Pages & Co: Tilly and the Bookwanderers

‘And what exactly makes someone best-friend material?’ Grandad asked.

‘Someone who sticks by you; someone who never gets bored of talking to you. Someone who’s adventurous, and clever, and brave, and funny …’ Tilly said, checking her criteria off on her fingers. ‘Someone like Anne Shirley or Alice from Wonderland – those are my favourite characters, incidentally.’ With very few exceptions Tilly found that she much preferred the company of characters in her books to most of the people she knew in real life.

‘I’m not sure best friends are a one-size-fits-all sort of situation, Tilly,’ Grandad said carefully. ‘Sometimes a person who becomes a friend is the least likely person you’d expect. Friends should bring out the best in you, not be the same as you. I’m sure you’re someone’s perfect fit.’

Tilly tried to imagine herself as the perfect fit for a potential best friend. But when she thought about herself too directly she felt sort of fuzzy round the edges, like a photograph that was blurred, and when she compared herself to the characters she met in books their ink and paper felt more real than her bones and skin.

‘And, for now, you’ve always got me,’ Grandad continued. ‘If you’re in the market for an elderly best friend with whiskers and a bookshop.’

‘Exactly,’ Tilly said, trying to erase all thoughts of hypothetical best friends from her mind. ‘I don’t need anyone who doesn’t live in Pages & Co.’

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he next morning Tilly woke up to the sound of rain and falling autumn leaves on her sloped skylight window. Rain meant quiet days in the shop as people stayed inside with only the odd group of bedraggled readers drying out in the café area, waiting for gaps in the downpour. She relished the school holidays with the familiar rhythms and rituals of the bookshop, and she savoured every moment of her first-day-of-the-holidays routine: a chapter of a new book in bed while everything was quiet, getting dressed in anything that wasn’t school uniform, a lazy breakfast of one of Grandad’s perfectly boiled eggs with toast soldiers.

‘So, what’s the plan for today?’ Grandma asked, handing Tilly a mug of milky tea.

‘Reading, mainly,’ Tilly said.

‘Do you want to wander down to the woods with me later?’ Grandad suggested. ‘Or I need to pop into the florist’s and confirm all the flowers for the Wonderland party on Wednesday night – I could do with your eye for colour. We’ve created a monster with this party, I sometimes think. Every year the customers and publishing folk seem to expect a more extravagant theme.’

Tilly shrugged.

‘Do you ever wish,’ she said, ignoring Grandad’s question and turning to her grandparents with a serious look on her face, ‘that you had a relatively good friend in mortal peril that you could go and rescue?’

‘I can’t say that’s something I spend much time thinking about,’ Grandma said, exchanging a look with Grandad across the table.

Tilly sighed. ‘I just wish there was something more exciting to do than go to the florist’s,’ she said. ‘No one has proper adventures in real life.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I do, my dear, but it never hurts to keep a weather eye open for adventures, even small ones.’

‘But for now,’ Grandma said, ‘why don’t you stick with an adventure in a book and, if the rain ever stops, we can head out for a wander later.’

Tilly opened the door into the bookshop and went to find Jack, who looked after the snug café area that took up a corner of the ground floor. When she reached the mismatched collection of chairs and tables he was nowhere to be found, so she went to see if there were any cakes she could sample, but, just as she reached out for a gooey-looking chocolate brownie, Jack’s head popped over the counter.

‘Aha! Caught red-handed!’ he said.

‘I was just looking,’ Tilly said sheepishly, before registering the wide smile on his face. ‘Why do you have honey on your forehead?’ she asked.

‘I’m experimenting with pop cakes,’ he said, holding up an ice-cube tray filled with sticky honey. ‘Remember in The Faraway Tree books by Enid Blyton? They eat those cakes that explode with honey when you bite into them? I’m going to freeze the honey so I can bake it in the middle of cupcakes. At least that’s the plan – the honey is proving a little, well, uncooperative.’

Jack, who was nineteen and saving up to go to pastry school in Paris, took his role as a bookshop baker very seriously and was always trying to recreate cakes and bakes from books. Tilly was under strict instructions to tell him whenever she came across a particularly tasty-sounding dish in a book she was reading. She had a suspicion he was using some of the new cookbooks for inspiration as well, as every once in a while she’d had to wipe off a smear of icing from a spine sticking out from a shelf, as though it had been put back in a hurry.

