Chapter Seven

‘A WORD, PLEASE, EVERYONE!’ shouted Norris a few days later, as he stood in the middle of the shop just before opening.

I looked over my shoulder and caught Eugene’s eye. He frowned at me; I shrugged back. Zach appeared at the top of the stairs and yawned, stretching his tattooed arms. A bird with unfurled wings flew up his right bicep, so delicately inked you could see every feather.

‘Morning, madam,’ said Zach mid-yawn, his arms still lifted. ‘What are you staring at?’

‘Put your hand over your mouth,’ I replied, walking past him towards the others.

‘Is everything OK, Norris?’ said Eugene. He was wearing his silliest bow tie, pink with yellow spots. It made him look like the host of a children’s game show.

‘Eugene, Eugene, calm down,’ said Norris, waving a hand in the air as if he was trying to slow traffic. ‘It’s only to say thank you, again, for the evening last week and any more ideas would be gratefully received since the landlord’s not budging on the rent. So we need more. More money, more support.’

‘More readings?’ suggested Eugene. ‘I’ve been looking at the catalogues and there’s a new cookery book by Marigold Shute coming out in the next couple of weeks called How to Have a Very Merry Vegan Christmas.’

‘Christ on a bike, not the nut-munchers,’ muttered Norris.

‘I’m not interviewing anybody,’ I warned.

‘And there’s a new Hitler biography by Simon Friedman,’ added Eugene.

‘Another one?’ I asked. ‘How is there anything left to say that the last 592 books about him haven’t?’

‘Hitler’s a crowd-puller,’ insisted Eugene.

‘Steady on,’ said Norris, waving his hand at him again. ‘But he does sell tickets so can you look into it?’

‘I’ve been thinking about children’s events,’ said Zach, leaning back against the shelves. ‘Hallowe’en is in a couple of weeks, then Christmas.’

‘Zachary, why would I want a stampede of kids dribbling from every orifice in this shop?’ asked Norris.

‘Because if you get the kids, you get the parents. Look, say we do a Hallowe’en party, a tenner a ticket per kid, string up fake cobwebs downstairs in the children’s section, do a couple of spooky readings, get a face painter. Job done. Meanwhile, the adults are stuck here for an hour or so. They’re going to buy books.’

‘You’ll probably just get a load of nannies.’

Zach rolled his eyes at me. ‘Don’t be a grinch. It’s what we should be doing. More community stuff, local stuff. And it’s good for our social channels. We get tagged in pictures, word spreads. Every little helps.’

‘If you want to do local stuff, what about my petition?’ I said, looking at Norris. ‘A proper campaign against the rent hike. And posters in the windows. That’s got to be more helpful than some fake cobwebs.’

‘Spoilsport,’ muttered Zach.

‘Don’t worry, I love fancy dress,’ said Eugene, patting his arm. ‘I’ll be there in my pumpkin outfit.’

‘Alternatively you could go as a toad,’ I suggested, peeved by Eugene’s open act of disloyalty.

‘We can do both,’ said Norris, adopting the tone of a UN peacekeeper. ‘Zachary, you can be in charge of events. Let’s see how Hallowe’en goes before committing to any others. But I do not want to see a drop of fake blood anywhere. If I see a drop of fake blood there could be a very real accident, all right?’

Zach nodded.

‘Florence, you may start your petition, but can you run it past me before you get any placards made up?’

‘I wasn’t going to get plac—’

‘It was a little joke,’ said Norris. ‘And Eugene, can you please approach Hitler and the cabbage brigade about readings?’

‘Yes, Norris, right away.’

‘Good, thank you. Can someone open up? I’m going back downstairs if anyone needs me.’

There was a NOMAD meeting that night, so I locked up and walked round the corner. ‘Hi, Stephen,’ I said, pushing the classroom door open. He waved from the teacher’s desk at the front where he was fanning out his custard creams. Mary was already in her seat at the front. Seamus, the hoarder, was making tea in the corner. I was always nervous about Seamus being on tea duty because he didn’t inspire much confidence on the hygiene front; today he was wearing a coat fastened with orange twine.

‘How you doing, babe?’ Jaz asked, as I took my usual seat next to her. ‘Saw those pictures of you with the dog.’

‘Don’t,’ I replied. ‘It was a complete disaster. All Zach’s fault.’

‘Is Zach the good-looking one?’

‘Not you as well?’

‘What?’

‘Ruby was all over him last week too.’

‘I wouldn’t mind him climbing all over me,’ said Jaz, with a wheezy laugh that attracted Stephen’s attention.

‘Jasmine and Florence, I wonder if you two would like to sit at the front this week?’

‘No, ta, Stephen. We’re all right here.’

‘If you say so,’ he replied, before turning back to his biscuits.

‘No Dunc?’ I asked.

‘Nah. Leon picked him up for once.’

‘All fine there?’

Jaz shrugged. ‘I handed over Dunc and his school bag, we didn’t say much.’ She paused and chewed a nail. ‘I dunno what he’ll give him for his tea.’

‘He’ll be OK, it’s one night.’ It felt feeble reassurance but I didn’t know what else to add. And to be fair to Leon, Dunc had only eaten from sterile jars of baby mush for the first two years of his life. One night of nuggets wasn’t going to hurt.

‘Anyway,’ Jaz went on, her face brightening, ‘how’s it going with that fancy boyfriend of yours?’

‘Fancy?’

She turned in her seat and squinted at me. ‘I thought you said he wears posh clothes?’

‘Oh, right, yes, and good, thanks. Stayed with his parents this weekend. Got caught shagging in the vegetable garden by his dad. The usual.’

‘What?’ she said, loudly enough for Stephen to glance over his shoulder at us.

‘Yeah, he’s quite keen on sex,’ I whispered.

‘You had that on that mad list of yours.’

‘What?’

‘Something about James Bond. And now you’ve got yourself a right pervert.’ She laughed loudly at this.

‘Shhhhhh.’

‘Have you been back to see that old witch?’ she asked, at the same volume.

‘Mmm.’

‘And what did she say about it?’

I winced, already embarrassed by what I was about to admit. ‘She put a spell on my necklace.’

‘For what?’

‘A spell for attraction, to transform my energy and make Rory fall in love with me. Or something like that.’

Jaz’s head dropped back and she cackled at the ceiling.

‘Jasmine!’ said Stephen. ‘As we’ll be starting in a few moments, are you sure I can’t persuade you to sit up here?’ He gestured at the front row, where Lenka had now joined Mary and was coughing into a handkerchief.

‘No, no, we’re all right,’ Jaz insisted, before looking at me. ‘I’m sorry, Floz, I shouldn’t laugh. But it is funny, all this. Forget your caterpillar book. Are you writing all this down?’

‘Isn’t it weird though? That everything’s happened like she said?’

She pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘Nah, not really. It’s what you want to believe, innit?’

‘What do you mean?’

Seamus shuffled in front of us, holding two mugs of tea so dark it looked like coffee.

‘Thanks, Seamus,’ I said, reaching for one handle, trying not to look at his dirty fingernails.

‘You’re the man,’ said Jaz, taking the other mug before breezing on. ‘Look, Floz, it’s like your counting and me thinking all my food was dangerous. And you thinking you’ve met Rory because of this list. It’s our brains persuading us that it must be true. It’s how them fortune tellers work.’

I frowned at her.

‘By winkling out people’s weak spots and convincing them that only they know the truth.’

‘When it isn’t true?’

She shrugged. ‘Could eating an apple really hurt Dunc? Nah, course not. But I had a little whispery voice telling me it might. And same with you, right? Did you meet Rory because you wrote a list of things you were looking for?’

I didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure what I believed now.

Jaz shook her head. ‘Nah. But you wanted a boyfriend and he happened to come into the shop one day, so you’ve persuaded yourself that it’s because of this list. It’s clever, man. It’s easy to believe, just be careful.’

‘With Rory?’

‘With everything. Don’t let anyone push you in the wrong direction. You’ve got to think for yourself.’

I sighed and decided to change the subject. I could feel Jaz’s advice acting like a depressant, deflating the excitement I felt about even being in a relationship.

