Page 22 of Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop

LILY

‘Oh, wow, Lily! It looks amazing in here,’ Dad said as we entered Bay Books through the back door on Saturday morning and he paused to look around at the Halloween decorations Cassie and I had put up the night before. ‘How long did it take you?’

‘A few hours. We made it to The Bombay Palace for just after eight, so not too bad.’

‘I’m impressed, as always.’

It would normally have been Dad’s day off today but it was the start of the half-term holiday and the extra pair of hands were usually needed.

It wasn’t just locals coming in but holidaymakers too.

I admired their hardiness, determined to enjoy a holiday by the seaside despite the often cold and wet weather.

Several of the local caravan parks, eager to prolong the holiday season, offered good deals in October which attracted families to the Yorkshire Coast.

‘I need to check the window before we open,’ I told Dad, heading outside. It had been dark when Cassie and I finished decorating last night and I wanted to ensure everything looked okay in the daylight.

Most of the window display carried a witchy theme aimed at children.

Held open on a cookbook holder, a book I’d made from stained parchment showed a spell containing well-known characters from children’s books.

The relevant books and the soft toy characters were piled up ready to go into a large cauldron in which there were already a few items. Fake glittery cobwebs covered colourful bottles of potions, and there were spiders and bats of varying sizes dotted around.

On the far side of the window was a smaller adult section.

We’d created a display stand from old fruit boxes on their sides, each carrying a range of titles with loose links to Halloween – the latest horror and crime fiction releases, a selection of romantic fiction titles featuring witches and ghosts, and various non-fiction titles about Victorian grave robbers, serial killers and witch trials.

Dispersed among the piles of books were soft orange, purple and black pumpkins and black, white and orange flameless candles.

Satisfied with the display, I went back inside.

If I hadn’t been aware it was half-term, the increased footfall across the day would have told me.

Dad, Alec, Flo and I barely paused for breath all day.

I loved days like that. Financially we needed them as they compensated for the quiet ones where we sold very few books – the worst being mid-week, mid-term days with torrential rain which kept the shoppers away.

But it wasn’t the excitement of running off the end of the day sales report and seeing a healthy figure that did it for me.

When the shop was busy, there was a buzz of excitement and it was caused by a united love for the written word.

I’d never tire of customers telling me why they’d chosen a particular book.

My friend recommended it. My mum loves this author.

I can’t resist pink covers. My dad’s having an operation and I thought this would take his mind off it.

I love the cute panda/tractor/cottage on the cover.

I loved this book when I was a kid. I’ve just watched the film and now I want to read the book.

My sister’s having a tough time right now so I thought I’d help her with some escapism.

Escapism. Most days I was reminded of how valuable books, especially fiction ones, were for escapism.

The opportunity for a reader to switch off from the challenges in their life and immerse themselves in a new world was so powerful.

How many times had I heard a customer say, I need this right now , or return to the shop later and tell me, this book came along at the perfect time ?

I’d experienced it myself so many times, escaping to Green Gables when Jordan no longer wanted to be my friend, and returning to that world again and again when life tripped me up.

New friends could be found between the pages of a book – new romances even – and readers could learn so much.

Sometimes I’d stand in the shop gazing at the bookshelves, feeling blown away by the multitude of lessons that could be learned from just the books in one section, let alone the whole shop.

The learning didn’t just come from the non-fiction books.

Commercial fiction could be just as valuable for educating readers or making them think.

By half four, trade had eased off a little. I was tidying and restocking the children’s section when Cassie arrived with Hallie and Rocco.

‘I wasn’t expecting to see you two today,’ I said as they charged at me for cuddles.

‘We’ve been to a party,’ Rocco declared.

‘Don’t tell me. Think it and see if I can guess.’ I pressed my fingers to my temples, scrunched up my forehead and stared at them both intently. ‘I’m getting something. Plastic balls? Some tunnels? I know! You’ve been to the soft play.’

