The Bookshop on the Corner (10 page)

I
t was raining. Living in Birmingham, Nina had thought she knew a bit about rain. Turned out she was wrong. Very wrong. In Birmingham when it rained you popped into a café or stayed inside your cozy centrally heated house or went to the Bullring so you could wander around in comfort.

Here in the Highlands, it rained and it rained and it rained until it felt as if the clouds were coming down and getting in your face, rolling their big black way toward you and unleashing their relentless showers on top of you.

Nina wouldn't have minded, but she absolutely had to get back to the van; it had been sitting out there for five days as it was. She'd packed as much as she could into her largest suitcase, crammed boxes of books into the back of the Mini Metro until she could hardly see out of the rear windshield—it still made barely a dent in the piles in the house, but Surinder was hungover and in a generous mood—then slipped away with many hugs and kisses and a final Tupperware for the road and a
promise to visit as soon as she was fixed up, i.e., had finally sold the car and found a place to live.

But first she needed to collect the van. As soon as she'd arrived, she'd asked Alasdair in the bar, ridiculously, if there was a taxi service, and he'd looked confused and asked her if she wanted Hugh to give her a lift on his tractor and she'd said not to worry. He then, kindly, offered to lend her an old bicycle that was out back.

It was incredibly old, in fact, a great big heavy metal bone shaker with a solid frame, three gears, and a withered brown basket on the front. The one thing in its favor was that riding it was so incredibly difficult that she soon ceased to feel the cold as she pedaled ferociously through the rain in the direction of where she thought the van was.

As she approached the crest of the hill, panting, she saw a small crack in the clouds that raced across the sky. Suddenly, and only for an instant, a great beam of golden sunshine flooded through it and she raised her head toward it, craning like a sunflower. At the very top of the hill, she stopped and gazed at the clouds. She never saw them back home, for glass and steel tended to obscure the top end of the weather; you kept your eyes on the pavement, or your phone, and you carried on. Clearing the drops out of her eyes and shaking her hair behind her—it would frizz like crazy, she thought, but who was there to mind or care?—she was rewarded suddenly by the rain stopping, as if on her command, and the golden sunlight splashed down again, illuminating every crystal raindrop, every damp leaf and shiny field of rapeseed all the way down to the little cove, an enormous rainbow cracking through the gaps. The clouds continued to race by as if speeding up, making a patchwork of the field below.

Nina took a deep breath of the incredibly fresh air, then looked to her right, where a red train was running parallel to the road. She knew it wouldn't have Marek in it—it was a passenger train—but she hopped back on her bike nevertheless and coasted down the other side of the hill, racing the train, watching as it sped on its way: Perth, Dundee . . . maybe Edinburgh, Glasgow and beyond, Britain for once not feeling like the small, cramped country she had always thought it to be, hugger-mugger, that corner of London and the southeast continuously sending out its fingers into more and more of the world around it, trying to swallow it whole, concreting over the entire land into a dark, grimy urban sprawl, with a coffee shop in every street and everyone shut away in highly priced boxy little flats, attached to their WiFi, living through a screen even as another nine skyscrapers were thrown up right next door, blocking out more of the light and the clouds and the air and the view and nobody seeming to care, everyone thinking of it as progress.

She let her feet fly off the pedals and freewheeled faster and faster, watching the train speed ahead, knowing that even though she had no job, no pension, no partner, nothing at all except a rackety old van, somehow, more than ever in her life, she felt free.

Not at all where she remembered it being—and rather farther away; she was starving by the time she reached it—she came upon the train crossing. In the turnoff next to it, completely untouched apart from the police sticker, which, had she still been in Birmingham, she'd have been tempted not to peel off in case it got her free parking, was the big van, looking a lot less
daunting in the sunshine than it had the last time she'd seen it, in the middle of the night.

As she dismounted from the bicycle, she saw the red lights begin to flash and the striped barriers making their descent. Immediately she felt tense; how awful that she'd been so nearly caught there, so nearly trapped. That feeling of panicky powerlessness when she'd fumbled for the door came over her again, and she forced herself to watch the train—a small local service, but even that felt huge and noisy—thunder across. She shivered as a cloud passed once more across the sun and she leaned against a nearby tree. It was okay. It was okay. It was fine. She had to tell herself that and not let her imagination run away with her. It was a freak accident, the train had stopped; it would not happen again.

She wondered if there was an alternative road that avoided the train crossing. There had to be. She would always take it from now on, just in case. Then she told herself no: she couldn't. She would have to face it and deal with it, and that was an end to it.

