The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts: A feel-good funny romance. Annie Darling

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      By five o’clock that afternoon, Posy was coasting a wave of anxiety as she battled with her flip chart and the stand it was meant to clip to.

      Technically, she was the boss now so what she said went, but she didn’t feel like the boss. Although Nina and Verity were the same age as her, Posy had always felt like an underling. Still did, but now she had three employees; three people who were relying on Posy to keep paying their wages so they could afford rent, utilities, food and maybe a cheeky glass of wine and an occasional trip to the cinema.

      Posy swore under her breath each time the flip chart refused to cooperate with her plans. How could she hope to take over an ailing bookshop and turn it into a successful, flourishing business when she couldn’t operate a flip-chart stand?

      ‘You have to do it like this,’ said a voice behind her, and Sam relieved himself of the burden of his bulging schoolbag simply by dropping it on the floor so he could help her. Within seconds he had the flip chart firmly attached and was shuffling out of the back office. ‘I only got a B for my rap in iambic pentameter, Pose. You’ll have to do better next time.’

      Sam was walking with strange pincer-like movements and showing even more sock than he had a couple of days ago. Posy made a mental note to take him shopping that weekend for new shoes and trousers. Maybe she could also buy some herbal supplements that would stop Sam growing at such an alarming, expensive rate. Because it wasn’t only the Bookends staff relying on Posy’s vision, it was Sam too. The shop was as much his legacy as it was hers, so it was up to Posy not to screw this up.

      On cue, she heard the shop door close, then the key turn in the lock and Nina and Tom, followed by Little Sophie, the Saturday girl, and finally Verity trooped into the back office. They came with a hot beverage apiece and cake. It was quite hard to launch into her exciting, revolutionary plans for Bookends when people were tussling over a box of Mr Kipling’s French Fancies.

      ‘So, right, OK. Welcome to the new and improved Bookends,’ Posy said with a jerky gesture as she revealed an inept drawing of the outside of the shop rendered in blue and green marker pen. ‘A one-stop shop for all your romantic fiction needs.’

      Everyone but Verity, who’d already heard the headlines, stopped fighting over who was going to get stuck with a pink French Fancy and looked up at Posy. This was good; she had their attention, though they didn’t need to stare quite so hard, and Tom didn’t need to look as if Posy had started to speak in tongues.

      ‘What is romantic fiction?’ Posy mused. It was a rhetorical question, so she ignored Little Sophie’s hand, which had shot up. ‘It can be high literature, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It can be commercial fiction like One Day or Bridget Jones’s Diary. It could be a bodice-ripper or a bonkbuster. It could be a novel about a woman in charge of her own destiny who opens a small cake shop in a delightful village or …’

      ‘Hang on! Back up!’ Tom, who’d got stuck with the pink French Fancy, reared back in his chair. ‘We’re only going to sell chicklit? Ow! Don’t hit me!’

      Nina already had her hand poised to strike again. ‘Nothing wrong with chicklit,’ she announced. ‘The only thing wrong with it is that novels primarily written for women about women by women are sneeringly and dismissively called “chicklit” as if they have absolutely no merit.’

      ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Tom made a big show of rubbing his head. ‘I meant: are you seriously going to get rid of the children’s room and the self-help section? The cookery books? The thrillers? You’re going to stop selling them?’

      ‘We never get any children in the shop these days,’ Posy explained. ‘Only in the school holidays when they want to have a go on the rolling ladder. And how many self-help books have we sold recently? Or any other kind of book, for that matter? We can try and be like all the other bookshops in the area, or we can do one thing and do it really well. We could become famous for selling romantic fiction; a destination bookshop. Just think of all those people coming to London for the day who’ll make a point of coming to our shop because they know that we stock the largest collection of romantic fiction in London? In the whole country!’

      ‘Steady on, Posy,’ said Sam, popping his head around the doorway. СКАЧАТЬ