The Lost Bookshop(81)
Dearest Jane,
I find myself in circumstances I can hardly believe myself and so I am at a loss as to how I should describe them to you, my closest friend in the world. In fact, just imagining our childhood together makes this seem like a dream. However, my time is short so I must rush these few words – I am resident in an asylum. I can assure you that I am sane and still in possession of my wits. Lyndon is behind it. I need say no more than that and I am sure you will understand. Also, I had a baby. She did not live. Please help me, if you can.
Your friend,
Opaline
A year had passed and any hope of escape seemed like a distant dream I couldn’t quite recall.
Mary spoke less and less. She had developed a worrying cough and could not sleep at night, so I sat up with her, wrapping her in my blanket.
‘Tell me about your life,’ she asked one night, as we lay in the darkness. ‘Before you came here.’
My life before. How could I even begin to describe a life that no longer felt like my own? I was worried that speaking about it would push me further away from it.
‘I used to sell books.’
There was a silence while we both adjusted to the reality of those words.
‘I’ve never read a book,’ came the reply.
I was glad the darkness of the night hid my features, which were a mixture of shock and pity. Mary wouldn’t want either of those. Then she became seized by a fit of coughing that lasted more than five minutes. The wheezing sound of her lungs affirmed to me that she was suffering from influenza. With no heat, threadbare rags for clothes and a diet of porridge and watery soup, I feared for her health.
‘Can you tell me a story? From one of your books?’
At that moment I would have done anything to offer her comfort and so I began to recite Emily Bront?’s manuscript, picturing the tiny handwriting in my mind’s eye. The words came easily, as I had read them in a way that was distinct from all other books. I was the only one to have seen them since they had been secreted in Charlotte’s sewing box and so they entered my soul in a way that no other writing had previously.
Mary was calmed by them and, just like a child, asked for the same story every night, as her condition deteriorated.
Chapter Forty-Four
MARTHA
I closed the book and felt the room settle around me. I turned it over and looked at the front cover again with its image of Mr Fitzpatrick’s shop. I let my fingertips run over the title, tooled in gold leaf.
‘A Place Called Lost,’ I whispered to myself. There was no doubt in my mind now that Opaline Carlisle had written it. I was almost at the end and I was trying to ration it out, like saving squares of a chocolate bar as a kid to make it last longer. The feeling was bittersweet, as the one person I wanted to tell about it probably hated me. Henry.
I was in the library at Trinity, where I was supposed to be writing an essay on Persuasion with Logan. He was sneakily looking up new dishes on Instagram, so at least we were both procrastinating.
‘What is it? You’ve been moping about since your birthday,’ Logan observed. He was a very loud whisperer and I could see that the people around us did not appreciate his vibe.
‘Nothing,’ I said, carelessly minimising my own feelings. ‘It’s just, I need some help with something and the only person I can ask is …’
‘Shhh!’
I pulled my chair a little closer to his. ‘You see, there’s this guy—’
‘Isn’t there always?’ he said, smiling.
‘It’s not like that. I just – I can’t get into anything serious right now, so we stopped things before they started and now …’
He scooched a little closer. ‘What you have here, Martha, is your classic “situationship”. Take it from me, you want to avoid them like the plague. You never know where you stand.’
He wasn’t wrong. Dancing with Henry at my birthday party had been overwhelming. I felt like a princess; for the first time in my life I was in a beautiful house wearing a magical dress and floating in the arms of a prince. He was charming, funny and attractive, with that whole dark academia thing he has going on. Of all the bruises and broken bones I’d sustained over the years, the numbing disappointment and emotional scars, I had never felt my heart crack the way it did when he gave me the Petit Prince pen.
‘It’s just, we were both involved in some … research and I kind of need his expertise.’
‘My advice? Set your boundaries, make it clear from the outset that you’re just friends and—’
‘SHHHHHHHH!’
Just friends. Exactly. I could do that. I mean, he wasn’t to know I had checked his socials, which was utterly useless because he rarely posted. The last photo was of his newborn niece. It had made me smile when I saw it but then it also made me upset because I knew that I’d never be a part of his life.
Logan was right. After all, Henry wouldn’t have come to my party if he didn’t want to remain friends. Nothing had really changed; he would still go home after he’d found his manuscript and until then, for whatever reason, we were both being pulled in the same direction by the bookshop and by Opaline. Some outside forces had decided that our destiny was entwined, but we didn’t necessarily need to be a couple in order to fulfil it.