“Let me put the water on for these eggs. Then I’ll crack the code. Where are you now? Is your hand cold from holding the phone?”
She was right next to London Fields Lido, an outdoor swimming pool that claimed to be “heated.” (It was not, or not warm enough for an Australian.)
“I’m at the Lido—I’m about to walk out past the school. Is that right? I can’t look at Maps while I’m talking to you.”
“Go on till you get to Greenwood Road shop and the Spurstowe. Turn left and go past Violet, the cake shop. If you get to the next pub, you’ve gone too far.”
“Why did you come to the Dove? If you live so close to two pubs?”
“Actually, three pubs.” She heard the clatter of the saucepan on the hob. “Okay, let’s see. We’ve got Woolf, Virginia. Jean Rhys. Elizabeths—Bowen and Taylor. Barbara Pym. Iris Murdoch. A. S. Byatt. Did you read what A. S. Byatt’s children call her? It was inThe Guardian.”
“Mum? Mummy? Antonia?”
“They call her A. S. Byatt. Those green-spine books by women. Mitfords. Who’s Helen Garner?”
Coralie gave a strangled cry.
“We’re getting more modern here,” Adam said. “Ali Smith, Monica Ali—I interviewed her on the podcast! Zadie Smith—my friend snogged her at uni. Allegedly! A bunch of Americans in a clump together. Wow, it’s all women, isn’t it? No, wait a minute.The Line of Beauty.A Single Man.Maurice. Is this a gay pile?”
“It’s a gay pile!”
“I see! Girls and gays.”
“That’s it! No straight men.”
“Did you bring all of these from Australia? Didn’t it cost a fortune?”
“Well.” She sighed. “It’s a long story. I’m outside the shop. Is there anything to eat at yours?”
“Spaghetti, onions, garlic, tinned tomatoes, cheese.”
“Perfect.” She kept walking.
After a while he said, “Aren’t you going to tell me the long story?”
“About the books? Well, it’s not really that long or interesting. It’s just a bit sad.”
“Go on.”
“I went to boarding school in Canberra, as discussed. Every year, there was a famous book fair put on by a charity called Lifeline, whose number you call if you’re depressed. Amazing books. Canberra must have been filled with feminists clearing out their shelves, or maybe their kids doing it when old feminists died—how sad! I didn’t think of that before. First-edition hardback Anita Brookners…I got a whole set of the Claudine books, by Colette, amazing pastel covers. I went to uni in Canberra, too, and I kept going to the fair. The books came with me from college to my share house. Then my boyfriend at the time got a job in Melbourne. I’ve always loved Melbourne; I moved with him. The books came with us to our flat. Then, when we broke up—when I was twenty-six—I had no idea what to do. I felt so lost and crazy—it was like I didn’t want the books to see me like that. I packed them all up and had them freighted to Darwin, where my mum lived, still lives. She put them in her spare room, which she hardly ever used. I moved to Sydney and got on with life, working, et cetera. But I always had this idea that the books were my real self, and I’d come back to them when I was ready. Is this boring?”
“It’s the opposite. I’m getting the eggs out. This is like my Tigey and Cuddles story, isn’t it? What terrible thing happened to the books?”
“Is it past Elrington Road?”
“A few up on the left. Red door.”
“I wish I hadn’t started talking about this, but okay. My mum had quite a big cancer operation. She had to go down to Brisbane for it, and I flew up from Sydney to help her. It was a week in hospital, then a week in hospital accommodation for lots of checkups. After that, I had to go back to work, so Daniel, my brother, who was living in Melbourne by then, took her back to Darwin and moved into Mum’s spare room.” She peered at each tall, gray Victorian terraced house as she went past. “I think I’m here. I’ll stand on the step so I don’t have to take the story inside.”
“Take it inside; it’s so cold. The hall, at least.”
“Okay.” His key ring was a leather map of France. She unlocked the top lock with a thin key and the bottom lock with a chunky one. She stood in the dark hall. “I’m in. So, I was on the phone to my brother to check up on Mum, and I said, ‘Sorry about the boxes in the spare room.’ And he said—”
Adam groaned. “What boxes?”
“Exactly. You can’t get upset with someone who has cancer. Anyway, it wasn’t Mum’s fault. I forgot about the wet season. It’s so tropical. They went moldy, and that was that—no way back. She got the council to collect them and take them to the dump.”
“How ruthless,” Adam said admiringly.
