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

As of now, the changes hadn’t made themselves known to Posy. She needed more time to research and ponder and possibly make some lists, maybe a pie chart too. Then, hopefully, she’d have a big idea, a grand scheme for Bookends, that Posy could present to Verity and the rest of the staff with such passion and conviction that they’d be completely on board too. What could be simpler?

It occurred to Posy, as she tried to avoid looking Verity in the eye, that she wasn’t cut out to be a leader. She wasn’t a follower either, or even a plodder. At least plodders got to their destination eventually. No, Posy was a floater, happy to do her own thing and be swept along with the tide and this was all a bit too much, a bit too soon when she was still reeling from Lavinia’s absence.

‘Like I said, good changes,’ Posy murmured vaguely, though she could feel sweat breaking out on her forehead and her upper lip while at the same time her hands were icy cold. She also had a terrible taste in her mouth, like she’d been licking batteries. It was fear. Big, stinky fear. She pulled up the corners of her mouth in a pitiful excuse for a confident smile. ‘Exciting changes. Very, very exciting. I’m going to need your help, I won’t be able to do it without you.’

Verity nodded. ‘As long as these changes aren’t like the time when you wanted to have the books arranged by colour and not by alphabet,’ she said.

‘But it would have looked pretty,’ Posy protested weakly.

‘God help us.’ Verity shook her head before scuttling off to the back office.

Telling her colleagues that they were now her employees had been more of an ordeal than Posy had anticipated and now she realised that she had their futures to worry about too. This wasn’t only about her and Sam. She didn’t want to be the person who was standing between the Bookends staff and unemployment, possibly destitution.

When she woke up the following morning, Posy felt galvanised into action. At the least, she should probably write a to-do list. Maybe pop to the fancy new Foyles on Charing Cross Road to scope out the competition.

Neither she nor Sam were morning people. They had a house rule that neither of them spoke at breakfast unless it was absolutely necessary. With her eyes half-closed, Posy made Sam toast and scrambled eggs, which he shovelled into his mouth while finishing his history homework. He should have finished it the night before but Posy didn’t have the energy to tell him off about it, not when she was still halfway down her first cup of tea.

Sam dumped his plate and mug in the sink and left for school with a grunt that might have been ‘goodbye’, leaving Posy sitting there, drinking her tea and reading The Pursuit of Love, even though she’d lost count of how many times she’d read it. It always reminded her of Lavinia and what her life might have been like before the war.

Posy cherished this hour when she was still in her pyjamas and befuddled with sleep. It was the one part of the day that was hers and hers alone.

It was a pity that no one had thought to mention it to the person banging on the shop door, ignoring the sign which spelled out very clearly, in the plainest English, that they didn’t open until ten. They weren’t expecting any deliveries either and anyway the drivers knew to come round the back and ring the bell.

Posy put down her cup and book and shuffled down the stairs in her slippers. The closer she got, the louder the banging was. Muttering under her breath, she moved through the shop and as she got nearer to the door, she saw who was responsible for breaching her peace.

‘Stop making all that noise!’ Posy banged on the glass to get his attention. ‘I’m unlocking the door.’

‘My breakfast meeting got cancelled,’ Sebastian informed Posy as he shouldered his way past her. ‘God, Morland, you’re not even dressed yet!’

Technically, Posy was dressed; in pyjama bottoms adorned with Christmas puddings, an old Minecraft T-shirt of Sam’s, and a threadbare cardigan. ‘It’s not even eight thirty, Sebastian. I wasn’t exactly expecting callers.’

‘Is that what you wear to bed?’ He narrowed his eyes, which weren’t puffy with sleep like hers. Posy was sure he could see through her layers to her braless state. She folded her arms. ‘What a thrill-killer.’

‘Shut up! What are you doing here anyway?’ Posy asked, but she was talking to Sebastian’s back. He’d already done a complete circuit of the main room and was heading past the counter.

‘Thought I’d have a proper look around before I make any decisions,’ he called from the stairs. ‘Come on! I haven’t got all day.’

Posy took off after him. ‘What kind of decisions?’ she panted as she took the stairs far too fast for someone who hadn’t finished their first pot of tea. ‘This is my home, you can’t just barge in here without asking.’

Sebastian was currently peering into Sam’s room. ‘Really? Why not? What unspeakable things do you get up to in here? Have you got a man on the premises?’

The last man on the premises had been Tom, when he’d come upstairs to mend a dripping tap. Though he hadn’t mended it so much as looked at it, then at the screwdriver Posy had given him, with a quizzical expression, and shrugged. ‘Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean that I know how to do useful stuff,’ he’d said and gone back downstairs.

The tap still dripped and Sebastian didn’t seem like the sort of man who knew how to do anything useful either. His speciality subjects were being rude and having absolutely no respect for people’s personal boundaries.

‘It’s none of your business what I get up to in my spare time,’ she told him indignantly. ‘I could have a whole football team up here if I wanted.’

Sebastian pulled his head out of Sam’s room, slammed the door and turned to her with a knowing look. ‘Highly unlikely. I think footballers tend to prefer their women in something a little more alluring than sagging pyjama bottoms with turds on them. You really are an odd girl, Morland.’

‘They’re not turds! They’re Christmas puddings! These are my Christmas pyjamas!’ Posy tugged at the offending pyjamas even as she knew she’d never wear them again. First chance she had, she was going to burn them.

