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

‘Seven years and you’ve got some weird shrine going on in there? How mawkish.’

Posy took a deep breath and tried to exhale through gritted teeth. ‘It’s not mawkish and it’s not a shrine and, again, it’s none of your business.’

Maybe it was a shrine and maybe the shop was too and that was why she was determined to hang on to it for dear life, but she couldn’t tell Sebastian that. He had the emotional intelligence of a goldfish. Not even a goldfish. Posy had heard tales of goldfish pining away after setting up home with another fish who’d then had the misfortune to die. No, Sebastian had the emotional intelligence of a gnat.

‘It’s not a shrine,’ she repeated. ‘I go in there. Vacuum, dust, that kind of thing.’

Sebastian’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really?’ Those two syllables dripped with scepticism. ‘Are you telling me you possess a vacuum cleaner and, on occasion, actually use it? And you dust?’ Then because he was so much taller and more annoying than her, he reached over Posy’s head to run a finger along the top of the doorframe and held it out for inspection. ‘Look at that! It’s as black as my favourite Alexander McQueen suit.’

It was black. Black with years of accumulated grime and gunk, but who had time to run damp cloths along every nook and crevice? ‘Didn’t someone once say that after three years the dust doesn’t get any worse?’ Posy offered with a weak smile. ‘Anyway, a bit of dirt never hurt anyone. In fact, it helps to build a healthy immune system.’

She was preaching to the choir – she certainly wasn’t preaching to Sebastian, who had suddenly launched himself out of her orbit and was tearing down the stairs, shouting over his shoulder about estate agents and developers. ‘… have to replace all the windows and I’m pretty sure your electrics are about to blow. Whole place is a death-trap. Not worth spending money to bring it up to code when you’re only going to be here for another two years. Probably less than two years. Best you sign it over to me now and we’ll put it on the market as a redevelopment site.’

Posy caught up with Sebastian in the back office and had no choice but to grab his sleeve and yank him back so hard that he shrieked. ‘Not the suit! Don’t ever touch the suit!’

‘Sit down! Now!’ It was a voice she never, ever had to use on Sam, because he was a paragon among teenage boys and wouldn’t dream of doing anything so heinous that she needed to go all Wrath of God on his arse. She’d never used this voice on anyone in her entire life, but she was using it now and it seemed to work because Sebastian immediately dropped down on to the big leather swivel chair, though he swung this way and that with a grin on his face to show that he wasn’t completely cowed.

‘So stern. You remind me of a dominatrix, I once knew,’ he remarked, then lowered his eyes demurely and took a sip of his coffee, though he couldn’t quite hide a grimace as his lips made contact with a beverage that had started life as freeze-dried granules.

Posy shook her head. There was nothing for it but to tell Sebastian her plans for Bookends and do it quickly and, hopefully, painlessly. ‘I’m not signing the shop over,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s up to you what do you with the mews, but Lavinia left Bookends to me and I can manage perfectly well without your help. Did I say help? My mistake. What I meant was interference.’

‘What are you going to do with Bookends then?’ Sebastian asked. He gazed around the office, the one room in the building which was a model of efficiency and organisation – and that was down to Verity. ‘I mean, why on earth would you want to take on a failing business?’

‘It’s not failing!’

Sebastian snorted, rather elegantly, into his coffee. ‘I take it you haven’t seen the books then? If you had, you’d know that it’s losing money hand over fist.’

Those weren’t the kind of books that Posy had any interest in, though now she made a mental note to ask Verity to go through them with her. Or rather, hit the horrible highlights for her. ‘Obviously, I’m going to have to make some drastic changes, but Lavinia left me the shop because she knew what it meant to me and that I’d honour what it meant to her. It’s Lavinia’s legacy.’

‘Do you know how many bookshops have closed in the last five years?’ Sebastian pulled a phone out of an inner pocket of his jacket and held it aloft. ‘Shall I google it? Or leave it to your imagination?’

Posy didn’t have to leave it to her imagination. She already knew. Some people navigated their way around London via public toilets or branches of McDonald’s, but for Posy, London was a collection of bookshops with streets attached to them. They were fast disappearing now and Posy always felt a flicker of fear and foreboding each time she passed a shop where she’d once whiled away many a happy hour browsing the shelves only to find that it was now a coffee shop or a nail bar.

But she also knew that the rise of e-readers and the recession hadn’t killed off the printed word. People still loved to read. They still loved to lose themselves in a world forged from paper and ink. They still bought books and, with the right kind of plan and passion, they’d buy them from Bookends.

