As Louisa lay wrapped in all the colours of the blanket on Dr Barker’s couch, she tried to think of a colour to describe how she felt now. But no colour came. Her mind and her thoughts were clear, like ice.
The next day, Dr Barker took Louisa back to her house. As they walked towards the front door, Louisa looked up at the grey building. It seemed different somehow: taller and more intimidating. Louisa could hear the sounds that she had always heard from the Pleasure Beach, but the squeals of joy now sounded more like screams of terror. They came in waves, like the waves of the sea.
The pie that Louisa had knocked over the day before was the only thing out of place. Its purple innards spewed out over the grey stone floor in a bloody mess and its sour scent drifted up around Louisa like a ghost.
‘Get together anything you want to bring with you, dear Louisa.’ The way Dr Barker spoke made Louisa want to cry. A lump of pain appeared in her throat. She tried to swallow it down as she climbed upstairs to her bedroom. The summer holidays had filled the small, square room with shells and books and socks, and Louisa had planned to tidy it up before she returned to school. Her copy of Bunty lay on the floor where she had dropped it after the vision of her mother the day before, making her feel sick and hot.
‘I don’t know what I’ll need.’
Dr Barker didn’t seem to know what a twelve-year-old girl with a missing mother might need either. But that didn’t matter. He knew to take Louisa’s hand, and to offer her his handkerchief and to walk beside her as she left her house behind.
Louisa stayed with Dr Barker for a time. She couldn’t remember how long. Those days were misshapen and blurry in her memory, as though they had been left outside and rained on. One day, while she was sitting in Dr Barker’s lounge, there finally came a moment when suddenly she felt a tiny crack of space opening between that terrible day when she had lost her mother and her life now. Dr Barker’s eyes twinkled when Louisa told him that she felt a little better and that she might be hungry. He slipped out of the room, leaving his newspaper and his reading glasses to peep at Louisa from the little table next to his chair. When he returned, he handed Louisa a plate with daisies around the rim and a ham sandwich stacked together in the centre. Louisa took a bite and focused on the daisies.
It was soon after the sandwich that Louisa found herself in Dr Barker’s car, which smelt faintly of leather and fish. Dr Barker was very quiet for most of the journey. It was after almost an hour when he turned to Louisa, his big hands settled on the steering wheel, and said:
‘Louisa, today is a very special day. Because today, you’re going to live with your father.’
Grace, 2008
‘A toast is definitely in order!’ Grace says as she struggles with the cork of a champagne bottle.
It’s the evening of the opening of Ash Books and the twins and Eliot are at Rose House, the old guest house that Elsie lives in by herself. The three of them ate at the pub across the road from the shop for dinner, Elsie warning them that they wouldn’t be able to eat away their profits every night and Grace rolling her eyes and pointing out that they deserved a treat.
‘Was it a huge success then?’ Eliot asks.
Grace avoids eye contact with Eliot. Tonight needs to be simple. She nods and allows herself a congratulatory ‘whoop!’ as she finally manages to pop out the stubborn cork.
‘Yes. A lot of people came in and looked at the second-hand stuff. And the head of English from a high school in Lytham came in and we did a deal with him on a collection of the classics we’d put on offer. He ordered about two hundred pounds’ worth of stock.’
Eliot strokes the peppering of stubble on his chin as though he has a full beard. It makes an unpleasant scratching sound and Grace wants to prod him, to make him stop.
‘Two hundred pounds is great,’ he says. ‘If you make that much every day you’ll be heading for world domination in no time!’
‘World domination?’ Elsie says, and grins at Eliot. ‘You’re ambitious.’
Eliot smiles back. ‘I’ll bet the free cupcakes had something to do with it. Good work on those, by the way, Grace.’ He bites into a leftover cake, and Grace sees a faint trace of pink icing line his mouth.
‘More champagne, anyone?’ Grace asks loudly as she fills up her own glass. Elsie doesn’t answer, but looks at her own glass, which sits on the battered coffee table, untouched.
‘Go on then, Grace. I’ll have a top-up,’ Eliot says, leaning forward and jostling Elsie, who sits up and rearranges her hairclip.
‘I think I’ll go to bed actually,’ Elsie says.
‘Bed?’ Grace asks incredulously. ‘You’ve hardly had any champagne. I thought we were celebrating?’
‘Yes, bed,’ Elsie answers simply as she stands and stretches. ‘Night.’
There’s silence for a few minutes after Elsie has clomped upstairs. Grace and Eliot hear Elsie’s bedtime ritual float downstairs and through the open lounge door: aggressive teeth brushing, cupboard doors opening and clothes being tossed onto the floor.
Grace sighs and downs her champagne. It’s cheap stuff, not even really champagne, and tastes woody and too sweet.
‘I’m so relieved that the opening day went well,’ Grace says after a moment. ‘I started to worry this morning.’
‘About what?’
‘About opening the shop. It all seemed a bit overwhelming. I was worried we’d perhaps done the wrong thing.’
Eliot shakes his head and loosens his tie. Eliot always wears a tie, even if he’s not at work.
‘Taking a risk like this is never the wrong thing. You’ve both been talking about opening a bookshop for a while, so it was the obvious thing for you to do. You can’t have any regrets about that.’
‘I hope not,’ Grace says. She shivers. ‘It’s always freezing in this house. Don’t you make Elsie put the heating on when you stay over with her?’
‘I hate being too hot. I’d rather be cool,’ Eliot says. Grace sees him start to reach for the blanket on the arm of the sofa to give her, then watches as he thinks better of it. If only things weren’t this complicated.
‘Elsie’s the same as me. She hates being too hot as well,’ Eliot finishes. Grace thinks she detects a look of defence in his slim, stubbled face.
‘So you’re staying over here tonight?’ he asks.
‘Yes. Elsie and I are going into the shop together tomorrow. She’s made one of the spare beds up for me.’
‘You’ve not slept over here for ages.’
‘I know. I don’t like sleeping here. But Elsie wanted me to stay over so that we could celebrate our first night and go in together first thing tomorrow. I’m trying to do things right at the moment. I want us to feel like a team again. I barely even feel like we’re friends at the moment. And that’s surely bad for business,’ she finishes with a weak smile. An unexpected lump lodges in her throat like a boiled sweet.
‘Yeah. She said things were a little tense between you both.’
The reason for the tension hangs in the air, between Grace and Eliot. Grace won’t say it. Eliot doesn’t know it.
‘Let’s have another drink,’ Eliot says, filling their glasses.
The next morning, Grace shuffles further