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

It turned out that a lot of the women who worked in nearby shops and offices and browsed Bookends in their lunch-hour were also suckers for a well-written romance. Since no one was buying enough misery memoirs or stodgy books on military history to warrant the shelf space, Posy persuaded Lavinia to allow her to take over two more rooms of the shop.

But these days, people weren’t buying enough books of any kind. Not from Bookends anyway. In her letter, Lavinia had seemed sure that Posy would immediately devise a bulletproof scheme to entice people back into the shop to buy books in great quantities, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Suddenly, Posy couldn’t bear to be in the shop a moment longer. It had always been her happy place, her lodestar, a comfort blanket made of wood and paper, but now the shelves upon shelves of books taunted her. It was so much responsibility and Posy wasn’t very good at responsibility.

She turned off the lights in the shop, shut the door that separated the shop from the stairs that led up to their flat, which was usually left open, then slowly climbed the stairs. She was about to open Sam’s door without knocking, but remembered just in time the ‘knock first’ rule she’d instigated after Sam had barged into the bathroom and caught her in the shower, screeching ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ into her shampoo-bottle microphone.

‘Sam? Are you decent?’ Dear God, don’t let him be doing indecent things, because she wasn’t ready for that. ‘Can I come in?’

She heard an affirmative grunt, and tentatively pushed open the door. Sam was lying on his stomach on top of his duvet, staring at his laptop. ‘What’s up?’

Posy sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at his bony shoulders hunched over the computer screen. Even now, though he’d been in her life for fifteen years (their miracle baby, her parents had called Sam, though at the time thirteen-year-old Posy had been mortified at the prospect of what her parents had been doing to produce a miracle baby) she still sometimes had an overwhelming urge to squeeze Sam until he squeaked, such was the depth of her love for him. She settled for reaching out to ruffle his hair but he twisted away from her. ‘Get off me! Have you been drinking?’

‘No!’ Posy settled for nudging him with her elbow. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘But we’ve already talked about Lavinia and I already told you that I’m sad and everything about it sucks, but really, Pose, I can’t take any more speeches about feelings and emotions.’ He pulled a face. ‘Can we just not?’

Posy was sick of making speeches about feelings and emotions, so that worked out fine, but still, she was the big sister. The parental figure. The designated adult. The responsible one. ‘But, you know, if you did want to talk, you can. You can tell me anything.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Sam looked up from his screen and gave her a wan smile. ‘Are we done now?’

‘I wanted to talk to you about something else, actually.’ It worked both ways. She was meant to be able to talk to Sam about anything – except her period, her weight, her love life or lack thereof (he’d drawn up a list) – but this was proving harder than expected. ‘I know you haven’t had much time to think about it, but how do you feel about me taking on the shop? I could make a go of it, right? After all, bookselling is in my blood. Like, if you cut me, I’d bleed words, so who better to take over Bookends than me?’ Posy’s shoulders slumped. ‘Though I suppose, it would mean being very grown-up and responsible.’

‘Hate to be the one to break it to you, Pose, but you’re twenty-eight, so technically you are grown-up.’ Sam hoisted himself up on his elbows so Posy could see the doubtful look on his face. She made a mental note not to come to Sam if she ever needed a character witness. ‘And I suppose you are responsible … in your own way. I mean, you’ve been responsible for me for the last seven years and I’m still alive and I don’t have rickets or anything.’

It wasn’t quite the validation that Posy had been after. ‘What about being responsible for the shop, though? I have two years to turn it round. Make it into a viable business.’

‘Less than two years really, because the shop isn’t doing very well, is it? It hasn’t made a profit for ages and it was only because Lavinia had family money that it’s kept going as long as it has.’ Sam shrugged. ‘That’s what Verity told Tom when he asked if he could have a pay rise.’

The problem with Sam was that he was too smart for his own good. The other problem was that he heard things that he shouldn’t and then he worried about them when he didn’t need to. It was Posy’s job to worry for the both of them.

