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

‘Are they, though? They’re unique, you’re always saying. They have a history, a story to tell. It’s the same with cookbooks.’

Sophie picked up The Fine Art of Margarine Cookery and shuddered. ‘Who the hell eats margarine?’

Della swung round as the front door opened and Mark strolled in. His fine-boned face was a little flushed around the nose and cheeks.

‘Hi, darling.’ Della pecked his cheek, but he didn’t seem to register the kiss as he too was staring down at the books. He hadn’t acknowledged Freda either.

‘What are these doing here?’

Della cleared her throat. ‘They’re just sitting quietly, in piles.’

‘For how long, though?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’

By now, Sophie was leafing through another book. ‘There’s a whole chapter on dripping. What’s that?’

‘It’s just the fat that comes out of meat,’ Freda explained.

‘Ugh!’ gasped Sophie.

‘People used to have bread and dripping,’ Della added, at which her daughter mimed vomiting.

‘This is crazy, Dell,’ Mark cut in. ‘Tell me they’re not staying here. Please tell me it’s only temporary.’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Della replied as Sophie snatched a book and waved it in front of him.

‘Look, Dad. A whole book on margarine!’

‘I hate margarine,’ he declared, as if someone were about to force it upon him.

‘They’re not all about margarine,’ Freda said, laughing.

‘And people used to have it, Sophie,’ Della added, ‘when they couldn’t afford butter.’

‘Yeah,’ Mark cut in, ‘people used to have all sorts, didn’t they? Diphtheria, scurvy, Bubonic Plague …’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Della spluttered. ‘Don’t be like this.’

‘… consumption,’ he went on, cheeks reddening further. ‘Rickets, smallpox …’

Della laughed in disbelief and turned to her friend. ‘He’s a ray of sunshine tonight, isn’t he?’

‘They’re just books, Mark,’ Freda added with a smirk. ‘Not a contagious, olden-days disease.’

He grunted, and Della accompanied Freda to the front door. ‘Thanks so much for helping, and sorry about Mark.’

‘They’re just not his kind of thing,’ she observed.

‘Well, they’re my thing,’ Della said with a defiant smile.

Freda paused on the doorstep. ‘What are you going to do with them, though?’

‘You know, I haven’t the faintest idea.’ They laughed and hugged, and as she stepped back inside Della reflected that Freda was right: Mark simply didn’t enjoy being surrounded by old things. Eight years ago, when they had upgraded from their flat to the then rather dilapidated end-of-terrace house in Pickering Street, he had set about hiring builders to remove internal walls and plaster the whole place so there wasn’t a bump or a crack to be seen. The place milled with joiners, electricians and tilers, all managed by Mark who seemed to relish his role as Director of Operations. Della would never have imagined a 120-year-old house could appear so unblemished and pristine. The kitchen – original sixties, which she had thought rather charming – had been flung into a skip, to be replaced by glossy white units and sleek granite worktops. She had found one of the original pistachio green Bakelite drawer knobs lying in the gutter and had wiped it down and stuffed it into her pocket.

When the work was complete, Della had been seized by an urge to fill their home with dazzling colour, of the kind their daughter used to love to daub onto rolls of lining paper before progressing to canvasses at the easel in her room. ‘This place should be bright and cheerful,’ Della had announced, ‘like a butterfly.’ The fiery dashes on a Red Admiral’s wings, she meant, or the beautiful azure of a Common Blue. While Mark started to pore over the sleek, modern furniture offered by high-end stores, she dabbled around on Gumtree, hoping to source more interesting items to add a dash of character to their newly renovated home.

‘Hey,’ Della said now, finding Mark reading the five-day-old Sunday paper in the living room. She perched beside him on the unyielding sofa. ‘Look, darling, I know I’ve been a bit rash. You’re right, we don’t have space for them. But they’re important to me, okay?’

