Love Letters (2 page)

‘You sound like a treasure. I’m sure another bookshop will snap you up. It’s so sad that this one’s going. I suppose it’s threatened by the supermarkets?’

Laura nodded. ‘And Henry wants to retire.’

Eleanora Huckleby took a bottle of wine from the table and tipped some into both her and Laura’s glasses. ‘Even the wine is drinkable.’

‘I’d love to find another bookshop, but it would have to be a quirky independent shop like this one,’ said Laura. ‘I’m not sure I could cope without all the autonomy Henry allows me. He’s been great. Lets me order extra copies of books I think will do especially well, read all the proof copies, all the fun stuff.’

Eleanora snorted, possibly at the thought of reading proof copies being described as fun. ‘I should think he’s grateful someone wants to read them.’ She paused, pressing her lips together in thought. ‘So who do you think is the rising literary star?’

Laura raised an eyebrow. ‘Apart from Damien Stubbs?’ She indicated her companion’s client, who was still signing and being charming.

‘Yes. What do you think of Anita Dubrovnik?’

The fact that Laura rarely expressed her true opinions out loud didn’t mean she didn’t have them. Now, when she was about to lose her job and had a glass of wine in her hand, she decided to say what she thought. ‘A great writer but lacks narrative thrust.’

The older woman’s eyes narrowed in agreement. ‘Who else have you read recently?’

‘Bertram Westlake?’

The women exchanged speculative looks. ‘Worthy but dull,’ said Laura firmly.

‘Oh God! Such a relief to find someone who agrees with me. I mean, there’s some great writing in there but whatever happened to plot! OK, what about Janice Hardacre?’

‘Well, I loved
The Soul-Mate
, but haven’t liked any of her others.’

‘Me neither. And that last one went on for ever.’

‘It was shortlisted for a prize,’ Laura pointed out.

‘God knows why!’

They talked about books, tearing apart the current literary masterpieces and raving over the unsung heroes that sold under a thousand copies, until the more senior of the publicists came over and addressed Eleanora.

‘Fifty books sold!’ She turned to Laura. ‘This has been such a good event. Henry told me you organised most of it. Brilliant! Thank you so much!’ Then she turned back to Eleanora. ‘We thought we’d push off to the restaurant now, if you’re ready.’

‘Mm. May I bring a guest?’

‘Of course! I booked a huge table. Who do you want to bring?’

‘Laura here.’

Laura, her habitual shyness coming back in a rush, felt totally thrown. ‘No. No really, I can’t come. It’s terribly kind of you to ask me. But there’s so much to do here.’ Never in the three years she’d been organising bookshop events had she been to dinner with the author afterwards. Her place was in the background, making things happen. It was where she felt most comfortable. Talking to a whole lot of strangers was not her thing. ‘I’ve got to help clear up. Wash the glasses, get rid of the chairs . . .’

‘Don’t move!’ said Eleanora firmly and strode off in the direction of Henry.

‘You’d better not move,’ the publicist advised. ‘She’s known as the Vixen in the trade. Easier to do what she says, really. I’m Emma, by the way, Emma Bennet.’

‘But I can’t imagine why she would want to ask me to dinner.’

‘Maybe she enjoyed your company?’ Emma smiled, amused by Laura’s incredulity at this suggestion.

Laura could see Eleanora, followed by Henry and her colleague Grant, coming over to where she and Emma were chatting.

‘She’s got reinforcements,’ muttered Emma. ‘You’ve got no chance.’

Both her boss and her colleague came to a halt.

‘You know perfectly well none of this would have happened without your very hard work,’ said Henry, who was tall, balding and distinguished-looking. If he hadn’t been forty years older than her and married already, Laura would have fancied him. ‘You go and have a nice dinner. You’ve earned it. Grant and I will clear up.’

‘But really . . .’ She bit her lip. Panic that she was going to be taken out of her comfort-zone, aka the bookshop, made her look urgently at her friend.

Grant, interpreting her expression, shook his head, determined that she should take this opportunity to mingle with people other than her colleagues for a change. ‘That’s right,’ he said firmly. ‘You go and enjoy the ball. Cinderella here will clear up after this one.’ He put his hand on her forearm. ‘Have a great time and tell me all the goss tomorrow. And don’t forget, we’re going to the Sisters of Swing gig tomorrow?’

