The Secret Christmas Bookshop (The Secret Bookshop #1)

Chapter Fourteen

A fter Sophie put the phone down, it felt as if the entire pub was holding its breath.

‘He’s coming, then?’ There was laughter in Jason’s voice, but also genuine surprise.

‘He is.’

‘Well I never,’ Fiona said. ‘A turn-up for the books, that’s for sure.’

‘Another round then. Dutch courage, and all that.’ Jason stood up.

‘Why do we need courage?’ Sophie asked, but she felt it, too: the curiosity, the anticipation of the others, which was ridiculous because he was just a man, and there was nothing remotely mysterious about him. Or not that much, anyway.

‘Another wine?’ Jason asked her.

She shook her head. ‘Water, please.’ She’d only had a couple of glasses, but she didn’t want any more. ‘I never should have called him,’ she said, mostly to herself.

‘Why not?’ Fiona asked.

‘If he hadn’t wanted to come, he could have just said no,’ Ermin added.

‘God knows he’s said no to things easily enough up until now,’ Fiona said tartly.

Jason returned with their drinks and Sophie sipped her water, on high alert while the others chatted around her. How had she allowed them to persuade her into inviting him? She felt all the pressure of having made the call. Then the door opened, letting in a snake of cold air, and the chatter in the pub faded.

Sophie was reminded how well Harry Anderly filled a doorway. His gaze cast about the room and, when he found her, a small smile lit his eyes, then he strode across to join them, murmurs following him like ripples in his wake.

‘Hello.’ He stood next to the table, as if he wasn’t sure what to do next. ‘Jason,’ he nodded. ‘Fiona, Ermin. Sophie, thanks for inviting me.’ He sounded stiff, as if he’d just realized he would have to engage in conversation with all of them.

‘Here.’ Sophie scooted over on her bench. ‘Sit next to me.’

Harry shrugged off his coat to reveal a soft-looking grey jumper. His jeans were dark, rucking over the tops of sturdy brown boots, and when he sat down he rolled up his sleeves, revealing tanned forearms dusted with brown hair.

‘Let me get you a drink,’ Sophie said.

‘No, it’s my round.’ Jason stood up. ‘What do you fancy?’

‘A pint, please. Whatever you’re having. Thanks.’ When Jason was gone he turned to Sophie, gesturing to her glass. ‘My presence requires you to have a pint of vodka?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘It’s water.’

‘How are you, Harry?’ Fiona asked, from across the table.

‘I’m good thanks, Fiona. How are you both?’

‘Very well,’ Ermin said, with his customary chuckle. ‘I hear you and Sophie are doing a grand job of organizing our festival.’

‘We’re just getting started,’ Harry admitted. ‘There’s a lot to do.’

‘Will it involve goats?’ Jason put a pint in front of Harry.

‘Thanks.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘We’ve not planned it that way, but at the moment it’s very much up to Felix where he goes. Unless I build a huge brick wall around the entire estate.’

‘He just wants to have fun,’ Sophie said.

‘Goats just want to have fun!’ Fiona said delightedly. ‘Perfect.’

Sophie glanced at Harry, and saw that he was grinning. It transformed him from dour to carefree, and her breath caught. Under the pub’s soft lighting, his hair had blond highlights, and his eyes looked more green than brown. He had weekend stubble, and she couldn’t stop her gaze flitting between his face and his forearms resting on the table, one hand wrapped loosely around the glass that Jason had just placed in front of him.

‘How’s the ice-cream business?’ he asked Jason. ‘Do you get by OK in the winter?’

‘More than I expected to.’ Jason leaned back in his chair. ‘Obviously we’ve got Batter Days too, and that has a steadier income stream – it carries Scoops a little – but the good people of Norfolk know that an ice cream on a winter’s day is a proper treat, and as long as we keep innovating, we’ll be fine.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ Harry nodded firmly.

‘What about you?’ Jason asked. ‘I expect the upkeep of Mistingham Manor is a full-time job.’

Harry stared into the amber liquid in his glass. ‘It’s not easy, and I still do some consulting work on the side, because the manor certainly has a habit of gobbling up money.’ He caught Sophie’s eye, acknowledging that he’d said the same to her the day before.

‘What do you consult on?’ Ermin asked. ‘If you don’t mind me probing.’

‘Investments,’ Harry said. ‘For businesses, mostly, rather than individuals. It’s pretty dry stuff, but I’ve got a lot of experience now, and it means I can work when I want to, alongside spending time on the house. It’s not where my passions lie.’

‘Where do they lie?’ Fiona asked.