The gates hadn't gone up. She glanced up the line cautiously. Sure enough, dramatically slower than the passenger train—thank goodness, thank goodness—a large freight train was coming down the line. She wondered if it was slowing because of what had happened before.

Suddenly, on impulse, she moved closer to the barrier. She hadn't e-mailed Marek—she couldn't decipher the strange hieroglyphs in the address—although she had thought about him. He had been kind to her when by rights he should have been extremely cross, and had given her a lift, but he was obviously just being nice. He was quite a lot older than she was and doubtless had a wife and family, either here or in Latvia. But even so, as
Nina had been reading a novel with a dark-eyed romantic hero, she had allowed her thoughts to stray—briefly, very briefly—to his dark, kind, saggy eyes.

She leaned on the top of the gate so she could see up into the cab. It was true, the train was slowing right down. They must have been given new instructions. Craning her neck, she made out a bald head and a sturdy figure in a pale blue coverall. To her surprise, she saw it was Jim; he must be on day shift. Raising her hand, she waved and waved.

The train slowed down even further and Jim leaned his head out of the window, smiling, Nina was very relieved to note. She could barely make out what he was shouting over the noise of the engine, but it sounded something like: “We have to slow down because of the likes of you!” Nonetheless, he was still smiling as he shouted, and as the many loading decks of the train began to make their rattling way past her, he blew the whistle three sharp times.

Nina waited for the entire train to pass—fifty-five cars, she counted—but there was no sign of Marek. He'd said there weren't always two members of the crew; it just depended on what they carried. Still, she realized, she'd had a thought that he might be on the back, waving just a little. The final car had a ledge on the outside like a balcony. You could have stood there if you wanted to watch the world go by. But he wasn't.

Nina opened up the van. She had found an old cardboard real estate agent's sign, complete with nail still in it, in a ditch and decided to keep it. On impulse, she felt in her bag for a pen—she always had a pen; she bought stationery the way other women
bought lipsticks—and wrote on the sign, in thick black letters, HELLO, JIM AND MAREK! THANK YOU ALWAYS. Nina xxxx

She knew the color would run the second it started to rain again—probably in the next five minutes. But she drove the nail into the tree nevertheless. Then, delving into her bag once more, she found the book she'd set aside—an enthralling out-of-print history of the Baltic states written by an English gentleman adventurer—wrapped it in a plastic bag and hung that from the nail, too. Finally, she tapped the van sharply on the side, said a small but fervent prayer, and took out her keys.

A
s luck would have it—and Nina was definitely, she felt, way beyond the point where she was due some luck—the person who bought the Mini Metro, after she'd removed all the boxes from it and put them in the van (where they instantly disappeared and looked tiny; she'd need a
lot
more stock), was a very smartly dressed farmer's wife in need of a second car, who also recommended that Nina go and look at a place to rent that apparently wouldn't mind a monstrous van parked outside.

Nina was undeniably worried. The amount she could pay in rent was negligible; even Surinder had been charging below market prices because they'd become such good friends (when Nina wasn't knocking down her house). She had a bit from the car, and the very last dregs of her severance, and she'd tried to be careful with her salary, which usually lasted as long as her next foray past a bookshop, but she'd still have to manage month to month based on what she could sell.

She'd phoned the local government, who'd sounded absolutely relaxed about her parking one morning a week here
and there, and, even better, had promised to e-mail her a list of farmers' markets and car-trunk sales where she could rent a spot. That seemed like a pretty good idea. But first she needed to get everything ready, and to do that, she needed a place to stay.

Lennox Farm was just outside the village, set back a little from the road; a gorgeous farmhouse, painted a deep orange, which should have stood out but in fact was enhanced by the country hills around it, even in spring; Nina expected it must be absolutely glorious in the autumn.

According to the woman who'd bought the Mini Metro, the farmer's wife had planned to turn a cottage near the farmhouse into a vacation rental, but apparently she wasn't around anymore—quite the scandal, the woman had said, without elaborating—so it was up for rent longer term instead. “Standing derelict, more likely,” she added. Something had obviously gone very wrong somewhere, Nina figured, and hoped the place wasn't in too decrepit a state. But what choice did she have?

No one was around as she drove up, following quite tenuous directions. She'd thought people would be all too ready to notice the van, as a) it tended to cast a shadow over everything it passed, and b) she had taken to driving at twenty miles an hour, just in case. But as she pulled in to the courtyard of the farm, all she could see was a lone chicken pecking its way cheerfully across the forecourt, eyeing her beadily as she parked and stepped down.