‘Oh yes.’ She clutched at his arm for a moment.

‘Go on! You’ll be fine!’ Grant, the only other full-time member of staff and her closest colleague, gave her hand an encouraging pat. He was on a you-must-get-out-more mission with Laura and was taking her to a club to hear ‘an incredible new girl band’. He teasingly described her as his ‘beard’, which made her laugh. Nothing and no one could make Grant look anything other than openly gay. But he did have her best interests at heart and she knew he was right and that she should go.

Now Laura had been officially dismissed – or in her eyes, abandoned – Eleanora grasped her arm. ‘Show me where the coats were put and get yours. You’ll need it. The wind is bitter!’

Instead of a coat, Eleanor had an item that looked like a cross between a hearthrug and a small tent. It enveloped the wearer in red, prickly wool: not a garment for the faint-hearted.

Seeing Laura’s slightly startled reaction, Eleanora said, ‘I always think I could camp out in this all night if I had to. And I can only wear it in deepest winter, or I sweat like a pig.’

Laura felt her own navy blue overcoat was pathetically drab. She’d bought it from a charity shop while she’d been at university and still hadn’t worn it out. Alas, working in a bookshop didn’t give one huge amounts of spare cash for clothes.

‘Well, come along now,’ said Eleanora. ‘Take my arm. I can’t really walk in these heels but I refuse to wear ballet slippers at my age. And lace-ups would ruin my image.’ She looked down at Laura’s shoes, which were almost completely flat. ‘I rest my case.’

In spite of her disapproval of Laura’s footwear, which was comfortable if unglamorous, Eleanora talked to her all the way to the restaurant, grilling her for her opinions of all sorts of books.

Laura read a lot. She lived alone in a tiny bedsit and her television was so small and snowy she didn’t watch it much. But she read all the time: at bedtime, while she ate, while she cooked, while she dressed and while she brushed her teeth. She would have read in the shower if she could have worked out a method that wouldn’t completely ruin the book. In the same way she could read anywhere, she could read anything, and if it was good, enjoy it. There wasn’t a genre or an author that Eleanora quizzed her on that Laura didn’t have some knowledge of. Still in the reckless mood engendered by losing her job and finding in Eleanora someone who cared about books as much as she did, she let herself speak her mind without holding back.

Eleanora was impressed. ‘Darling! You’re a phenomenon!’ she declared. ‘I’m so glad I’ve found you.’

At the restaurant Laura was introduced again to the young literary lion, Damien Stubbs. He’d said hello briefly when he arrived at the bookshop and had been as charming then as he was now. He thanked her for arranging such a good event and she muttered a few words of praise for his book. But he didn’t seem to need reassurance. Confidence shone from him, and everyone around him basked in its warmth. He was the young writer of the moment and the world loved him.

Laura, who in the confusion of deciding where everyone should sit, which she took no part in, had an opportunity to wonder why she didn’t fancy Damien Stubbs. Everyone else, men and women alike, seemed to. Several reasons occurred to her, but the one she felt most likely was that she didn’t really admire his writing. When it was allocated to her, she took her seat gloomily. I’m a literary snob, she concluded. My emotions are more wrapped up in books than they are in real life. She felt slightly depressed and not only because she was about to lose what seemed the best job in the world. When had she become so boring? And was it too late to change?

While everyone else sat down, got up again, moved and then ended up back where they’d started, Laura had time for her life to flash before her eyes. Since university, which she had loved, she had only had two jobs, both working in bookshops. Once she’d joined Henry Barnsley Books she hadn’t wanted to work anywhere else. Although she was usually shy in her personal life, she enjoyed finding the right book for the right customer. She was popular with them. They asked for her if they wanted a book as a present and didn’t know what to buy. Some of them asked her out on dates and sometimes, nagged by Grant, who’d worked at the shop longer than she had and so was her superior, she even went. But it never came to anything. If they enjoyed books and reading as much as she did they quite often had soup stains down the front of their cardigans. She might be a bluestocking bookworm, but she had some standards.