‘But it’s February,’ Sebastian pointed out helpfully as he brushed past her into the living room. ‘This place is a fire hazard. Why do you need so many books? Haven’t you got enough of them downstairs?’

Posy followed him into the room. ‘These are for my personal use,’ she said primly, as if she had never, ever read a stock book very carefully so she didn’t crease the spine, then placed it tenderly back on the shelf. ‘Anyway, there’s no such thing as too many books.’

‘Oh, yes there is,’ Sebastian assured her as he strode over to one of the bookshelves set into the alcoves on either side of the fireplace, where the books were triple stacked. ‘I’d say you reached peak book several years ago. There are books everywhere!’ he added in disgust as he made a sharp left turn and sent a pile of novels crashing to the ground. ‘You must be personally responsible for the destruction of at least three rainforests.’

‘I recycle a lot, so I’m sure it all evens out,’ Posy said and as Sebastian was obviously intending to stay there for some time – he was currently switching the main light on and off, though she had no idea why – she decided to leave him to it and make a fresh pot of tea. Not wanting to be thought completely devoid of manners, she asked, ‘Do you want a brew?’

‘Coffee.’ Sebastian stared down at the coffee table where last night’s dinner plates still sat and his beautiful cupid’s bow of a top lip curled. ‘Sumatran beans, if you’ve got them. If not, I’ll have Peruvian.’

‘Does this look like a branch of Starbucks?’

‘No, it doesn’t. If this was a branch of Starbucks, it would have been closed down by Environmental Health months ago.’

‘You can have instant coffee out of a jar – and it’s your lucky day, sweetheart: the Douwe Egberts was on special offer,’ Posy said and she swept out of the living room as grandly as anyone could when they were wearing Christmas pudding pyjamas and bunny face slippers.

She didn’t want to leave Sebastian unattended but anything was better than having to see the sneer etched on his face and listen to him pass judgement on her soft furnishings and lifestyle choices.

Lavinia had had the roof replaced a few years ago after she’d ventured upstairs and seen the bowls and saucepans positioned to catch the various leaks, but the flat hadn’t been redecorated in all the time Posy had lived there. Redecorating would mean having to pack up everything and put it into storage; it didn’t bear thinking about, so Posy never thought about it.

She made a fresh pot of tea and poured Sebastian’s coffee into a Penguin Books The Invisible Man mug – wishful thinking on her part, especially when she discovered that Sebastian wasn’t in the living room any more. With sinking heart, she padded down the hall to find him in her room, lounging on her unmade bed and staring at the pile of clothes heaped on the pale blue Lloyd Loom chair. Or maybe he was staring at the pile of clothes heaped on the floor. Or the clothes spilling out of her open drawers. Or the teetering stacks of books by the bed and under her bedside table and next to her bookcases, which were straining under the weight of yet more books.

It was odd, a whole wide world of odd, to have Sebastian of all people stretched out on her candy-striped sheets in another impeccably cut, verging on obscenely tight suit – this one was light grey tweed, accessorised with sky blue shirt, pocket-square, socks and shoelaces. It had been a long time since she’d had a man on her bed, but it wasn’t as if Sebastian had seduction on his mind, thank God. Not when his attention was riveted on the half-eaten Double Decker, a sticky and congealed tub of Vick’s Vapour Rub and a balled up pair of socks on her bedside table. Posy might just as well have a sign above her bed that said, ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’

‘Not a word,’ Posy warned him. ‘Or you’ll be wearing this coffee.’

Sebastian held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Oh, Morland, there are no words.’ He leaned back on his elbows and eyed yesterday’s bra, which was hanging forlornly off one of the knobs of her old-fashioned headboard where Posy had thrown it when she’d got undressed the night before. ‘That’s twice in three days that I’ve seen one of your bras. People will start to talk.’

‘My bras are no concern of yours.’ Posy made a little shooing motion and slopped coffee over an upturned copy of Valley of the Dolls. ‘Come out of here!’

Sebastian bounded off the bed, snatched the mug from her and was out of the room and all set to sweep into the room next door, when he came to a halt. A locked door would do that.

‘What’s in here?’ he demanded.

‘It’s none of your business because you’re not going in there,’ Posy told him. She tried to look stern. ‘Anyway, you can’t just barge into my shop, my home, and start snooping about like you—’

‘Is this where you bury the bodies?’ He rattled the door handle again so forcefully that Posy feared for its safety. She insinuated herself between Sebastian and the door and then wished she hadn’t because now they were nose to nose. Or rather, her nose was somewhere in the vicinity of Sebastian’s chin and she could take great whiffs of him. He smelt heavenly; a heady mixture of mossy forests, warm leather chairs and smoky gentleman’s clubs.

Not only was it quite overwhelming, but Sebastian was in a perfect position to look right down the gaping neckline of her T-shirt. As he opened his mouth to make yet another sarcastic remark, Posy put one hand on the centre of his chest and pushed him back. He was so warm, all bone and muscle and—

‘Careful, now. I think that counts as inappropriate touching,’ he said kindly.

‘You! You’re inappropriate! This is my parents’ room and you’re not going in there.’

Sebastian frowned. ‘Was. Not is. It was your parents’ room. They’ve been dead, what? Five years.’

‘Seven years, as a matter of fact.’ Though actually it was six years, eight months, one week and three days, because the exact date of their … parting was etched on Posy’s heart.