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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ You know where the bathroom is. And your room – it’s the same one you always had. Do you need me to show you?’

      Kate shook her head and got up from the bed, the soft quilt and pillow doing their utmost to drag her back.

      *

      As Emily clattered down the stairs, Kate tugged the suitcase across the hall and stepped into the bedroom that had always been hers – stepping back in time. Nothing had changed: not the blue forget-me-knots on the bedspread or the candlewick blanket; not the walls painted the colour of cornflowers or the tarnished silver mirror hanging a little askew above a rickety chest of drawers; not the little, wooden bed beneath the window or the smell of fabric softener and dust, or the windows that could do with a clean, but still revealed the most beautiful, picture-perfect view in the world. However far she travelled, Kate did not think it was possible to top the view from her Bluebell Bank bedroom.

      A hard lump of emotion invaded her chest, pushing into her throat and threatening to undo her. A heavy cloak of nostalgia settled around her, shimmering all shades of happy and sad, and every hue between. Knowing better than to let jet lag and wistfulness hook her, Kate made herself keep busy. She unzipped her case and dug around for her toilet bag, which she carried down the hall as she went to take a shower.

      The bathroom had gotten an overhaul since her last visit, thank goodness: new shower, fresh paint, pristine white porcelain. The shower itself used to be a trickle of lukewarm water from the rubber tube that attached to the taps, in an ancient, freezing stone bath so scratched and stained it was impossible to tell what colour it really was. Not that Kate had cared back then. She would have made do with a daily dip in the river if Lena hadn’t forced her to bathe occasionally. Now she lined up an array of expensive products and stepped into the steamy cubicle with a luxuriant sigh.

      As she soaped and shampooed, she felt the last vestiges of tension from that final fight with Ben ebb away. His incredulity had rung in her ears all the way across the Atlantic (‘You’re going to quit your job to go and run some mouldy old bookshop! Why? You don’t even read books. And who is this girl you never talk about whom you claim is your best friend all of a sudden?’)

      Fair points, both. Kate couldn’t adequately explain the inexorable pull across the ocean. The Cottons. Bluebell Bank. Emily.

      She had known she would come the instant she opened the email, sitting in the middle of Ben’s big bed wearing silk sleep shorts and a Edinburgh university T-shirt as she waited for him to return, framed by the New York night sky through the picture window: velvet and purple and polluted with the glow of a million firefly lights.

      The email was so perfectly Emily that she could hear Em’s voice in every typed word, could hear the Merlot talking, and she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

      For six years, Emily had been no more than a fragment of memory; a stab of guilt that pierced in the depths of a sleepless night; the unbidden thought that came to mind when least expected – hurrying through Time Square late for work, or boarding the subway and catching sight of a countenance or gesture that tipped her headlong into reminiscence.

      No messages, not a single word, save the depressingly formal thank you note. Until that email.

      Quitting her job, telling Ben, purchasing the ticket, saying goodbye to her friends – all of those things were items to tick off her list, and she did them all with a brisk, unemotional vigour. It was accomplished quickly, simply. Before she knew what was happening she had a suitcase by the door of Ben’s apartment, a one-way ticket tucked between the pages of her passport and a lot of confused people clamouring for a better explanation.

      Kate did not fully understand her choice either, but she knew enough: this was redemption, for both of them; the joy of rediscovering a simpler time, retracing their steps. Emily had been the key to Kate’s salvation, enveloping her in her big, loving family when all she knew was neglect and cold and that sinking feeling accompanying the clink of wine bottles.

      Now it was Kate’s turn to do the saving.

      Kate hadn’t packed the right clothes, didn’t own the right clothes: she was now a city girl through and through. But now that she was here that didn’t seem to matter. Nothing mattered: not the differences between her and Emily, the way they’d let circumstances come between them or the divergence of their paths; not the doubts and uncertainties Ben had exploited to try to convince her to stay.

      Stepping from the shower, Kate still felt bone-achingly tired – neither the tight confines of her airplane seat nor the snoring of her supersized seatmate had been remotely conducive to sleep as they hummed over the vast grey of the ocean - but she was able to push the tiredness aside for a little longer. She rummaged through her suitcase again, seeing the lovely dresses and designer labels with a critical eye. Nothing suitable for Bluebell Bank. In the end she pulled on a pair of jeans and Emily’s hoodie, avoided the bed after one long, yearning glance then set off downstairs in search of Emily.

Chapter Four

      With ghosts popping up at every turn, Kate descended the stairs, feeling like an imposter. For the first time the unwelcome thought rose to torment her: what if the email had been a drunken whim and Emily neither expected nor truly wanted her to come? Then she recalled how Emily had flung her arms around her in the bookshop and was somewhat reassured.

      Kate was unused to doubting herself these days – such prevarication was relegated to a time long gone – and the sense of uncertainty unsettled her.

      Life with Lily in the dismal tenement flat in Edinburgh had been terribly grim, a battle for survival sometimes. It was thanks to the Cottons that she had prevailed, made a success of herself; thanks to one night in fact, when she had been driven to seek their help. The nights were always the worst; it was then that her mother’s demeanour was at its most precarious. It wasn’t so bad when Lily went out – the parties back at the tenement were far more frightening. Kate would lie rigid and sleepless beneath her thin sheet, listening to raucous voices in the sitting room. A man had invaded her bedroom once, lurched towards her bed slurring sibilantly, shushing her, grinning drunkenly. Kate had lain frozen, heart thundering and body useless, until Lily had come in and laughingly dragged him out by the shirt. After that Kate always made sure the chair was firmly beneath the door handle.

      The nights when Lily went off who-knew-where with people she called friends were usually something of a relief. But not this particular night. After years of trying to keep the stark truth of her mother’s drinking locked tightly within, Kate was forced to throw herself upon the Cottons’ mercy. She hadn’t been able to sleep. She had been up for hours waiting for Lily to come home, tormented by some ambiguous terror. They’d had a fight earlier – a raging argument about Lily spending all her money on booze, too little left over to feed them – and Kate was nursing lingering resentment and the dull thud of pain from a developing bruise where Lily had swiped at her on the way past.

      Lily didn’t come. The electricity was off again and there was no money to feed the meter. Kate was cold, wrapped in a blanket, watching raindrops slide down the dark, curtain-less windows and street lights bleed in the wet that patterned the glass. Waiting, waiting, for her mum to come home and be safe. She had her shoebox on her knee – the contents might have seemed like junk to anyone else but to Kate they were treasures and she had them still, carrying them through adulthood with her, carefully preserved: shells from Rigg Bay, the plastic bangles from Emily, a birthday card Dan had given her scribbled in his messy boyish handwriting, a piece of turquoise sea glass and other such oddments.

      Kate listened to the sounds of car tyres sluicing through puddles until СКАЧАТЬ