‘I don’t care,’ Posy said to Sebastian, though she cared very much. ‘Lavinia left the shop to me, I can do what I want with it.’

‘Yes, but she made me her executor. That means I act in the best interests of the estate.’ Posy wasn’t sure about that. The lawyer – she couldn’t remember his name – had said something about coming to his office to sign a few forms and then Bookends would belong to Posy. Was Sebastian going to contest the will, on the grounds that Lavinia was mentally diminished when she wrote it?

‘Lavinia said I had two years to make a go of things. If you’re determined to force me into giving up and handing over the shop to you, then you’re going against her last wishes. Do you want that on your conscience?’ Posy asked, though she wasn’t entirely sure that appealing to Sebastian’s conscience would work. In any case, Sebastian was on the move again, out of his chair and stalking back into the shop, pausing only to smile wolfishly at Verity as she came through the door.

Verity treated him to her patented dead-eyed stare, which she used to great effect on customers who assumed that because she worked in a bookshop she was there to help them with their bookish needs. Ditto, men who tried to compliment her, buy her a drink or engage her in small talk. It usually had the recipient backing away while apologising profusely, but Sebastian didn’t seem at all fazed. He shrugged, smiled to himself as if to say, ‘Well, you can’t win them all,’ then walked over to the centre table and stopped dead.

Traditionally, the large round table in the middle of the main shop was where they displayed new releases, but yesterday, in her first act as owner, Posy had broken with tradition. She’d bought a bunch of Lavinia’s favourite pale pink roses and placed them in Lavinia’s treasured chipped vase from Woolworths, next to a framed photo of Lavinia and Peregrine standing behind the counter, taken shortly after they got married. Then she’d typed out a notice and printed it on fancy card:

In loving memory of Lavinia Thorndyke, a bookseller to her bones. On this table is a selection of Lavinia’s favourite books; the ones that brought her the greatest joy, that were like old friends. We hope that you may find the same joy, the same friendship.

‘If one cannot enjoy reading a book

over and over again,

there is no use reading it at all.’

Oscar Wilde

By some miracle, Sebastian at last fell silent. He traced the photograph, one long finger caressing the curve of Lavinia’s cheek; a Lavinia frozen in black and white who’d always be young and gay and gazing up at Peregrine with a teasing, loving look.

‘Oh … well, now … that’s very … thoughtful.’ He swallowed around the word, as though it had got stuck in his throat. ‘Sometimes Perry used to tell Lavinia that she loved this shop more than she loved him. Then she’d laugh and say that they were on pretty equal pegging.’

‘Lavinia did love this shop.’ Posy clasped her hands together and tried to compose herself. She needed to be impassioned but in control; it wouldn’t help her cause if she launched into some incoherent, garbled speech. ‘This is more than a shop. It’s part of your history, Sebastian. It was founded by your great-grandmother, Agatha. It survived the war. Everyone from Virginia Woolf to Marilyn Monroe to The Beatles has come through that door. But it’s part of my history too. It’s the only home I’ve ever known. It might not be making money right now, but it has done, it used to, it could again.’ She wasn’t clasping her hands together any more so much as wringing them, but she felt Verity pause to give her shoulder a squeeze as she brushed past the counter on her way back to the office. ‘Is this because Lavinia left the shop to me? Are you angry about that?’

‘Angry?’ Sebastian dropped his usual look of sneering condescension in favour of letting his mouth hang open in disbelief. ‘What? No! History, books, a place covered in dust. What would I want with that? I’m already rich beyond the dreams of avarice anyway.’

‘I just thought …’

‘Look, Posy, we’re veering dangerously close to talking about our feelings. Messy things, feelings. Almost as messy as your flat. Let’s go back to the bit where you explain why you want to commit financial suicide. You might as well light a big bonfire in the yard outside and throw all your money on to it.’ Sebastian cast his eyes to the heavens. It was a good look for him, showing off the lean, corded beauty of his throat.

Posy blinked and tried to pay attention to what Sebastian was saying, but given that he was hell-bent on ringing the death knell for Bookends she didn’t know why she was bothering. ‘… and you’ve got the London Review Bookshop and the big new Foyles around the corner. It’s huge. Then there’s the flagship Waterstones on Piccadilly. It beggars belief, really, why anyone would want to come here. Or buy a book at all. So much easier to download it straight on to an e-reader. Not so dusty either – you should try it, Morland.’