“Hello?” she shouted, feeling suddenly terribly self-conscious. She'd tried to Google the place, but had found only a faded-looking Web site, where the photos had come down and most of the links weren't working. A dead Web site was a sad thing, she thought. Full of hope when it had been
set up, and now floating away down the Google drain, gently decaying. Like the cottage itself, she thought glumly. An idea half executed then left to rot. On the other hand, she couldn't sleep in the van.

“Hello?” she called again, then went and knocked on the door. There was absolutely nobody there, she could tell right away. She sighed and peered through the kitchen window. It was neat and tidy and very, very bare. There were no pictures on the walls or piles of mail or dirty cups. It had looked like this was the vacation cottage, but it was clearly the farmhouse. Across the cobbles and past the hen was a garage. She couldn't see anything that resembled a cottage. She sighed and checked the address. This was it all right.

She glanced around. She didn't know anything about farms. She thought that she must have been on a school trip once. That was about it. She knew about closing gates, that there was manure everywhere, that you shouldn't let your dog in, and that there were electric fences. All of those things conspired to make her think that perhaps farms were fairly scary places to be. On the other hand, she didn't know what she'd do otherwise in terms of finding a place to stay. She couldn't even afford the pub for much longer.

The mountains opposite were gleaming with sunshine, even though the day was chilly. Nina had sought out her winter parka before she'd come up, and she was glad of it now, even though it was technically spring. She pulled it closer around her and tried to figure out what to do.

Half an hour later, she was utterly engrossed in
Fair Stood the Wind for France
in the front of the van, with the radio on, when a violent banging on the driver's window made her start. She looked up, blinking, as she often did when she was immersed in a book, not quite knowing where she was.

Standing next to the van was a rather gruff-looking man wearing a flat cap on curly brown hair. He wasn't smiling. Nina wound down the window.

“Um, hello,” she said, suddenly totally shy.

“You can't park here! It's not a campsite,” barked the man.

Nina stared back at him, slightly shocked. “Yes, I know that,” she said. She pulled the handle to open the door, and the man, reluctantly, stepped back. When she jumped down, she realized he was extremely tall and was holding a big stick. He was rather imposing, in fact.

“And I'm not expecting any deliveries. Are you lost?”

Nina was about to say he didn't know what a deep question that was for this particular time in her life, but instead set her chin forward.

“I was told to come and look at the cottage,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

There was a moment's quiet. Then his hand went to his forehead.

“Oh,” he said gruffly. “Right. I'd forgotten all about that.”

There was another silence as Nina waited for him to apologize, which he didn't.

“Do people often try and camp here?” she asked, kicking a stone with her toe.

“Aye,” he said. “I don't mind normally, if they ask first. Well. It depends.”

“On whether you like the look of them?” said Nina, trying to raise a smile.

The man didn't answer, just sighed briefly.

“Do you want to see the place then?”

“Um, yes please.” She stuck out her hand. “Nina Redmond.”

The man looked at her, then took it. His hand was strong, large, and weather-beaten, a working hand. He was, she realized, younger than she'd thought at first.

“Lennox,” he said shortly.

“Like Lewis was?” Nina said before she could help herself. He frowned even more deeply, if that was possible.

“If you like,” he said in a thick, melodious accent, and Nina instantly regretted saying it.

“Right,” he said. “Follow me.” And he set off across the farmyard with a broad stride, scattering the chickens that had come out to see him.

About twenty yards from the house, tucked away at the end of a beaten track that Nina eyed carefully but figured she could probably get the van up, was a stone building.

“You're sure you don't mind me parking the van here?” she asked nervously.

“What on earth have you got a van for?” said Lennox. “You're only little.”

“Why can't short people drive vans?” said Nina crossly. “Anyway, I'm a perfectly normal size. You're too tall.”

“Well, at least I don't need a ladder to get into my van.”

“Well, at least I don't need to wear a pillow on my head to get through a door frame,” said Nina. It was, she found, oddly liberating to be rude to someone who was rude first. She wasn't normally nearly so cheeky.

“Hmm,” he grunted. “You can park it there. If you can maneuver it.”

“I hope you weren't about to be sexist?” said Nina.

“No,” said Lennox. “Um. Not sure. It's difficult to tell these days.”

Nina looked at the muddy slope next to the building. “I'm sure it'll be totally fine,” she said, trying to sound blithely confident.