Hallie looked stunned for a moment, then started giggling. ‘Mummy told you!’

‘Busted!’

‘You two go and choose a book each,’ Cassie said. ‘But what do we do with books?’

‘We treat them with love,’ Hallie and Rocco chorused together.

‘And we put them back on the shelf in the right place carefully,’ Hallie added. ‘No ramming cos it hurts the corners.’

Cassie clapped her hand to her heart. ‘My babies! You make me so proud. Off you go!’ She turned to me with a grin. ‘Just call me Mother of Books.’

‘Okay, Mother of Books, how was soft play?’

‘Like Satan’s playpen. Although that’s surprisingly not the strapline the owners of Squishy Joe’s went with.

Urgh, I hate those places but I love my kids so I begrudgingly accept the intermittent torture of a couple of hours of screeching children and competitive mums. My daughter’s a genius.

My son’s going to the Olympics. My daughter’s found a cure for Alzheimer’s. My son’s solved world poverty. ’

The smarmy show-off voices Cassie adopted had me laughing. She rolled her eyes at me. ‘Knowing I was going to hate it but be far too polite to say anything, I went for a silent protest.’

‘No! You didn’t…’

She unzipped her coat, revealing her I’d rather be reading books T-shirt.

‘…wear your T-shirt?’ I finished. ‘You did. I can’t believe you did that!’

‘It had to be done. I’d never have forgiven myself if I hadn’t.’

‘Cassie! And you wonder why nobody speaks to you at the school gates.’

‘And my life is all the richer for it.’

It was an in-joke as Cassie was actually really popular among the school gate crowd.

She had one of those bubbly personalities people couldn’t help being drawn to, smiling and chatting to everyone but never being fake.

She couldn’t abide fake people and the one-upmanship some parents and carers seemed to subscribe to drove her to distraction.

‘They’re just children,’ she frequently lamented.

‘Who cares if one isn’t as good at spelling or numbers or sport?

If some of those blummin’ parents would stop making it into a competition and just let their kids be kids, life would be so much easier.

They’ll find their way. They’ll discover their gifts and that won’t necessarily be something academic or sporty. ’

I used to laugh along with her school gate tales and wonder if I’d experience the same thing when Wes and I had children but the stories hit differently now.

I still laughed, but I did wonder whether children were part of my future anymore and occasionally I questioned whether I’d done the right thing by walking away from Wes, especially when letting him go meant letting go of our future plans to get a house and have a family.

The thought popped into my head again now, immediately followed by Dad’s declaration that Wes hadn’t been my Gilbert Blythe.

We weren’t right together. I could see that now.

‘The Paperback Pixie has been gifting again,’ Cassie said, bringing my attention back to the present as she thrust her phone in front of me.

‘Today?’

‘Yes. No theme this time but five books again. She’s definitely making up for the missed summer.’

I took Cassie’s phone and scrolled through the photos, recognising the various locations around Whitsborough Bay where the Paperback Pixie had placed the books.

‘Who are you?’ I murmured, shaking my head. The accompanying message just had the usual spiel about tagging the Pixie in for any finds and wishing the finders an enjoyable read.

‘I think that’s going to forever remain a mystery,’ Cassie said as I returned her phone. ‘Oh! You know what we’ve never tried? Searching the system for an email address with Paperback Pixie in it.’

I glanced towards the till where Dad was serving a customer. ‘I doubt they’d be that obvious but it’s worth a try. I’ll look after we close.’

‘Too right! Okay, I’ll leave you to crack on and I’d best see what my two are up to. We’ll get books and then Mummy can go home and drink wine until she’s obliterated the trauma of Satan’s playpen.’

She headed over to where Hallie and Rocco were looking through our Halloween reads and I finished tidying the shelf I’d been working on, thinking about her email comment.

It seemed ridiculous now that we hadn’t searched on paperback pixie before.

The search facility was designed to take a partial email address so I could try pixie too and see if that brought up anything.