‘Talking of the shop,’ I said, ‘can I talk to you about making a petition?’ Jaz had organized one a couple of years before when the council tried to demolish the red-brick block she lived in at the end of the King’s Road.

‘Petition?’

‘For Frisbee. To make the landlord back down on the rent. He only put it up last year and now he’s trying to do it again.’

‘You should do what we did.’

‘What was that?’

‘We put up a table on the street one weekend and got nearly two thousand signatures. And the local MP came and took photos. And we had stickers…’

‘Stickers!’ I hadn’t thought of stickers. ‘Did it help?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m still living there, aren’t I? I’ll help if you want. I quite like all that. A cause. In the olden times I could have been Joan of the Ark.’

‘Joan of Arc.’

‘Yeah, her.’

‘Mmm,’ I murmured. ‘We could have a table outside the shop and I’ll get a banner made up. I just need to beat Zach.’

‘Beat him?’

‘He’s doing a Hallowe’en party to raise money.’

‘Top idea! Can I bring Dunc?’

I tutted. ‘Yeah, all right.’ Then I remembered Mia’s hair request. ‘Oh, also, you up for doing our hair on my sister’s wedding day?’

‘Sure. When is it?’

‘First Saturday in December. It’ll be me and Ruby who are the bridesmaids. Plus my stepmum and the—’

‘JASMINE AND FLORENCE,’ shouted Stephen from the front. ‘As we’re about to start, I’m going to insist today that you both sit here.’ He gestured at the seats directly in front of his desk.

‘All right, Steve, keep your hair on,’ said Jaz, peeling her bottom out of the chair and picking up her bag. ‘Come on, Floz. You got us in trouble with Stephen.’

The following morning, I downloaded a petition template and personalized it at the till computer while Eugene tidied the customer orders in the cupboard behind me, singing hymns as he went.

‘Save our local bookshop!’ I typed in big red letters at the top of the document, followed by a short paragraph explaining that we needed support to force our landlord to back down on the rent increase. Initially, I wrote ‘evil landlord’ but deleted it on the basis that it was a petty barb that made the petition sound less professional.

Zach had come upstairs looking for the stapler earlier and peered over my shoulder before offering to help with the design, but I had primly refused him. The petition was my job. And it looked very official; neat little rectangular boxes for printed names, signatures and email addresses. I felt proud. The suffragettes might have handcuffed themselves to the Downing Street railings but I’d mastered Excel. Both were impressive in their own way.

‘How many sheets do you think we need?’ I asked Eugene over my shoulder.

He paused from a verse of ‘Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer’.

‘How many signatures can you get on each one?’

‘Mmm… about thirty,’ I said, scrolling down the computer.

His head popped out from the cupboard like a mole. ‘Maybe a hundred?’

‘A hundred sheets? Norris will go mad.’ The printer was downstairs in his office. Eugene used to print his lines from it until Norris appeared on the shop floor one morning, eyes like a dragon and clutching fistfuls of paper, demanding to know which of us had printed the entire text of Othello.

‘Just do it when he goes for lunch,’ Eugene said with a shrug, before returning to the cupboard and resuming his singing.

I hit print just after Norris left for The Duck and Sausage (he had lunch at the nearby pub every day: a pint of ale and a pickled egg sandwich), and I left it a few minutes before going downstairs to the office.

Zach spun from his laptop and gestured at the printer where dozens of pages had fluttered to the floor and more were spilling out of it, page after page. ‘You aiming for the whole of London to sign this?’

‘I don’t want to run out of sheets on Saturday,’ I said, sucking my stomach in and stepping into the tight space between the printer and the back of his chair. I had decided, and Norris had grunted his assent, that this weekend was a good time to erect a table outside the shop and start bagging signatures. The forecast was clear and it was half-term, so I figured families might be out shopping.

‘How many did you print?’

‘A hundred.’

Zach swivelled round, the back of his chair pressing my bottom into the filing cabinet, and picked up a few sheets from the floor. ‘You must have done more than that, look.’ He held up a sheet which had the number ‘178’ in the top right-hand corner.

I checked the next sheet out of the printer: 241. And the sheets didn’t look like they were supposed to. The table was the wrong way round and the signatures boxes had pushed the spaces for email addresses off the page. How had I done this? Fucking Excel. Norris would explode. He was always telling us that ink cartridges were more expensive than gold.

‘Shit,’ I muttered, biting my lip at Zach. ‘I don’t know. Stop it, can we stop it?’ I hit the printer’s red button multiple times but the printer kept churning them out, the pages now spooling out and covering my feet. ‘Shit, Zach! And the layout’s all messed up, there’s no space on each one for email addresses. The whole lot’s useless. Shit, what a waste. How do I make it stop? Zach, don’t just laugh, help!’

‘Calm down,’ he said, standing up. ‘And budge up.’

I bent myself underneath the sloped ceiling as Zach tapped at a few buttons on the machine and it stopped instantly.

‘What’s going on?’ barked Norris, appearing in the doorway.

‘Thought you’d gone for lunch,’ I said quickly.

‘Forgot something I needed to post.’ He glared at the floor, a sea of A4. ‘What’s all this paper?’

‘It’s the petition which Florence has very kindly spent all morning working on to help you,’ said Zach, in the calming tone that you’d use on a child. ‘Is that OK?’

Norris reached for an envelope from his desk. ‘Yes, yes, fine.’ He stuck out his chin to peer at one of the sheets.

‘Go and have lunch, we’ll show you when you’re back,’ Zach said, ushering him out. Then he turned back to me, scrabbling around in his Doc Martens, picking up the wasted sheets. ‘Email me the document. I’ll print it.’

‘Thanks,’ I said meekly, standing up and feeling child-like myself. Hateful, hateful Excel.

The printer wasn’t my only challenge that week. On Friday evening, I traipsed along Harley Street, walked up four floors and knocked on Gwendolyn’s door.

I waited for her summoning.

Nothing.

I knocked again.

Nothing.

I knocked for a third time and cracked the door open. I didn’t want to interrupt any poor, embarrassed soul lying on the sofa while they had a spell put on them.

But instead of anybody lying on the sofa, I was greeted by the sight of Gwendolyn dancing around the room in a pair of large pink headphones, wafting a bunch of burning twigs over her head. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of very strong sweet tea.

‘Gwendolyn?’

She didn’t hear me.

‘Gwendolyn?’

‘Oh girls, they wanna have fu-hunnnnn…’ she sang, still with her back to me. She side-stepped into the corner, her bottom swinging side to side as she waved the twigs like a rhythmic gymnast twirling a ribbon in the air.

‘GWENDOLYN!’

The bottom froze and she frowned over her shoulder, then tugged her headphones off.

‘Florence, hello, you’re very early.’

I looked at my watch. It was 6.32 p.m., which meant I was two minutes late.

‘No, it’s, er, gone six thirty.’

‘Has it?’ Gwendolyn squinted at her watch as if I was lying to her. ‘Goodness me, so it has. Right, let me just sort myself out and we’ll get cracking.’

She unclipped an old Walkman from the waistband of her patchwork trousers, then dropped the twigs into a small ceramic bowl on the coffee table.

‘What is that?’ I asked. The room smelled like a hippie’s armpit.

‘Sage. I had a very troubled client before you, poor man’s wife has just left him, so I needed to purify the room, to dispel all the negative energy.’ Gwendolyn sat down on the armchair opposite me and briefly closed her eyes. ‘Mmm, it’s helped.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Did you know, Florence, that the Latin for sage, salvia, means to heal?’

‘Er, no, I didn’t.’

‘So when you burn it, it releases negative ions which neutralize the space around us. But let’s not dwell on poor Mr Nicopoulous and his runaway wife. How are you? Is your romance still blossoming like a cherry tree in April? I do hope so.’

‘It is,’ I said slowly. ‘I think so. I went to stay with his parents at the weekend.’

She clapped her hands with delight. ‘You did? And how was his mother? You wanted someone with a nice mother, did you not?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, and she was nice. Although his fath—’

Gwendolyn interrupted by clicking her finger and thumb several times and shaking her head.

‘What?’

‘Always this negativity, Florence. Have you noticed it? It’s a very pernicious habit of yours, almost as if you can’t allow anything to be going well.’

