Page 32 of Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop

LARS

Lily was smiling but I could see the hurt in her eyes and hear the pain in her voice and I longed to reach out and hold her.

If we were doing this after hours, I might have done just that but I could hear Cassie talking to someone at the till and, even if there hadn’t been any customers in the shop, it probably wasn’t appropriate.

‘I didn’t realise Marcus wasn’t your biological dad,’ I said.

‘Most people don’t. Kadence and Hendrix are my half-siblings.’

‘Are you still in touch with Justin?’

She scrunched up her nose. ‘Yes, if you can call it that. I haven’t heard from him in over six months. I was meant to be seeing him on my birthday in March but, in typical Justin style, he cancelled on me the day before. At least it was better than a no-show.’

Once again, I could hear the pain despite the smile and jokey tone. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve been through all that.’

She gave me a weak smile before adding a handful of books to the shelf.

This Justin sounded like a waste of space and probably best cut out of her life completely, but I knew from experience how complicated families could be.

I also knew how confusing it was to know that their behaviour was unacceptable but somehow to feel conflicted by a sense of loyalty towards them if anyone else pointed that out.

I was stunned to discover that Marcus wasn’t Lily’s biological father and that her siblings were actually half-siblings.

And I was furious with myself because my appalling attitude towards her back in school had been partly triggered by my belief and my envy that she had the ‘perfect’ family when my parents had seemingly rejected me and my only sibling had died.

The day in late August when Nanna brought me to Bay Books to get my stationery ready for senior school I’d hoped to see Lily.

Her dad was behind the till but there was no sign of her.

Nanna paid for my stationery and left me to browse the books in the children’s section while she visited some other shops.

I was reading a blurb when I heard Lily’s voice and, still holding the book, I rushed to the archway, excited to see her, but stopped dead when I saw she wasn’t alone.

The woman with her had dark, curly hair like Lily and had to be her mum.

Lily was holding the hand of a young girl and there was a baby asleep in a pushchair.

Lily’s dad was dishing out hugs and he kissed the baby’s forehead then kissed Lily’s mum.

An older man appeared who I guessed was her granddad and he produced a sweet from behind the little girl’s ear, making her giggle, and another from behind Lily’s.

Peeping round the archway watching them, I felt so incredibly lonely.

I wished I had what Lily had and, at that moment, the warmth and friendship I’d felt towards her was replaced by envy and resentment.

I slunk back into the children’s section and hoped she stayed out the front.

That first day at school, I’d never felt so lost and low.

I hated Mum for leaving that morning without saying goodbye and I hated the kids at school who’d already taken the piss out of my accent.

I just wanted to be alone with my book and couldn’t wait to escape into the world of the Baudelaire orphans, relating hard to their situation of being parentless and hounded by bad fortune.

My hackles rose as footsteps approached.

Why couldn’t the bullies just leave me alone?

But it was Lily and she was all smiley and friendly and I should have embraced that but, instead, I released my frustration and anger on her.

She didn’t deserve any of it but I was in self-destruct mode.

What was the point in having any friends when they’d only abandon me sooner or later?

‘I think that’s about it for the picture books,’ Lily said, bringing my focus back to the present. ‘If we add any more, they’ll get shoved back in and damaged.’

She gathered the spares into a pile and I returned them to the cupboard before removing a pile of chapter books for younger readers and carrying them across to the tree.

As Lily looked through the pile, I chewed on my lip, feeling the need to explain the mess in my head all of those years ago and how she’d been unfairly the target of my pain, but was the workplace the right place to do that?

She might need some time to process it. She might get angry and want to tell me exactly what she thought of me and I couldn’t blame her if she did.

I was angry with me. Plus, she had said she wanted to put a line in the sand and forget about it all.

What if me bringing it all to the fore opened up some old wounds?

The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her again, especially when it sounded like so many men in her life had already caused her pain.

Placing a second pile of paperbacks down next to Lily, I returned to the cupboard for more, still debating what – if anything – to say.

‘The Bookmas tree’s looking good,’ Cassie said, smiling as she joined us.

‘Every time I see it, it takes me right back to picking out books when I was this high.’ She put her hand out to indicate a toddler’s height.

‘Did I tell you, Lars, that this shop and particularly the Bookmas tree were responsible for my love of books? If I’d told the six-year-old me that she’d end up working here… ’

Cassie’s eyes shone as she spoke, just like Lily’s did and just like Pia’s had whenever books were mentioned.

‘Anyway, it’s half two so I’m off,’ Cassie said. ‘There’s nobody out the front but there are a few customers upstairs.’

Lily stood up and brushed some dust from the navy-blue tunic top she was wearing. ‘I’ll go through. Lars, are you okay to finish this off?’

‘Yeah, no problem.’

As she returned to the front of the shop with Cassie, I felt disappointed that our conversation was over, although that was maybe a good thing. The confession could wait until another day, if ever.

