The Secret of Happy Ever After (18 page)

‘Rory was just saying how impressed he was by how much we’ve done in such a short time,’ Anna said quickly, seeing Michelle’s face darken. ‘He’s been away.’

‘Indeed. When I left, it was a shell, and now it’s the new Waterstone’s. Mixed with Liberty.’

Michelle stared at him, trying to work out whether he was one of those men who’d been told that ladies like a bit of sparring, or if he was genuinely standing there, criticising her shop for making money. Rory Stirling was hard to read, especially behind his glasses. They were a bit like Anna’s, square and tortoiseshell, only Anna’s were ironically geeky, and Rory’s seemed bona fide geek issue. Luckily for him, they didn’t make his eyes look all weird and distorted, and she could see he had sandy lashes to match his hair.

‘It looks like you’ve found a real book person here,’ he added, and Anna beamed happily.

‘Rory was just saying he was in the Puffin Club too.’ She pointed to the ever-present pile of kids’ books on the front desk.

‘The Puffin Club?’ Michelle pretended to look blank. ‘No idea. Was that like the Tufty Club? Or the Pony Club?’

‘Michelle! Don’t tell me you weren’t—’ Anna began, but Michelle wasn’t in the mood for more of Anna’s rose-tinted nursery reminiscences.

‘No, I wasn’t in the Puffin Club. I went to
actual
clubs with
actual
friends,’ she said. ‘I didn’t read about girls who had ponies, I
rode
ponies. I didn’t read about tomboys who went on adventures, I
was
a tomboy who went on adventures. And boarding school is not like in Enid Blyton, let me tell you.’

Anna looked shocked by the force of her outburst, but Rory folded his arms, amused.

‘I think the lady doth protest too much, don’t you, Anna?’ he said, tapping his long fingers on his sleeve. ‘I think she’s hiding a box set of
Worst Witch
stories.’

‘Certainly not. Not everyone spent their childhood indoors with their nose in a book,’ she retorted. ‘That doesn’t make me a Philistine, and it doesn’t make me the wrong person to run a bookshop, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

A smaller, quieter voice pointed out that she might be overreacting, but she couldn’t stop herself.

‘Of course it doesn’t!’ Anna started, in her conciliatory tone. ‘No one’s saying that.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Rory. ‘You seem to have got the shop part perfect. It’s looking . . .’ He waved a long arm in the direction of her table displays.

He had arms like a spider, thought Michelle waspishly. She raised her eyebrow, waiting for his adjective.

‘. . . More
shop-like
than I’ve ever seen it.’

‘Have we moved the boxes?’ she asked, turning to Anna.

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Rory.

‘No, there’s no need.’ Michelle pushed her sleeves back. ‘My brother can do it. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of post-Christmas family break-ups to be sorting out.’

‘Actually, I’m on holiday,’ he said. ‘Been doing family things for a few days, and I’ve got the rest of the week off.’ He turned back to Anna. ‘Luckily, the buggy’s gone for the time being, but it’ll probably be back sooner or later. And I need to be able to get my fishing stuff up there anyway.’

Michelle had started to walk over to the door to get Owen, but now she spun round. ‘Hang on. You live up there?’

‘With your . . . family?’ Anna prompted innocently.

‘No, it’s just me most of the time,’ said Rory.

Michelle wasn’t interested, though; a big penny had just dropped. That
totally
explained why he was so adamant the place shouldn’t be turned into some noisy café or busy phone shop. Talk about vested interests. It had less to do with Cyril Quentin’s so-called legacy and more to do with Rory Stirling’s lie-ins on a Saturday morning.

‘Oh.
Now
I see why you’re so keen on this staying a bookshop,’ she said meaningfully.

‘No, you don’t,’ he said, reading her cynical expression at once. ‘My living here has got nothing to do with anything. I’ve been here a year or so, and yes, I came to be good friends with Cyril, being a book lover myself, and—’

‘No need to go into the heart-rending details.’ Michelle held up a hand. ‘I’ll shift the books and you can rest assured you won’t have any more access problems.’

‘Let me help.’