‘No, it is going well, it’s just that his father was a bit weird. And he’s got this old friend called Octavia who told me something strange.’

She sighed as if I was making this up. ‘What was it? Tell me.’

I twisted my mouth into a tight knot before answering. ‘She just said he was looking for a wife. She basically implied that’s all he wanted, and that it could have been anyone, but that I was docile enough to fit the bill.’

‘Oh goodness me, Florence, what’s wrong with that?’ Gwendolyn looked at me with wide-eyed astonishment. ‘Don’t you want to get married?’

‘Yes. But no, not like that. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to marry Rory, not yet. Why do I have to know now? And why is everyone so frigging obsessed with getting married? What is so bad about not being married?’

‘Florence…’

But I ignored her and carried on. ‘I mean, we’ve invented driverless cars and vegan cheese but the marker of civilization is still putting on a white dress and staggering twenty metres down an aisle. What canapés to have. What cake to have. A fishtail dress or halterneck? Roses or lilies? DJ or a band? Should our invitations be white or blue? What should our wedding hashtag be? Jesus Christ, a wedding hashtag! That’s when you need more going on in your life, if you’re busy worrying about your wedding hashtag.’

‘Florence, have you quite finished?’

I leant back against the sofa. ‘Yes.’

‘Well I think there’s only one thing for it,’ she said. ‘We need to do a sage ritual with you too.’

‘Why?’ I asked wearily, but she was already leaning forward to pick up the small bundle of twigs from the bowl.

‘Because it will balance you out. Help clear all this toxic negativity. Now sit there and hold this.’

‘Hold what?’

Gwendolyn stood, opened a drawer of the dresser behind her and turned back to me with a pale grey feather. ‘This. It’s from a very rare type of white-bellied forest owl found only in the Ural Mountains.’

‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

‘Just wave it slowly in front of you while I perform the smudging ceremony.’

‘The what?’

‘Florence, no more questions, close your eyes.’

I wriggled myself further back on the sofa, dragged the feather back and forth in front of me as if it was a sparkler and listened to Gwendolyn light the bundle of sage.

Inevitably, there was also a mad prayer.

‘May your hands be cleansed, that they create beautiful things,’ she said, as the first pungent whiff of smoke caught my nostrils. ‘And may your feet be cleansed, that they might take you where you most need to be.’

She continued for several minutes, listing pretty much each and every body part. Even my reproductive organs got a shout-out. And the smell! The smell made me want to retch.

‘May this person be washed clean by the smoke of this fragrant plant. And may that same smoke carry these prayers, spiralling, to the heavens,’ she said finally, before telling me to open my eyes and hand back the feather. ‘There, I expect you’ll sleep very well tonight. You can report back in our next session.’

One more to go, I thought, as I left her room a few minutes later and headed back downstairs to Harley Street. While strolling home through St James’s Park, I glanced down and saw a feather which looked suspiciously like that of the white-bellied forest owl. I picked it up as I heard a cooing above my head in a tree. It was a pigeon, so I’m not entirely convinced that Gwendolyn’s feather was from a rare owl at all.

When I got back to Kennington, an unexpected situation was unfolding in the kitchen: Mia, Hugo and Rory were all sitting at the kitchen table wearing sleep masks over their eyes while Ruby poured red wine into glasses in front of them. Mia had a pink silky sleep mask on; Rory’s was lilac and Hugo’s was white and fluffy, shaped like a unicorn with closed eyes on the front of it and a small horn protruding from the middle. The table was covered with further wine bottles and used glasses, and from the speaker behind the sink came the sound of aggressive hip-hop. Ruby loved hip-hop.

‘Hello,’ I said, dropping my rucksack on the floor. ‘Rory, how come you’re here so early?’

He lifted up one end of his mask and then stood and came round the table to kiss me. ‘I finished work before I thought I would. Where’ve you been? Did you not see my message?’

‘No, sorry.’ I’d been too busy contemplating pigeon feathers and the effects of sage to look at my phone on the walk home. ‘I was working late on my petition,’ I added quickly, before Mia and Ruby could remember that I’d had my third session with Gwendolyn.

‘Want a glass, Flo?’ said Ruby, waggling the bottle at me.

‘Yep, thanks,’ I replied as Rory sat back down.

He and I had planned to meet here and order a takeaway on the sofa since, when Mia had mentioned the wine tasting a couple of days ago, I’d assumed that she meant they were doing it at Claridge’s, not in our kitchen. I wondered how long Rory had been here and totted up the number of open bottles on the table. Eight. There was a relaxed, end-of-dinner-party vibe to the room; the glasses were smeary with fingerprints, there was a bowl of half-eaten crisps on the table and Hugo and Rory had pulled their tie knots loose. But the thought of him hanging with my sisters and Hugo without me made me anxious. Or maybe that was the screaming hip-hop. Just please could they not have mentioned the list.

‘What petition? Were you with Zach?’ asked Ruby, handing me a glass.

‘I do hope not,’ said Rory.

‘Has he said anything about me?’ Ruby added. ‘I’ve started following him on Insta but he hasn’t followed me back.’

‘No, sorry. And it’s just something I’m doing at the shop tomorrow. To try and raise local support and so on and so on. But why the blindfolds?’ I pushed on, keen to get off the subject of Zach.

Mia pushed her sleep mask back so her blonde hair stuck out behind it like straw from a scarecrow and explained, ‘We thought we’d make it a blind tasting, more fun.’

I watched as Hugo, mask still on, fumbled in front of him for a plastic bowl on the table, then picked it up and spat into it.

Ruby wrinkled her nose. ‘Just swallow it, Hugo, everyone else is.’

‘A spittoon is how the professionals do it. And I’m not sure about that one at all. The first red was better.’

Ruby sighed and picked up a bottle from the table before squinting at the label. ‘That was the Merlot.’ She looked back to me. ‘I’ll come and sign the petition if Zach’s going to be there. Dad’s back this weekend too, did you know?’

‘What? No, I didn’t.’

‘We’re having lunch tomorrow, and then dropping into Claridge’s to show him the ballroom,’ Mia added. ‘Wanna join?’

‘Can’t. I’ve got this petition. How long’s he back for?’

‘Think just the weekend, it’s a very last-minute thing. Mum organized it. But listen, why don’t we all swing by the shop on the way?’ said Mia, presumably noticing the hurt I could feel rippling across my face.

Hugo pulled his unicorn mask down around his neck. ‘We’ve got to be at Claridge’s at midday, Mia, I’m not sure we’ll have time to fit in a trip to Chel—’

‘Yes, we will,’ she replied, swatting his arm.

I nodded while straining my eyes wide to stop the kitchen from going blurry. This sense of isolation took me straight back to being small again, to being shunted upstairs and feeling like the odd one out. We were supposed to be a family of five but at moments like this, it felt like a unit of four with an awkward add-on. The difficult daughter, the weirdo who played strange mind games and thought she’d have a bad day if she woke up at 7.13 a.m. instead of 7.14 a.m.

‘Great,’ said Mia, before turning to Rory with a wide smile. ‘You up for meeting the parents?’

‘Absolutely, although…’ he glanced at me with a wince, ‘I might have to go to the office afterwards to do some work.’

‘And the best news of all,’ went on Mia, clearly still in cheering-up mode, ‘is that Rory’s coming to my wedding.’

‘Our wedding,’ sighed Hugo. ‘Mia, how many times do I have to say it?’

I looked at Rory in surprise. ‘Actually?’

He nodded. ‘Absolutely. I’m very honoured to be asked.’

‘And to my stag,’ added Hugo.

‘WHAT?’

‘Well, since Mr Popular here only has about three friends…’ said Mia, elbowing Hugo.

‘That’s not true!’ he protested.

‘Oh, come on, you do.’ Her gaze slid back to me. ‘Since he’s only got three friends, and Rory’s free, he’s said he’s up for going too. Isn’t that nice?’

‘Um, yep, if you’re sure?’ I said, looking sideways at Rory, trying to gauge how keen he actually was.

‘Course,’ he said. ‘I love Prague. Terrific city. Did you know there’s more beer drunk there per head than any other country in the world?’

