Turning around, she surveyed the bookshop for a minute or two and then picked up her phone and opened the camera app and panned around as if seeing it for the first time. It was really all she needed and Uncle Dennis had seen it, long, long, long before she had. Shuffling about tidying up the rest of the shop, moving around the room wiping down the little tables by the wingback chairs, she straightened a few books, glanced out the window to the laneway, popped the library ladders in place and wedged a few things in the display cabinet as she mused the words. How very sweet and very nice.
The light outside had dimmed to a low haze and inside the bookshop, the air was faintly dusty with a whisper of old paper coming from the cupboard. The glow from the mismatched lamps gave the place its usual cosy feel and outside, the streetlamps had just blinked on, making a yellow light spill across the pavement just outside the front window.
After pottering for a bit longer, back in the corner cupboard, Daisy made a keep and dump pile and then reached for the last of the notebooks and dropped it into the small sorting box beside her. She had just decided the biscuit tin without a lid was going straight to the bin when her phone buzzed on the counter where she’d left it beside the payment gateway.
She wiped her hands on her sweatshirt, stood up slowly and picking up the phone, she smiled before she’d even read the message properly.
Miles:Just checking in. How’s your day been? Did you manage to line up a sleepover for the girls? Thought I’d ask... No pressure. Xxx
Daisy stared at the screen for a moment, still holding a cloth she’d used to wipe out the back of the cupboard. She smiled. Miles hadn’t forgotten, changed his mind or vanished. Nope, the man was still around, still asking if she wanted to go away for a night. Tidy.
She tapped out a reply.
Daisy:All good. Annabelle’s having them Saturday. Evie’s already packed her overnight bag. So yes, I’m free. I would love a night away or just at yours. Either way is lovely. xx
Miles:Excellent! I’ll get to it x
Daisy:I just found this really sweet note from some of my uncle’s old stuff.
Miles:Saying what?
Daisy:Everything I’ve ever needed has been in these four walls. How nice is that?
Miles:Aww.
Daisy leant on the counter and from her spot, looked across the shop at the wingback chairs, the fairy lights, and the rows of carefully shelved paperbacks. Her heart gave a really odd little twist at how far she’d come. The shop was nothing fancy, and it wasn’t perfect, but it was hers, it was full of books and it was, surprisingly, doing quite well. Really, what more could she ask for in life?
As she messaged back and forth with Miles, she sighed as she looked at the shop. The whole place felt like it had breathed out for the night, the same way she had when she’d closed up and pulled the old-fashioned security cage door across. Asshe finished off tidying, she couldn’t stop hearing or feeling the words from Uncle Dennis. There was something about the way they’d been written, the offhand scrawl of someone who probably hadn’t known he’d be making her emotional years and years later. It had settled something in her, and she wasn’t sure she could explain what, why or how, but boy did it feel nice. His words had ticked a box she hadn’t known needed ticking. Like him, she didn’t need much. She realised it was also one of the reasons she never liked leaving Pretty Beach: it gave her all she needed.
Tucking the last edge of a hand-knitted blanket over the arm of the big chair, she stepped back and glanced around the bookshop again, hands on hips. She still had so much to do and many ideas for its journey and it wasn’t polished, but it looked and felt right. The lights were soft, the corners were all in their usual quietly charming organised muddle, and a vase of fading garden flowers from Susannah still looked decent enough to keep another day or two.
The girls upstairs had gone quiet, too quiet for her liking, but she decided not to investigate. She had roughly ten minutes of peace left, and she intended to use it well. She reached for her phone and propped it up against the old biscuit tin. It sat just at the right angle on the edge of the counter. Not fussing with lighting or staging anything, she just tapped record and walked through the bookshop, slow and steady. Past the fiction table where she flicked her fingers across the covers; soft pastels, bold typeset, the new display of autumn reads standing proudly in the centre.
Then she wandered over to the window nook and gave the lamp on the little book stool table a gentle nudge. The fairy lights above twinkled in their usual lopsided fashion. She reached down and picked up a stray wrapper from one of the girls, paused the recording, and started it again without a secondthought. Moving slowly past the side shelves, then up the little library ladder, pausing with one hand resting on the top rung as if to say: yes, this is my bookshop. Yes, it’s all still here. Yes, I am not a failure and yes, I am going to make this and the rest of my life succeed.
When she stopped the recording, she added a filter, let it sit in her gallery for a moment while she washed her hands and made herself a mug of lemon and ginger tea. She’d learned the hard way not to post anything in a rush. A minute later, she scrolled through the video, tapped a quiet bit of instrumental jazz from her saved sounds, overlaid it, trimmed the end where she’d bumped the biscuit tin and uploaded. Captioning it in her usual way with no hashtags, no pushy captions, she just typed out a note.
Bit of end-of-the-day faffing, a flick through the shelves and a tidy of the corner. I found a little note from a previous occupant of the building, which said that everything he ever needed was in these four walls. Can’t argue with that. Bookshop by the sea, tea in hand, lights on low. That’ll do me.
As she flicked off the light, she looked across the room and nodded to herself. None of it was glossy or curated to within an inch of its life, but it was her little project, and so far, so good. She nodded and reckoned the realness was the sort of thing people liked to see. Stuff what the woman with the choppy bob and Marc with a “C” had said about business, convenience, selection, and competitive prices. It wasn’t perfection, or a fake story, just a place that felt real. Really, really real and really really hers and the man in her life was too. As far as she could see.
15
In the end, after a bit of back and forth, Daisy had decided against going away-away for the sleepover with Miles. Despite Annabelle, Maggie, Susannah and even Suntanned Pete egging her on, she’d decided one, that she didn't want to be too far away from the twins, and two, that she wanted a cosy, easy night without any faffing, driving or travelling. All she really wanted to do was stay in Pretty Beach and chill. Not very hard to please.
Therefore, after depositing the twins with Annabelle, she’d walked from the bookshop, past the ferry to the other side of Pretty Beach and stood just outside the flats where Miles had rented a temporary place. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, her jacket wrapped around her and a small overnight bag hanging off her shoulder, she wondered quite how she’d found herself with a partner. It wasn’t cold and she stared at the buzzer panel by a huge old black door with a brass knocker in the centre for a moment before she knocked. Here she was going to dinner with a man. Part of her didn’t feel as if she was even in her own body any more.
The door opened a few seconds after she’d pressed the buzzer and there he was. Barefoot, rolled-up sleeves, holding a wooden spoon in one hand and a smile on his face. Very, very handsome.‘Welcome to paradise,’ Miles joked as he pushed the door back fully.
Daisy stepped inside, felt her insides go flip and then flop and beamed. ‘Hi.’
As they walked through a communal hallway and up a wide staircase, Daisy smiled as she went into the small but very high-ceilinged flat. The smell of garlic and something sweet drifted through from the kitchen, a speaker played from the side and on a small table by a floor-to-ceiling window, two candles flickered between plates.
‘I hope you’re hungry and ready to eat a horse. I think I may have over catered.’
Daisy stood awkwardly for a moment and suddenly wondered quite how she’d got to being in a relationship with a very nice man who was cooking her dinner. Miles appeared not to notice, pottered around, handed her a glass of wine without asking and nodded to the table.
‘I was going to light a few candles by the oven and all over the place too, because I know you dig that look, but I thought that could be too much in here and that I might set fire to things. I was going for the bookshop vibe…’
