“Sure,” Harry said. “Have fun. There’s a little goodbye present from your dad on the windowsill. Nice to meet you, Hannah,” he said, then turned, picked up a pile of empty bags and boxes by the door, and left. The door swung shut, and April kicked off her shoes and threw herself onto the newly made bed, sinking deep into the soft feathered duvet.
“So this is it. Real life.”
“Real life,” Hannah echoed. It wasn’t true, though. Sitting here, in a centuries-old center of learning, surrounded by April’s rich, beautiful things, breathing in the strange heavy scent of some expensive perfume, she had never felt more unreal. She wondered what her mum—presumably still circling Oxford looking for a parking space—would make of all this.
“Better see what he’s left me, I guess,” April said. “The box isn’t Tiffany’s, which is a bad start.”
She swung her legs off the bed and went to the window, where a tall gift box stood on the stone sill. A card was poking out of a gap at the top of the box.
“?‘Start your Oxford life the right way. Love, Daddy.’ Well, he signed it himself at least. One up from my birthday card, which was in his secretary’s writing.”
Digging her nails into the lid, she pried it open and then began to laugh.
“Oh God, just when I think he barely knows my middle name, he proves me wrong.” She held up a bottle of champagne and two glasses. “Drink, Hannah Jones?”
“Um, sure,” Hannah said. In truth, she didn’t really like champagne—the few times she’d had it, at weddings and her mum’s fiftieth, it had given her a headache. But there was no way she was going to refuse such a perfect moment. Maybe Dodsworth Hannah didn’t like champagne. But Pelham College Hannah was different.
She watched as April popped the cork with a practiced expertise and poured out two foaming glasses.
“Well, it’s not chilled, but it’s Dom Pérignon at least,” April said, handing over a flute. “What shall we drink to? How about… to Oxford.” She held out her glass.
“To Oxford,” Hannah echoed. She clinked her glass against April’s and then put it to her lips. The warm, fizzing champagne frothed in her mouth, the bubbles expanding on her tongue and the alcohol tickling at the back of her nose and throat. She began to feel a little light-headed—though whether that was the champagne, or the fact that they had driven through lunch, or just… this, she could not have said. “And to Pelham.”
“And to us,” April said. She threw back her head and drained the glass in four long gulps. Then she refilled, looked at Hannah, and smiled, a wide, wicked smile that shot that deep, beguiling dimple into each soft cheek. “Yes, here’s to us, Hannah Jones. I think we’re going to have a pretty majestic time here, don’t you?”
AFTER
As Hannah puts the phone down, she feels the quiet of the shop close around her like a cocoon. She would never tell Cathy, but these times are the reason she came to work at Tall Tales—not the Saturday hustle and bustle of customers, or the August rush of tourists for the festival, but the quiet midweek lulls when she is—not alone, exactly, for you’re never alone in a room filled with a thousand books. But when she is alone with the books.
Christie. The Bront?s. Sayers. Mitford. Dickens. These are the people who got her through the years after April’s death. She escaped the stares and sympathy of real life, the terrifying unpredictability of the internet, the horrors of a reality where you could be ambushed at any moment by a reporter or a curious stranger, or by the death of your best friend—into a world where everything was ordered. In books, a bad thing might happen on page 207, that was true. But it would always happen on page 207, no matter what. And when you reread, you could see it coming, watch out for the signs, prepare yourself.
Now she listens to the gentle spatter of the Edinburgh rain on the bow window at her back, the tick, tick of old floorboards creaking as the heating pipes come on. She feels the silent sympathy of the books. For a moment she has a visceral longing to pick up one of them, an old favorite perhaps, a novel she knows practically by heart—and sink into the pile of beanbags in the children’s section, shutting out the world.
But she can’t. She is on duty. And besides, she’s not alone. Not really. She can see Robyn now, edging her way back through the maze of little Victorian rooms that make up Tall Tales, each crowded with display tables and dump bins.
“Beep beep! Robyn Grant, tea lady extraordinaire, coming through!” she says as she enters the front of the bookshop. She plonks the two cups cheerfully down on the counter, slopping hot brown liquid dangerously close to the card display. “The one with the spoon is yours. Are you—” She looks over at Hannah, and then stops, taken aback by something in Hannah’s expression. “Hey, are you okay? You look really odd.”
Hannah’s heart sinks. Is it that obvious?
“I—I’m not sure,” she says slowly. “I’ve had some weird news.”
“Oh my God.” Robyn’s hand goes to her throat, and her eyes flick involuntarily to Hannah’s stomach, and then back up to her face. “Not—”
“No!” Hannah says quickly. She tries to smile, though it feels false and stiff. “Nothing like that—it’s just—just family stuff.”
It’s the closest she could come to the truth on the spur of the moment, but she wishes, as soon as the final words leave her mouth, that she had not chosen them. John Neville is not family. She doesn’t want him or his memory anywhere near her family.
“Do you need to go?” Robyn says. She looks at her watch and then at the empty shop. “It’s nearly five. I doubt we’ll get a rush now. I can handle anything that comes up.”
“No,” Hannah says reflexively. She shouldn’t need to leave—after all, what’s really changed? Nothing. But at the same time, the thought of trying to stand here, smiling at customers like nothing has happened, with the memories boiling and churning inside her…
“Go,” Robyn says, making up her mind. “Honestly, just go. I’ll explain to Cathy if she comes in, but she won’t mind.”
“Really?” Hannah asks, and Robyn nods firmly. Hannah stands up, picks up her phone, feeling a rush of guilt and gratitude. She finds Robyn irritating sometimes—her relentless Girl Guide–ish cheerfulness, her habit of telling customers “No, you have a great day!” over and over again. But now there’s something immensely comforting about her solid, unflappable kindness.
“Thank you so much, Robyn. I’ll return the favor, I promise.”
“Hey, no thanks needed,” Robyn says. She smiles, pats Hannah on her arm, but Hannah can see the concern in her eyes beneath the friendly smile, and she feels Robyn’s gaze on her as she walks slowly back to the staff room to gather up her things.
* * *
WHEN SHE LEAVES THE SHOP the rain has stopped, and it’s a damp clear autumn afternoon, so like the day she first turned up at Pelham that for an instant the links to the past feel almost sickeningly real. As she stops at the traffic lights, waiting for the green man, she has the strangest sensation—that at any moment she might see April walking casually through the crowd, that lazy mocking smile on her lips and the deep dimples coming and going in her cheeks. For a second Hannah has to steady herself on a lamppost, the past is so real, so close. She feels an unassuageable yearning for it to be true—for that tall blond girl hurrying through the crowd with the light behind her to be April—brilliant, beautiful, alive. How would she greet her? Would she hug her? Slap her? Cry?
Hannah does not know. Maybe all of them.
She is heading through the crowds of tourists towards the bus stop for her usual number 24 back to Stockbridge, eager to get home in time to get supper on, put up her increasingly weary feet, watch some trashy TV.