‘Great,’ I said, before taking a big mouthful of wine and counting to six before swallowing because I felt very out of control at the speed with which everything was moving around me. I don’t believe Gwendolyn’s sage had done anything to lower my stress levels.

I brooded silently about all this while the others chatted. Dad had presumably been very busy, I told myself. Important meetings all week with beef farmers and Malbec producers. I was thirty-two, not twelve; I needed to stop being so sensitive. I’d see him tomorrow. It would all be fine.

Beside me, Mia was telling Rory about their honeymoon to Sicily. ‘I wanted to go to Zanzibar but Hugo was worried about the mosquitos.’

‘Mia, they’ve had very bad dengue fever there.’

‘So we’re staying in a hotel with not one but two golf courses instead. But it’s got an infinity pool and a spa so I’ll be fine.’

‘His and hers activities. How romantic,’ drawled Ruby, rolling her eyes at me.

‘You’ll have to keep an eye out for the Mafia in Sicily, of course,’ Rory added.

‘Really?’ Hugo said quickly. ‘I thought that sort of thing was all over?’

Rory shook his head and looked solemn. ‘No, no. It’s still very much alive. Just don’t carve anyone up on the golf course.’

‘Or he’ll find a horse’s head on his pillow?’ suggested Ruby.

‘Exactly,’ Rory replied, and they both laughed.

‘They’re joking, sweetheart, relax,’ said Mia, as Hugo’s brows knitted in panic.

The wine was finished so everyone started murmuring about bed. I stood to clear the glasses from the table but Mia told me off.

‘Leave it, Flo, we can do it in the morning. You guys go to bed.’

‘Sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

I counted the stairs in my head as we went upstairs. Bed, delicious bed. I felt strangely woozy. The sage? The wine? My jumbled emotions on hearing that Dad was back? Hard to pinpoint but I wanted to go straight to sleep and be fresh for a day manning my trestle table.

Rory had other ideas. Once he’d closed my bedroom door, he pulled the lilac blindfold from his pocket and dangled it from his fingers.

‘You thief!’ I said, trying to snatch it. But he was too quick and sidestepped so I fell forwards on to my duvet.

‘Put it on,’ he instructed, tossing the blindfold at me.

‘What, now? Like this?’ I gestured at my clothes and stifled a yawn. Not sexy to yawn in your boyfriend’s face when he wants to play a sex game, Florence. It might not be that long, I told myself. If you go to sleep in half an hour, you’ll still get six hours at least.

Rory nodded so I tugged it over my head. And when my eyes were covered, he pushed me back on my bed, unbuttoned my shirt and pulled off my trousers. Then he unhooked my bra, peeled down my knickers and started kissing my body, but as his stubble grazed my skin, I kept sniggering.

‘Shhhhhhh,’ he instructed, as his mouth moved down the hollow of my chest.

‘Sorry,’ I snorted. ‘I’m trying to be serious, it’s just…’ I cracked up again and lost it, ‘funny. And it tickles.’

Rory stopped and I heard him stand up. Then came a noise that sounded like him rummaging through my make-up bag. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing. Lie down. No looking.’

He came back to the bed and I felt the mattress dip as he knelt on it and kissed me.

‘Put your hands above your head.’

I did as instructed and felt him tie them together.

‘What is tha—’

‘Shhhhh,’ he ordered.

Something feathery and light ran up my inner thigh. ‘What is THAT?’

‘Ssssshhhhhhh,’ he said, as the mysterious downy instrument trailed up my stomach, over my nipple, across my neck and down my body. He was kissing me at the same time, brushing my cheeks, my ears, my neck and the top of my chest with his mouth. As the kisses became harder, my laughter subsided and I started writhing at the sensation of being under Rory’s mouth – and whatever he was running over me.

‘I want to see you,’ I said.

‘Uh-uh,’ he replied, and continued for a few minutes until I was arching my back against the mattress.

It stopped very suddenly and I listened to him stand up and unzip his trousers, leaving me tied and blindfolded on the bed.

‘Hang on,’ he told me, and I groaned in frustration before I felt the feathery sensation start running down the side of my body again, flicking along the soles of my feet. As the heat increased between my legs, I pressed my chest into the air. ‘Seriously, that’s too much, PLEASE can we have sex?’

He laughed from behind my head.

Huh? What was he doing there? Something was still tickling my feet and his arms couldn’t reach that far. Could they? I twisted my wrists together to see if I could release them but the strap was too tight.

‘Rory? Rory? What’s going on? Rory?’ The dark was now freaking me out.

He knelt on the bed and untied my wrists; I instantly pulled the blindfold off.

Oh no.

Really, really no.

No, no, no.

No.

It was Marmalade lying at my feet, flexing his tail back and forth against them. I felt sick. I felt like one of those perverts you read about in weird magazines who marry their pets. I felt like Catherine the Great who died shagging her horse. I felt furious.

‘RORY? Are you kidding me?’

He realized what I meant and shook his head quickly. ‘Oh no! It was your make-up brush, I promise, I wasn’t using him. It was your make-up brush, and then I got up to strip, and by the time I’d done that he was rubbing himself against your feet. Look.’ He reached to the carpet and picked up my bronzer brush, then leant forward and ran it up my chest. I was suddenly a lot less into it.

‘Stop, no more,’ I said grumpily, pushing him off. I was done with today. I wanted to go to sleep.

Rory dropped the brush on the floor and scooped up Marmalade. ‘Come on, boy,’ he said, taking him to my bedroom door and shutting him out.

He came back to bed and although I still felt silly, it took him all of three minutes before he’d seduced me all over again. He was insatiable. But also extremely inventive. I didn’t recall James Bond ever using a bronzer brush as a sex toy.

What time was it? What year was it? What was my name? I woke the next morning with a start, confused by the bright light running around the edges of my window blind. I rolled on to my side and looked at my clock. Shit. It was nearly nine. I’d overslept, and I needed to be in the shop in less than half an hour to put up my trestle table.

I stepped out of bed, saw the blindfold on the carpet and winced. Poor Marmalade. As the needles of hot water hit my neck, I stood with my head hanging, wishing it could purify my soul. I buried my face in my hands and groaned.

I got out of the shower and dressed while Rory lay flat on his stomach, still asleep. Lucky, I thought, because I didn’t have the strength for a morning session. Back in the bathroom, I rubbed my face with moisturizer and slicked on a coat of mascara. I needed a coffee but I’d have to get one on the way. I didn’t have time to dally in the kitchen.

I arrived at the shop fifteen minutes before opening.

‘MORNING, I’M HERE,’ I said, bursting in.

Jaz was sitting on the counter in a huge leopard print coat, her purple ankle boots dangling beneath her. ‘Hi, how did you get in?’ I asked, panting.

She frowned. ‘Did you get the Tube like that?’

‘Why?’

She reached into her bag and handed me a compact mirror. Ah. Beneath my eyebrows were thick black smudges of mascara. ‘Shit,’ I said, licking my index finger and rubbing at them. ‘Jaz, they won’t come off. Help! Why won’t they come off?’

She reached into her bag again and brought out a packet of wipes. ‘Stand still,’ she said, dabbing at my face with one. ‘Why so late? It’s unlike you.’

I sighed and Jaz winced, turning her face away at my breath.

‘Sorry, had some red wine. And then Rory made me have sex with my bronzer brush.’

‘WHAT?’ she shouted.

‘WHAT?’ said Zach, appearing at the top of the stairs.

I closed my eyes. This morning was bad. So bad.

‘Florence Fairfax?’ said Jaz.

‘Yes?’ I squeaked, opening my eyes.

‘What are you talking about?’

I glanced at the clock over the till. ‘OK, Jaz, I’ll tell you while we put the table up outside. Zach, you didn’t hear that.’

‘I certainly did hear that,’ he said. ‘And nice of you to join us. Luckily, I got here early and found poor Jaz loitering outside the door with Dunc.’

‘Dunc! Where’s he?’

‘Downstairs in the kids’ section,’ said Zach.

As Jaz and I carried the trestle table upstairs, I explained the previous night in more detail, although I left the part about the blindfold and the bronzer brush until we were outside so Zach couldn’t eavesdrop. At least the forecast had been right; it was the perfect October day, a clear sky and the sun already high enough to dazzle us as we fought with the table legs.