‘The manor,’ Harry said. ‘Felix and the dogs. Mistingham.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Though I know I haven’t exactly been …’

‘Around much?’ Jason finished. ‘It’s up to you, mate. Live your life how you want, but it’s grand to see you here. Grand that Sophie asked you.’

Harry looked at her, and she dropped her gaze to the floor. Clifton was staring up at her, so she pulled him onto her lap. Harry stroked the dog’s silky ears, his fingers inches from hers.

‘I’m glad she asked me too,’ he said. ‘I’ve got into the habit of spending Saturday nights pottering and trying to fix things, which isn’t very easy once the daylight’s gone.’

‘May’s working?’ Sophie asked. Why hadn’t Harry said she was one of his passions? It wouldn’t hurt, she thought, to find out a little bit more. ‘You don’t have film nights together or … anything?’

‘Sometimes,’ Harry said. ‘But she works on a tech helpline, and if she covers calls on Saturday nights she gets paid triple, so …’ He shrugged and took a sip of his pint.

‘I hear your goat had fun in Birdie’s vegetable patch yesterday,’ Jason said jauntily, as if he was trying to cut through the stilted conversation.

Harry looked up at the ceiling, and Sophie held her breath. Was that it? Had he run out of his capacity for small talk? Was he about to lose patience in the face of a gentle interrogation?

He dropped his gaze and turned towards Jason, his knee nudging against Sophie’s. She waited for him to move it, but instead he leaned forward, increasing the contact, and said, ‘Felix getting into Birdie’s allotment is one of the least outrageous things he’s done recently. He’s acting out, in his adolescent years. Last week I found him on my bed, muddy hooves rucked into the duvet, eating my copy of The Secret History .’

‘Oh I love that book,’ Sophie said, and Harry looked at her, surprised.

‘Me too. I must have read it a dozen times. No more, though – or not this copy, anyway.’

‘That scene before the funeral.’ Sophie winced. ‘I thought I was going to be sick, it was so tense.’

‘It’s horrible.’ Harry shook his head. ‘When Richard was succumbing to the cold, that lonely winter before Henry rescued him – I could feel it. I had to put on an extra jumper.’

‘How did Felix get into your bedroom?’ Jason asked, calling a halt to their Donna Tartt love-in.

‘I left the front door open,’ Harry admitted. ‘I was fixing the spotlights at the front of the house, and thought it’d be fine if I left it ajar while I carted tools in and out. Apparently not.’

‘How did you get him out?’ Fiona asked.

‘With quite a bit of difficulty and a lot of swearing.’

Sophie watched a sigh escape his lips, then he smiled, soft and genuine, and her heart contracted.

‘The thing you have to understand about Felix,’ he went on, ‘is that he knows he’ll have your whole attention if he’s laying waste to things: destruction, antagonism, whatever it is. And he also knows that, without a shadow of a doubt, he’ll get away with it.’

‘Because he’s so cute,’ Sophie said.

‘Well then,’ Fiona said, ‘you are somewhat hoist on your own petard.’

‘Because of the jumpers?’ Harry asked. ‘I know. Felix is a disaster of my own making, and my burden to bear.’ He was still smiling as his hand returned to Clifton’s head. Sophie wondered if he usually had Terror or Darkness by his side, if stroking them was his version of a stress ball: the warm, unconditional love of his dogs. And Felix, of course, who Sophie couldn’t think of as anything but mischievously charming.

‘What else has he done?’ Ermin asked.

‘What hasn’t he done?’ Harry started listing Felix’s misadventures, telling each story in a way that had everyone laughing, people looking over from other tables. His delivery was dry, his timing was perfect.

Sophie conjured up a list of all the things she believed about Harry Anderly: that he would be a wonderful Santa Claus; that he was denying Mistingham the pleasure of his company by mostly hiding away in his spooky manor house; that she wouldn’t mind his long fingers stroking through her hair, if things had been different; that he was warming up here too, enjoying the company; that, even if calling him had been an I’ll show everyone moment, she was glad she’d done it.

When they’d finished laughing at a story about how Felix had got into the postman’s van when he’d been dropping off a couple of parcels, Harry had ended up chasing the van down the driveway, and they’d discovered the goat chewing through a Bravissimo catalogue, Fiona glanced at her watch and said, ‘Goodness! It’s almost last orders.’

‘Shit, seriously?’ Jason sank the last of his drink. ‘I promised Simon I’d help with clear-up tonight.’ He stood and pulled on his coat. ‘Great to catch you all. You especially, Harry.’

‘I owe you a pint,’ Harry said, and the two men shook hands.

‘Next time, then? Don’t leave it so long.’

‘I won’t,’ Harry assured him.

