The Lost Bookshop(102)

‘Okay, how did you know that’s what I was …’

‘It’s a gift, Henry. And I don’t plan on hiding it any more.’

I tried to pretend that this wasn’t unnerving at all and then immediately tried to not think of anything, lest she pluck it from my brain. The branches of the tree fluttered in an imperceptible breeze and the door slowly swung open with a theatrical creak.

‘As for Emily’s manuscript, no one’s going to believe it, are they?’

She was right. We had no proof that it was real. But we knew and that was enough. The realisation blew me sideways. The recognition didn’t matter to me any more.

‘You’ll have to settle for being the only one who sees it,’ she said, kissing me on the cheek.

‘I think I’m okay with that.’ I was very okay with that.

‘Right, should we give it a try?’ she asked, pulling on her shoes.

‘Climbing Everest? Dinner at the new Asian place?’ Apparently I did not share her gift.

She batted my arm and gave me that heart-melting smile. ‘Finding the bookshop. You read the last page, didn’t you?’

I tried to summon up the words in my minds’ eye.

The soul of the night turned upside down …

‘I’m not even sure what it means … the soul of the night?’

‘Don’t be so literal,’ she said, with a new-found confidence I’d never seen. It looked good on her. ‘If I am to be the custodian, and everything that has happened since I arrived here has been screaming to tell me that, I need to believe. I’ve been in denial for so long. I suppose I just never dared hope—’

She broke off, her voice thick with emotion. I put my arms around her waist and told her to slow down, take a breath.

‘You are so special. Only you can’t see it.’ I bent my head and let my lips touch the softness of her mouth, feeling the sweet scent of her breath pulling me in. ‘I’m just not sure where I fit in,’ I said, reluctantly breaking away. Stupid thoughts.

‘You’re the only one who has seen the bookshop. That has to mean something.’

It was true. The search for the manuscript had led me here and now I’d found the treasure I never knew I was searching for. She took my hand and led me upstairs. No light was on, but the rooms were lit by an incredibly large moon shining through the windows.

‘What about Madame Bowden?’ I asked, as we rounded the ground floor and headed up to the first landing.

‘I don’t think she’s coming back.’

Any hint of anxiety had left her voice. What was going on? She stopped for a moment and turned to face me.

‘Would you think it strange—’

‘Martha,’ I said, taking her by the shoulders. ‘I think the strange horse has bolted, don’t you?’

She smiled and physically shook off whatever last doubts were holding her back.

‘Apart from us, there isn’t one other person who has actually met Madame Bowden. I asked my friends from college – none of them saw her that night at my birthday party. Not even my mother.’

‘Right. Okay. That is strange.’

‘Apart from Shane,’ she added, her forehead creasing as she became lost in troubling memories of the past. ‘Why was that?’ she whispered almost inaudibly to herself.

I began to wish I hadn’t seen her either. Was she a ghost?

‘I don’t think she’s a ghost.’

‘So you’re just reading my thoughts at will now, is it? I don’t know if I like this!’

Martha smiled and assured me her ‘gift’ wasn’t that refined.

‘I read people’s stories, not every single thought. Although sometimes your thoughts are easily readable,’ she said, stepping closer to me in the darkness. We kissed again because, well, any opportunity.

A small door at the end of the hall, which resembled something you might find at the front of a gnome’s house, required both of us to contort ourselves in equally undignified fashion in order to gain entry. Your average attic, where Christmas lay in hiding for eleven months of the year, was illuminated by the milky glow of the moon through half-size windows. Dustsheets covered unknowable shapes, and a cheval mirror at the end of the room reflected another young couple entering the room from a similarly tiny door. I recalled a book I had found at the bottom of a bargain bin in a charity shop near Camden. Something about the memories of buildings and how the walls are infused with them. They never forget, what we, as mere mortals, misplace. I hadn’t thought of it since, until now.

‘There’s a note,’ Martha said, picking up an envelope with her name on it.

Martha, I have played many different characters in other people’s stories. Your story was my favourite and this chapter shall be your finest yet. In order for something to exist, you must first believe in it. Invite your heart to see what your eyes cannot. Follow your path and bring the scholar, I like having him around.

B.





‘Is that her handwriting?’ I asked.

‘Her?’

‘Yes. Madame Bowden.’

‘I don’t think Madame Bowden is the person we thought she was.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

She put the letter down and breathed in deeply, before smiling to herself. ‘You never left at all, did you?’