‘What did I say? The guy’s a pervert,’ Jaz said, once I’d finished explaining.

‘He’s coming later today so you can tell him yourself,’ I said, as I unfurled a banner I’d made that week. ‘As are my entire family, including my dad.’

‘Your old man?’ said Jaz, squinting at me in the sunshine. ‘It’d be nice to meet him.’

‘Mmm,’ I murmured back, realizing that, although I’d mentioned Dad many times in NOMAD meetings, I’d always kept him – and the rest of my family – very separate. But today, everyone would collide. Not just Jaz and my family, but Rory, too, along with Eugene and Norris. And Zach! The thought made me dizzy.

‘You all right?’ said Jaz.

‘Mmm,’ I said again. ‘Come on, help me with this.’ I handed her one end of the banner and picked up the Sellotape from the table.

‘Chuck us that,’ Jaz said after I’d secured my side.

She taped her corner and we stood back to survey our handiwork.

A BOOKSHOP’S FOR LIFE, NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS, said the banner, in wobbly red letters since I’d decided to paint it rather than risk the printer again.

‘That? That’s the slogan you went with?’ said Jaz, her hands on her hips.

Zach opened the door and came out, hand in hand with Dunc.

I squatted down. ‘Hello, you’ve got so big!’

He buried himself between Zach’s legs.

‘You’ve got a mate,’ said Jaz. ‘What are your babysitting rates like?’

‘Free to this one,’ Zach replied, putting a hand on Dunc’s head. ‘We’ve been looking at dinosaur books, haven’t we?’

Dunc nodded. ‘Yes, and my favourite is the, er…’ His small face contorted with concentration before he frowned up at Zach.

‘The diplodocus,’ said Zach.

Dunc nodded authoritatively.

‘You’re my hero,’ Jaz told him.

‘Not at all. But nice work, you two. You all right if I open up?’

I nodded. ‘I might make a coffee quickly. Jaz, want one?’

‘Yeah, babe. Milk, three sugars please.’

The sunshine meant shoppers flocked to the King’s Road in their cashmere overcoats and sunglasses. By lunchtime, we had over three hundred signatures and Jaz had gone hoarse from shouting like a town crier.

‘Save our local bookshop,’ she croaked for a final time before I told her to quit. I could feel the tentacles of a headache twitching behind my forehead.

Zach ferried us tea and biscuits while Eugene manned the till inside, helped by Dunc sitting on the counter, sliding new books into paper bags.

It was around eleven when I spotted a familiar head of silver hair coming towards us.

‘Dad!’ I cried, one hand shielding my eyes from the sun, the other waving like a small child who’d just spotted her father at the school gates.

He grinned and, behind his spectacles, his eyes crinkled into lines. Time spent in hot countries meant his face had darkened over the years as his hair turned paler.

‘Ah, my Florence, hello,’ he cried, as I hurried out from behind the table and he wrapped his arms around me.

‘Hi,’ I mumbled into his overcoat before stepping back and squinting at him. ‘How are you? Tired? How was the flight? When do you go back? Where are the others?’ I glanced over his shoulder to gauge how long I had him before they arrived.

Dad laughed. ‘Which question do you want me to answer first?’

‘All of them. Oh no, actually, meet my friend Jaz. Jaz, this is my dad, Henry.’

‘Henry Fairfax, hello, very good to meet you.’ He held a tanned hand out towards her.

‘Henry, my man, you too. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

Dad pretended to grimace. ‘Not all terrible, I hope?’ Ever a diplomat, he was always ready to charm strangers.

‘Mostly terrible, yeah, but some good,’ she replied, with a grin.

He turned back to me. ‘Your stepmother and sisters have stopped in a shop down there…’ He turned and pointed along the King’s Road. ‘Patricia wanted to look at hats. And I’m extremely well, only sorry that this trip is so brief.’

‘You’re flying back tomorrow?’

‘’Fraid so. Got to be back in the embajada on Monday.’

This meant the embassy. Dad was good with languages. He’d picked up Urdu in Pakistan and was now fluent in Spanish. Mum had been the same – born in France, she could natter in French and English as a child and learned Hindi while teaching in Mumbai. Apparently she’d called me ‘baby bandar’ when I was tiny, a Hindi term of affection meaning ‘little monkey’. I didn’t remember this but Dad had told me once and I’d held on to the phrase ever since, an oral talisman that reminded me of her.

‘How is it?’ I asked again. ‘How are the soybean magnates?’

‘Oh fine, fine,’ he replied. It was always his answer. There could have been another war brewing in the Falklands and he would have shrugged it off. It was an unflappable calm which explained both why he’d been successful in diplomacy and his marriage to Patricia worked.

‘But forget about me,’ Dad went on. ‘Look at all this!’ He waved at my banner. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘Thanks.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘All right. Got a few hundred names, I reckon. Will you sign?’

‘Try and stop me,’ he said, picking up a pen.

As Dad leant over the table, I heard Patricia’s voice floating towards us. Not the words, just the shrill tone. I watched her approach, flanked by Mia and Ruby. Hugo was lagging at the back, phone clutched to his ear.

‘Morning, darling,’ said Patricia, proffering her cheek.

‘Morning, did you find a hat?’

Patricia made a noise of disgust. ‘No, they were all hopeless.’

‘I took some photos though, look,’ said Ruby, grinning. She pulled out her phone. They were ludicrous: Patricia with what looked like a turquoise bath puff attached to her head; Patricia wearing a pink boomerang; Patricia in a red beret.

‘No sniggering please, girls.’

‘Oh, Pat, come on, we’re only joking,’ Ruby replied, slipping her phone into her pocket.

Before Patricia could complain about the nickname I turned back to the table and introduced them all to Jaz, then told everyone to add their signatures to the petition.

‘But what exactly am I signing for?’ demanded Hugo. ‘I don’t like signing things I’m not fully informed about.’

Mia tutted. ‘Sweetheart, it’s to save the shop, and Flo’s job. It’s not a pyramid scheme.’ She held out a pen which Hugo looked at suspiciously before leaning over the sheet and adding his name.

‘Is Zach here?’ asked Ruby, peering through the shop window.

‘He’s probably downstairs.’

‘Who?’ asked Dad.

‘My colleague Zach.’

‘I’m with you, Rubes, he’s a honey,’ said Jaz, winking at her.

‘Where does he come from? And who are his parents?’ demanded Patricia, who was mourning the departure of Jasper from Ruby’s life and, with it, the idea of her daughter becoming a duchess who lived in a castle.

‘He’s Norris’s nephew. A photographer.’

Patricia’s lip curled. A photographer didn’t sound at all like someone who might own a castle.

‘He’s hot and he rides a motorbike, and he teases Flo, which is very good for her,’ said Ruby, grinning. Then she turned from her mother to me. ‘I saw Rory in the kitchen this morning, had a cup of tea with him. He said you two were up very late last night.’

‘Can we not talk about last night,’ I said, at a flashback of the bronzer brush. This absolutely was not a topic I wanted to discuss in front of Dad and Patricia.

Jaz cackled.

‘I don’t want to know,’ said Dad. ‘I might just go into the shop and have a browse.’

‘Me too,’ said Ruby, hurrying in after him.

The others hovered in front of the table and Hugo’s face flinched as if in pain.

‘You all right?’ I asked.

‘Worried about time,’ he muttered, glancing at his wrist. ‘Mia, we really should be going if we’re going to get to Claridge’s.’

‘But where’s this boyfriend of yours, Florence?’ interjected my stepmother. ‘I thought he was going to be here? Your father and I are longing to meet him.’

Right on cue, Rory’s face appeared behind them.

‘Hello, hello,’ he boomed, so everyone spun to face him. He was wearing a beige overcoat, Raybans and a pair of leather gloves. ‘How’s my little campaigner?’ he asked, leaning over the table and kissing the top of my head.

‘Bit tired,’ I said, ‘but Rory, meet my friend Jaz and my stepmum Patricia.’

Patricia beamed so widely her eyes formed little slits. ‘Rory, hello, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to meet you. We were starting to worry because poor Florence here has never had a bo—’

‘BOLOGNAISE!’ I shouted. I couldn’t think of anything else. I’d panicked and belted out the first word that came to mind.