Fiona and Ermin said their goodbyes, and Fiona even let Harry peck her on the cheek. ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ she said and he nodded warily.

‘Good to see you, old chap.’ Ermin patted his shoulder as he walked past.

Sophie put on her coat, her arm flailing as she tried to find one of the sleeves.

‘Here.’ Harry held it for her and then pulled it gently over her shoulders. He turned her around and straightened the collar.

‘Thanks.’

‘You know, after inviting me here, you’ve been pretty quiet all evening.’

‘You kept the conversation going, though,’ she said with a smile.

‘I enjoyed myself.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Jason, Fiona and Ermin – it’s been a long time since I spoke to any of them properly.’

‘Fiona’s been quite unkind about you, though.’

Harry nodded. ‘Everyone has opinions, and a lot of people here have strong ones about me and my family, but …’ He shrugged. ‘Can I walk you home?’

‘You walked?’

‘I didn’t know how many pints I’d end up having.’

‘You have a torch?’ She raised an eyebrow, but he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a hefty looking Maglite. She laughed. ‘Of course you do.’

He opened the door for her and they stepped out into the dark, the stars like pinpricks in a blackout curtain above, the crisp, cold air stroking icy fingertips across her skin.

‘Wow.’ She tipped her head up. ‘I will never, ever get over seeing this many stars. It makes you feel so small.’

‘It does,’ Harry said quietly. He was standing behind her, and when she leaned too far back to follow the line of a constellation, he put his hand gently between her shoulder blades. ‘I’ve got you,’ he whispered, and for some reason those three words clogged Sophie’s throat.

‘We should go,’ she said, standing upright. ‘It’s so cold, and you’ve got further to walk than me.’

‘Lead the way.’

Clifton trotted alongside them, and after a moment Harry held his elbow out, and Sophie slipped her arm through his, until she was anchored to his side. It made her feel safer, more secure, and also – perhaps because it was just the two of them now – she found it easier to speak.

‘I’m sorry about your copy of The Secret History .’

Harry glanced at her. ‘It’s OK. I bought another one.’

‘You must miss The Book Ends,’ she said gently. She didn’t know if it was forbidden ground, but he’d been so much more open in the pub.

‘I do,’ he admitted. ‘It was this strange mix of organized and haphazard; you never knew what you were going to find in any of the rooms, but if you wanted something specific, either it would be there or Dad would order it in.’

‘You didn’t want to take it over?’

‘I couldn’t,’ he said simply. ‘I had to be in London.’

He looked towards the seafront, and Sophie followed his gaze. The water was a black hole, except for the silver pathway cast across it by the moon, picking out the white of the foam-topped waves.

‘Everyone loved my dad,’ he said. ‘He was always ready with a kind word or a joke, and he had an immense knowledge of books. He ordered whatever people wanted immediately, so they had it in days. He came across as generous and competent, but …’ Harry shook his head. ‘In the last few years he’d run the bookshop into the ground, he was in so much debt he was about to lose the shop and the manor, and I didn’t have a choice. People say there’s always a choice, that you can make anything work if you really want to, but willpower – just wanting something – won’t win over real life and all the barriers you’re faced with.’

Sophie knew about barriers. She knew that wanting to be part of a family didn’t make it happen, that you couldn’t just wish it into existence, just as you couldn’t make somewhere your home if it didn’t feel right, and you couldn’t hold on to love if the other person didn’t want it as much as you. ‘What are your barriers?’ she asked quietly.

‘Money, expectation, reputation, rules. Desire can’t overrule all those things.’ His voice was gruff, as if he was holding in his emotions, and Sophie thought how hard it must have been, to deal with the financial mess his father had left, while everyone in Mistingham thought his dad was the good guy and Harry the villain. And, although she knew he was talking about desire in general terms, she could only think of one kind: a kind that was totally inappropriate because of May. But, being this close to him in the dark, his body warm against hers, the laughter from his goat stories echoing in her head, she couldn’t help it.

‘But you still love books,’ she said, dragging herself onto safer ground.

‘I’ll always love books.’

‘Me too,’ she murmured. ‘Have you heard of The Secret Bookshop?’

‘The Secret Bookshop? No, what is that?’

‘I’ve had this … this book given to me, and I have no idea who did it. It’s a random, anonymous gift.’

‘What do you mean? Which book?’ He sounded so perplexed that Sophie knew Fiona was wrong: there was no way Harry was behind her copy of Jane Eyre .

So, instead of pursuing her mystery, she decided to be bold. ‘Why can’t we hold the Christmas festival close to the oak tree?’

