The Bookshop of New Beginnings: Heart-warming, uplifting – a perfect feel good read!. Jen Mouat

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СКАЧАТЬ course I came,’ Kate said, when they had disentangled. She held Emily at arm’s length and surveyed her. ‘I was summoned.’ She lifted one eyebrow and bestowed a teasing smile.

      Emily was sheepish, remembering the drunken, superlative-laden email. She looked Kate up and down; Kate seemed unsuitably dressed for a rainy, Scottish summer-town, in a well-cut, navy sateen dress printed with bird motifs. Navy stockings, whisper soft, and grey suede ankle boots – now trailing mud from the path – completed the ensemble. Her hair fanned out across her shoulders like corn-silk and her smile was vibrant with vermillion gloss.

      Emily smiled nervously back, her chapped lips as pale as rose petals, skin bloodless. She was utterly overwhelmed by the moment and stepped away from Kate, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Sophisti-kate,’ she said wryly – an old nickname, given when Kate emerged, swan-like, from her tomboyish, ugly-duckling years, ‘I didn’t think you would come.’ The awe in her voice revealed the magnitude of this gift of Kate’s presence: a whim to buy and renovate a run-down bookshop, one drunken email, and here Kate stood. So easy. I should have done this long ago, Emily thought. I should have brought Kate home.

      Kate shivered and cast another appraising look around the room, concerned mainly with the temperature, but not overlooking the dust, the cobwebby corners and the shop’s general listlessness. ‘Well, here I am. It’s really cold in here, Em. Don’t you have heating?’ Emily shook her head, her face falling. Kate began to wander, already redesigning the place in her head: planning how to order and stack and present to best advantage. ‘No matter,’ she said briskly, and clasped her arms to her sides, suppressing a shiver.

      ‘I can lend you a jumper,’ Emily offered, glancing doubtfully at Kate’s outfit, and producing from beneath the counter a hoodie that had seen a lifetime of better days. Kate made no complaint as she pulled it on over her dress, distracted by a ribbon of memory, tangled around so many others; this was Emily’s hangover jumper. Adding a pair of fingerless gloves to the outfit brought further relief, and she cared not for the lack of sartorial elegance; the chill inside the barn was of old, neglected stone.

      The jumper looked every bit as incongruous as Emily had feared, but Kate only tossed her head, struck a funny pose and made them both laugh. And the jumper was an invisible thread between them, bringing them snapping back together. The memories surged, unfettered, like moths shaken free from the fabric.

      Laughter was the overriding memory. Laughing long and loud and often, in a succession of crumbling student flats. Wine-nights in vibrantly painted kitchens amongst the detritus of a thrown together meal, and lazy weekend mornings watching old films on the sofa, beneath Kate’s duvet because they so often couldn’t afford to turn the heating on. Boys came and went and other friends hovered on the periphery. But always Emily and Kate. Together. A unit.

      Since the first days at South Morningside Primary School. A playground that resonated with the cries of major victories and minor conflicts, with melodies of skipping rhymes and football feuds and the brutal games of tig – a place of conquest, chieftains and queen bees and imperative allegiances; of friendships forged that might eventually wither, and one day die.

      Or else last a lifetime.

      The jury was still out on whether Kate and Emily’s friendship would stand the test of time – for a while both had been doubtful they’d ever see each other again – but here Kate was, which was a good start. They would need all the laughter they could muster to undertake this venture together, to repair what was broken – the barn with its rotting timbers and decaying books, and their friendship. Every word, every smile, every girlish giggle so reminiscent of old times, broke through the barricade and began the painstaking process of shoring things up.

      ‘You could offer the customers jumpers to keep them warm,’ Kate said, only half joking, plucking at the sleeve of the threadbare hoodie. ‘Keep them in a basket by the door.’

      Emily’s tone was gloom-laden. ‘That presupposes there will be any customers.’ Kate looked stern at that and Emily quickly smoothed over her doubts with a paper-thin, unconvincing smile. ‘Cup of tea?’ she offered brightly.

      Ah, the Emily of old, thought Kate, healing all the ills of the world with tea. And when tea failed: Merlot. ‘Sure. Is there electricity?’ Again, only half in jest. She was quickly realigning her ideas of this bookshop; the cheerful images that had sustained her across the ocean were fading now. This was not a bountiful business yet: nowhere near. It was not even a germ of one; it was just four walls and a roof and piles of books, and Emily so weighed down by the last few years that all the hope and verve had been squeezed out of her. Emily, who had been the schemer, the imaginative one, who had masterminded all their games and commanded Kate and the brothers to her will during Solway summers past.

      Emily drew herself up with all the dignity she could manage. ‘Yes. No need to look so surprised. No coffee, I’m afraid. But come and look around.’ Walking Kate around the small shop, she visibly swelled with pride, a queen in her domain. For all its faults, every stone and timber of the shop was her own and she loved it. ‘The electrics are actually not bad,’ Emily said, leading Kate through a little door at the rear of the shop. ‘The lights flicker occasionally, but … look, there’s a kitchen here and a toilet through the back, and some outbuildings where we can keep the spare stock.’

      The use of the word ‘we’ did not go unnoticed, but hovered in the air between them, somehow tangible and reassuring. The brightening of Emily’s tone cheered Kate.

      She peered through the postage-stamp window, coated with decades of dirt, and nodded, enjoying Emily’s enthusiasm. Her arrival, she realised, had stoked Emily’s fire, released little tendrils of optimism that flared from her like smoke – shades of the little girl with grand schemes who had learned her obstinacy at her grandmother’s knee. But, at the same time, Kate could also see how fragile Emily’s confidence was, how very breakable her friend had become.

      They stood in the cupboard-sized kitchen, which boasted a small sink, a cracked countertop and a merrily bubbling kettle, and stared at each other, breaking into foolish, incredulous grins and feeling just as shy and unsure as that first day in the school playground, when Emily had shared her crisps for no better reason than that Kate didn’t have any – and Emily had known instinctively that this wasn’t an oversight but a matter of course.

      Back then, Emily and the Cottons were all twelve-year-old Kate had to cling to; they had become her life raft in the maelstrom of her mother’s depression and drinking. Lily Vincent had succumbed to her demons before Kate was born and even a small daughter dependent on her hadn’t been enough to drag her out of the slough of despair she found herself in. Kate had learned to survive, relying on her wits and a sense that there was some other life, just waiting to be uncovered. That she had managed to do more than simply survive – had crafted a new life for herself and dared to dream of a future in which she could achieve something – was entirely down to the Cotton family.

      Emily laid out a box of tea bags, two cracked mugs and some sour-smelling milk – they opted to drink the tea black. Wrapping their hands around the mugs, they wandered back through the shop, their thoughts unconsciously unspooling in perfect harmony. The moment had a vibration, shared thoughts humming between them. This is awkward. This is brilliant! Why didn’t we do this before? And, Why are we doing this now?

      They exchanged shy sidelong glances. Emily weighed her words, a furrow between her brows as she considered how to broach the question. Why had Kate come? She must surely have left so much behind in New York: a career, boyfriend, friends – all abandoned for a cold, damp summer in Wigtown, renovating a dilapidated bookshop with an erstwhile former friend who probably didn’t deserve her sacrifice. ‘I had no right to expect you would come,’ СКАЧАТЬ