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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ overshadowed by words she didn’t say.

      Without warning Kate found herself overwhelmed by exhaustion, the flight catching up with her at once; she was in no mood for Emily’s prevarication. ‘What’s going on, Em?’

      Emily dumped the cups into the sink with a jarring clatter of china. ‘All right. Not here. Let’s go upstairs.’ Between them they lugged Kate’s suitcase up the creaking stairs and sat side by side on Emily’s bed in a room almost entirely overlooked by time. Emily had yet to make the mark of her adult self on a room that still anchored her securely to her childhood.

      ‘So?’ Kate prompted, kicking off her boots and drawing her legs up beneath her, feeling the jet lag tug at her like the pull of a strong current as soon as the softness of the bed embraced her.

      Emily stroked the seams of her patchwork quilt and took a deep breath, looking as if she was about to make a dire confession. She fixed Kate with a solemn, grey-eyed gaze. ‘Lena has Alzheimer’s,’ she said.

      The thought of Lena being sick was a blow to Kate, and she reeled from the impact. Lena was one of the formative pillars of her childhood, the foundation upon which she had crafted herself. Six lost years … so much of Lena gone, and continuing to be lost – moment by moment, slipping away.

      ‘Mostly, she’s frightened about forgetting,’ Emily said softly. ‘It’s little things: beginning a sentence and forgetting the end, losing words for ordinary things, forgetting the names of people she knows, or recent conversations. Older stuff she’s better with. It was easier to introduce you as if she’d never met you because she’d be upset if she thought she should know you and didn’t. Sometimes photographs help her to make the connections. And sometimes you just have to accept that she doesn’t remember, and ride out the episode until she comes back. She always comes back.’ Emily met Kate’s eyes with a fierce flare of defiance, then dropped her gaze to her hands, knotting them into fists. ‘So far she has, anyway. Suddenly, there she is … and then gone again.’ Emily’s voice was careful and controlled now, but Kate could hear the pain flexing beneath the surface.

      Kate was silent for a long time, thoughts and questions spinning too fast; everything she knew about the condition – admittedly, not much – was depressing and inevitable. A slow, indecorous decline: was that to be Lena’s future? ‘When did you find out?’ she asked, when she couldn’t think of anything more helpful to say.

      Emily picked at her bitten, unloved fingernails and heaved a sigh. ‘She was diagnosed about a year ago. She was living alone and my parents were worried it might not be safe in the long term. There were other options, such as selling the house and taking her to live with them in Edinburgh, or … a home. But …’

      Kate raised an eyebrow. ‘I can’t imagine Lena being very happy with either of those options.’

      Emily shook her head. ‘We didn’t even suggest them to her. I had just quit teaching – I was terrible at it! – and had no idea what I was going to do and I needed a place to stay. It was convenient for me too – I wasn’t being entirely altruistic. It puts Mum and Dad’s minds at rest having me here keeping an eye on her. And we rub along together all right. We play scrabble and do crosswords and keep her garden going and sell her vegetables at the market. Just trying to keep everything normal for as long as possible. We’re lucky, at the moment she’s mostly still Lena. Sometimes it feels like there are bits of her missing, but mostly she’s the same. And she’s physically very well. We have to accept that will change in the future, though. She will get worse, and when she loses her sense of self entirely … I guess it’s something we have to be ready for.’

      Kate frowned; Emily might have resigned herself to Lena’s illness, but this was all new to Kate and it eroded some of the joy of reunion. ‘How do you prepare for something like that?’

      Emily’s mouth wobbled in a pale smile. ‘I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I have it figured out.’

      Kate studied her closely. ‘Do you think it will confuse Lena more having me here? I wouldn’t want that.’

      ‘Sometimes it confuses her having me here. She forgets I live with her. Forgets she has children, or grandchildren. I don’t think having you around will make things worse. It’s more company for her and talking to people is good. Plus, I need you here.’

      Kate pictured again the Lena of her childhood, tough, rough around the edges, desperately caring in her own unorthodox way, and was haunted by regret. The sense of loss was too big, too impossible to wrap her mind around. How she wished she hadn’t lost those years. ‘It was very good of you to do this,’ she said. ‘Really, Em. Lena’s lucky to have you.’

      They had all been lucky to have had Lena.

      Emily stopped pacing and pulled the cuffs of her jumper down over her hands to hide her ruined nails. She nodded. ‘I needed somewhere safe to go. After—’

      ‘Joe.’ His name, once again, shaped the very air, changing its texture and altering Emily, making her shrink. She turned to her dresser and began rearranging items in the film of dust that covered its surface.

      She shook her head quickly. ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about him. Not yet.’ She sounded brittle, as if she might snap at any moment, fracturing along old fault lines like an ancient piece of china. ‘Why don’t you tell me about Ben, and your life in New York. It all looks so wonderful.’

      Emily thought about the pictures she’d ogled on Kate’s Instagram: the fantasy perfection of Ben, with his designer suits, model-esque physique and artfully scruffy hair. How could a relationship with such a man be anything less than perfect? She’d studied every photo Kate posted online in minute detail, when that were all she had left of Kate: the skiing holidays and nightclub posing, the fancy restaurants and gallery openings, the whole rich, luxuriant life Kate had immersed herself in, slipping into a new persona like a new skin. Emily was just one of hundreds of thumbnail friends to grace her page – a fragment of memory clinging steadfast as a barnacle to a rock. Ignored, just another insignificant face. Until now.

      Kate must have reasons for coming beyond old loyalty and the desire to rekindle their friendship. She couldn’t have been altogether happy with her life if it was so easy to shed that glossy new skin and leave it all behind.

      Kate played with a strand of hair. ‘I will tell you,’ she said, ‘but not now. I don’t really want to talk about Ben yet either. It’s complicated. He’s there … and I’m here.’

      ‘At least you didn’t marry him.’ Emily’s habit of saying the first thing that popped into her head without a thought was in some respects an admirable trait, but it didn’t always win her friends.

      Kate was used to it. ‘No, not yet.’ She gave a shaky laugh. ‘So, the subject of men is off the table for us both.’

      Emily gave her a rueful smile. ‘I suppose so. What do you mean not yet?’

      Kate gave a languid wave, deftly dismissive. ‘A question for another time. When I don’t feel like I’m drowning with tiredness.’

      Emily nodded. ‘Of course, sorry. Actually now would be a good opportunity for you to have a rest while I make dinner. I was thinking after we eat we might take a walk over to the farm and visit Dan.’

      Kate was half consumed by a jaw-cracking yawn. She felt a shiver of trepidation and pleasure at the prospect of seeing Dan again. ‘Fine. Not the resting part. I think maybe a shower instead. If I fell asleep now I’d СКАЧАТЬ