Page 42 of Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop

I ran through the events of that difficult year but, when I reached the part where I woke up on my first morning of senior school to discover that Mum had left without saying goodbye, a wave of emotion unexpectedly crashed over me.

My voice cracked and tears spilled down my cheeks as I struggled to get any more words out.

Next moment, Lily took my hands and eased me to my feet.

She wrapped her arms round me and hugged me tightly as the emotion poured from me.

I’d thought I was okay with everything that had happened – sad and disappointed but okay.

Evidently I’d avoided it rather than dealt with it and now I couldn’t stop the hurt caused by being abandoned like that from overpowering me.

Lily didn’t say anything. She just held me, stroking my back, until I stopped shaking and the tears slowed.

‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ I murmured.

‘You obviously needed it. Are you okay?’

‘I think so.’

She released her hold and pulled her chair closer to mine as I sat back down. As she sat, she placed her hand gently on my thigh. ‘You don’t have to continue if it’s too hard.’

I smiled weakly. ‘Thanks, but I think I’m best getting the rest out now. I don’t think that’ll happen again.’

‘I’ve got some bottles of water in the fridge. I’ll grab you one of those.’

I appreciated her giving me a few minutes to compose myself before returning from the staff room with some water and a box of tissues. I took a tissue and wiped my cheeks.

‘You’ve got some tissue caught on…’ Lily leaned forward and brushed her hand across my jawline, her gentle touch sending a pulse of electricity through me. ‘All gone.’

After taking a few glugs of water, I picked up where I’d left off.

‘I was a mess when I started at school. I was grieving for my sister and also for the loss of my parents from my life, but I didn’t know that back then.

I was so angry and confused. Sometimes I’d sit on my bed with my hands under my legs, desperately fighting the urge to leap up and trash the room.

I wanted to hurl things at the mirror, yank my wardrobe doors off, stamp on things, but there was this little voice in my head saying if you do that, Nanna won’t want to keep you and then you’ll have nobody so I’d bury my head in my pillow and scream into it and pound my fists on the mattress. ’

‘Oh, Lars, that’s awful. You must have been terrified.’

‘I was. The crazy thing is that my nanna’s amazing. We’ve always been close so I could have talked to her and she’d have helped me through it, but I kept it all locked inside me most of the time because of this fear of her abandoning me too.’

‘That’s understandable after what your parents did. What were they thinking?’ She bit her lip. ‘Sorry. I’m being judgy when I don’t know the full story.’

‘It’s not judgy, it’s accurate,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I kept thinking they’d come back saying how sorry they were and that we could still be a family despite losing Pia. My birthday’s in December so I let myself believe they’d come back for that. Or Christmas. New Year… But it never happened.’

I took another swig of water. This was the crux moment. This was the point I was going to tell her why I’d pushed her away.

‘I’d never taken much notice of other people when I was out and about – more likely to notice birds or trees – but across the summer before Mum left, I started noticing people more.

Specifically happy families. And this ball of anger built inside me.

I wanted that. I wanted a mum, dad and sister.

I wanted my family back together and I resented everyone who had what I didn’t.

And one day Nanna brought me into Bay Books to get some back-to-school stationery… ’

I told her how much I’d been looking forward to seeing her, how disappointed I was when she wasn’t there and my irrational reaction to seeing her with her family.

‘We’d never spoken about our families. You knew nothing about mine and all I knew about yours was that your dad worked here, but I saw you all together that day and the green-eyed monster got to me. You had the perfect family and I was so envious.’

Lily’s eyes widened. ‘Perfect. Is that why you called me…’

‘Little Miss Perfect?’ I suggested when she tailed off, wincing at the memory. ‘It is and you have no idea how much I’ve regretted that.’

‘I always wondered about the name. I didn’t get it because I couldn’t see anything perfect about me. I had this bird’s nest of crazy hair and braces so I knew it couldn’t be anything to do with my looks. It couldn’t be about grades either because you did better than me.’

‘It was such a stupid thing to say and it was never really about you – it was about me and my issues and making huge assumptions about something I knew nothing about.’

I searched her face for any signs of contempt but all I saw was empathy.

‘No kid should have to go through what you did,’ she said, her voice gentle. ‘If you hadn’t seen me with my family, do you think you’d have been different with me on our first day at school?’

‘That’s a great question.’ I pondered on it for a moment before shaking my head.

‘You know, I’m not sure I would. Mum leaving that morning without saying goodbye was my breaking point in a horrendous year.

Nearly all the people I cared about had let me down and I wanted to be on my own so nobody else could hurt me.

And then the only friend I’d ever made appeared with a smile and a book in her hand and the protective walls went up.

If I let you in, I thought you’d abandon me too because that’s what the people I cared about did. ’

Tears pooled in her eyes as she took my hand in hers. ‘Oh, Lars, I wish I’d known.’

‘I couldn’t have told you at the time because I couldn’t make sense of it myself but, as time went on, I wondered if somehow you did know because why else would you keep trying to be my friend when I didn’t deserve it?’

