The Bookshop on Rosemary Lane: The feel-good read perfect for those long winter nights

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Six : Five Months Later (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-Seven : The Bookshop’s First Birthday (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author, Writing as Fiona Gibson: (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

In The Beginning … (#u44dfd2bd-bdc2-53f7-a19b-dc9764fce377)

Of the hundreds of cookbooks in Kitty’s collection, an extraordinary number were dedicated to cooking under difficult circumstances. Meals With One Pan, Dinner For Pennies, The Frugal Hostess, even Cooking Without a Kitchen. At ten years old, Della Cartwright was intimately familiar with her mother’s personal library; she could instantly locate Blancmanges, Jellies and Other Set Desserts, and lay a finger upon Rescuing Kitchen Disasters with no problem at all. She knew, however, that there was no book in the house entitled Rustling Up Dinner When Your Husband Has Left You For Another Woman. Which was precisely what Kitty Cartwright needed right now.

Stillness had settled over the kitchen in Rosemary Cottage. Even the books, which entirely lined every inch of available wall space – promising infinite culinary adventures – looked forlorn. Usually the hub of the house, filled with delicious aromas as Kitty chopped and stirred, the room felt cold and uninviting now. A few shrivelled potatoes sat in the wire rack, and tiny flies drifted around them. The milk was sour in the fridge, and the Victoria sponge Kitty had made over a week ago sat, hard and uninviting, beneath its fluted glass dome. Still in pyjamas at 2.30 p.m., Della skimmed her gaze over the books. They no longer promised treats. They overwhelmed her.

Della’s stomach growled hollowly. Hunger had driven Jeff, her big brother, to his best friend Mick’s house at the end of the lane, whilst Roxanne, the youngest, would occasionally emerge from her bedroom to snatch a Jacob’s cracker or a handful of dry Sugar Puffs from the cupboard. Mostly, though, she remained in her room, styling the synthetic blonde hair of her army of Barbies.

Della, the middle child, had no interest in dolls. She owned a battered old Chopper bike – the one Jeff had outgrown – that she’d cycle through the mushy fallen leaves entirely covering the winding lanes of the small Yorkshire village of Burley Bridge. Mostly, though, she loved to stay indoors and cook. Kitty had never given the impression that she knew what to do with her children – it was as if they had been foisted upon her, forever requiring name tapes to be sewn into clothes, or to be driven en masse to Clark’s in Heathfield for school shoes – but she did seem to appreciate a kitchen assistant. Della had made this her job. Together, mother and daughter would pore over the books. Whilst Kitty took charge in her rather flappy manner, Della would undertake menial tasks: peeling carrots, trimming green beans, and gathering up the eggshells her mother left strewn around in her wake. She felt useful then, as if she belonged.

Della ran her fingers along the spines of the books. What to Cook Today was where her hand stopped. Perhaps she hadn’t known the whole collection after all. She didn’t remember seeing that one before. She pulled it from the shelf and studied its plain brown fabric cover. It was slightly stained and smelled musty, its title almost faded away. There were no pictures inside: just tiny type on mottled yellowing pages and a few scribbled notes in the margins. Della fetched a notebook and pencil and, installed at the well-worn kitchen table, she started to flick through the book.

Potato Soup, she wrote in rounded childish lettering. Roast Chicken. Semolina Pudding. Warm, comforting foods to coax Jeff back from Mick’s and Roxanne away from her Barbies and, most importantly, their mother away from her glass of gin. Della was sensible enough to know Kitty needed to eat, and that gin and tonic didn’t count as real food, even with ice and lemon.

Getting up from the wobbly kitchen chair, Della took an elastic band from the rubbery ball which Kitty, frugal to the last, had made by collecting the ones dropped by the postman, and used it to secure her thick brown hair in a ponytail. Then she lifted her own navy blue apron from the hook on the kitchen door and, aware of the distant chink of ice cubes in a glass, turned back to the chapter entitled Soups and Starters.

And so she began.

Chapter One (#u44dfd2bd-bdc2-53f7-a19b-dc9764fce377)

It wasn’t a train she was trying to catch but her mother’s last breath. So Della couldn’t be late. ‘Start, dammit,’ she muttered, repeatedly turning the ignition key: nothing. Her car appeared to be dead. Her mother could be too, very soon, if her brother was right. He’d called just a few moments ago.

‘Della,’ Jeff had barked, ‘things aren’t looking good. You’d better get yourself over here right away.’ It was the phrase that had stung her: get yourself over here, implying that she’d spent the past three days lying prone on the sofa, posting chocolates into her mouth, rather than keeping an almost permanent vigil at their mother’s bedside. In fact, even before Kitty had moved to the hospice, Della had done most of the caring, driving over to Rosemary Cottage every day after work, not to mention weekends. Jeff, who was based ninety minutes away in Manchester, was generally ‘too tied up’ to assist. As for Della’s younger sister, Roxanne: despite their mother’s decline, this was the first time she’d deigned to venture to Yorkshire from London in three weeks. And just when Della had dared to pop home to catch up on a little sleep, it had started to happen.