‘Are you feeling all right, darling?’ asked Patricia.

‘Mmm, fine, I was just thinking about my lunch. And I’ve never had a proper bolognaise before. Some people make it with cream and others say you should never put mushrooms in it. What do you all think?’ I was gabbling, as if speaking faster would alleviate the social tension I felt. This gathering of people, the colliding of several parts of my life, felt like a complicated Venn diagram – and I was right in the middle trying to hold it all together.

‘I think we should be leaving for our own lunch,’ said Hugo, looking at his watch again. For once, I was grateful to him.

‘Stop fussing,’ said Mia, ‘I need to talk to Jaz about my wedding hair.’

She and Jaz started discussing the merits of loose hair versus bridal up-dos, while Rory peered at the sheets lying on the table.

‘How many signatures?’

‘Over three hundred, we reckon.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Oi! I’m quite proud of that.’

‘No, of course,’ he replied quickly. ‘You should be.’ Then he glanced up at me. ‘Where’s your dad?’

‘Inside with Ruby, who’s chasing after Zach.’

‘Not the communist?’ said Rory, wrinkling his nose as if someone had just farted.

Patricia gasped. ‘He’s a communist?’

Rory leant towards her, smirking. ‘I don’t think officially, but he might as well be. A terrible left-winger.’

‘Oh dear, we can’t have that,’ said Patricia, straining her neck to look inside the shop.

I handed Rory a pen. ‘Sign please.’

He added his name at the bottom of a sheet. ‘Three hundred and one,’ he said, handing the pen back to me. ‘And I should probably be getting on to my office.’

‘Hang on, you need to meet Dad,’ I said, feeling a pang of disappointment that Rory might disappear so quickly when I’d spent the previous weekend sweating with anxiety, hoping I didn’t say anything wrong in front of his parents.

‘Yes, Rory, I gather you work in politics, like my husband,’ Patricia said, placing a hand on his forearm, as if to stop him from physically leaving.

‘Indeed I do.’

Patricia patted his arm approvingly. ‘I do so love a man with ambition.’ Then she glanced at me. ‘Wasn’t ambition one of the things on your list, Florence?’

‘MAGICIAN,’ I shouted, cursing Patricia in my head. She seemed completely oblivious to the idea that Gwendolyn had to remain a secret.

‘What list?’ said Rory.

‘A list of jobs,’ I lied. ‘I wrote it when I was little. They were the jobs I wanted to do when I grew up.’

You wanted to be a magician?’ said Rory, with a frown.

‘Yup. I loved, er, Paul Daniels. And then I wanted to be a, er, cook. And then I read The Secret Garden and decided on books. Isn’t life funny?’ I laughed too loudly at this, my eyes sliding from Rory to Patricia, then Mia and Hugo and finally Jaz. They all stood blinking at me, as if they were silently weighing up whether I should be committed to some sort of asylum.

I felt relief flood my body as the shop door opened again and Dad stepped out, followed by Ruby. A distraction. But then Zach appeared behind them with Dunc on his shoulders and the relief was swept away by a spike of anxiety at the thought that he’d say something snarky to Rory.

Christ, this morning was an emotional assault course and the table felt crowded. I wanted to sit down but we didn’t have any chairs.

‘Dad!’ I said weakly. ‘This is Rory, Rory, this is my dad.’

‘Rory, excellent to meet you.’

‘Not at all, sir,’ said Rory, pushing his sunglasses on to his head before shaking his hand. ‘The pleasure is all mine.’

‘No, no, none of that please. And I’m delighted to hear you’re joining us for Mia’s wedding?’

‘It’s also my wedding,’ chipped in Hugo.

‘I am,’ Rory replied. ‘Very much looking forward to it.’

As Dad and Rory grinned at one another there was a lull in conversation.

‘And this is Zach,’ I said, for the benefit of those outside who hadn’t met him.

Rory spun to face him. ‘Oh it’s you. Hello,’ he drawled.

‘Hi, everyone.’ Zach released one of Dunc’s legs to wave at the semicircle before his eyes reached Rory. He took in his sunglasses and gloves. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he added. ‘Are you off to a Goodfellas convention?’

‘Ha, no, no,’ said Rory, with a short bark of fake laughter. ‘Actually I really must be getting to the office, so much paperwork to get through.’

‘The Middle East’s not going to solve itself,’ Zach replied, with a wide smile.

I ground my teeth. I’d been desperate for my family to meet an actual, real-life man I was dating but now I wanted everyone to clear off. This was exhausting. I felt like a very small country, more an island, really, whose threat level had been raised to critical by the presence of various competing factions. I needed peace and space for my jangling loyalties and emotions to calm down.

‘We really must go too, Mia,’ said Hugo.

‘All right, all right,’ she said, flapping a hand at him. ‘But Jaz, I’ll ring you.’

‘Sure, babe. Any time.’

Patricia declared they’d catch a taxi to Claridge’s from the King’s Road and everyone murmured their goodbyes.

‘I’m walking that way so I’ll come with you,’ replied Rory, before leaning over to kiss me. ‘Bye, sweetheart, call me when you finish here?’

‘Sure.’

Dad hung back as the others headed down the little street towards the King’s Road.

‘Florence, darling, it’s such a coincidence, but I’ve just discovered that Zach’s about to go travelling across South America.’

‘Are you?’ I said, frowning at Zach. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Yeah. When I’m done here. I’ve been wanting to go to Patagonia for years to take pictures.’

‘Lunch, lunch, lunch,’ demanded Dunc, his little heels kicking against Zach’s chest.

He laughed. ‘All right, buddy, we’re off.’

‘Zach, do get my email address from Florence to look me up,’ said Dad.

‘I will, thanks.’

A high-pitched shout came from down the street. ‘Henry!’ It was Patricia, gesticulating at a dawdling taxi.

Dad nodded at her, then looked back to me. ‘Bye, darling, sorry this was so brief.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said, stepping out from the table for another hug. ‘When are you next home?’

‘Probably the wedding,’ he said, releasing me.

‘Not till then?’

‘It’s only a month or so away.’

‘True.’ I nodded at him and told myself that, at least outwardly, I had to act like a grown-up, even though I wanted to hold on to Dad’s ankles and refuse to let him leave.

‘Be good,’ he replied with a grin. ‘Great to meet you both,’ he added, waving at Jaz and Zach before hurrying towards the taxi.

‘And we’re going to get some food, aren’t we, Dunc?’ said Zach, before glancing at Jaz. ‘Anything he can’t eat?’

Jaz opened her mouth as if she was about to issue a stream of mad rules but then closed it. ‘Nah, whatever you like. But let me give you some cash.’

Zach waved a hand at her. ‘I’ve got it.’

They sauntered off and I let myself fall back against the shop’s windows with a big sigh.

‘Careful,’ warned Jaz. ‘You all right?’

‘Mmm, just tired.’

‘Families, eh?’ she said, with a sympathetic grin.

‘Yeah. Something like that. But listen, you don’t have to stay. Take Dunc home when they get back. I can manage on my own.’

‘Are you kidding? Getting to shout at all these posh people? Not a chance! Save our local bookshop!’ she croaked.

‘All right, I’ll go and get sandwiches. Any preferences?’

‘Not a sandwich. Can you get me the falafel salad from Pret? And a fork. And a handful of napkins?’

‘Your wish is my command,’ I said, as I checked my phone and saw a message from Ruby asking for Zach’s number. I ignored it and slid it back into my pocket. She’d have to wait until I’d eaten forty million calories for lunch.

Fortunately, that afternoon was less eventful. I bleated at a few more shoppers. ‘Could you sign our petition? No more rent rises! Save Frisbee Books!’ Some refused to meet my eye and slid past as if we were buskers on the Tube, rattling a bucket at them. ‘Just a name! All we need is a signature to save our bookshop! Just a name!’ I persisted. Older people were better than youth. At one point, Mrs Delaney wobbled towards us on her stick and stopped to sign, but she wanted to use her fountain pen and upended her handbag on the table before she found it. She scrawled her signature in spidery letters as Zach appeared outside and offered yet another round of tea.

‘Is this your husband?’ Mrs Delaney asked Jaz, peering up at Zach from behind her spectacles.

