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TWO WEEKS LATER

Lilah

She’d done it.

The last train, the last piece of track, the last tiny human being, all of it to precise scale: she’d wrapped every single one of them carefully in paper and put them in labeled boxes. The back room of the Chislehurst house was full of them now, stacked nearly to her waist.

Marina and the two older children had helped her pack up the books in her library, the photograph albums, the board games, personal things that she wanted to take with her. With Marina’s support, she’d also been able to select a few bits of Dad’s clothing that she could keep as a memento. His woolly cardigan, which she could wear on cold days; his old Post Office sweater with the worn-through elbows. They were both way too big for her, but she felt safe and happy when she put them on. She didn’t need clothes to remember her dad, but she liked them anyway.

Most of the furniture would be sold with the house. She’d never been particularly attached to it. In the garden, she and Marina had already chosen a few of her father’s favorite roses and a small Japanese maple to transplant to Marina’s in Richmond, for now at least, until Lilah had a garden of her own.

But Lilah wanted to do this last bit, this hardest bit, by herself.

This was the room where S had killed her father, hired by the man she thought she’d loved. It was where Dad had taken his last, painful breath. Before she set foot in it, she wasn’t sure that she could even bear to be in it.

But when she gathered her courage and went into the room, she remembered that this was also where Dad had spent hours and hours creating his own little perfect world. It was the place where he was happiest. A whole miniature England, with cheerful trains and chocolate box shops; people with painted smiles and trees that were always the green of late spring.

It was Dad’s world. Everything made sense here. It all had its own order, its own logic, and every single part of it was infused with her father’s attention and care.

As she packed up the train set she found little sparks of joy, too—jokes that he’d created, little scenes to amuse himself. There was a tiny dog, chasing a tinier cat, chasing a barely visible mouse. A trainspotter stood on a platform, complete with anorak and notebook. The barber shop had a sign saying BARBER STREISAND and the chip shop was called FISHCOTEQUE.

Best of all there was a mailman wearing a sweater with wornthrough elbows and hauling a bulging sack of packages. There was a young woman wearing a fanny pack and carrying a stack of books. She slipped those two figures into her bag, wrapped up in a tissue to keep them safe and together.

In the end, Dad’s life was much more powerful than Dad’s death. It took her hours to disassemble the tracks and the trains, but she loved every minute. She handled these small intricate things that her father had before her. She could almost hear his voice explaining to her, gently, what everything was.

It was sad, yes. Sometimes she cried, alone in that room where her father had lived and died. And she had to take breaks; she couldn’t do it all in one day. But it was also one of the nicest goodbyes that she could imagine.

And now the last carriage had been wrapped up and packed, and the courier would be here in an hour to take it all to a charity she’d found that matched train sets with children fighting cancer.

Then the estate agent would be in to take photographs of the empty house to put it on the market. Lilah had moved out of the Premier Inn. She’d found a nice two-bedroom flat with lots of bookcases in Twickenham, not ten minutes’ walk from Marina’s house. She was renting it for now. She liked being close to Marina, close enough to pop in to share meals and go for walks together, to play with her children, take them to the park, and be called “Auntie Lilah.” And the building allowed cats.

She gazed around the room and felt at peace. She was still grieving her dad, she knew that; just as she was still recovering from being manipulated and betrayed. But this was a good step forward into a new life.

* * *

The bell over the door at Cuthbert & Binding was just as cheerful as it ever had been, but the shelves were sparsely populated, and the wonderful bookshop smell was slightly diluted with the scent of cleaning fluid. There were still SALE signs everywhere.

“Welcome,” said the man at the till, and then he looked up and a smile lit up his face. “Oh hi! It’s you.”

“It is me,” said Lilah. “And it’s you.”

“My name’s Mychal, by the way.”

“I’m Lilah.”

“I see you’ve got your Cuthbert & Binding tote bag.”

“Yes, it’s very useful for carrying things.” She remembered that this had included both of Zachary’s arms, and blushed a little. She said quickly, “I’m celebrating something, and I need to buy a lot of books.”

“That is the best kind of celebration,” said Mychal. “Can I help you find anything?”

They went upstairs to the children’s section together, Lilah explaining the ages and personalities of Archie, Lucy Rose, and Ewan and the bookseller saying he knew just the thing. When he’d helped her choose a stack of picture and story books, and then they’d gone to the cookery section and found a book on Vietnamese food for Marina, who’d expressed an interest in pho, and then gone to the fantasy and science fiction section, where Mychal introduced her to a trilogy by a new author, and she introduced him to a book of short stories by one of her old favorites, and they’d had a long conversation about which Discworld novel was the best and why, Lilah peered around at the shelves and said, “Well, you’ve got a lot of gaps here now.”

“Yeah. I hate to see all the stock being sold off. It’s been hard not to buy most of it myself. But...space.”

“Are the owners sad about closing it?”

“Yes, but also they’ve been wanting to retire to France. So it’s bittersweet for them.”

“What do you think this shop will be used for?”

He shrugged sadly. “London souvenirs? Key chains? Bobblehead King Charles?”

“That’s such a shame.”

“I know.”

They walked back to the till together. She’d chosen so many books that he had to help her carry them. And she’d meant to stop by the self-help section, to see if there were any books she could give to Formerly Evil Alice, as a sort of thank-you, but she had started to get an idea that was taking up most of her head space. An idea that would be a celebration of her father’s life, and her friendship with Marina and her children and with Opal, too.

Mychal glanced at her several times while he rang up her books, but she didn’t really notice. She was thinking too hard. She automatically handed over her debit card when he was finished, and he packed up the books for her in her tote bag and a few more.

“Well,” he said, when he was finished. “Those should last you a little while.”

“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t pick up the bags or move away. She gnawed on her lip, and she looked at Mychal, and she thought about how he had a nice smile, and he knew a lot about books, and seemed to like them a whole lot, and how it would be lovely to talk with him every day.

“I think—” she said, at the same time that he said, “Would you—”

They both stopped.

“Sorry,” Lilah said. “You go first.”

“No, please, you go first.”

“I was going to say, that I think I might like to buy this bookshop.”

His eyes widened. “Oh wow,” he said. “Wow, really? And keep it a bookshop?”

“Yes. What do you think?”

“I think that’s a great idea. But...”

“But what? Is the business not for sale?”

“It’s definitely for sale. I was just thinking...that if you were going to be my boss, then I probably shouldn’t ask you what I was going to ask you.”

“What were you going to ask me?”

“If you’d like to go for pizza with me sometime.”

“Oh,” said Lilah. “I see. Actually, I think that is also a really great idea.”