This Book Made Me Think of You(37)
“I pretty much do. The shop keeps me busy. But I like to fit a morning ride in if I can. It’s nice to see some daylight once in a while. Plus, I feel more like myself when I’ve been on the bike.”
“That’s how Joe always used to feel about running. I was the same once, too, but I’m out of practice.”
“I take it you’ve been inspired by your June book to get back into it though?”
Alfie gestures at her outfit, and she suddenly feels very conscious of her tight leggings and strappy running top. It makes her feel awkwardly out of place, like bumping into a colleague in a swimming pool changing room. But then she remembers their previous conversations in the bookshop and feels herself relaxing again. He might be dressed differently and with an almost alarming amount of long, muscular limbs on show, but he is still Bookshop Alfie who rereads The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe every Christmas and has an adopted stray cat named after Georgette Heyer.
“You could say that. Maybe too inspired, actually.” He raises an eyebrow in her direction, and she explains about the half-marathon. “Although I’m starting to regret it. Running is harder than I remember. It was probably a mad thing to do…”
The path narrows as they reach a bridge, and Alfie is forced to take a step closer to Tilly, their hips bumping. “It’s not mad, I think it’s brave.” There’s a moment’s silence broken only by the sound of water dripping from the bridge onto the canal.
“Well, I don’t know how brave I am really, given I’m currently doing everything I can to hide from my mother-in-law. Who is a five-foot-nothing woman in her sixties, most commonly spotted in an apron and holding a batch of freshly baked cookies.”
A rumbling sound breaks through the air, and Tilly realizes with a jolt of warmth that it’s Alfie, and that she has never heard him laugh before.
“I’m guessing you have a tricky relationship with your in-laws then?”
“What a cliché, I know.”
“Maybe it’s a cliché for a reason. My brother-in-law is not my favorite person in the world. But my little sister is, so I try my best to keep it together around him. But let’s put it this way—if I spotted him on the other side of a pub, I’d probably dive under the table to hide.”
Tilly feels herself smiling at the image of Alfie folding his long limbs under a pub table.
“My relationship with my mother-in-law has always been complicated,” Tilly answers as they continue side by side along the path. They have reached a section where the path opens into a basin, riverboats hugging the edges and a red-and-gold Chinese restaurant floating on the water. “She’s made it pretty clear that she doesn’t like me, even if never to my face.”
She isn’t quite sure why she’s telling Alfie all this, but there’s something about walking alongside one another that makes it easier to open up. As she does, she realizes how badly she’s needed to talk about all of this. It’s part of her story she’s tried not to think about since Joe’s death because it’s so messy, but she knows that Alfie understands the messiness of death.
“How could anyone not like you?”
The question catches her so off guard that she almost trips before regaining her footing.
“Ellen Carter has plenty of reasons. She even tried to talk Joe out of marrying me when we told his family we were engaged.”
Suddenly she is back in Santorini, the air thick with the smell of fig trees and olives, the sky and sea astonishingly blue…
* * *
—
It is a few months after they bought their flat in Primrose Hill, and they’ve gone on holiday to celebrate. Tilly has insisted they make a pilgrimage to Atlantis Books. Joe good-humoredly goes along with it, waiting on the terrace opposite the shop while Tilly browses in the cave-like interior piled high with books. Afterward she finds him outside, noticing that there are outdoor bookshelves up there, too, facing the ocean.
“You looked exactly like that when I first met you,” he says, watching her from the shade as she browses with her head tilted to one side so she can read the spines.
“Not much has changed then,” she laughs in reply. “After all these years, you’re still waiting for me at a bookshop.”
“Hmm. Maybe this will do, actually,” comes his voice as he stands up and walks across to her. “Yes. I think this is quite good.”
“Good for what?”
A second later he is kneeling down in front of her.
“Matilda Nightingale,” says Joe, and her heart dances as a hot breeze tugs at the hem of her dress and she stands in front of a backdrop of books and sea. “I know I’ll only ever be the second love of your life. I know that I will always have to wait for you in bookshops and that if our home were to go up in flames, I’d have to save myself because you’d be busy grabbing your special-edition copy of Little Women…”
She protests, but maybe there is the tiniest bit of truth in it. Joe is an athletic man. Poor Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth couldn’t fend for themselves like he can.
“But I’m OK with all of that. Because I never for a second thought I’d be lucky enough to have even a little bit of this life we have. I promise I won’t make you turn the bedside light out when you’ve still got a chapter left to go. I promise to always keep spare space in my suitcase when we go on vacation so you can fill it with books. And I promise I won’t ever rush you when you’re browsing. Because I might not be much of a reader, but I know how happy books make you. And all I want is to make you happy, Tilly.”