‘We don’t have to stay. I could give up the shop and then I guess we could move somewhere else and I could get another job—’

Sam’s head shot up. ‘What? No! I can’t leave school, not with my GCSEs coming up! And where would we live? What kind of money would you be able to earn? Have you any idea how much the average London rent is?’ He looked as if he might burst into tears. ‘We’d have to move miles and miles away. To, like, the suburbs.’

Sam made it sound as if the suburbs were just a fancy way of saying a cesspit. ‘Lots of people live in the suburbs, Sam. Or we could move to another big city but one that isn’t as expensive as London. Say, Manchester or Cardiff. If we moved back to Wales, we’d be close to the grandparents.’

‘But Manchester or Cardiff isn’t here, is it? Why would anyone want to live anywhere else but here?’ Sam asked with all the arrogance of someone lucky enough to have lived their entire life in Central London. Coram Fields was his back garden and the British Museum was his corner shop full of mummies and fossils and ancient weapons. In five minutes they could be in Soho or Oxford Street or Covent Garden. They could jump on a bus or a tube and the whole of London was theirs for the taking.

People who didn’t know London thought it was a cold and unfeeling place, but their London wasn’t at all like that. Posy and Sam knew all the shopkeepers along Rochester Street (Posy was even a member of the Rochester Street Traders’ Association) and got mates’ rates on everything from fish and chips to scented candles. They knew the names of their favourite assistants in the big Sainsbury’s opposite Holborn tube station. Posy volunteered at Sam’s old primary school, going in once a week for one-on-one sessions with reluctant readers, and Sam’s best friends, Pants and Little Sophie, who worked in Bookends on Saturdays, lived just around the corner on the sprawling Housing Association estate.

It was like living in a village without the inconvenience of living in a village. When they went to stay with their Welsh grandparents, everything shut at six in the evening, one o’clock on Thursdays, all day on Sundays, so God help you if you’d forgotten to stock up on chocolate.

‘So, you want to stay here, then?’ Posy asked, because they were in this together, she and Sam. ‘You reckon I could make a success of the shop?’

‘Yeah. You have to try at least, don’t you? It’s what Lavinia wanted.’ Sam looked at his laptop then sighed. ‘The only thing is … I’m not saying that it will, but if it all goes horribly wrong, what’s going to happen to us? We might end up owing money, instead of just being poor. And then what about tuition fees and things?’

The urge to squeeze Sam came over Posy again and she had to slide her hands under her thighs. ‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘When they died, Mum and Dad … they had a life insurance policy. I haven’t touched a penny of it because I’ve been saving it for your university fees. There’s enough there to get you through a degree, maybe a postgraduate degree too, if you only eat Pot Noodles. So you don’t have to stress about that, OK?’

‘OK. Wow! I wasn’t expecting that.’ Sam let out a deep breath. ‘I’d been worrying about how we were going to pay for the tuition fees. Though if you really need the money to, like, pay the staff wages, then maybe I could skip university and get a job.’

‘You are going to university,’ Posy stated forcefully. ‘Are we clear about that?’

‘We are,’ Sam agreed, and Posy thought that maybe he was smiling, though his back was to her and neither of them had smiled much this week. ‘And until then, we’re staying here – which is good cause I hate it when things change.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ Posy said feelingly. ‘They never seem to be good changes, do they?’

Sam rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. ‘About the shop …’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine. Better than fine. You’ll be amazing. You’ll be the best bookseller ever. You have to be, Posy, because otherwise we’ll be homeless right when I’m meant to be doing A-levels. What more motivation do you need?’

‘I think that’s more than enough motivation,’ Posy said, though rather than spurring her on, Sam’s words had put the fear of God into her. ‘Another half hour, then lights out.’

‘You can kiss me if you like,’ Sam offered magnanimously. ‘On the cheek.’

