And, she didn’t add, Vronsky wasn’t there to share his thoughts on what should happen next in his story, so Aurelia hadn’t made any progress at all.
“And?”Antonia asked.
“And what?”
“There’s something else—this isn’t just Aurelia on a writing tear.There’s something else going on with you.”
Aurelia sighed.She’d been rumbled.She should have guessed she would be.
“Nothing else is happening,” she lied waspishly.
“Is it that Oliver guy?You keep telling me you don’t like him, but do you?”
Aurelia had filled Antonia in on both of David’s surprise dinner set-ups, and even Antonia agreed he’d taken his meddling too far.
“No!I’ve told you a million times there’s nothing there.”
“He kept your bookmark, though.You said he had it when he came to the shop—that seems like something.”
“Yes, and that ‘something’ is that he hadn’t been through his pockets since our date,” Aurelia said dismissively.“Anyway, that was weeks ago.He’s probably tossed it in the bin by now.”
“Well, something else is going on.You can keep pretending it’s not, but I can tell—you’ve been different.”
Am I really acting strangely?Aurelia wondered.She’d grown close with the characters over the past few weeks, looked forward to spending time with them, and was counting down the days until she’d be back at home.She hadn’t felt excited to be part of a community like this since her writing classes at university.
“Are you going to share what’s going on in there?”Antonia asked, her tone softening.
“Okay… There is something else.”
Aurelia’s mind desperately raced through the options of what she could plausibly tell her sister.
“It’s just that I’ve… I’ve joined a writing group.”
The idea had popped into her head, and it seemed like the easiest way through—a half-truth that amounted to something close to reality.
“Oh.”Antonia sounded disappointed by the lack of intrigue.“Well, that’s great.”
“We’ve become really close, all of us.I see them almost every night after work and we’ve been sharing ideas.”The half-truths were coming faster and faster.
“Then I’m glad,” Antonia declared.“It’s good you’re getting out and meeting people again.You know I hate thinking of you being cooped up in the shop.”
Aurelia didn’t correct Antonia, in spite of the stab of guilt she felt at her deception.
“Shall we head back?”she suggested.
Antonia nodded and turned, and Aurelia linked her arm through her sister’s and called for the dogs to stop splashing in a puddle of muddy water.On the walk back, she sensed her sister stealing glances at her, but she kept up a flow of chatter to keep from giving Antonia an opening for more questions.
Her break in Yorkshire seemed to come to a rapid close.Fezz reluctantly climbed back into his carrier for the drive home, and the family tearfully said their farewells.Aurelia’s father chivvied her into her car, warning her of traffic if she didn’t get on the road.It was hardest saying goodbye to him, but she knew he had friends and company nearby.With a last smile and wave, Aurelia put her car in gear and started the drive home to London.
Once she was on the motorway and in the traffic her father had predicted, her mind went directly to her shop and the characters that would be waiting for her there.Did she really seem different, as Antonia had said?It was hard not to be with everything she’d experienced over the past few weeks.It was also hard to think about getting out of the shop despite her promises to her father, Antonia, and herself to do just that.But what could be the harm in spending time with characters that had become as real to her as David, Kali, and her other friends?
As traffic continued to crawl southward, Aurelia slowly let go of her worries and focused instead on the fact that each mile was bringing her closer to the friends she’d be seeing again at midnight.
34
Aurelia’sfirstnighthomewas filled with happy chatter as she caught up with each of the characters and told them about her holiday and her family.By the following day, she’d fallen back into her schedule of working in the shop during the day, napping in the early evenings, and spending her nights with the characters.She and Vronsky came up with ideas at night, and she wrote them out and added detail, dialogue, and descriptions during the day.The relief of falling back into a writing routine drove her to keep going, so that she wouldn’t fall back out of it again.
Weeks passed and suddenly it was February.Aurelia and Vronsky were working quickly now, motivated by their plan to get a copy of the manuscript ready for their experiment.Other characters often joined their writing sessions, adding ideas about what Vronsky ought to do, or where he ought to go.And as the characters disappeared back into their books at dawn each morning, it was less jarring now that Aurelia knew Vronsky was getting closer to disappearing into his new story.