Jaz shook her head. ‘No, sadly not. But that is my son.’

This confused Mrs Delaney so she announced she was going inside to have a look at the books.

That was just before a small girl in a pink anorak ran up to the table.

‘Hello,’ said Jaz. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I’m Maya and I’ll be seven soon,’ she said proudly.

‘Seven! Goodness gracious me. You’ll be driving a car next.’

A harassed man appeared behind her. ‘Maya, you can’t run off like that. Sorry,’ he added, looking apologetically at Jaz.

‘That’s all right,’ she replied. ‘D’you want to sign the petition? It’s for saving the bookshop.’

‘Er, yes, go on then,’ he said, picking up a pen with a shy smile.

He had a completely smooth face, as if he’d never had to shave, and sandy-coloured hair that stuck up in tufts. But as he bent to sign, I noticed Jaz gazing at him with the tenderness of a doughnut addict walking past a bakery.

‘Here you go,’ he said, straightening up and holding out the pen.

‘No wife around to sign it?’ Jaz asked.

He looked embarrassed. ‘No, er, no wife.’

‘Or girlfriend?’ she persisted, which made me want to spontaneously combust with embarrassment and laugh at the same time. Jaz’s boldness was one of the reasons I loved her; I just couldn’t imagine being like it myself.

‘Nope, er, no girlfriend either,’ he replied, with a nervous chuckle.

‘He needs a girlfriend,’ came a small voice beside him, and we all looked down at Maya.

‘Shhh, Maya, that’s quite enough. Come on, better go home.’ His hairless cheeks had turned quite pink.

‘But you do,’ she persisted. ‘Mum said if you had a girlfriend it would make life much easier.’

The man’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Oh, did she now? When did she tell you that?’

Maya looked down at her trainers. ‘I just heard her say that on the phone,’ she mumbled.

‘Sorry about this,’ he said, grimacing at us before taking his small daughter’s hand. ‘Right, Maya, we’re going to catch the bus and discuss your habit of eavesdropping on adult conversations. Good luck with the shop,’ he said over his shoulder as he led her back down the street.

‘George Spencer,’ Jaz said dreamily, once they were out of sight.

‘Huh?’

‘He’s called George Spencer, look.’

She pointed at the last scrawl on the list of signatures and ran her finger along the box to where he’d printed his email address in neat capital letters. ‘Do you think I can email him?’

‘What about?’

Jaz tutted. ‘Florence Fairfax, this is why you were single for so long. To ask him out! Didn’t you think he was cute?’

‘Him?’ I exclaimed loudly. ‘That guy? The human seal?’

She tutted again. ‘Don’t be horrid about my future husband.’

I frowned at her. ‘I think it might be illegal, taking someone’s email address from a petition and asking them out. Data protection or something.’

‘Rubbish. What’s that thing they say? Fortune favours the old.’

‘Bold.’

‘Oh, I always thought it was an age thing. Like, we all get luckier as we get older because, like, we know more?’

I shook my head. ‘Nope, definitely bold.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m going to email him. I thought he looked nice.’

‘What about her mother?’

She frowned at me.

‘Maya’s mother. Sounded a bit complicated.’

‘Oh that,’ Jaz said airily. ‘I think it sounded over. Don’t worry, Floz, leave it to me.’

I stayed silent, just hoping that this wouldn’t end up like the Solihull situation a few months earlier.

An hour later, having taken a photograph of George’s email address on her phone, she and Dunc went home. I folded up the table as the sun dropped, taking the shoppers with it.

‘How many names do you think you got?’ asked Zach, helping me downstairs.

‘Nearly a thousand,’ I said as I tried to manoeuvre the table round the banisters. ‘How many do you reckon we need for the landlord to take any notice?’

‘Well, the petition to stay in Europe got six million.’

‘I feel like that’s ambitious.’

He laughed as we dropped the table in the stockroom and went back upstairs where Eugene was cashing up.

‘Fancy a drink?’ said Zach. ‘I thought we might need one after today so I shoved a few beers in the fridge.’

Eugene tutted. ‘I’ve got an audition in the morning so I need to get home and practise.’

‘Florence, you up for it?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, although I felt nervous. Just me and Zach was weird; I didn’t have the energy to bicker for an hour but I couldn’t back out now. I looked at my watch. It had just gone six. I’d stay for one beer and ring Rory to see where he was.

‘Great, I’ll grab ’em, hang on.’

‘What’s this audition for?’ I asked Eugene, as Zach thumped downstairs again.

‘Hamlet. I won’t get it.’

‘Don’t be so down on yourself. What part you auditioning for?’

‘Hamlet.’

‘Oh.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, my darling, but have fun. See you Monday.’

He rushed out and, since Zach still hadn’t reappeared with the beers, I stood at the top of the stairs and shouted for him.

‘Let’s have them down here,’ he shouted back.

I found him standing by the fridge. ‘Here you go,’ he said, handing me a bottle. ‘Shall we sit?’ He nodded towards the beanbags in the kids’ section.

‘There?’

‘Yeah, I can’t stand up any more today. Come on.’ He led me through and fell back on a beanbag, groaning, before reaching up to knock his bottle against mine. ‘Cheers, partner.’

‘Cheers.’ I sat down beside him and took a slug.

Zach sighed. ‘That might be the best beer I’ve ever had.’

‘It’s good,’ I agreed, wishing I could think of something else to say. This was an odd situation. We were sitting on red beanbags, surrounded by children’s books, a life-size cut-out of Wally in his red and white top, and Hallowe’en decorations, which Zach had put up ahead of the party. Fake cobwebs, pumpkin bunting, fake spiders.

‘So,’ I said, unable to bear the silence for another second. ‘Patagonia?’

He raised his eyebrows at me.

‘You want to go to Patagonia?’

‘Oh, yeah. Wanted to for ages.’

‘Why there?’

‘To photograph the mountains, mostly, but the animals too. You get orcas at the right time of year. And you ever heard of a commerson's dolphin?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s like a penguin shagged a dolphin. They’re black and white. I’d love to see them. And you get amazing eagles. The biggest eagle in the world was from there. Six-metre wings.’ He paused and stretched his arms out, the beer bottle dangling from his fingers. ‘Six metres. Can you imagine? It’s extinct now but, still, I want to go.’ Another slug of his bottle. ‘You travelled much?’

‘Nope, I’d like to. I’ve just… always been working.’ It was an easy excuse. I didn’t want to admit to him of all people that the furthest I’d travelled was to a small French village full of apricot trees, that I was too nervous about exploring anywhere else.

‘What’s your plan?’

‘Plan?’

‘Yeah. You know, what do you want to do, where do you want to go? Or will you stay here forever?’

‘What I really want to do…’ I started, before pausing, afraid of admitting it out loud.

He frowned at me. ‘What?’

‘I’d really like to get my children’s book published.’

‘You write kids’ stuff?’

I looked down and pushed my thumbnail under the label of the bottle. ‘I’m trying to. Why? Is that surprising?’

‘No, you’ve just never mentioned it. What’s it about?’

I raised my eyes and winced at him. ‘I’ll tell you but you can’t laugh.’

Zach smiled and swigged at his beer.

‘Look! You’re laughing already and I haven’t even told you!’

He shook his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before replying. ‘I’m not laughing. It’s excitement at hearing about your magnum opus. Come on, tell me.’

I took a breath. ‘OK, it’s called The Caterpillar Who Couldn’t Stop Counting.’

He grinned again.

‘No laughing!’

‘I’m not. What’s the storyline? Hit me with it.’

‘It’s…’ Then I stopped.

‘What?’

‘OK, it’s about a caterpillar who has twenty feet, and he’s late to school every day because he has to count all his shoes. Every day he has to count all his shoes on and count them off again, and every day it takes him ages and it makes him late, which means he’s in trouble with his teacher. And once he’s at school he has to count everything else – his pencils, the number of chairs in the classroom, all the rucksacks. And everybody else in his class thinks he’s a weirdo so nobody plays with him. But Curtis, he’s the caterpillar, is too embarrassed to admit that he just has this… thing about counting. It just makes him feel better. And then one day, his teacher, who’s a butterfly called Mrs Flutterby, overhears him counting in the playground and asks him about it, and he tells her that he can’t help it, he just has to count everything he sees. And Mrs Flutterby asks if he wants to know a secret. And Curtis nods because obviously everyone wants to know a secret. So she tells him that he has obviously been born with a special superpower for counting, and it’s nothing to feel ashamed of or worry about. That he should be proud of it. And suddenly Curtis is the hero of his class for having this superpower and then once he tells everyone he…’ I paused. Zach hadn’t said a word during this speech.

