This Book Made Me Think of You(6)
At first it feels an even more shocking revelation than a foot fetish would have been. How can anyone not read? What do they do with their evenings? All of her (not many) previous boyfriends have been readers. Her most recent ex had been a writer, too, who liked to read her his terrible poems as a form of foreplay.
Maybe it is time for a change.
“I’d really like to see you again too.”
* * *
—
The brown paper falls away to reveal a book that Tilly knows well. There’s a note, too, and her heart aches as she recognizes Joe’s familiar handwriting—the letters large and widely spaced—and begins to read.
Dear Tilly,
Happy birthday! By now you’ll know about my gift for you. A book a month for a whole year. Great idea, huh? I was pretty pleased with it anyway.
I wish I could be making you pancakes and wishing you happy birthday in person, but I hope this will count as the next best thing.
I know you stopped reading when I got my diagnosis. You told me you just couldn’t concentrate on reading anymore and I got it, but it still made me really sad. For as long as I’ve known you (and long before that) you’ve been a reader. It’s who you are. You need books, my library mouse. And I suspect you need them now more than ever.
I remember asking you once why you loved reading so much and you said that books can change lives. I am determined that these will change yours.
I’ve started with a book that always makes me think of you. How could your first book not be this one? I hope that reading the book that is your namesake might remind you of how and why you became a reader. And that Roald Dahl’s Matilda might make mine smile again.
I love you.
Joe x
The illustrated cover showing a little girl surrounded by books is so familiar. She runs a hand over it, trying to imagine opening it and beginning to read. But as she does, she thinks about all the times she has tried reading since Joe’s diagnosis, the words jumbling and her attention never making it beyond a few sentences. Since losing Joe she’s lost the ability to lose herself in a book. The stories she used to love all seem so…pointless now.
“Oh, Joe,” she says out loud, her eyes flicking to the blue ceramic urn that rests on one of the bookshelves. It’s a deep shade of indigo, dappled with flecks of paler blue that reminded Tilly of Joe’s eyes when she chose it. The silence is so full of his absence that for a moment she almost expects to hear his voice. The room seems to grow darker, grief shrouding her like a cloak. She waits for a beat longer and then folds the letter and tucks it carefully back into the book. “I love you for this idea. In the past a year of books would have been my dream gift. But it’s just not who I am anymore.”
She places her copy of Matilda firmly back on the coffee table, where it will remain for weeks, unread.
February
Book Lane Recommends
Books to make you hungry
Chocolat, Joanne Harris
The Kamogawa Food Detectives, Hisashi Kashiwai
One More Croissant for the Road, Felicity Cloake
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis
Four
The man in the green anorak is growing increasingly red in the face.
“You know the book,” he says to Alfie, gesturing in the air with one hand. “It was in this weekend’s Sunday Times. You know. Blue cover.”
Alfie tries his best to remain calm and not to tell the customer that the book having a blue cover doesn’t exactly narrow things down.
“You know. Written by that posh bloke on the telly,” the man adds.
Which doesn’t especially help either.
“Just give me a moment, sir, and I’ll see what I can do.”
As Alfie turns to the computer, he tries to focus on what he is doing and not let his attention wander to the door, looking out for a flash of ginger hair. It’s the first of February, and Matilda Nightingale’s next book is waiting on the shelf. Every time the doorbell jangles today, he has found himself looking up, wondering if it might be her. But she hasn’t stepped inside the shop since that day back in January.
The fingers of one hand dart across the keyboard, and then he flicks through the weekend papers and a copy of the London Review of Books, which he keeps on his desk for moments like this. Five minutes later the customer leaves with a copy of a recently published historical biography under his arm, Alfie having just managed to stop himself from telling him that the book was actually featured in The Telegraph, not The Sunday Times.
For the rest of the day he unloads books, rearranges shelves, and deals with online orders and emails from publishers. But the customer in the tweed coat with the colorful buttons and the bright orange hair never appears.
* * *
—
“Sorry I’m late, I had some invoices to finish dealing with,” he says later that evening as he unclips his bicycle helmet, his hair springing up in defiance of having been constrained for the fifteen-minute ride.
“You work too hard,” says the five-foot-one woman in the doorway, dressed in jeans, slippers, and an orange sweater, graying hair in a messy bun. “Just like your father,” she adds as she reaches up, and he stoops down so he can kiss her on the cheek.