‘Mmm.’ His gaze remained on the newspaper. ‘You could have left them in their boxes, though. At least then I’d have been reassured that they’re not a permanent fixture.’

‘But that’d look awful, as if we’d just moved in.’

‘And it looks great with them all piled up, hardly any room to move, stinking the place out?’ As if she had lugged a crate of rotting fish into the house!

She glared at him, deciding not to explain that unpacking was just an excuse to go through the books, to handle and pore over them, as she had done as a child. She had wanted to feel the pages, to study her mother’s rather ill-tempered scribbled notes. Pie far too tart. Jeff refused to eat. 2 oz more sugar needed … Took TWICE as long to bake as says here … Unpleasant cheese sauce. Waste of ingredients. Avoid!!!

‘Okay,’ Della went on, aware of tightness in her chest now, ‘I accept that they can’t sit there piled up in the hall forever. I mean, I know it makes us look like the crazy family, and no one’ll want to visit us.’

She glanced at him. Not that Mark was a huge fan of gatherings in the house anyway, lest a drink be spilled, heaven forbid. ‘I’ll find somewhere else to store them,’ she added, feeling like a child, summonsed to the head teacher’s office to give an explanation for some minor misdemeanour.

Was this how marriage was meant to be? It wasn’t as if Mark was unkind. Yet somehow, without Della even noticing it happening, he’d become the one who decided pretty much everything. It made her feel faintly ashamed and bewildered – why had she allowed it to happen? She had raised Sophie to be confident and strong and to go for whatever she wanted in life. Yet here Della was, pandering to a man who barely seemed to care or even notice what she did, unless it involved 962 cookbooks.

He turned to her. ‘Okay, have your books. Keep them wherever you like. That’s not really the issue.’

‘What is the issue then?’ She frowned.

He flared his nostrils in a rather equine way, Della thought. ‘You and Freda, in cahoots …’

‘She’s my friend,’ Della retorted. ‘We weren’t in cahoots. She was only helping me out. She’s been a huge help, actually, these past few weeks.’

‘What I mean is,’ he cut in, ‘the two of you hatched a plan, hiring that bloody great van that’s parked outside …’

‘It’s the smallest one they had!’

‘And bringing them all here without even consulting …’

‘Consulting?’ she spluttered.

‘I mean, without even discussing it with me.’

Della stared at him, and all the words she wanted to say – I don’t have to consult you about everything – faded away in her mind. Instead of defending her actions, which would have led to a row, and which Sophie would have heard from her room, she sat still and stared around their living room. It was a shrine to neutrals, a study in muted good taste. That’s what Della felt like too sometimes: muted, as if all the sparkle in her had been dimmed down so low as to be barely noticeable anymore. She hadn’t got her way in the decorating scheme for their home. Mark had vetoed any vintage furniture she’d found on Gumtree. Without any discussion – and certainly no prior consultation – he had taken himself off to Homebase and returned with several cans of Farrow & Ball’s Cabbage White.

In fact, Mark was only pretending to be engrossed in the newspaper. He couldn’t read right now; he could barely think, since it had become apparent that Della was determined to keep those darned books. She couldn’t let her mother go – that was the real issue. She had spent weeks looking after and visiting her, and now Kitty had gone, leaving a gaping hole that Della had no idea how to fill. Mark hadn’t really considered how he would feel when his own mother and father passed away, but he was pretty certain he wouldn’t want to pack up their possessions and haul them all to this house.

In fact, books in great numbers had always made him feel decidedly uneasy. His parents owned perhaps a dozen between them, and he had never been a great reader himself. It had always pained him slightly, the feeling of being hemmed in by all those cookbooks whenever they had visited Kitty at Rosemary Cottage. And now – he could hardly believe it was true – the books had damn’ well migrated here.

He couldn’t bear it. Hemmed in: that was precisely how he felt right now. Why, he wondered, as he made his way through to the kitchen in search of wine, couldn’t Della have chosen one of Kitty’s necklaces instead?