The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts: A feel-good funny romance

It was all very well having a new name for the shop and a unique selling point, but Posy still wasn’t sure how to get her plans from flip chart to reality.

Luckily, Verity and Nina were fired up and full of can-do spirit when they burst into the shop the next morning. Or rather, Verity sidled in, not being one for bursting, waved at Posy who was going through a box of new deliveries and said, ‘I’ve had a think about it overnight and I’m completely on board with Happy Ever After. In fact, I’m very excited about it.’ Verity shook her fists like they were cheerleader pompoms. ‘See? This is me being excited. Now I’ve got to do the VAT returns, but later in the week, I think we should come up with an action plan. Maybe a spreadsheet too. And definitely a schedule. What fun!’

It didn’t exactly sound like fun, but a moment later Nina burst – literally this time – through the door.

‘I have paint samples!’ she cried, holding up a fistful of colour charts. ‘And I spoke to Claude, my tattoo artist, and he said that he’d design a logo for us. For free. I’ve given him so much money over the years that I always used to joke he should give me frequent-flier miles.’

‘Paint samples?’ Posy queried. ‘Are we going to paint then?’

‘I think we should. It is rather dark and well, woody in here, isn’t it?’

It was, and in between dealing with the odd customer, two tourists who couldn’t find the British Museum even though it was a massive building heavily signposted and only five minutes away, and many browsers who were more interested in sheltering from the leaden February skies and the seeping drizzle than buying books, Posy and Nina spent a very enjoyable morning debating colour schemes.

They decided on a light but warm grey for the shelves and a smudgy pink for accents. ‘I did promise Tom I wouldn’t paint the shop pink, but it’s only a highlight colour,’ Posy said as she held up the swatch. ‘It’s not a girly pink.’

‘It’s a clover pink. I had my hair that colour during my gothic Lolita phase,’ Nina said. ‘Now, shall we have a bash at coming up with a shop layout?’

As they pondered the ‘flow’ of the shop and how many bookcases they’d have to cull to achieve it, Posy wondered if she should speak to Sebastian, give him a heads-up. Not that she needed his permission to make sweeping changes to what belonged to her legally. Maybe she’d be better off hiring a lawyer, a kindly, avuncular lawyer, who could write Sebastian a letter telling him that. A kindly, avuncular lawyer who charged very reasonably for his time, Posy thought.

They were in the main room now, Nina chattering happily away about how to make the shop more welcoming ‘Do you think there is anything in that Feng Shui? Have we got any books on it?’ as Posy imagined Sebastian’s lip-curling derision when he spotted the splashes of her clover pink accent colour dotted around the shop.

‘Sebastian!’ she muttered contemptuously.

‘Yeah, what is he doing out there?’ Nina asked. ‘And who’s that guy he’s with? Do you think he’s fit?’

‘What? Is who fit? Sebastian? Can hardly see him at the gym lifting weights. The only bit of his body that ever gets a workout is his tongue,’ Posy said as she crossed over to the window where Nina was watching Sebastian and another man on the opposite side of the yard.

‘You saucy mare!’ Nina nudged Posy and treated her to a theatrical wink. ‘How would you know what he gets up to with his tongue? Something you need to tell your Aunty Nina about?’

‘What?’ Posy looked at her friend in confusion then wished she hadn’t as Nina did something obscene with her own tongue so Posy could see the underside of her piercing, which always made her feel slightly vomitous. ‘I didn’t mean like that! His tongue has been nowhere about my person. As if! I meant his mouth! Not like that either. That he never stops talking and usually the content of his conversation consists mostly of unmitigated rudeness.’

‘Protesting a little too much there, aren’t you?’ Nina teased.

They’d been standing at the window while carrying on this conversation, so it was inevitable that Sebastian spotted them. He looked past the other man, who was gesticulating wildly, then raised his hand in greeting.

No, that would have been too polite. What Sebastian was in fact doing was beckoning Posy with an imperious finger.

‘I wonder what he wants,’ said Posy, making absolutely no effort to find out. A moment later the beckoning turned into a clicking of Sebastian’s fingers, as if he were summoning an underperforming lackey.

‘So rude, but I’d better go out and talk to him,’ Posy muttered without enthusiasm.

‘Keep away from his tongue!’ Nina cheerfully called after her as Posy squared her shoulders against the bitter February wind and opened the door.

‘Morland! Over here! Haven’t got all day,’ was Sebastian’s peremptory greeting.

Posy shuffled across the courtyard, thankful that unlike their last meeting, this time she was fully dressed in bra, jeans, jumper and cardigan, unadorned with anything that could be mistaken for piles of poo. ‘And hello to you too!’ she said as soon as she was near enough not to have to bellow. ‘What’s up?’

‘Brocklehurst, this is Morland, quasi-owner of the bookshop,’ Sebastian said to his companion even as Posy turned on him.

‘There’s nothing quasi about it. I am the actual owner,’ Posy said furiously.

‘I told you she was uppity,’ Sebastian sighed. ‘Morland, this is Brocklehurst. We were at Eton together.’

‘Hello, I’m Piers,’ said the other man. ‘And I refuse to call a beautiful woman by her surname.’

‘Posy.’ She held out her hand but instead of shaking it Piers Brocklehurst raised it to his lips in a practised move so he could kiss the back of it. ‘Nice to meet you.’

It wasn’t exactly … nice. In fact, Posy longed to rub the back of her hand against her jeans. There was something about the smooth gesture, an oily quality to Piers’ patter, the failure of his easy smile to reach his eyes, which remained flat and rather dead, that spooked Posy. In fact, Piers sent shivers rippling down her spine, in spite of the fact he was textbook good-looking, albeit in an ex-public schoolboy kind of way. He was tall, with blond hair slicked back from his ruddy face, and muscles that rippled beneath his blue pinstripe suit. The man wouldn’t have looked out of place in an aftershave ad, smirking to camera as an unseen woman ran a caressing hand down his chest, but he wasn’t Posy’s type. She already had one extremely irritating ex-public schoolboy in her life – she didn’t need any more.

‘No, really, the pleasure’s all mine,’ Piers murmured throatily, and that flat, dead gaze of his rested on Posy’s hips, breasts, face and then looked beyond her to the bookshop as if there was nothing there to hold his interest.

‘That’s quite enough of that,’ Sebastian snapped, coming to stand between Posy and Piers. ‘Posy only likes men in soppy romance novels, so you’re on a hiding to nothing there. Now about the bookshop, Morland, Brocklehurst has been talking about redeveloping the site, maybe building a boutique hotel here.’ Sebastian gestured at the row of boarded-up shops. ‘And where the bookshop is, he was saying that we should put up a fancy apartment block, with concierge, basement gym, swimming pool and—’

‘Do you ever listen to a single word I say?’ Obviously not. ‘Bookends is mine for at least two years and, as I tried to tell you the last time I saw you, it’s going to be the only bookshop in the country dedicated to romantic fiction.’ Posy finished with relish because she’d shocked Sebastian into silence.

Annoyingly, Sebastian still looked handsome even with his mouth hanging half open in a gormless fashion. ‘Are you mad?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘Quite sane,’ Posy assured him as Piers muttered something under his breath that suggested he too doubted Posy’s claims to sanity. ‘And as I was saying, I’m the owner of Bookends for at least the next two years.’

‘More like two months if you insist on going through with some ridiculous scheme to turn it into a lavender-scented palace crammed wall to wall with bodice-rippers. Two months for the business to fail horribly and the bailiffs to turn up on your doorstep,’ Sebastian summed up with obvious pleasure.