“Well, maybe leave it in gear. Which you knew already, as you are totally competent about everything,” said Lennox quickly.

Nina stepped forward to inspect the building. It just looked like a barn.

“Have you got the key?” she said.

“Oh. Yes. Key,” said Lennox vaguely. “I didn't think of that. Don't lock up much around here.”

“Because you know, if I rent it, I'll probably need a key.”

Lennox squinted against the sun. “I'm sure I know where it is . . . It's definitely somewhere.”

The barn door was made of heavy wood. The entire place looked very forbidding. Nina worried suddenly that it wasn't actually converted, that it would just be an old barn filled with straw, with eaves open to the sky and one set of silverware. Which had always sounded like utter heaven when it happened in
Heidi
, but she wasn't at all sure what it would be like now. She took a deep breath as Lennox pushed the door open and groped around inside for the lights, which turned on.

“Oh thank goodness,” he said. “I couldnae remember if we'd wired it up or not. Obviously we did.”

Nina followed him into the space. It smelled a little musty
and dank, like a place that hadn't been lived in, and there was a chill to the air. But she didn't notice that. She didn't notice it at all.

Instead, as she stepped forward, she stared straight ahead. Someone had installed, at what must have been vast expense, big picture windows on the south side of the barn, the side facing away from where they'd come in, so you couldn't see the farmhouse or the road behind it or the mountains to the north, simply what looked like an advertisement for bread: miles of gently rolling hills carved up by lazy stone walls; blobs of sheep; wildflower meadows; and a long, low river with a humpback bridge over it.

All that could be heard through the double glazing was a little lowing, while a chicken scratched about on the small lawn space that had been formed out in the front.

“Oh my God!” she said. “This is amazing!”

Then she remembered she didn't have a lot of money to pay for rent.

“I mean, it's quite . . . It must have been a lot of work,” she said more stiffly. She moved forward into the room. The lights weren't needed; the sun, currently out, flooded the place, making her feel like lounging in it, like a cat, without the biting wind of outside.

It wasn't a large space. There was a cozy-looking wood-burning stove down at one end, and a set of high-end kitchen units along the back wall. A little spiral staircase led up to a small mezzanine with a vast double bed and a bathroom, which both had huge windows of their own looking over the hillside. Bookshelves lined the far wall against the original gray stone.

It was stunning. As perfect a sanctuary as she could ever have imagined. Nina had never wanted to live somewhere as
much in her entire life. Someone had designed and made this barn with the utmost care and attention. She wouldn't have marked Lennox down as an interior-design type on their short acquaintance.

“Um,” she said carefully, scampering back down the spiral wooden staircase. “Do you rent this out a lot?”

Lennox looked around as if he hadn't been in the building for a year (as indeed he hadn't).

“Oh, no,” he said. “No, I . . . I never have. Don't really have the time for all that nonsense. No, it was . . .” He went quiet for a second. “Well. My wife did all that stuff. My soon to be ex-wife.”

His pain in simply pronouncing the words made Nina wary about saying more.

“Right,” she said quietly. “Okay.”

Lennox turned away from the beautiful little apartment.

“Well,” he said, gesturing with a large arm that nearly knocked a lamp off a side table. “Anyway. This is it if you want it.”

“Um,” said Nina. “How much . . .”

Lennox sighed. “Oh God, I don't know,” he said, then named a sum that was less than Nina could have hoped for.

She could barely conceal her delight, and suddenly felt guilty that she was getting the property for so much less than it was worth. It wouldn't have paid for a room in a shared student house in Birmingham. Then she looked around and realized that he had about forty thousand sheep and so many chickens he didn't even check to see where they were around the place, and he was probably doing all right for himself. What was he going to buy, a new flat cap?

“Um, that should be fine,” she said carefully, suddenly flashing back to the last time she'd gone apartment hunting in Birmingham: absolutely loads of horrid places with damp
patches on the walls going for a fortune, and weird people until she'd finally been lucky enough to team up with Surinder. “Yes please,” she said, more vehemently.

“Okay.” Lennox shrugged. “I'll give you the keys when I find them.”

“I will need keys,” said Nina.

“And turn on the water and whatnot . . .” He waved his hand vaguely. “And anything else you need. Do you need sheets and stuff? We have an absolute ton of those, too. Kate . . . She was going to do up all the outbuildings just like this. Had a real fire of enthusiasm for it.” He swallowed hard. “Fell for the interior designer. I didn't even know he liked girls. Anyway.”