This Book Made Me Think of You(40)

“Tilly!” comes a voice, and Tilly spots Rachel at one of their usual tables—a booth in the corner, the seats piled with comfy cushions. When Tilly reaches her, Rachel stands up and hugs her tightly. It feels like pulling on an old favorite summer dress again after winter has passed. That feeling of surprise that it still fits, but delight that it does.

A server comes over and they order drinks and burgers. Once they’re alone again, they both look at each other for a moment, smiling but saying nothing. Then Tilly remembers the book in her bag.

“I just finished this and thought you might like it,” she says, sliding it across the table. Rachel eagerly picks it up and begins reading the blurb.

“Ooh, I’ve heard of this one but haven’t read it yet. Thanks, Tils.” She places the book down, resting one hand on the cover as if petting a sleeping cat. Then she looks up, leaning forward slightly. “Now I want to hear everything you’ve been up to recently. Starting with the fact you’ve quit your job! Which I still can’t believe, by the way.”

The waitress reappears with Rachel’s glass of wine and Tilly’s gin and tonic, placing them down with a smile. They raise their glasses, their eyes meeting and Tilly thinking about fresh starts as they clink them together.

“I still can’t quite believe it either,” she says after a sip of her drink.

“Obviously it’s amazing that you have though. You’ve been speaking about moving on to something else ever since I met you.” She tilts her head, considering this for a moment. “Actually, that’s not true. You talked loads about leaving when we first became friends but less so later on.”

A memory enters Tilly’s mind of the one time she thought she really might leave. She’d been ready to hand in her notice. But then her life exploded and a new job became the last thing on her mind.

“I think I got stuck,” Tilly admits, thinking back to the time following Joe’s diagnosis and his death when the familiarity of work felt like a place in which to hide.

“I get that,” Rachel replies. “I think maybe I’ve got stuck too. I get sick of writing other people’s stories sometimes. Especially people like Esmerelda.” She gives a little shudder, and Tilly stifles a laugh.

“How’s that all going?” she asks, surprised that she hasn’t once thought about Esmerelda Love and the book since quitting.

Rachel rolls her eyes. “It’s…going. She recently decided she wants to write the whole book in lowercase because it’s what the ‘kids’ are doing. Even though she’s forty-five. But we’ll get there. I’m just not sure this is exactly the kind of writing the nerdy kid me had in mind when she dreamed of being an author…”

“Then you should write your own book! You’re an amazing writer. It’s a shame that it’s never your name on the things you write.”

“Ah, but it’s a lot riskier to put my own name to my work. If people didn’t like it, there would be nowhere to hide.”

Tilly takes another sip of her drink and then asks, “If you weren’t afraid, what would you write?”

“A novel,” Rachel answers immediately. “Something that draws inspiration from my grandparents and how they met. They have the most amazing story.” The change in Rachel’s demeanor is immediate. Her eyes light up, and an energy radiates from her that Tilly has never seen before.

“Then you should do it. If the past year has taught me anything, it’s that life is short.”

There’s a silence where Joe’s absence feels so huge that it threatens to overwhelm her. But it doesn’t. She breathes through the moment, and it passes.

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid, Tilly?”

The question catches her off guard. Since leaving her job, she’s been keeping busy with other things—reading and resting and visiting the bookshop. But now she thinks of everything she’s been putting off—the flat cluttered with the chaos of all Joe’s things and all the unanswered questions about the future of her career. As good as it feels to finally have a break, she knows she can’t keep living like this, free from responsibilities or a sense of direction. She can’t put her life on pause forever.

“I honestly don’t know,” she replies. “But I want to try and find out.”





June


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The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown Outer Order, Inner Calm, Gretchen Rubin The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age, Claudia Hammond Weathering: How the Earth’s Deep Wisdom Can Help Us Endure Life’s Storms, Ruth Allen





Twenty-Six




When spring gives way fully to summer, Tilly is there in the front row to see it. She watches the colors along the canal path change from pale to vivid green on her morning runs and the park filling with picnic blankets and stretched-out towels as she loops around the base of the hill, not quite brave enough to climb up it yet. Parakeets gather in the trees, and the air smells like cut grass, hot tarmac, and sunscreen-scented optimism.

But as Tilly approaches the bookshop on the first of June, it strikes her that the arrival of summer means something else too. It means she is nearly halfway through her year of books. Her visits on the first of the month have become like bookmarks keeping her place in the year. But there will come a day soon when there are no books left to collect.