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

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      Lavinia Thorndyke’s wake was held at a private members’ club for ladies of a literary persuasion on Endell Street in Covent Garden, which she’d belonged to for over fifty years.

      In a wood-panelled reception room on the second floor, its windows looking out on to the bustling streets below, people gathered to remember. Even though the mourners had come straight from Lavinia’s funeral, there was a rainbow of colours on display. Women in floral summer frocks, men in white suits and crisp sherbet-coloured shirts, though one man was wearing an egg yolk yellow blazer as if it were his personal mission to make up for the lack of sun on this grey February day.

      But then Lavinia’s instructions had been quite clear in the letter she’d left detailing her funeral arrangements – ‘Absolutely no black. Cheerful colours only’ – and maybe that was why the atmosphere was less funereal and more garden party. A very raucous garden party.

      Posy Morland was dressed in the same shade of pale pink as Lavinia’s favourite roses. She’d unearthed the dress from the back of her wardrobe where it had hung limply for nearly a decade, hidden behind a leopard print fun fur that Posy hadn’t worn since her student days.

      Over the subsequent years, there’d been a lot of pizza, quite a bit of cake and huge amounts of wine. No wonder the dress strained against her breasts and hips, but it was what Lavinia would have wanted, so Posy tugged ineffectually at the tight pink cotton and took another sip of the champagne, which had been another of Lavinia’s express wishes.

      With the champagne flowing, the conversation in the room had reached a deafening crescendo. ‘Any fool can put on a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream but it takes real guts to do it in togas,’ she heard someone bray in a booming luvvie voice and Nina, who was sitting next to Posy, giggled, then tried to mask it with a delicate cough.

      ‘It’s all right, I think we’re allowed to laugh,’ Posy told her, because the two men in the corner behind them were guffawing so uproariously that one had to stop and clutch his knees. ‘Lavinia always said that the best funerals turned into the best parties.’

      Nina sighed. She’d matched her gingham dress with her hair, which was currently a vibrant Prussian blue. ‘God, I’m going to miss her.’

      ‘The shop won’t be the same without Lavinia,’ said Verity, who was sitting on Posy’s other side and wearing grey because she’d argued that grey wasn’t black and that she didn’t have the complexion or the disposition to wear cheerful colours. ‘I still expect her to come barrelling through the door all excited about a book she’d stayed up half the night СКАЧАТЬ