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

‘Bloody hell! That was bracing.’ Verity had decided it was finally safe to emerge from the back office.

‘I feel like I’ve just run with the bulls at Pamplona.’ Posy’s heart rate was returning to its usual slug-like pace. ‘Thanks for all your support there, Very.’

Verity looked entirely unrepentant. In fact, she even waved a hand too, in a fair approximation of Sebastian’s jaunty farewell. ‘I like to pick my own battles,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it looked like you had things under control.’ She folded her arms. ‘So that’s your big idea: a bookshop that only sells romance?’

Posy nodded. ‘Honestly, you can’t be any more surprised than I am. It’s not a bad idea, though, is it? A one-stop shop for all your romantic fiction needs.’ She bit her lip. ‘I need to figure out the details. Properly. With a flip chart and everything, but until I do, can you keep it between us?’

‘We’re only going to sell romance novels? Nothing else?’ Verity’s voice was flatter than Holland. She looked around the shop. ‘That’s hardly going to fill the entire shop, is it? I mean, I understand about going niche, but isn’t that a bit too niche?’

‘It’s not. It’s really not. People love romantic novels. Here, in the main room, we could have new releases, bestsellers and contemporary fiction. Plus all the classics: Bridget Jones, Jackie Collins and chicklit – though I have major problems with that term. Major.’ Posy moved through the shop, into the room on the left. Now that she’d started to think about it, it was all so obvious. ‘We could have classics in here: Jane Austen, the Brontës, poetry, plays and then in the next room—’

Verity held up her hand. ‘Enough!’

Posy turned to her with a troubled expression. ‘You don’t think it’s a good idea? But you love romance novels, Very! I know exactly what you buy with your staff discount, and even Nina says—’

‘Nina will be in soon. Tom’s coming in this afternoon. We’re going to close an hour early and you’re going to talk us through this plan.’ Verity still didn’t sound as if she thought it was a good plan, but Posy tried not to take it personally. That was Verity’s way. She’d once brushed past Benedict Cumberbatch in the Midnight Bell and didn’t so much as flicker an eyelash, but then she’d had to go to the toilet and breathe into a paper bag because she was hyperventilating. ‘I’ll let you have some money out of petty cash so you can go and buy a flip chart,’ Verity added kindly. ‘After you’ve put the kettle on. And changed out of your pyjamas. What is that on them anyway? Looks like little piles of poo.’

‘They’re Christmas puddings! Can’t you see the sprigs of holly?’ Posy tugged at the offending garment that she was never, ever going to wear again. ‘You put the kettle on. I’m going to have a shower.’

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By five o’clock that afternoon, Posy was coasting a wave of anxiety as she battled with her flip chart and the stand it was meant to clip to.

Technically, she was the boss now so what she said went, but she didn’t feel like the boss. Although Nina and Verity were the same age as her, Posy had always felt like an underling. Still did, but now she had three employees; three people who were relying on Posy to keep paying their wages so they could afford rent, utilities, food and maybe a cheeky glass of wine and an occasional trip to the cinema.

Posy swore under her breath each time the flip chart refused to cooperate with her plans. How could she hope to take over an ailing bookshop and turn it into a successful, flourishing business when she couldn’t operate a flip-chart stand?

‘You have to do it like this,’ said a voice behind her, and Sam relieved himself of the burden of his bulging schoolbag simply by dropping it on the floor so he could help her. Within seconds he had the flip chart firmly attached and was shuffling out of the back office. ‘I only got a B for my rap in iambic pentameter, Pose. You’ll have to do better next time.’

Sam was walking with strange pincer-like movements and showing even more sock than he had a couple of days ago. Posy made a mental note to take him shopping that weekend for new shoes and trousers. Maybe she could also buy some herbal supplements that would stop Sam growing at such an alarming, expensive rate. Because it wasn’t only the Bookends staff relying on Posy’s vision, it was Sam too. The shop was as much his legacy as it was hers, so it was up to Posy not to screw this up.