Harry looked away, his breath puffing a cloud into the night air. ‘Dad was so cavalier with everything,’ he said. ‘The shop, the estate, money. Me and my sister Daisy, even. He did whatever he wanted to, believed everything would just work out somehow, even when it started falling apart. I think it was how he dealt with his grief, after my mum died. Denial was his default, but …’ He turned to face her. ‘I had a survey done on the oak when I moved back here, and they said it was unstable: that it could be compromised if it’s messed about with too much.’

Sophie gave him a gentle smile. ‘So you’d rather nobody went near it? Looked at it, enjoyed it, but from a distance? Preserve the tree, but stop everyone using the green that surrounds it?’

‘Soph—’

‘Do you really think a few fairy lights strung through its branches are going to bring it tumbling down? That people walking near it will make it collapse?’

He shut his eyes. ‘It’s over four-hundred years old. It’s sheltered people from the rain, been home for countless insects and birds.’

Sophie squeezed his arm. ‘My very favourite foster mum, Mrs Fairweather, once told me that it was better to enjoy things and make use of them, rather than keep them carefully shut up and save them for the perfect moment. She said that the perfect moment might never come and, by waiting for it, you end up missing out instead.’

‘She sounds wise,’ Harry said. ‘How long did you live with her?’

‘Only a couple of years. She retired when I was seventeen, after a long, exhausting career of making lost kids feel cherished. I owe her so much, and I trust the things she told me.’ She looked up at Harry. ‘Your dad may have managed his finances badly, and caused you a whole load of grief in the process, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong about everything. Jazz was saying how important community is, how it’s better for people to be too close than distant, and I thought we could incorporate that into the festival: bring the community into it as much as possible.’

Now she’d said it aloud, she knew it made sense. ‘The best way to do that would be to use the green and the village hall, have indoor and outdoor activities: pot-luck food, some kind of games tournament, an open-mic night.’

‘An open- mic night?’

‘What’s more community-spirited than that? Then everyone who wants to be part of the performance can be. It would be so good, Harry. Come on.’ She was bouncing on her feet now. ‘The oak tree would love to be at the heart of it. Think how many village events it must have presided over. You can’t take that away from it.’

Harry started walking again. ‘And you can’t anthropomorphize a tree and expect me to change my mind.’

‘You think it’s a great idea – admit it.’ She grinned at him, then couldn’t stop a huge yawn escaping. She turned her head away and covered her mouth.

‘Right,’ Harry said decisively. ‘Time for bed.’

Her gaze shot to his. But he hadn’t meant that. Of course he hadn’t.

He cleared his throat. ‘I mean …’

‘I’m just here.’ She gestured to her front door, wondering if her cheeks were as pink as his.

‘I know that,’ Harry murmured. Batter Days was in darkness, but Sophie could see a faint glow in the back, could make out the shadowy figures of Simon and Jason moving about in the far room.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for coming tonight, and for walking me home. And will you at least think about what I’ve said?’

‘I’ll think about it, but …’ He turned away, looking in the direction of the darkened sea.

‘What is it?’ She touched his chin gently, bringing him back to face her. ‘I’m right here, in front of you. You can tell me anything you want to.’

‘I’m trying not to.’

‘Why not?’

He reached up and tucked a chunk of her hair behind her ear. ‘Because if I do, this whole situation might run away with us.’

‘Run away?’ Sophie whispered.

He was closer now, his eyes like miniature galaxies, black holes in the middle, swallowing the light. ‘I’m going to go now.’

‘Probably wise,’ she murmured, every bit of her wishing he would stay. She could take hold of his collar or his belt or his arms, slide her hands behind his neck. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘Fair to who?’ he whispered, frowning.

She shook her head. ‘Night, Harry. Thanks for coming to the pub.’

‘Thanks for inviting me.’ He turned away from her, shoving one hand in his pocket as he strode away, the other wielding the torch, ready to turn it on when he was beyond the reach of the streetlights. Then he stopped, turned abruptly, and called out to her: ‘I’ve thought about it, and you’re right.’

‘About what?’

‘The festival. The green. The bloody oak tree!’

Sophie’s heart thudded. Had she misheard? Was she going mad? Had that been vodka in her glass, after all? ‘You mean we can do the festival on the green, instead of the street?’

‘Yes! Let’s do it – let’s not wait for the perfect moment, but enjoy it all right now.’ He grinned, then waved and turned away, leaving her stunned and confounded and – after a moment – elated, on her doorstep.

She had changed Harry’s mind. She’d invited him to the pub, got him to open up and now, now , the villagers could have the festival they really wanted. It would be a fitting end to her time in Mistingham – she could disappear to Cornwall, leaving them all on a high.

With a grin mirroring Harry’s, Sophie unlocked the door of her flat and went inside.