My heart leapt at the possibility but my head told me that, if the Paperback Pixie had kept their identity secret for fifteen or so years, their email address wouldn’t give anything away.

The end of the day soon arrived and we said goodbye to our last customer.

While Dad finished vacuuming, I ran off the sales report for the day, cashed up, then did an email search on paperback pixie , pixie and paperback .

The first two brought up nothing but my heart leapt when paperback yielded a couple of results.

They were a dead end as I knew the customers attached to both – a regular who devoured historical novels, had been in a few days ago and was now on holiday in Lanzarote, and a former regular who’d moved out of the area a few years ago.

Although I was no further forward with identifying the Paperback Pixie, the email address search had given me an idea.

Cassie and I had searched on Lars’s name but what if he had an account registered under a different name – perhaps his business?

I found the email address Lars had put on his CV and tapped that into the search field, generating a customer account for an Aileen Bridges living at 17 Fountain Street.

There was a long history of orders, mainly consisting of romantic fiction, Viking fiction and non-fiction books about Vikings, Iceland and photography.

‘That’s a serious face,’ Dad said, reaching round me to unplug the vacuum cleaner. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Yes. It’s relief, actually.’

When Dad raised his eyebrows questioningly, I felt I had to expand.

‘I did a thing. You know how Lars mentioned in his interview that he hadn’t been in the shop since he was a kid but he bought from us online? Cassie wanted to check out his reading tastes but couldn’t find him on the system.’

Dad nodded his head knowingly when I paused. ‘So you assumed he’d lied to us.’

‘Exactly. And you know what I’m like with liars. It’s been bugging me all week but I’ve just searched on his email address and found a long order history so now I feel awful.’

‘Did you say anything to Lars?’

‘Thankfully no, but I might have been a bit off with him after Cassie told me and I don’t know what to do about it now.

If I apologise and he never noticed anything, I’m going to look daft.

But if he did notice and I don’t apologise, he might think I’m still holding a grudge from school even though I promised it was all forgotten. ’

Dad placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. ‘I haven’t picked up on any bad vibes between you so I don’t think you’ve behaved as differently as you might think you have.’

I smiled at him, reassured and relieved because Dad was exceptionally observant and would have picked up anything remiss.

While Dad put the vacuum cleaner away, I glanced once more at Lars’s order list before shutting the system down. Discovering that Lars hadn’t been lying about being a customer should have made me happy but, instead, I felt disappointed, which made no sense to me.

* * *

Most evenings I ate my tea with Mum and Dad in Everdene but they were dining out with friends so I picked up a takeaway pizza on the way home.

Dad had said I was welcome to eat in the main house but, after such a busy day, I fancied slipping into my pyjamas before I ate and I didn’t want to get all warm and cosy then have to brave the cold as I darted back across to my annexe.

Sprawled out on my bed munching on my pizza while watching a new episode of a drama series I’d been enjoying, I had to admit to myself the reason why I’d felt disappointed when I found Lars’s book orders on the system.

Aileen Bridges. The woman with whom Lars lived.

Girlfriend? Fiancée? She could even be a wife who’d kept her own name, although Lars wasn’t wearing a wedding band.

Of course, she might not be romantically connected to him at all.

Lars had said his parents were divorced so Aileen might be his mum using her maiden name, although he’d also said he barely saw his parents so perhaps not.

Could be a sister who’d changed her name through marriage.

I didn’t remember him having a sister at school or mentioning one when we used to talk about books, although I had a vague recollection of him sometimes buying picture books so it was possible that he had a younger sister.

A big age gap would have made her too young to be at senior school at the same time as us.

I desperately wanted to know who Aileen Bridges was but it was hardly something I could ask Lars without admitting I’d been searching for him on the system because I thought he was a liar. I’d have to hope it came up in casual conversation.

As I settled down to sleep, it was still on my mind. I found myself willing Aileen to be family because the idea of her being someone in a romantic relationship with Lars bothered me way more than it should.