Page 12 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER NINE

Leo

Once I got back from my errands and made sure Mari had drunk some Lemsip before she fell asleep again, I messaged Graham and Catriona that I’d be upstairs for a little while, then settled on the gray velvet love seat with my laptop, tugging another of Judith’s afghans over my lap for warmth.

After I’d handled my emails, I paused. My eyes hunted for the touches of Mari while she dozed. A few tubes and pots of lotion and makeup on top of the chest of drawers, a small, colorful pile of laundry on a chair in the corner, a clean plate and mug drying in the dish rack.

It’d make sense that she traveled lightly, if she was used to going from bookshop to bookshop. It was a lightness I’d never had, I realized. The thought of simply picking up and leaving just with what I could carry on my back was as strange as thinking about spontaneous teleportation.

But now I saw a battered hardback on the nightstand next to Mari, the cover a yellow like summer sunshine. I picked it up like I was a burglar and it was a ruby in a bank vault, then found myself smiling at the familiar wide-eyed bear in his floppy hat.

I sat back down and opened A Bear Called Paddington, looking for the beginning as familiar and sweet as marmalade sandwiches, Mr. and Mrs. Brown meeting the stowaway bear on the railway platform.

As I turned the first pages, I saw a flash of blue scribble on the front matter.

Curiosity flickered, and I turned back and found a note:

For my sweet baby girl, Mari, on her tenth birthday. May you be as brave and adventurous as little Paddington. Love, Mama.

The date was just under twenty years ago.

Tender affection radiated off the page, but it was a too-bright splash of color on a darker picture: Mari shying away, Mari fighting any hint of care, Mari curled up tight under the covers like she was used to being her own comfort.

I’ve always been able to look after myself. I had to.

My heart twisted in sympathy. Were she and her mother estranged now? A lot could happen in twenty years. But then would she have kept the little book at all?

Had her mother disappeared?

Or died?

She hadn’t mentioned a father either, just a stepfather who sounded like a right bastard.

It was like the light in the room had shifted, and what looked like an easy kind of living transformed into absence. Into loneliness.

I turned the page and a small picture slipped out of the middle of the book.

A woman with long wavy hair the color of chestnuts looked at the camera, laughing, her eyes Mari’s striking hazel. She was kneeling on the ground wearing dirt-covered dungarees and garden gloves, surrounded by brilliant scarlet tulips.

But the coloring was where the resemblance between Mari and her mum ended.

Mari’s features were softly pretty, welcoming, in a way.

It almost hurt to look at the woman in the picture with her model-like planes and edges, while I could have studied Mari for hours, captured the weather shifts in her expressive face.

It was aesthetic appreciation, I told myself, shaking my head hard. I was noticing her colors and expressions because I wanted to draw her from across the room, not because I wanted to get closer to her.

A strangled gasp, and my head snapped up from the photograph.

Mari sat up quickly, clutching at her chest, and I could hear the rattle when she coughed.

She threw herself out of bed and ran into the toilet, slamming the door, and I heard her coughing, gagging, retching.

I put the picture back in the book and the book aside, moved to the door and listened closely, holding back until I heard a heavy sound like a body hitting a floor.

When I opened the door, Mari was in the fetal position in front of the toilet, moaning softly. Without thinking I went on my knees next to her.

“I’m fine,” she gasped.

I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so afraid. “Right, enough of that,” I said, trying to channel Judith’s warm, businesslike voice as I tugged her upright. “Back to bed with you.”

I pulled her up until she was standing, shivering. Her mouth opened, and I waited for her to put on her brave face, to joke. But then everything crumpled, and she suddenly pressed her face into my shoulder.

“I feel so bad,” she sobbed. “I’m so cold, and I hurt, and I want it to stop. Please make it stop.”

Her voice… it was curled up on itself the way she’d been in bed, small and pained.

An electric surge of something I’d never felt before went through me, like I wanted to wrap myself around her, keep the world at bay, make her warm and safe.

But she wouldn’t welcome that. Instead I hummed and chafed her back briskly until she lifted her head.

Tears trickled down her cheeks. Without thinking my thumb went to rub one away.

“I know…” Darling had tried to get past my lips, but I shoved it back. “I know,” I said hoarsely. “I’m so sorry. But more fluids, more sleep, and I promise you’ll feel better. All right?”

