This Book Made Me Think of You(71)

“Just drop it, OK?” His eyes flash, his hands clenching in his pocket, but as soon as he sees her flinch, he relaxes his fists, letting out a breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“It’s OK. I know nothing about running a business. I shouldn’t have overstepped.”

“It’s not that. I suppose it’s a fair question. It’s just…” She’s looking at him so intently that the words for some reason spill out of him. “It’s exactly what Freya used to say, and I guess I just find it a bit…triggering.”

“Freya?”

“My ex,” he replies, flashing her a quick glance. “We got together at uni. She was with me when I got the call from my mum about Dad.”

It was years ago, but that day still feels so vivid in his mind. He knew as soon as he heard his mother’s voice wobble and then break as she said his name on the phone that his life had changed forever.

“I didn’t realize you were with someone at the time.”

Alfie nods.

They have reached the iconic brick building of the Oxo Tower, and he veers off the path, heading for a pier that juts out over the river. Tilly follows until they are standing side by side at the very end of the jetty, Tilly hugging her coat tightly to her, hair flying like ribbons in the wind. Below them people beachcomb on the rocky shore, and boats cruise up and down the river.

“What happened?” Tilly asks.

“One moment I was on the beach with Freya, about to go to a bar for cocktails, and the next I was in a taxi to the airport, madly trying to find myself a ticket on the next plane to London.”

“Freya didn’t come with you?”

Alfie stiffens. “No. She stayed. At first it was just until she could arrange a reasonable flight back and cancel our arrangements for the next couple of months. She said she’d sort everything while I was gone and then join me.”

“Please tell me she actually came…Your dad had just died.”

“She came back for the funeral.” He remembers how relieved he was to see her. He’d been holding it together for his mum and sister, taking care of the organization of the funeral and all the logistics that suddenly needed to happen. He threw himself into looking after everything and everyone, but when he met Freya off the plane, he finally let himself collapse, falling into her arms and crying for the first time since that call. “At first it was so good to see her. I felt like maybe I could face it all with her there. That we could face it together. But then I started talking about what was going to happen to the bookshop, and everything changed.”

“She wasn’t keen on the thought of you taking over?”

“I thought she understood. She seemed supportive. But a week after the funeral, she told me she’d booked her flight and she’d be heading back to India, picking up the trip where we left off. She wanted me to come with her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t just close the bookshop for a year while I went traveling. So I stayed and Freya went.”

Tilly’s hand grips Alfie’s sleeve.

“That’s awful, I’m sorry, Alfie.”

He shakes his head. “The crazy thing is, I’d even been planning to propose. I had the ring and everything, stashed in the bottom of my backpack. Looking back now, it seems ridiculous. We were so young. But I thought I’d found it.”

He lets out a breath, trying to imagine being that…optimistic. He’s not the same person who packed for that trip, stashing the jewelry box containing the gold band with the tiny diamond that he’d bought with three years’ worth of tips from working in the student union bar into a balled-up pair of socks.

“I was an idiot.”

He laughs but the sound falls flat. He can feel Tilly beside him, the warmth of her shoulder pressing up against his, the feel of her hand on his arm.

“No.” Her grip on his arm tightens. “A romantic, maybe. But not an idiot. Never that.”

He swallows hard, trying to fight the urge to place his hand on top of hers, wrapping their fingers together.

“As the final perfect bow to wrap up the whole shit show, about a month after I left, Freya met someone else. For the rest of the year I had to see photos of them together, going on the trip that I’d planned. That we were supposed to take together.”

Tilly winces.

“You should have blocked her.”

“Ah,” he says, turning around now so that he is facing Tilly, his back against the railing. “But that would have been the act of a sane person. I was not sane. Not back then.”

“You were grieving. Grief makes everyone go a bit insane. At least it’s made me feel that way. And what she did was really shitty.”

The sun illuminates her pale face, picking out the green in her eyes.

“You’re probably right. But I think that’s why I get defensive when it comes to the bookshop. I don’t want to say I’ve sacrificed a lot, because it didn’t feel like a sacrifice. It felt like the only thing to do. The shop…it just means a lot to me.”

“I can tell,” says Tilly. “I felt it back when I came in for my first book, even if back then I was too blinkered to really appreciate it. There’s this atmosphere in the shop, a sense of care and thought. You can tell how much work you’ve put into making the shop somewhere for everyone. Your dad would be so proud of you, Alfie.”