‘Do you want some hot chocolate?’ Jack offered as he manhandled the ice-cube tray into the tiny freezer section of the café fridge. ‘I’ll bring it up.’

Tilly nodded and grinned and then headed to her favourite reading corner on the first floor. Ten minutes later Jack sat down next to her, carefully holding a tray with two steaming mugs – and two brownies – on it. ‘If your grandparents notice me giving you brownies so soon after breakfast, just claim it’s a very important baking experiment for the party, okay?’

He nudged her arm. ‘What are you reading?’

Tilly showed him the book cover, which was blue and glittery.

‘I’ve just started. It’s about mermaids and pirates and the ocean. It’s probably not your kind of thing.’

‘Well, actually, Miss Tilly, I’ll have you know I have quite a penchant for books about pirates and the ocean,’ he said. ‘But I like all sorts, really. I can’t resist books set in space, especially if they’ve got something weird going on, or a really good twist. And, if there’s some kind of intelligent robot, even better. Especially if it turns out to be evil. I know I should know this by now, but what are your favourites?’

‘My two favourite books are Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland,’ Tilly replied with a great deal of certainty. ‘Anne and Alice are my favourite characters.’

‘Why do you like them so much then?’

She paused. ‘For lots of reasons, but I like them best because they seem real even when I’m not reading about them.’

‘What do you mean by real?’ Jack asked.

Tilly contemplated the question.

‘Like, sometimes when I don’t know what to do I think about what Anne would do, or I find myself wanting to tell Alice about something I learned, and it takes a second before I remember they’re not real people I can just go and talk to.’

Jack smiled. ‘Often characters in books are considerably more consistent than the people around us. All that messy life stuff does rather get in the way. Speaking of,’ he said, brushing crumbs off his apron as a tinny beep sounded through the shop, ‘my pop cakes are calling. Come and try one in a bit.’

He pushed himself up from the squishy sofa and disappeared down the stairs, leaving Tilly to her book.

A little while later Tilly was interrupted from her adventures under the sea by the sound of her grandma’s laughter tumbling down the stairs. Tilly couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Grandma laugh like that, or the last time she herself had laughed so hard either, so she tiptoed up the stairs to see what was causing it. She found Grandma tucked in a corner, wiping tears from her eyes as a woman with dark curly hair pinned up on the back of her head waved her hands around animatedly. She seemed quite a lot younger than Grandma and wore a long, old-fashioned-looking dress. Tilly crept closer, wanting to hear what Grandma was finding so funny, without interrupting the moment.

‘And do you know, he turned to him and said in the most insufferable voice, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” I tell you, Elsie, I held Charlotte’s hand very tightly to stop myself going over and telling him exactly what I thought of his manners, especially when he was so new to town. Of course, my mother will forgive a man that rich almost anything, although this tested even her resolve.’

No longer able to resist Grandma’s giggles, Tilly coughed loudly and rounded the corner only to find Grandma sitting by herself.

‘Oh, Tilly!’ she said, still hiccuping a little. ‘Are you okay, darling?’

‘Where’s that woman gone?’ Tilly asked, looking around in confusion, unable to understand how she’d left so quickly and quietly.

Grandma’s laughter abruptly stopped. ‘Which woman, darling?’ she asked, sitting up straighter.

‘The woman you were just talking to, of course,’ Tilly said. ‘The one with the long dress and the dark hair – the one who made you laugh like that!’

‘Oh, her,’ Grandma said slowly. ‘That’s Lizzy – she’s an old friend. You caught a glimpse of her, did you?’

‘She was literally just sitting here as I came up the stairs,’ Tilly said, confused. ‘Where’s she gone?’

‘She must have slipped past without you noticing. You know how this place is like a rabbit warren; it’s impossible to keep track of everything and everyone. I’m forever losing you in here!’ Grandma said, more composed. ‘Anyway! Enough of that! How’s your book?’

Tilly had the distinct feeling that Grandma wasn’t telling her something.

‘How long have you known Lizzy for?’ she asked, ignoring Grandma’s question.

‘Oh, a long time now.’