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“Thanks, Pen,” Elspeth said, taking the box.

“Right, you’re a realist,” George said when the primary teacher had left. “You don’t live in a fantasy world at all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pen asked, sweeping crumbs from the counter.

“It means that you’ve just handed over a box of cakes to someone without asking for money in exchange. You do actually understand how a business is supposed to work, don’t you?”

“I understand how a community is supposed to work,” said Pen sharply.

George sighed. “I don’t know how you make a profit when you give away half your stock every day. Mind you, if Ash could be as nice as you, I suppose I’d still have a job, wouldn’t I?”

“I’ve told you that you can come and work here,” said Pen.

“You can pay me in cakes,” George said with a grin. “And if I don’t get back to the bookshop, she’s going to have my head. I’m only supposed to be on a ten minute break.”

He was finishing up his coffee when the thought struck Pen. Something in what Elspeth had said stirred something inside her.

“A community project,” she said.

“Hmm?” asked George, putting his empty cup down.

Pen put both hands on the counter. “A community project,” she said again.

“Yeah, repeating that isn’t going to help,” said George. “I’m going to need more info.”

“Listen, this community needs a bookshop. And it’s a good business according to you, right?”

“It is,” agreed George.

“So we can agree that Ash selling the bookshop might not be in the best interests of the community. After all, we’ve got no idea who might buy it next, or who might want to change it. And Tetherington is known for the fact that it has a romance-only bookshop. In fact, it could almost be considered a cultural monument.”

“That’s putting it a bit strongly,” said George carefully, eyeing Pen.

“Is it though?” Pen asked. “Because I think that Mended Hearts is an important part of our town community.”

George’s eyes opened wide as he cottoned on to what Pen was saying. “You’re thinking that Mended Hearts should be a community project,” he said.

“Why not?” Pen said. “We could take it in turns to run it, we could donate profits to charity, we could keep our bookshop.”

George blew out a breath. “Yeah, that’s all very well. But you do realize that before we do any of those things, we have to do something a lot bigger and more important.”

“Of course,” Pen said with a gleam in her eye. “We have to buy the bookshop.”

Chapter Nine

As a child, Ash spent plenty of time alone. What with being an only child and her mother being busy arranging weddings and divorces, it wasn’t like there was a constant stream of children in and out of her house. Not that she’d really minded. She’d been happy with a book or a game or a TV program.

And being up in the little bookshop attic reminded her a lot of being a child, maybe it was the solitariness of it. Maybe it was just the idea of sneaking away from normal life for a while.

She poked through dusty boxes, finding Christmas decorations and discarded books. A whole set of boxes contained clothes and she pulled some out, trying to gauge what Mary had liked to wear. Trousers was the overwhelming answer. Trousers and shirts and a few hippy kind of dresses.

There was a set of smaller boxes near the roof hatch and Ash had to sit down to get to those. As she sat, she heard a meowing from the bottom of the ladder. The orange cat was standing on its hind paws with its front paws on the third rung.

“Pshht, get away from there,” Ash said. “Go on, get.”

Instead, the animal bounded up the ladder and Ash groaned. She had visions of chasing the thing around the attic.

“When I’m done here, we’re leaving. And if you don’t leave when I tell you to, I’m going to close the hatch on you,” she warned it.