While the task seemed overwhelming at first, I soon developed a method to make things easier. I took one shelf at a time and brought all of the books to the floor, placing them on an old sheet. I put a cushion under my knees and carefully wiped each and every book. Some of them were very old and threatened to come apart in my hands. Others were in foreign languages I couldn’t understand. Madame Bowden must have been highly educated, I thought, envying her. Books and I never really got along. No, that wasn’t right. Books made me nervous. Always had done. For as long as I could remember, I’d had this kind of reaction to them. Almost like they were a threat to me. I preferred to read people. People were easier than books. My mother taught me how to read a person’s story without them ever having to utter a word.
Like Madame Bowden: I knew she was afraid of getting senile and that was why she was so angry with the world. I knew that my mother was carrying some emotional pain that she didn’t have words for. And I knew that the English man outside my window was in love with a woman called Isabelle. For the longest time I assumed everyone could do this, but it was only when my friends became angry with me for finding out their secrets that I saw it was a gift belonging to me alone. Or a curse. The real curse was how I couldn’t read my husband after I fell in love with him. They say love is blind and for me it was truer than for most. So I never saw the violence coming. Come to think of it, neither did he, or I would have sensed it. What made him change? Was it me? Something I had done wrong?
His favourite taunt was to yell at me, ‘You think you’re special, don’t you!’
And he was right. I did. Not in a vain way, but in the kind of way where you think you’re meant to be something greater in this life. That your path will somehow lead to something better because you’re really good at something or you have a destiny. Well, he didn’t like that. Nobody liked it, in fact. And so I learned to hide these thoughts. I hid them so well that I’d forgotten where I put them. Because now, I didn’t think I deserved any better than this. A battered face, a broken marriage and a job cleaning someone else’s beautiful home. I knew I didn’t deserve better, but somewhere inside, I still hoped. That’s what was making me miserable: the hoping. I realised then that I would have to give up one or the other, happiness or hope.
Chapter Six
HENRY
‘The thing is, 11 Ha'penny Lane is, um … well, it’s here,’ Mr Dunne said, pointing to the patch of waste ground that stood between number 10 and number 12. ‘Or rather, it’s not here. Here’s where it isn’t,’ he said, disguising a snigger with a hearty cough.
An official from the planning office, he had reluctantly agreed to a site visit after weeks of my incessant phone calls.
‘Okay,’ I said. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something else. ‘But you’ve seen the maps I sent you, the ones showing the shop to be right here?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen the map, Mr Field, but as I explained on the phone, there are no official records for any building registered on this site. Apart from this,’ he said pointing to the house next door.
‘But this is number 12.’
‘Exactly. There is no number 11.’
‘But just because it’s a house now, doesn’t mean it wasn’t previously used as a shop. The ground floor I mean.’ I was warming to this idea. I hadn’t a clue about historic buildings, but people used to conduct commerce from their homes, surely.
‘Even so, it doesn’t alter the fact that there is no number 11,’ Mr Dunne said, losing interest. ‘Have you tried speaking to the residents?’
‘I’m sorry?’
An articulated lorry was slowly making its way down the street, meaning we had to shout to be heard.
‘They might know something about the area’s past,’ he roared.
‘What, a past of disappearing buildings?’ I said.
Mr Dunne simply looked at me as though there was something not quite right about me and stepped back, in case it was contagious.
‘Is this some kind of prank?’ Mr Dunne checked his watch. ‘I’m already late for my next appointment so I’ll have to leave you to it,’ he said, jangling his car keys in a very pointed manner. ‘Good luck with’—he gestured to the space between the house—‘all of it.’
Yes, I get it, I thought. I’m on my own. The idiot who came all the way to Ireland to find a bookshop that doesn’t exist.
He left, but I couldn’t move. I stared at the facade of number 12 and then at number 10 and back again. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been standing there when I noticed the front door of number 12 opening. It was her, the fallen angel, looking as unimpressed with the world as she had done the other day, leaning out of the window. There was something about her, perhaps it was just the sight of another lost soul, looking for something they knew should be here, but wasn’t.
‘Excuse me! I wonder if I might take a moment of your time, Miss?’
She halted mid-stride and turned to look at me, as though she would make me regret my entire life if I didn’t make the next words from my mouth worthwhile.
‘What is it?’
‘I – well …’ Brilliant. Ten out of ten. She carried on her brisk pace.
‘Can I buy you a coffee? I could tell you all about it—’
‘I can buy my own coffee, thanks.’
‘Look, I’m not some kind of weirdo—’
‘That exactly what a weirdo would say.’
I struggled to find the words that might make her turn around. As a last resort, I went with honesty.
‘I need your help!’
She stopped, her head dropped and she paused for a moment, as though deciding something.
‘There’s a café through here,’ she said, pointing to a narrow cobbled street through an old archway.
As I followed her lead, I reintroduced myself as Henry. Henry Field. Exactly like that, as though I were a key member of MI5.
She kept her name to herself, making an altogether better spy.
‘So, you found an old letter that mentions a book no one’s ever heard of, hidden in a bookshop that doesn’t exist.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ I agreed, before taking a mouthful of coffee and inadvertently giving myself a frothy milk moustache. It was kind of liberating, this honesty business. For so long I had hidden my findings for fear someone else would uncover the lost manuscript, but I knew this girl, Martha （as she eventually told me, no surname）， wouldn’t have the background knowledge or the interest to steal my discovery.
‘Have you thought about seeing a therapist?’
‘Hah!’ I hadn’t expected her to be funny, her whole countenance was so serious up to that point. She was wearing makeup, which went some way towards covering her bruises, but she still winced from the cut on her lip when drinking her tea. I did the honourable thing and pretended not to have noticed.
‘I know it existed, I have the address on the letter-headed paper, even if the council has no record of it.’
‘And how do you think I can help? I’ve only been here a few days. I don’t know this city at all.’
‘Oh, I just assumed. You don’t own number 12?’