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“Her partner?” George said. “But… But you’ve never, I mean… I mean, I’d know.”

The man smiled. “Would you?” he asked. “Mary and I, we had something special. Something that worked for us. I travel a lot for my job, as you can imagine. But I always arranged my trips here with a vacation attached. Once a quarter I come here—”

“And Mary closes for a stock-take,” George said, understanding. “I thought it was odd that she never wanted me to help her. She said she knew the books best.”

“She knew that she wanted to spend a week in bed,” grinned Jesús. “And don’t pull faces like that, we’re not so old that we can’t enjoy pleasures of the flesh.”

“But… but why didn’t Mary tell anyone?” Ash asked.

Jesús shrugged. “She said she shared enough with the community, and when it was time, she would tell them. Though I think some people suspected, or even knew, we weren’t always as discrete as we thought.” He looked down at his hands. “And I am a little younger than her. Perhaps that played its part.” He looked up again defiantly. “But I am retiring next year and the plan was always that I would come here, that we would spend time together to find if we wanted more than what we already had.”

“Oh God,” George said, sitting down. “That’s so sad.”

“No, no,” Jesús said. “Please, don’t think like that. What we had was beautiful and good and everything that either of us wanted.” He bit his lip. “I left a wife and a son in Spain a long, long time ago now. I had a normal family life. But this was more than that, it was true love, like a fire inside your heart and I am lucky to have had even a taste of it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ash said. “I’m so sorry you had to find out like this. But… why didn’t you phone or write or something?”

“I did,” Jesús said. “I texted and got no answer. But Mary was so busy, so involved, it didn’t strike me as so odd that she didn’t reply. And we didn’t text often. We had our own lives, separate from what he had together.” He smiled again. “It was our way, we always said, and it worked for us.”

Which was fair enough, Ash thought. She was beginning to see that her own narrow definitions of what a relationship could be were far from being correct.

“If you don’t mind me saying,” said Jesús. “You have me at a disadvantage here. I’m afraid I don’t exactly know who you are?”

George looked at Ash and Ash sighed and finally, finally made her decision.

“I’m the new owner of the bookshop,” she said, the words filling her with tingles as she said them. George grinned at her. “I’m Ash Wells, Mary’s niece.”

Jesús frowned. “No,” he said.

“No?” said George and Ash together.

“No,” repeated Jesús a little more certainly. “No, you’re not Mary’s niece.”

“How do you know?” asked George, looking annoyed.

Jesús looked at Ash. “Well, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you’re a little too old, and far more strikingly, you are not exactly the right color.”

Chapter Twenty Seven

Pen felt like she’d eaten rocks, like they were weighing her down and she was sinking, breathless and panicking into the darkness.

“But, but I don’t understand,” was all she managed to say.

“It is simple,” said Jesús. “Ashley is the daughter of an old friend of Mary’s. They once lived together in some English village. When Mary moved here, she kept in touch with Ashley. They wrote letters, it was almost like, what do call it in English? Pencil pals?”

“Penpals,” Ash said.

“So where is she now?” asked Pen, demanded really, her voice felt high and tight. “I mean, if she was so important, where is she?”

Jesús shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “She left three months ago, which is why I know what she looks like. The last time I was here, Mary and I went to see her off at the airport. We drove a long way, got up really early, all to wave this girl goodbye. So I know she was important to Mary.”

“Where did she go?” asked Ash.

Again, Jesús shrugged. “I think she’s in Australia, maybe? I’m not sure. She’s doing what they call a gap year. Except, as Mary explained to me, many people do this gap year between school and university, whereas Ashley had just finished university.”

Pen was playing catch up. She’d come to bring Ash lunch, a croissant sandwich fresh from the oven, and to bring George his favorite biscuits, and found the bookshop door locked. Now here she was, sitting at the kitchen table being told that the happy ending she’d believed in was all a lie.

If anything, she was offended. How dare her optimism be punished like this?