Eleanora handed her a menu. Laura hadn’t noticed her sitting down next to her and felt rather cheered. At least she would be able to talk to Eleanora, or if not, sit in silence, observing the other diners, something she loved doing. She much preferred to be safely on the outside of life, watching, than deeply involved. Thankfully there was no one on Laura’s other side.

‘So dear,’ Eleanora said later, and inevitably, Laura felt, ‘any plans for your future? Do you want to be a writer?’

‘Good God no!’ said Laura and then, realising that perhaps she may be shouldn’t have sounded so horrified, went on: ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so vehement, but I would hate to be a writer. I love to get lost in other people’s books, but I really don’t want to write one myself.’

‘Such a relief!’ said Eleanora. ‘I felt I had to ask, but I’m really pleased. Any other plans for gainful employment?’

‘Not really.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve hardly had time to think about it, and I’ve got a couple of months before I’m on the dole. I’m sure to find something.’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

Laura tried to make herself clear. ‘I’m sure I won’t starve – there are always jobs for willing workers – but it’s unlikely I’ll find anything book related, which I love so much. Not in this town anyway.’

Eleanora narrowed her eyes in thought. ‘I might have something.’

Laura turned to her, not sure if she’d heard properly. ‘Have you?’

Eleanora leant in. ‘Mm, something frightfully exciting!’

Laura’s little flicker of hope died. She didn’t do ‘frightfully exciting’. She wouldn’t be right for the job. It would probably involve marketing, or starting a business from scratch – not her sort of thing at all.

‘Well, don’t you want to hear what it is?’ Eleanora demanded through a slice of tomato and feta cheese.

Laura speared a black olive with her fork. ‘Of course. It’s so kind of you to take an interest.’ She hoped Eleanora wouldn’t hear her apathy.

‘It is, actually,’ agreed Eleanora, possibly slightly annoyed by Laura’s lukewarm response. ‘And if it wasn’t in my interest as well, I wouldn’t bother. Too busy. But what it is, is this!’

At that moment a phalanx of waiters descended on the table, whipping away Greek salad and taramasalata and replacing it with sizzling platters of moussaka, sinister fish dishes and more bottles of wine.

While all this was going on, Laura framed an elegant and polite refusal for whatever Eleanora might be about to suggest. She didn’t think anything this brightly coloured parrot of a woman could offer her could possibly be up her street. They were too different as people.

‘I want you to set up a literary festival!’ Eleanora announced with the assumption that this would be greeted with clapping and shrieks of delight, as if she was a conjuror who had just produced a particularly endearing rabbit. ‘Well, help set up one, anyway.’

Visions of the major festivals – Cheltenham, Hay, Edinburgh, with their phalanx of stars, many of them famous for something quite other than writing books – made her feel weak. ‘I don’t think—’

‘But it’s not just an ordinary lit. fest.’ Eleanora flapped a heavily ringed hand as if it were boredom that made Laura doubtful. ‘There’s a music festival going on too. It’s at my niece’s house.’

‘Oh. Big house,’ said Laura. For a moment, her wayward imagination was distracted by the notion of a two-bed semi with a literary lion in one room and an
X Factor
entry-level band in another.

‘Huge. A monster, millstone round their necks, but lovely, of course. They’re trying to make it pay its way so they can keep it. The music festival should make them a bit, but my niece, Fenella, wanted a literary festival too, to make it a bit different.’

‘I think there is a festival already that combines—’

‘Doesn’t mean they can’t have one too, does it?’

‘Of course not. I was just saying—’

‘The music side of it is all going fine but they’ve got no one to take over the literary festival bit. You’d be perfect.’

Laura shook her head. She wasn’t the right sort of entrepreneurial, feisty woman who could blag big firms into sponsoring huge events for ex-presidents who had written heavily ghosted autobiographies. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why on earth not?’

Why didn’t Eleanora – obviously a very bright woman – get it? ‘Because I’ve never done anything like that before. I wouldn’t know where to start!’

Eleanora took a moment and then lowered her voice and spoke slowly, as if to a bewildered child or a frightened horse. ‘But, sweetie, you
have
done things like that before! What do you think a bookshop event is? You get the authors there, you get them to speak, you make sure people buy their books. Just the same!’

‘But we don’t have to make vast amounts of money out of the bookshop events, or hire a venue, or anything.’