On cue, she heard the shop door close, then the key turn in the lock and Nina and Tom, followed by Little Sophie, the Saturday girl, and finally Verity trooped into the back office. They came with a hot beverage apiece and cake. It was quite hard to launch into her exciting, revolutionary plans for Bookends when people were tussling over a box of Mr Kipling’s French Fancies.

‘So, right, OK. Welcome to the new and improved Bookends,’ Posy said with a jerky gesture as she revealed an inept drawing of the outside of the shop rendered in blue and green marker pen. ‘A one-stop shop for all your romantic fiction needs.’

Everyone but Verity, who’d already heard the headlines, stopped fighting over who was going to get stuck with a pink French Fancy and looked up at Posy. This was good; she had their attention, though they didn’t need to stare quite so hard, and Tom didn’t need to look as if Posy had started to speak in tongues.

‘What is romantic fiction?’ Posy mused. It was a rhetorical question, so she ignored Little Sophie’s hand, which had shot up. ‘It can be high literature, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It can be commercial fiction like One Day or Bridget Jones’s Diary. It could be a bodice-ripper or a bonkbuster. It could be a novel about a woman in charge of her own destiny who opens a small cake shop in a delightful village or …’

‘Hang on! Back up!’ Tom, who’d got stuck with the pink French Fancy, reared back in his chair. ‘We’re only going to sell chicklit? Ow! Don’t hit me!’

Nina already had her hand poised to strike again. ‘Nothing wrong with chicklit,’ she announced. ‘The only thing wrong with it is that novels primarily written for women about women by women are sneeringly and dismissively called “chicklit” as if they have absolutely no merit.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Tom made a big show of rubbing his head. ‘I meant: are you seriously going to get rid of the children’s room and the self-help section? The cookery books? The thrillers? You’re going to stop selling them?’

‘We never get any children in the shop these days,’ Posy explained. ‘Only in the school holidays when they want to have a go on the rolling ladder. And how many self-help books have we sold recently? Or any other kind of book, for that matter? We can try and be like all the other bookshops in the area, or we can do one thing and do it really well. We could become famous for selling romantic fiction; a destination bookshop. Just think of all those people coming to London for the day who’ll make a point of coming to our shop because they know that we stock the largest collection of romantic fiction in London? In the whole country!’

‘Steady on, Posy,’ said Sam, popping his head around the doorway. Posy suddenly found it hard to breathe but it was less nerves and more that Sam had slathered himself in a noxious man scent probably called something like Axe or Blade or Gunslinger because he’d realised Sophie was on the premises. How Posy longed for those innocent days when Sophie and Sam had been nothing more than mates, before their hormones kicked in. ‘Does this mean that the publishers’ sales reps won’t give me free graphic novels any more?’

Then he realised he must sound incredibly whiny in front of Sophie, who was refusing to make eye contact with Sam and staring intently at the glittery polish on her fingernails instead.

‘I’m sure they will,’ Posy said firmly, ‘when they see how many romance novels we’re selling.’

‘So how would the shop be planned out?’ Verity asked. She had a big notepad on her lap and had been diligently making notes. ‘Weren’t you saying something about keeping the main room for contemporaries, popular fiction and new releases?’

‘Yes! Yes, I was!’ Posy nodded and she flipped over the flip chart once more to show the new layout of the shop. Even if she did say so herself, it had a much better flow once she’d reconfigured some of the more randomly placed bookcases. ‘Then to the right, a Regency room, then a historical room, and the smallest room at the end can be for paranormal, fantasy and um, erotica. Sam and Sophie, you are never to go in there unless accompanied by a responsible adult, right?’

Sam groaned like he was in pain and Sophie gave Posy a slightly pitying look, because whatever depravities might lurk in the pages of erotic romance novels, they couldn’t begin to compare to the filth she could access on her home computer.