It didn’t take me long to finish filling the Bookmas tree. Lily asked me to string some fairy lights around it and directed me to the cupboard where I’d find the stocking fillers for the hooks.

‘You’ve done a brilliant job,’ she said a bit later, her hands clasped round a mug of tea. ‘Thank you.’

‘I enjoyed it.’

We returned to the front of the shop and Lily went round to the other side of the counter to check the computer for emails.

‘Is there anything else you’d like me to do?’ I asked.

‘I’d like more Christmas books in the window ahead of full Christmas next week. How’s your creativity?’

‘On a scale of one to ten, I’d say minus figures.’

She laughed. ‘You designed your own learning portal so you can’t be that bad!’

‘That’s different. It was driven by logic so I found it easy, but I have zero flair for anything else.

My house currently has only white walls and I hate them – far too clinical-looking – but I don’t know where to start with colour.

I don’t know where to start with furniture either so I’ve barely got any of that.

The echoes are so loud, it’s like living in a cave, albeit a very bright one because of those white walls. ’

‘Could you consider an interior designer?’

‘I could and I even have a contact but she’ll want to know my taste and, embarrassingly, I don’t know that either. I’ve never had to consider it until now.’

‘I loved picking out colours and designs for the house I bought with my ex. It needed gutting and we had to save up to have everything done so I had loads of time to design the perfect home. I might have gone a bit over the top with mood boards for every room but I got really into it. We were a couple of months away from the fun part – the decorating and furnishing – when Ewan and I split up.’

The name jolted me. ‘You don’t mean Ewan Cottler from school?’

‘You remember him?’

‘Remember him? He was a…’ I stopped myself just in time. He’d obviously meant a lot to Lily and I had no right to tell her what I’d thought of him at school, especially when my own record was hardly unblemished.

‘A pain in the backside?’ she suggested, giving me a gentle smile.

‘A show-off, overly confident, annoying… I thought the same too but when he was assigned to me as my lab partner I got to see another side of him. Something shifted between us and we both felt it but we didn’t act on it because his parents were moving and he was going with them.

When I was twenty-four, he returned to Whitsborough Bay because his employer had set up an office here and that was finally our time.

Except they decided the two-office thing wasn’t working and they closed it four years later so that was it for us.

Ewan hated driving and he hated public transport too so we were a bit stuffed.

He went back to Sheffield, we sold the house and I never got to see my beautiful mood boards come to life. ’

‘That was one of your two crap Christmases,’ I said, recalling our earlier conversation.

‘That’s right.’

‘Could you have moved to Sheffield?’

‘I considered it. I even spotted a job in a bookshop but I couldn’t bring myself to apply.

The thought of being an employee in a chain store as opposed to a partner in our family-run indie hurt my heart.

And the thought of moving away from my family and friends was unbearable, even to be with Ewan.

It would be easy to turn against him and say that he chose his career over me so he’d obviously never cared about me, but the same accusation could be hurled straight back at me because I chose mine and Whitsborough Bay over him. ’

‘You really love it here?’ I said, noticing how her face had lit up.

‘So much. Home is where the heart is and my heart’s right here.

Anyway, back to decorating, Mum and Dad said I could do up the annexe however I wanted.

It was a tad smaller but it gave me something to sink my teeth into and hopefully one day I’ll have my own place and be able to put my interior design head on again and create some fresh mood boards.

I’ve no idea when that’ll be, mind. I should have been house-hunting with Wes now – my more recent ex – and I can’t seem to muster any energy to do it on my own. ’

‘How recent an ex?’ I asked, curious as to how raw it might be for Lily.

‘Seven and a half months now. He was meant to be working in Dubai for two years and he came back to visit after eighteen months and casually announced he’d been offered a further four years. He made out he wanted to discuss it but it was obvious he’d already made the decision so I walked away.’

She’d been looking past me, a wistful expression on her face as though questioning for a moment whether she’d made the right decision.

‘Happy birthday to me!’

‘It ended on your birthday?’ I asked, aghast for her. ‘And didn’t you say Justin cancelled on you then too?’

She seemed to realise where she was and fixed her eyes on me, her cheeks flushing.

‘Apologies, Lars. We were talking about getting creative with the shop window and I somehow turned that into sharing my relationship woes with you. As if you wanted a potted history of my boyfriend disasters. But, yes, Justin cancelled on me and Wes and I split up so this year’s birthday is vying for pole position with my two crap Christmases. ’

‘I’m sure next year will be better.’

‘It can’t be worse. Thanks for listening.’

‘Happy to. And, if it helps, my relationship track record is disastrous. I swear I repel women. Maybe I need to change my body spray. Or my personality.’

Lily placed her hand lightly over mine and, even though her hand was cold, electricity zipped up my arm and throughout my body. ‘You don’t need to change either of those things, Lars.’

My heart pounded at her words. Was she just being nice or was she telling me something?