Her hand came up and pressed against mine and she closed her eyes for a moment.

“All right,” she said softly, and I felt a wild urge to press my lips to her forehead.

Instead I got her a glass of water so she could rinse her mouth and rehydrate, then shut myself in the bathroom so she could change into fresh pajamas.

When I came out, she was curled up on her side in bed, and I bustled around making her a fresh Lemsip.

Even with the blankets, I could see the shivers pass through her.

If she were mine, I’d climb into the bed, curl up around her so she could absorb my body heat.

What? There were so many things wrong with that thought I didn’t know where to begin. Starting with her being mine, because what woman in her right mind would want me?

Instead of making an idiot of myself, I offered her the little hardback. “You like Paddington?”

She hesitated, her eyes flickering between the book and me.

I kept my face innocent, and she took it from me, running her hand over the cover before putting it back on the nightstand.

“I do.” She smiled a little. “I actually love a lot of books set here. I think there was a little part of my brain when I got off the plane that expected to walk into a storybook, not passport control at Heathrow.”

I snorted. “The writer hasn’t been born who could make passport control charming or romantic. But which books?”

She extended her fingers and tapped them one by one. “ Mary Poppins, of course. Noel Streatfeild’s books, like Ballet Shoes . I read my copies of them so often they fell apart. Adult books, too: David Copperfield, Mrs Dalloway, White Teeth, Bridget Jones’s Diary, One Day .”

I found myself smiling, remembering summer afternoons and sunlit chapters in the grass on the Heath, rainy Sundays in an armchair, alternating pages with sips of steaming tea.

“I love all of those. There are some less famous London books you should read, too. Small Island and The British Museum Is Falling Down and The Morning Gift .” I tilted my head.

“You really should read The Morning Gift, actually. You remind me a lot of the heroine.”

“Is she a pain in the ass?”

“Ha. I was going to say she’s plucky.”

“Thanks. Though I don’t feel super plucky right this second.”

“You know Dickens lived not far from here? We…” I swallowed, not wanting to be presumptuous. “You can visit his house and see where he set his books.”

She’d either missed or was ignoring my slipup. “I’d like that. Plus, a lot of the historical romances I love are set here.” She raised her eyebrows. “Though I know you don’t approve of those.”

“I don’t mind,” I protested. “You can read whatever you like. I just don’t see the point of rehashing Jane Austen plots over and over again.”

“Have you actually read one?”

I clamped my mouth shut.

“That’s what I thought.” Then the tease in her voice disappeared. “But what’s actually going on with the shop, Leo? Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?”

God, thinking of it made me feel as ill and tired as Mari looked. “It’s a rubbish bedtime story,” I hedged. “It should wait until you feel better.”

She snorted. “Think of it this way: I’m too tired to do anything but listen, for once.” Her tone changed, went softer. “I just want to understand. Start at the beginning. How did you get here?”

Maybe telling her the story would make my load the smallest bit lighter.

“Alexander died eight months ago from a heart attack, but he wasn’t quite himself for a long time before that,” I began quietly.

“He was a little vague. Detached. Quicker to shout when something wasn’t the way he wanted it.

” I rubbed my face. “Judith had told me a week before he died that she was trying to persuade him to go in for a consultation with someone who specialized in dementia.”

Mari’s eyes were intent, and I continued, “He also decided all of a sudden to open another branch of Ross and Co., in a shopfront in Covent Garden. The rent was very high, but we’d get tons of foot traffic, he said, much more than we got here.

” I sighed. “So I went along with it. But it didn’t work.

We were too close to competitors, didn’t have enough to differentiate us.

It was a white elephant, a bottomless pit for money. ”

Mari studied me. “You thought it was a bad idea from the beginning.”

A bitter laugh escaped my mouth. “I did. Taking on so much debt when business was static was foolhardy. But Alexander had always known what he was talking about before, so I wasn’t brave enough to say anything.”

She nodded. “Classic copilot syndrome.” She paused. “I haven’t heard of another Ross and Co., so I guess that shop is gone?”

I nodded. “Even Alexander couldn’t deny that the shop wasn’t earning enough to pay the rent. So we got out of the lease, at great expense.” I looked down at my hands. “And then he died. And I’ve just felt… so lost ever since. Like I don’t trust myself at all.”