Aleisha had no idea what it was like to be haunted by a dead woman or to live in a mansion, but the way Manderley was described, the atmosphere, sharp, heavy and suffocating … she got that. She knew exactly what that felt like. She wished she’d never made the comparison. Maybe it wasn’t the best book choice for her after all. But it was already too late.
She let herself out of the library, locking the doors behind her. She looked back through the windows. It had been confronting seeing Mia here today – an intruder in the space that was starting to feel different to her. More like a refuge than a prison sentence. More like somewhere she could, one day, actually belong. She watched as the last beam of evening sun shone on her desk, her spot. Even if she’d never admit it to Mia, maybe she was starting to like working here.
It was the little things.
THE READING LIST
IZZY
2017
IZZY SAW IT THERE, lying on the pavement in front of her. She had a look around, wondering if someone had dropped it, where it had come from. It had a piece of sticky tape at the top, now lacking any adhesive. It was just dry and dirty from the London smog.
She hadn’t found a list in a long time. It was a bit of a weird habit of hers, collecting lists. She’d started when she first moved to London, when she’d found one abandoned in a trolley in Sainsbury’s. The city had been so large, so vast and lonely sometimes, finding lists was like finding tiny moments of human connection, where she could prove that the silent strangers who walked past her, avoiding eye contact, were people too. They wrote shopping lists, they planned their dinners, they added some treats in every so often – the lists grounded her.
Every list she’d ever found was now stuffed into a little box in her hallway dresser drawer. She knew that one day she’d upgrade them, put them in a folder or a photo album or something, but for now, that’s where they lived. Most of the lists were from supermarkets, found in baskets, on the floor, by the cash register, left at the self-service checkout. Sometimes she discovered them floating down the street outside a shop. Almost all the lists were shopping lists, once useful then suddenly discarded. Apart from one, which was an invite list – a small dinner party, maybe. There were names scribbled out – and some responses too: ‘doesn’t eat eggs’ or ‘allergic to chicken but fine with other birds’。 For days she’d wondered how the dinner party had turned out – whether the people who were crossed off had RSVP’d ‘no’， or were dumped by the host.
Every list gave her some kind of insight into the person – she loved trying to work out what meal someone might be cooking, whether they were meal planning for the whole week or just for one special dinner, maybe a date, a meet-the-parents lunch, or just a cosy night in.
Sometimes she wished she was all right at art, because the images of these people were so vivid in her mind, she wanted to draw them, immortalize them in some way. She could work out if someone had kids, was vegetarian, was cooking for one or two, even what their skincare regime was or how smelly they were （deciphered by their choice of deodorant）。
But this list, floating down Wembley High Road, was a bit different.
Just in case you need it:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Rebecca
The Kite Runner
Life of Pi
Pride and Prejudice
Little Women
Beloved
A Suitable Boy
She knew what it was. She’d written loads herself when she was at uni and had to get a pile of books out of the library. It was a reading list. It might even have been someone’s university reading list, if it weren’t for the line at the top: Just in case you need it.
She recognized some of the books, had read them years ago, but, as she stood in the middle of the busy pavement, scrutinizing the handwriting, she struggled to find the connections between each title. What, and importantly, who had brought all these books together?
Looking down at this smudgy list, her fingers brushed over the words. Silently, it began to rain. She didn’t notice until the drops fell on the words, and the ink, once dry, was suddenly fresh and running into a puddle. She tucked it up her sleeve in a hurry and sprinted to the nearest bus stop. Here she stood looking down at the words, the handwriting, the gentle curl of the ‘J’， the ‘d’。 The titles were written less floridly, as though whoever wrote the list wanted the books themselves to be as legible as possible. Yet they couldn’t resist adding a flourish to the ‘g’ and the ‘R’， and eliding the ‘B’ and ‘e’ of Beloved.