Posy settled for ruffling his hair, which made Sam squawk in outrage as she knew it would. That was the only reason she was smiling as she closed his bedroom door.

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Telling Sam that she was going to take over Bookends and do her utmost to turn it into a profitable business was a doddle, a breeze, a walk in the park, compared to having to tell the staff the latest developments.

‘What happened to you yesterday?’ Verity asked when she arrived for work the next morning, closely followed by Nina, then Tom. ‘You disappeared with the dreaded Sebastian and that was the last we saw of you.’

Nina was in the little kitchen off the back office, but she stuck her head out of the door, kettle in hand and a grin on her face. ‘Did he take liberties with you? Did you slap his face and storm off?’

‘Liberties weren’t taken but I did want to slap his face several times,’ Posy said, as she turned on the till. ‘It was touch and go at one point.’

‘Didn’t he drag you off to see Lavinia’s lawyer?’ Tom looked up from his breakfast panini. ‘Oh God, it’s bad news, isn’t it? Are they selling the shop?’

All three of them wore matching expressions that could be summed up as ‘The end of the world is nigh’, when it wasn’t nigh at all. At least Posy didn’t think it was.

‘No one’s selling the shop.’ Posy gripped the counter tight for moral support, felt the scarred, polished wood firm beneath her fingers. ‘Lavinia’s left the shop to me and I’m not going anywhere.’

Posy paused and waited. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was waiting for; perhaps some heartfelt congratulations, maybe a ‘You go, girl!’ Instead she got silence and three perplexed faces staring back at her. Was there anyone, anywhere, who had even a tiny bit of faith in her? Apart from Lavinia, whose faith in Posy, it seemed, was entirely misguided.

Posy rubbed her hands together nervously. ‘Not that it’s going to be easy, but Sam and I are up for the challenge. Well, Sam’s kind of up for it, anyway. Although I’m … we’re … going to have … There will be changes but, um, good changes. Er, exciting changes.’

‘You’re in charge then? You’re the boss of us?’ It was impossible to know how Verity felt about that – in fact, it was impossible to tell how Verity felt about most things. She was very hard to read, for all that Posy had known her for four years and considered Verity one of her very best friends. Verity was also the assistant manager of Bookends, which meant she stayed in the back office doing the accounts, ordering stock and refusing to interact with anyone coming into the shop to buy a book. She’d been Lavinia’s right-hand woman while Posy had drifted about colonising more space in the shop for her romance novels. Without Verity, Bookends would cease to function within days. Within hours.

‘Boss is such a harsh word,’ Posy said soothingly. ‘Nothing will change. Well, some things will need to change, but I’m not going to turn into a despot and shout, “It’s my way or the highway!” whenever we have a disagreement. I’ll still make tea and stock shelves and go out on a chocolate run.’

‘So is my job safe?’ It was easy to tell what Nina was thinking because Nina was biting her lip and frowning and generally looking as if Posy was about to issue her with her P45 – not that Posy would have had the first clue how to do such a thing. ‘And Tom can still work part-time – or, to be more accurate, whenever he feels like gracing us with his presence? Or is it last in, first out? Which would mean me, because I’ve only been here two years. Though technically, I’ve worked more hours than Tom.’

‘Shut up,’ Tom hissed. ‘Of course, Posy isn’t sacking anyone because Posy’s our friend as well as our new boss. Our sweet, kind, dear friend. And may I say that you’re looking particularly lovely today, Posy.’

‘You can but I’m writing you up for sexual harassment,’ Posy said, and she pretended to write something in her notebook, which was a long-standing shop joke and Tom was always the punchline, so he pretended to scowl and Nina went back into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Only Verity remained standing there, hands on hips.

‘I’m pleased for you, Posy – it would have been awful if you and Sam had been made homeless – but very soon we won’t be able to afford any members of staff, full-time or part-time,’ she added in a whisper, though Tom was more interested in his panini than their conversation. ‘These changes you mentioned, what are they?’