Sarah put her face in her hands. ‘Please. Don’t tell anyone. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘I won’t breathe a word,’ he promised solemnly. ‘Honestly, sometimes I feel like a priest in here. People tell me all sorts of extraordinary things. I could write a book. But I’m too busy selling them.’
In the end, he made her laugh so much the world seemed a much better place.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Take the books. Pay me when you can. It’s honestly no skin off my nose.’
He was so insistent that it was easier to take them than to refuse. And it gave her an excuse, a few days later when she’d managed to scrape together some cash, to go in and pay him. And she stayed nearly an hour and chatted, because the great thing was you could stay in a book shop talking about books for as long as you liked and nobody thought it strange.
The books she’d chosen made Sarah’s Christmas brighter. Even the book she had chosen for Dillon, the lad she had taken on to help with the garden, went down better than she had expected. She’d given him a copy of The Secret Garden. It was a book she herself returned to time and again, and she never failed to find the story one of hope.
She wrapped it in white tissue with a dark green ribbon and gave it to him.
‘You probably think this is a really weird and inappropriate present,’ she told him. ‘But this book means the world to me. And I want you to know how much I appreciate what you’re doing here at Peasebrook. You make me feel as if I can achieve what I want to.’
He was so polite when he opened the book. He thanked her effusively, and assured her he didn’t think it was a boring present. It was the only present he’d had that was actually wrapped. His mum and dad had got him some safety goggles and a bottle of J?germeister.
‘I wasn’t expecting anything at all from you, to be honest,’ he told her.
She thought he would probably take it home and shove it away somewhere, never to be seen again. But to her surprise he came to her a few days into the New Year and told her how much he’d enjoyed it.
He might have just been being polite, but the next time she went past Nightingale Books, she went in and told Julius, and he was delighted.
‘It must happen to you all the time,’ said Sarah. ‘People telling you how much a book has meant.’
‘Yes,’ said Julius. ‘It’s why I do what I do. There’s a book for everyone, even if they don’t think there is. A book that reaches in and grabs your soul.’
And he looked at her, and she felt a tug deep inside, and she thought – that’s my soul.
She looked away, flustered, and then she looked back, and he was still looking at her.
She could remember every detail of that moment as she took her navy coat off the peg in the cloakroom and then tucked a silk scarf around her neck. The last one he had given her. They had always given each other scarves at Christmas. After all, no one ever questioned a new scarf the way they might a piece of jewellery, yet they were pleasingly intimate. Sarah cherished the feel of the silk against her skin, as soft and caressing as her lover’s fingers had once been.
She buttoned up her coat and walked briskly to her car.
Thomasina was grateful, for once, for the distraction of her unruly class. Trying to keep them in check kept her mind off the stress. They were particularly skittish today: clearly the rigours of making a béchamel sauce weren’t enough to hold their attention. They liked things they could take home and share, like pizza or muffins or sausage rolls. And béchamel sauce was tricky: difficult not to burn, even harder to get rid of the lumps. It took practice and patience, neither of which came naturally to her Year Elevens.
Her star pupil, Lauren, proffered her saucepan, showing her a glossy smooth sauce, and Thomasina smiled.
‘Perfect,’ she said.
The result particularly pleased her because Lauren was one of the school’s problem pupils. She’d been threatened with exclusion on more than one occasion for disruptive behaviour. Lauren took bubbly to a new level. She was incapable of keeping quiet or concentrating for any length of time. Thomasina had sat in on endless staff meetings to discuss Lauren’s behaviour, and had heard every teacher express exasperation.
‘She’s either going to end up in prison or on the Sunday Times’ Rich List,’ sighed the head.
For some reason, Lauren behaved impeccably in Thomasina’s class. She was the only member of staff who seemed to have any influence over her. Which was odd, because Thomasina usually found people took no notice of her whatsoever.
She’d taken a risk two months before, and with the head’s permission asked Lauren if she would like a Saturday job with her at A Deux.
‘Good idea,’ the head agreed. ‘She’ll only be out shoplifting or drinking cider otherwise.’
She wasn’t stereotyping. Lauren had been cautioned for both in the past. Thomasina was surprised at how pleased she was when Lauren agreed to the job.