‘Go on,’ he urged.

‘He realizes that once it’s out in the open he doesn’t feel like he needs to count so much. I mean, I’ve still got a few bits to work out, but that’s the gist,’ I said, flicking the label with my nail again, embarrassed at having spluttered it all out. The story sounded better in my head.

‘So it’s you.’

‘Huh?’ I said, looking up from the bottle as if this idea had never occurred to me.

‘Curtis is you.’

I wrinkled my nose. ‘Is it obvious?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah. I hear you sometimes, putting away books or coming downstairs. I quite like it. “Oh, here comes Florence in her enormous work shoes…”’

‘Stop it! You can’t laugh at my mental habit and my shoes!’

‘Sorry, but those shoes are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.’ Then his face turned serious. ‘Why the counting?’

I inhaled and held the air in my chest before replying. ‘Because I always have done. Ever since I was little. It’s a comfort blanket.’

‘For how long?’

‘Since I was four. When I could count. My mum died and my stepmother arrived and… it just started.’

He nodded slowly and grinned again. ‘Do you do anything else weird?’

It made me laugh. ‘No! Just that. What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Do you have any weird habits?’

He gestured at his arms. ‘Do tattoos count?’

From here, I could see the bird flying up his right arm, and, on the left, the muscled legs of a man in winged sandals sticking out from underneath his T-shirt sleeve. ‘What’s the bird?’ I asked, pointing at it.

He glanced down and rubbed his fingers across its feathers. ‘An owl.’ He raised his eyes to mine. ‘It was Athene’s.’

I frowned, unsure about whether this Athene woman was a family member or perhaps even an ex. The thought of that was weird; Zach hadn’t ever talked about his personal life.

‘She was the Greek goddess of wisdom and war,’ he explained. ‘And an owl was her bird…’

‘Like Hedwig in Harry Potter?’ I said quickly, wanting to cover up the fact I’d assumed Athene was an ex-girlfriend.

Zach grinned. ‘Kind of. Her owl symbolizes wisdom, and sat on Athene’s right shoulder, her blind side, so she could see the whole truth. So that’s why she’s here, on my right arm.’

I nodded slowly, ashamed that my classics knowledge was so feeble.

‘What about that one?’ I asked, nodding at the legs of the man in winged sandals.

‘This is Perseus,’ said Zach, smoothing his hand over his other arm.

I winced at him, uncertain about the name again.

‘The Greek hero who killed Medusa. You know, the gorgon who had snakes for hair?’

‘Kind of,’ I replied, recalling a childhood book of Greek myths and a woman with a green face and serpents twisting around her head.

‘Perseus killed her and then a sea monster called Cetus,’ went on Zach.

‘Why?’

‘Why did he kill them?’

I nodded.

‘Why do you think? For the love of a beautiful woman.’

He grinned as I blushed. ‘But why did you pick him?’ I said quickly, trying to cover my coyness.

‘It was my favourite story when I was younger. Mum’s a teacher. I told you that, right?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, but that’s kind of all I know. What’s your deal? All I really know is that you’re Norris’s mysterious nephew.’

Zach sucked in a breath. ‘Another beer first?’

I nodded and, as he took the empties to the kitchen, I realized I was enjoying myself. I’d never spoken this openly about my writing or my counting with Rory. We hadn’t bickered. No awkward silences either. The only weirdness was being overlooked by the cardboard cut-out of Wally.

He brought back another two bottles and handed me one before sitting. I took it and waited for him to speak.

‘So I’m Norris’s nephew but I don’t actually know my dad, his brother.’

‘Huh?’

‘Never knew him. He walked out when I was born, moved to Australia. Mum brought me up by herself. Well, with help from Norris. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but he’s pretty useless with money?’

I smiled and nodded.

‘He paid for a lot of stuff which I don’t think he could really afford. Mum’s car. Holidays. And he gave me my first camera when I was thirteen.’

‘It’s weird, I’ve worked with him for five years and never knew any of this.’

Zach shrugged. ‘He’s private about it. I think he’s ashamed of his own brother and felt like he had to make up for him.’

‘And now you’re paying it back?’

‘Trying to, if we can keep this place going,’ he said, looking around us.

‘But hang on, why the tattoo? You said your mum’s a teacher?’

‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘She’s an English teacher and used to read me the classics when I was younger. Perseus was always my favourite because he has a happy ending, unlike most of the others who are killed by a ten-headed lion or murdered by their own family. And he ends up in the sky, the Perseus constellation.’

‘You know your Greeks,’ I said, smiling. I felt guilty at making so many assumptions about Zach – dishevelled, coffee-throwing Zach – that were unfair.

‘I’ve forgotten a lot of them. But I like your story. The caterpillar. I can see it. Can imagine it on the page, all those little shoes.’

‘Can you actually? It’s no Greek tragedy but I think it’s kind of sweet.’

‘You shown it to anyone?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Like an agent?’

I shook my head quickly. ‘Uh-uh. No way. It’s not good enough.’

‘I can ask mine if you like? He’s a photography agent but they have a literary department.’

I screwed my eyes shut at the very idea.

‘Come on, you big wimp. What’s the point in hiding it if you want to get it published? I can just ask if anyone wants to have a look at it. No pressure.’

‘What if they hate it?’ I asked, opening one eye to squint at him.

‘Then you show someone else. J.K. Rowling sent Harry Potter and Hedwig to loads of agents before someone accepted it.’

‘I’m not sure Curtis the counting caterpillar has as much appeal as Harry.’

Zach spread his hands in front of him. ‘How do you know if you don’t put it out there?’

‘All right. Maybe, thank you.’

‘You’re very welcome.’

‘What do you want to do with photography then?’

He shrugged. ‘Travel, let it take me places. Do a trip, sell a few pictures, fund another trip.’

‘Where’s the best place you’ve been?’

Zach lifted his bottle to his mouth as he thought. ‘There’s a town in northern India called Leh. Right up in the Himalayas. One of the most dangerous airports to fly into in the world.’

‘How come?’

‘Imagine landing in a salad bowl…’ He raised his hand flat in the air and swooped it in front of him. ‘There are mountains all around so the pilot has to dive and stop quickly because the runway’s so short, and the wind gets up every afternoon so you can only land in the morning. It feels like you’re riding a leaf.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yeah, pretty terrifying. My girlfriend hated it. But once you’re there it’s worth it. The views, the monasteries, the people. The tea! You’d love it. They give you clay cups the size of thimbles which you drink very sweet milky tea from. It tastes like earth. And ginger.’

‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,’ I said, instantly wishing I could cram the words back in my mouth. Turns out he would talk about his personal life if pushed.

‘Ex-girlfriend.’

Zach said this so quietly it was as if I’d stepped on a ghost. ‘Sorry,’ I muttered.

‘All good,’ he said, before draining his bottle. ‘It was a mutual thing. We’d been together for so long so I forget sometimes.’

I nodded but didn’t reply. The atmosphere felt tighter than it had a moment ago.

‘Has Ruby texted you?’ I’d given in and texted her Zach’s number that afternoon, knowing that once Ruby went after something, she usually ended up getting it.

He looked as if I’d asked whether the Pope had been in touch. ‘Ruby? No. How come?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, feeling nosy again. ‘Forget it.’

‘Right,’ he said, stretching his arms towards the ceiling. ‘I’m going to head home. Want a lift?’

‘On the bike?’

He grinned and nodded. ‘Got a spare helmet.’

‘Noooooo, I’ll walk.’

He stood and held out his hand to heave me up.

‘Thanks though,’ I said, ‘that was nice.’

‘It was. And I mean it, send me your book and I can pass it on.’

‘OK, deal,’ I said, and then let go of his hand, embarrassed that I was still holding it.