There was no point in explaining to Sebastian how lovely it was to crack open a new book and inhale that wonderful smell. Or the powdery, almost earthy smell of old books. To feel the comforting weight of a novel in your lap, or let the pages dampen and curl as you read in the bath. He wouldn’t get it. She’d have to stick to the facts, lead with her business plan, which was nothing more than a to-do list in an old exercise book and with Verity earwigging from the back office.

‘We can’t compete with the big chain bookshops, I know that,’ she said calmly, though that was about the only thing she did know for certain. ‘But Bookends is about more than selling books, it’s about the experience and expertise we can offer. We don’t sell books like they’re cans of baked beans or bars of soap. We love books, and that comes across in our bookselling.’

‘Not that there’s much selling going on here. Quite the contrary,’ Sebastian said with a smug sniff, as if he knew anything about the subject. ‘Maybe you love books too much, Morland, and that’s why your sales are so shocking. People come in to buy a book and you scare them off by frothing at the mouth as you bang on and on about the new Dan Brown.’

‘I do not froth – and certainly not about Dan Brown,’ Posy said crossly. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. And I do – know what I’m talking about, that is. Which is why Lavinia let me take over the three rooms on the right, to sell romantic fiction.’ Posy didn’t mean to, she was out and proud, but she whispered the last two words and blushed as Sebastian pulled an agonised face as though she’d made his instant coffee with curdled milk. ‘It’s been going really well because I’m passionate about romantic fiction. I doubt there’s another bookseller in London who’s read as many romance novels as I have, and it shows in my sales. I’ve been taking a lot of orders online too, even though our website is really basic. So, FYI our sales for romantic fiction are up by … a lot.’

Posy had wanted to wow Sebastian with percentages and profit margins, but she’d never concerned herself with that side of things. She was, however, an expert on romantic fiction. If she were to go on Mastermind with romantic fiction as her specialist subject, she’d get a clear round every time. OK, she’d come a cropper on the general knowledge, but whatever! The problem with knowledge was that it was too general, too wide, impossible to know everything and …

Oh goodness! Posy had to clutch on to a shelf because she was having an idea. A big idea. A grand scheme. A USP. She’d got it! By God, she’d got it!

‘Are you having a funny turn, Morland?’ Sebastian asked solicitously. ‘I’m not surprised. I’m pretty sure you’ve been inhaling all kinds of poisonous spores from the mould in your flat.’

‘We don’t have mould,’ Posy snapped; she wasn’t about to let Sebastian distract her now. ‘As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted: instead of trying to do everything, compete with the big bookstores, which is a hopeless task, Bookends is going to specialise in one genre. Go niche or go home.’ Posy paused for dramatic effect – and because she couldn’t quite believe what she was going to say next. ‘We’re going to become the only bookshop in Britain, maybe even the world, which specialises in romantic literature. So, what do you think about that? Hey! Did you hear what I just said?’

Posy was talking to Sebastian’s back again. He’d disappeared into the first room and Posy had no choice but to follow. She caught up with him as he began pulling a book from one of the shelves. It was a US import, which was why it had a cover that featured a long-haired piece of beefcake with a rippling six-pack, straddling a woman who was wearing a filmy negligee and showing a lot of leg, as befitted someone who was about to be Seduced by a Scoundrel. Sebastian stared at it in horror then thrust it back in the wrong place.

By the time Posy had restored it to its rightful place, Sebastian had moved on to the classics section of her little romance fiefdom and was waving a copy of Pride and Prejudice around. ‘Boring!’ he proclaimed, which was treason. High treason. Before Posy had time to react he’d moved on to I Capture the Castle. ‘Banal!’ And Tender Is the Night. ‘Facile!’

‘You’re so predictable! You make all these assumptions about romance novels and I bet you’ve never even read one. The whole world revolves around people meeting and falling in love; if it didn’t then, the human race would die out, you silly, ignor— Mpppfffhhhh!’ She got no further because Sebastian had clapped his hand over her mouth.

How she longed to bite his hand. Maybe it would teach Sebastian a lesson about invading her personal space. Getting so close to her that she could feel the heat coming off him. ‘Not another word!’ His eyes flashed, not with anger but amusement, as if this was the most fun he’d had all morning. ‘Stop banging on about romance novels and lurve. I swear I can feel my testicles shrivelling.’

Posy yanked his hand away. ‘I think you can get a cream for that. Try Boots.’

‘Good idea!’ Sebastian was in forward motion again. He flung open the door of the shop, because he couldn’t even open a door, without it turning into a big, dramatic gesture. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said with an airy wave of his hand. Then he was gone.

Posy put a hand to her racing heart.