‘No thanks. Don’t want you suing me for personal injury.’

Michelle pulled her spine up to its full length and glared at him. She felt wrongfooted. Rory Stirling should have said something. It was
unethical
. Besides which, the thought that he was upstairs, keeping an eye on her, was very, very unsettling.

‘It won’t happen again,’ said Anna quickly, eager as ever to smooth out any wrinkles. ‘And come back soon and buy some books! We’ve got a whole box of old Puffin Club specials. Maybe you could get something for the baby?’

Rory shot an amused glance over to Michelle, then smiled more readily at Anna. ‘Maybe. Thanks for the coffee,’ he added, as he loped towards the door.

‘You gave him coffee?’ Michelle hissed, when it closed behind him.

‘Yes! We got chatting and I’d just put the pot on . . . Why? Shouldn’t I have done?’ Anna squinted at her. ‘Why were you so off with him? What’s he done to you? I thought he was nice.’ She looked pensive. ‘Bit weird about the buggy, though, if he lives alone. Whose baby was it, do you think?’

‘I don’t care about the baby. He should have said he lived upstairs.’

‘He did. Just then.’

Something niggled at Michelle. Hadn’t he said he didn’t have a family when she’d gone in to see him? That he was in the office because he didn’t have family ties?

Anna looked at her more closely. ‘Come on, Michelle, what’s up? You were fine this morning. Rory’s fine, honestly. I’m sure he won’t make a big deal about it.’

Michelle knew it wasn’t really Rory Stirling; it was Harvey. After three years of peace, suddenly Harvey was in the back of her head the whole time like a permanent stress headache. She was constantly wondering when the next unwanted floral reminder would appear, wondering what her mother was ‘advising’ him to do, wondering what he was saying to her mother about their marriage. It was worse than him just turning up on her doorstep.

‘I’m feeling a bit stressed,’ she admitted. ‘Harvey’s . . . Harvey’s been talking to my mother. He wants to try again.’

‘What?’ Anna was instantly and gratifyingly outraged for her. ‘He’s got no right, you’re divorced!’

Michelle took a deep breath. ‘Actually, Anna, we’re not. Not officially.’

‘I thought you were?’ Anna’s brow creased. ‘Why did I think that?’

‘Because I never said. It’s not something I’m very proud of,’ she admitted.

‘Then divorce him.’ Anna turned her palms up, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. ‘Get on with it.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ said Michelle. ‘Harvey refused to get divorced when I asked for one, even when I said I’d be the unreasonable party. He hates losing. I was going to wait out the five years’ separation, then he has no choice. But now he’s decided that’s not going to happen either. And if my mum’s behind him, too . . .’

Anna opened her mouth to argue back, but Michelle’s hooded eyes obviously stopped her. She seemed shocked to see her so beaten.

‘Don’t say anything,’ warned Michelle. ‘There’s nothing you can say I haven’t already said to myself a million times.’

Anna grabbed her hand. ‘You know what always cheers me up?’

‘If you say
Winnie the Pooh
, I will have to kill you.’

‘No! Once round the park and a big meringue from Natalie’s café. I’ll go halves if you want.’

Michelle managed a wintry smile. ‘I prefer exercise. I’m going to shift those boxes for Rory myself.’

Moving the heavy boxes made Michelle’s muscles ache, but it sapped the worst of her headache. What it didn’t do, though, was distract her from the shifting sensation she felt inside, that her own neatly stacked life was starting to escape its storage.

9

Anna had never really thought of herself as an organiser, but the collection/delivery plans she’d put in place to keep Lily, Chloe and Becca’s various schedules in the air at the same time as her new job and Pongo’s exercise needs made FedEx look like a bunch of rank amateurs.

Michelle or Gillian covered the first hour so she could do the school run and walk Pongo, then Jack’s mum walked Lily home to the bookshop on Mondays and Wednesdays, while Isabel’s mum picked her up on Tuesdays. On Thursdays, Becca had a free study afternoon, so she covered for Anna in the shop for an hour while she went to get Lily, and on Fridays Phil finished work early to collect her, amidst coos of adoration and sympathy from the other mums, which he milked shamelessly.