Cursing under her breath, she turned the key over and over. It was as effective as repeatedly jabbing at the button to call a lift.

She scrambled out of her car – a scuffed red Fiat Punto – and glanced around the quiet residential street in panic. Running to the hospice wasn’t an option. Della wasn’t built for speed, and Perivale House – which sounded like a luxury spa rather than a place where people went to die – was a couple of miles away on the outskirts of the bustling market town. You couldn’t just hail a taxi in Heathfield – they had to be booked in advance – and Della couldn’t think of anyone she knew who’d be around, ready and willing to drive her, at 3.17 p.m. on a grubby-skied September afternoon.

Whilst pacing at the bus stop she tried Mark on his mobile, knowing he wouldn’t pick up; his working days were filled with back-to-back patient consultations. Often he didn’t even break for lunch. ‘Going to the hospice,’ she informed his voicemail. ‘It doesn’t sound good, love. Jeff and Rox are with her right now and, can you believe this, my bloody car won’t start. I’ll call you later, okay? Or call me. Yes, please call me, soon as you can. ’Bye.’ She tried to calm her breathing before calling Sophie, their daughter, who didn’t answer either. Not because she was working – she was probably in Starbucks hanging out with her best friend Evie, or perhaps Liam, the boyfriend who seemed to be fading from her affections – but because MUM had flashed up on her phone. These days, Della was always pleasantly surprised and faintly honoured when her daughter did answer a call.

Finally – finally – the bus crawled into view. Della perched on the edge of the front seat, as if that would get her there faster as it trundled through the bustling market town. Her mother was dying, for goodness’ sake, couldn’t the driver put his foot down? Of course, it wasn’t his fault that Heathfield was especially busy today, it being the first Wednesday in the month and therefore farmers’ market day. Never mind a seventy-seven-year-old lady with terminal cancer: people needed their onion marmalades and artisan cheeses. And the driver had to let passengers on and off; it was his job, Della reminded herself, conscious of her thumping heart. And her job right now was to be with Kitty, to hold her bony hand as she slipped away to … where exactly? Although Della didn’t believe in the afterlife, she hoped her mother might drift away to a place where pain, confusion and toxic chemicals would be replaced by a steady trickle of gin.

Come on, bus. Come ON! It had stopped, not at a bus stop but due to a van parked outside Greggs, hazard lights flashing, blocking the lane. Seven minutes, it took, for a man in unforgiving tight jeans to reappear and drive it away. Della felt herself ageing rapidly as the bus finally nudged its way along the tree-lined residential roads and out into the soft, rolling North Yorkshire countryside towards Perivale House. The turreted Victorian manor came into view. The bus doors opened and Della sprang off.

Roxanne and Jeff looked up from Kitty’s bedside in the small private room. Jeff muttered something – it might have been ‘Here you are’ – but Della couldn’t hear properly. All she could do was look at the tiny old lady whose facial skin had settled into little folds around her jawline. A little downy fuzz was all that was left of her hair now.

‘Oh, Mum,’ Della whispered, kneeling down on the rubbery floor and taking her mother’s hand. Kitty’s slim fingers were cold, her ring with its chunky emerald a little loose. ‘I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. I’m so sorry.’

Roxanne reached down and squeezed her sister’s arm. Apart from pinkish, sore-looking eyes, she was her usual immaculate self in a plain but clearly expensive black shift, plus an embroidered cream cardi and low, glossy black heels. Della was wearing the leggings and faded turquoise T-shirt she’d napped in. Jeff, the eldest of the three and something important in banking, fixed her with a resigned look across the bed. As her siblings were occupying the only two chairs, Della remained kneeling on the floor. ‘When did it happen?’ she murmured.

‘About ten minutes ago,’ Roxanne replied.

‘Ten minutes! I can’t believe it. That’s when I was stuck outside Greggs …’

‘You went to Greggs on your way here?’ Jeff gasped,

‘No, of course I didn’t. I was on the bus, there was a lorry blocking the road.’

‘The bus?’ gasped Roxanne, who probably hadn’t travelled on one since 1995. ‘Why didn’t you drive?’

Della let go of her mother’s hand. ‘My car wouldn’t start.’

Jeff let out a heavy sigh. ‘For God’s sake, Dell, you’re an adult woman. When are you going to get a proper car that’s not held together with string?’

At first, it had seemed like a terrible idea: for the three of them to drive over to Kitty’s house less than two hours since she had passed away. But then, the Cartwrights weren’t one of those families who gathered purely to be together. They needed a purpose: a birth, a marriage, a significant birthday – or a death. And coming to Rosemary Cottage – in which all three of them had grown up – felt like the right thing to do. They had things to attend to. They needed, as Jeff put it with his customary directness, to ‘figure out what needs to be done’.

Mark arrived, still in his work attire of crisp striped blue shirt and dark grey trousers, with Sophie in tow. ‘Oh, darling,’ he exclaimed, ‘I know how hard this is for you.’ He gathered Della into his arms and kissed the top of her head where her haphazard top-knot was coming loose.

‘Thanks, love,’ she said, momentarily soothed by the embrace.