‘Because I couldn’t help myself. I had no idea what had happened to you or why you’d turned on me but I knew there was something.

I could see this vulnerability in you and I wanted to help.

I’d see you around school reading a book and I’d ache for the bookish conversations we used to have in this very room.

’ She bit her lip and lowered her eyes, shaking her head, then looked up at me with a rueful smile.

‘As we’re confessing things, I should admit that I read all the same books as you so that we could talk about them if you ever changed your mind about me. ’

‘You never did!’

‘I did and I’m forever grateful for that because you read such an eclectic mix of books and widened my reading massively.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘I wanted our friendship back and sometimes I’d catch you looking at me across the classroom and get this sense that you wanted that too.’

My heart leapt that she’d noticed and I placed my other hand over hers.

‘So much, but I’d convinced myself there was no way you’d want to be friends after how I’d treated you.

And there was definitely no way you’d consider being…

’ I gulped and lowered my eyes, staring at our entwined hands, cursing myself for being too chicken to say it.

‘Consider being what?’ Lily asked, her voice soft and encouraging. ‘Look at me, Lars.’

I raised my eyes to hers. There’d never be a better time to admit it.

‘We could have been more than friends. I wanted you to be my girlfriend, but I didn’t know what to do with those feelings so I wrapped them up with my confusion and envy, repeatedly pushing you away instead.

Truth is I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen and the nicest one too.

I know nothing I said or did would ever have given you the impression I felt that way but, believe me, I did. ’

She kept her eyes on mine but didn’t speak for a moment, and then she added quietly, ‘Did?’

‘Still do.’ My heart was pounding so loudly, I could barely hear the words and wondered if I’d even spoken them but I evidently had because, next moment, Lily’s lips were pressed against mine.

She released my hands and her arms snaked round my neck as she ran her fingers into my hair.

I pushed her curls back from her face and, as though of one mind, we rose to our feet, never breaking our kiss.

My hands slipped down to her waist and she released a soft moan as my fingers brushed against her skin where her T-shirt had risen.

The kiss deepened and I’d never felt anything like it.

I had no idea this was how it could feel when you were kissing somebody you cared deeply about.

I didn’t want to stop but we had to come up for air eventually.

We stood there, holding hands once more, breathless.

‘Well, that was unexpected,’ Lily said, ‘but my mum always says the unexpected things in life are often the best .’

I ran my thumb softly across her cheek and lightly brushed my lips against hers. ‘My nanna says the best things come to those who wait . That was definitely worth waiting for.’

‘For me too.’

I raised my eyebrows questioningly.

‘You weren’t the only one who wanted more than friendship,’ Lily said, smiling at me.

‘There was something about you that drew me in from the moment I saw you. You were standing right over there looking at Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire .’ She pointed to the bookshelves on the other side of the room.

‘You remember which book it was?’

She nodded. ‘I remember everything about that day – just like you remembered my odd-coloured bobbles behind the sports hall. You were so careful not to damage the book and your eyes shone as you read the first page and I just knew you were a kindred spirit. After that, the first thing I did every time I came to the shop was look for you. We were too young back then to be thinking of more than friendship but, by my teens, something had changed and I knew I wanted to be with you so I kept trying and you kept pushing me away but it got harder and harder which was why I snapped when we were fifteen, demanding to know why you were so mean to me.’

I grimaced. ‘You really surprised me that day and this voice inside me was yelling tell her how you feel! But I just couldn’t do it.’

‘Protective walls?’ she asked.

I nodded. ‘You had the power to break my heart.’

‘You’d already broken mine.’

I cupped her face and drew her into another gentle kiss.

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,’ I said, keeping my arms around her waist.

‘I think we were both pretty clueless and too young to deal with some grown-up emotions and, of course, you had so much more going on.’

‘We could have been together all that time if I hadn’t been such an idiot. All that wasted time!’

‘I need to show you something.’ She took her phone out and scrolled through it, stopping on a photo.

‘When things ended with Wes, I was really upset, not just about it being over but about feeling like I’d wasted years on him and, even worse, that it was the second time it had happened.

Mum spotted this in Yorkshire’s Best and thought it was perfect for me. ’

Yorkshire’s Best was a shop at the other end of Castle Street selling the work of local artist Jed Ferguson and a range of locally made hand-crafted items. The photo showed a small wooden sign with flowers in the background and the handwritten words:

Little by little, day by day, what is meant for you will find a way.

‘Mum bought it to give me hope that I was exactly where I was meant to be and things would come right in the end.’

‘ Tetta reddast ,’ I said and smiled when Lily looked at me quizzically. ‘It’s a saying but also a philosophy for how Icelanders live. It means it’ll all work out in the end or it’ll fix itself.’ I returned her phone. ‘So you think this is what’s meant for us?’

‘I do. What about you?’

‘Definitely.’ And to prove it, I kissed her once more.