Lily didn’t seem to mind being passed around like a parcel; her main concern was how Pongo was taking to being ‘abandoned’ every day.

‘Did he look sad when you left him this morning?’ she asked Anna, as they walked down the high street towards the bookshop. Her bag was weighing down one shoulder, but she wouldn’t let Anna carry it; it contained Mrs Piggle and her new all-American pig, Piggy-Jo, a gift from Sarah. ‘How sad did he look, out of ten?’

‘Two. He was fine,’ said Anna. ‘He’d got a busy day planned – trip to the park at lunchtime, film in front of the telly this afternoon, back to us for supper.’

‘Does Pongo have his own bed at Juliet’s? And who does he like most out of Minton and Coco? Does he have a best friend there?’

Minton and Coco were Juliet’s own dogs; Pongo didn’t express a preference for either, loving everyone enthusiastically, but Lily was obsessed with best friends. Anna was painfully aware that Lily didn’t seem to have one herself.

‘You’re his best friend.’ She wasn’t sure she should be encouraging Lily’s obsession with anthropomorphising everything from Pongo to Mrs Piggle but at least it got her talking. Any questions about school usually resulted in a worryingly unspecific answer.

‘I know,’ said Lily. ‘But he’s allowed to have one best
dog
friend too.’

‘Maybe he has a girlfriend,’ suggested Anna, ‘like Missis Pongo?’

‘No,’ said Lily decisively. ‘There aren’t any other Dalmatians round here. He’d have to find one on the internet. A special internet Dalmatian dating site.’

‘Perdita just arrived, didn’t she? In the book.’

Lily wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t remember that bit in the film.’

‘Well, she was just wandering around when Pongo and Missis needed some help with the puppies. We could read that part together,’ she suggested, then played a sneaky trump card. ‘Maybe Pongo would like to join us? He could listen too.’

They were nearly at the shop now, and Lily stopped walking. Anna stopped too, thinking Lily had seen something pretty in the window of Home Sweet Home, but she hadn’t. She just wanted to get Anna’s attention.

‘That would be nice for him,’ Lily said very seriously. ‘I think he probably misses us. He’d like to have some one-on-one time, and a story. Poor Pongo. Maybe he doesn’t speak the same language as Coco and Minton. What if he speaks Dog French, and they speak Dog Italian?’

Anna’s heart caught in her throat at the barely disguised sadness in the huge blue eyes, but Lily’s acceptance of her suggestion to read together was a real leap. Her attempts to read
Ballet Shoes
had fallen on stony ground; Lily hadn’t wanted to listen to girls ‘showing off like Chloe’ on stage.

‘Then let’s start tonight,’ she said, trying not to sound too excited. ‘We’ll have a reading party! You, me, Mrs Piggle and Pongo.’

‘Good,’ said Lily, the sunshine returning to her face with the usual family speed that Anna found so disconcerting. ‘Ooh, who’s that boy talking to Becca?’

‘Which boy?’ Anna looked where Lily was looking – through the big plate-glass window of the bookshop – and saw Becca behind the counter, chatting animatedly to Michelle and Owen.

Becca looked a lot more awake than Anna had seen her recently, and kept twirling the end of her plait round and round as she spoke, glancing up and down shyly.

She must have come to discuss the Saturday job, she thought. Chloe had more or less dropped her nagging about it after Phil had caved in and increased her weekly allowance instead of risking her grades, but Becca seemed keen to help. She probably fancied the quiet atmosphere even more than the cash.

Anna squinted. She was looking very keen at the moment. Very keen indeed. Owen was flicking through a paperback and laughing, and Becca was laughing too, trying to make him stop and read the bits she was pointing at.

‘That’s not a boy, that’s Michelle’s brother, Owen,’ she started to say, but Lily was already barging in through the door, pushing it hard to make the bell clang as loud as she could.

Michelle looked pleased to see her and Becca sprang up from the counter, blushing. Owen’s demeanour didn’t change. He carried on looking cool, skinny and relaxed.