‘To the left of the main room will be the Classics room, for Jane Austen, the Brontës, that kind of thing, along with plays and poetry. Then the next room will be Young Adult – Sophie, I thought you could help me with that. And the last room will be non-fiction and a foreign language section.’ Posy exhaled. ‘And that’s the highlights.’

‘What about the tearooms? Are you going to have books in there too?’ Nina asked. She’d been nodding and giving Posy encouraging smiles all the way through her speech.

This was all moving too fast. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead,’ Posy said, though she didn’t have to think too hard about it. The tearoom had been her mother’s domain. There was simply no way Posy could entertain the idea of taking it over, repainting and reorganising the space so that any lingering traces of Angharad Morland would disappear. ‘There’s more than enough work to do in the shop without worrying about the tearoom too.’

Nina didn’t seem inclined to let the matter drop. ‘But maybe at some point in the future, you could employ someone to run it so—’

‘No,’ Verity said emphatically, so Posy didn’t have to. ‘We’ll charge someone rent – that way you have guaranteed money coming in and they can sort out all the health and safety shenanigans. We’ll have enough to do, as it is. Let’s revisit the tearoom at a later date. What’s on the next page, Posy?’

Posy’s palms were still clammy, making it hard to find purchase on the flip chart and move on to the website portion of her plan. Although actually the page simply said, ‘MAKE A BETTER WEBSITE.’

‘Yeah, I’ll sort that out for you,’ Sam offered diffidently, as if he could knock one up overnight, though surely there was more to it than that? ‘Might be hard to put our entire catalogue online, but we could offer a selection of books …’

‘Yeah! Like our top fifty bestsellers and … and we could have a book of the month too,’ Sophie said, leaning forwards on her chair eagerly. ‘Maybe offer a discount on that one.’

‘If we’re going to have a book of the month, then why not have a book group?’ Nina suggested. ‘They could meet one evening a month. And if we were going to open the tearoom again – which I really implore you to think about, because it means there’ll be a never-ending supply of cake in the shop – we’ll also have onsite catering, then we could host book launches and author visits. Signings too. Though I suppose we could do that anyway.’

‘And if you’re going to have a proper website, then you need to be on Instagram and Tumblr,’ Sophie insisted. ‘Like, otherwise what’s the point? I can set up and run the shop’s Twitter account too and we can link it all back to the website, right, Sammy?’

Sam swept his fringe out of his eyes again. ‘Yeah, I guess. Got to be multi-platform. We’ll want paying though, won’t we, Soph? Say, ten per cent of everything you make on the website.’

Posy folded her arms. ‘How about you reimburse me for all the food and clothing and video games that I’ve bought you over the last seven years?’

‘Just so you know, there are strict child labour laws in this country.’ Sam folded his arms too and stuck out his chin for good measure.

Posy didn’t want to ground him or send him back upstairs in front of Sophie, especially when he was the only person she knew who could build a website. ‘Eight point five per cent. Final offer.’

‘Are the pair of you trying to bankrupt us? If you want paying, Sam, then you have to go through me. I do the payroll and I might be prepared to consider three per cent – after costs,’ Verity said. She was getting that antsy look that came over her when she’d done a full day’s work and was still being expected to interact with other people. Posy could tell Verity was reaching the end of all reason, but before she did …

‘Actually, the other big thing I wanted to discuss with all of you is the name of the shop.’

Tom had sunk down low on his chair so his chin rested on his chest, but now he found the strength to raise his head. ‘What’s wrong with the name of the shop? It’s an institution, Bookends is.’

‘It was – and that’s the problem,’ Posy said. It was a theme she’d kept coming back to after hours of mentally going around in circles. ‘It was an institution, but most of the people who came to Bookends because of its history, its atmosphere, its reputation, were contemporaries of Lavinia, and they’re dwindling fast. Without them, Bookends is one more struggling bookshop. If we’re going to specialise in romantic fiction, we need a name for the shop which reflects that.’

‘So, did you have a name in mind?’ Tom asked. He was still slumped, still oozing the absolute opposite of enthusiasm.