Pages & Co: Tilly and the Bookwanderers. Anna James

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      After dropping the vanilla off with Jack, Tilly went back into the kitchen to find Grandad sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the box with his hanky out. Tilly slid down the wall next to him and squeezed in under his arm, breathing in his familiar smell of cashmere jumpers and old paper.

      ‘I’d forgotten where I’d put these,’ he said, hugging Tilly close to him. ‘They were some of your mum’s books when she was your age. She’d been rereading a lot of them while she was pregnant with you.’

      ‘These were her favourites?’ Tilly prompted, eager for more details.

      ‘Yes, well, her favourites when she was growing up. These were ones that meant a lot to her when she was around your age. The books we love when we’re growing up shape us in a special way, Tilly. The characters in the books we read help us decide who we want to be.’

      Grandad paused, and Tilly noticed he had a book in his hands, turning it round and round as he spoke.

      ‘Ah. This one,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to show you. I mean … Well, just let me know what you think of it.’ He gave a last glance at the book in his hand and passed it to Tilly. It was A Little Princess – a copy with a yellow cover. Tilly took Mary’s photo out of the envelope and showed it to Grandad.

      ‘Where did you get this from?’ he asked.

      ‘Mary just gave it to me,’ Tilly said. ‘Look, she’s reading this exact book!’

      ‘You see, it was her favourite,’ Grandad said. ‘She enjoyed it when she was your age, but she really fell in love with it while she was at university. She took this copy with her and read it over and over again. She … Well, she found something new in it as an adult, I suppose. Have you read it?’

      ‘Yes, a few times.’

      ‘What did you think?’ Grandad asked. ‘Did you connect with any characters in particular?’

      Tilly shrugged. ‘I enjoyed it. It’s not my favourite but I liked Sara a lot. I like how she tells stories when she feels sad, and to help her after her dad dies.’

      Grandad smiled softly, as much to himself as to Tilly. ‘Well, now you have your mum’s copy to keep. And a photo of her reading it.’

      He looked at the box of books. ‘There might be some in there you haven’t read before. Why don’t you take them up to your room and have a sort through?’ He gave Tilly a squeeze and hauled himself up off the floor. ‘Can’t leave your grandma to deal with Jack by herself for too long,’ he said and headed back into the bookshop.

      Tilly put A Little Princess back in the box and staggered upstairs with it to her tiny room at the very top of the house. The walls were lined with bookshelves full of her own books, as well as ones she had temporarily borrowed from the shop, something she was not really supposed to do, but after she caught Grandma spilling tea on what turned out to be a shop book a blind eye was usually turned as long as they reappeared in pristine condition. Tilly put the box down in the middle of the floor and placed Mary’s envelope on top. She sat down on her bed, curled her knees up underneath her, and stared at them as her feelings tangled round each other, twisting and knotting her up.

      Finally she pulled the photo out again and laid it on her bed before slipping a narrow album off her shelves. In the pages were a collection of photos her grandparents had let her collate that all featured her mum: as a child, with Grandma and Grandad, in the bookshop, even some in New York where she had gone to university. The photos looked back at Tilly, a puddle of memories that weren’t hers.

      Tilly felt like she was being wrapped in a heavy blanket that was comforting and suffocating at the same time. Her mum’s face looked up at her from too many photos all at once. When Tilly tried to picture her mum in her mind she felt like she was trying to imagine what a character in a book looks like. You think they’re standing right next to you, but as soon as you whirl round to look straight at them everything blurs and dissolves, and the harder you try to see them, the more flighty and unfocused they get until they barely resemble a real person at all.

      She tried to calm her breathing down and tucked Mary’s photo into the album, before putting it on her bedside table. Then she took a deep breath and settled down to look at the box of books instead, which felt more manageable.

      ‘Books are my thing,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I can do books.’

      She tried to blow the dust off the top of the box, but it worked rather less well than it did in films, so she wiped it with her sleeve. There wasn’t any other writing on the box apart from her mum’s name in blocky capitals. Tilly peeled back the rest of the barely sticky tape and pulled out the copy of A Little Princess. Underneath that was a dated-looking version of Anne of Green Gables, which she picked up, but found СКАЧАТЬ