I let out a squeal and then clamp my hand over my mouth expecting my flatmate to start banging on the wall again, but his music comes on loudly – ‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye, how imaginative – and the headboard starts banging against the wall as one of the two scantily clad girls he was with starts moaning. Have they really got nothing better to do on a Monday afternoon? The light fixture rattles and plaster falls from the ceiling as the banging increases in speed, and I use the opportunity to flop back onto the bed and muffle my scream in the duvet as I roll around in excitement, and clearly overestimate how wide the single bed is, because I roll right off the edge and land on the floor with the duvet wrapped in a knot around me.
Ouch. My still-damp hair has fallen over my face and I pull it back, spitting out blonde strands as I check my computer screen again to make sure it’s not all a dream because that would’ve been certain to wake me up.
The email is still there.
This is actually for real. I’ve actually won a bookshop. And not just any bookshop – my favourite bookshop in the world. Well, of the ones I’ve been to, anyway. And by ‘the world’ I mean the little area of the Cotswolds between where I grew up and where I live now. I haven’t ventured much further than that, except on the pages of books. The world is endlessly big when you have books.
How can this be happening? Owning a bookshop has always been my dream, but people as unlucky as me don’t get dream jobs. I’ve always wanted to work with books, but the opportunities are few and far between around here, and the one time there was a job advertised for a bookshop manager, even though I thought the long three-bus daily commute would’ve been worth it, two of the buses were late on the day of the interview, and by the time I eventually made it, soaked through from the rain and with a broken heel – torn between hobbling in barefoot or limping in one-heeled, they refused to see me because of my poor timekeeping.
I’ve lost every job I’ve ever had anyway. What’s the point in trying to work with something I love? Reading should just be a hobby, and I should pursue a sensible career in … whichever job I manage to keep the longest without getting fired.
I’d bought the ticket on a cold and damp January afternoon on the way back to the bus stop after visiting my mum and sister – always a good excuse to go into Once Upon A Page and have time for a browse.
Robert Paige was behind the counter as always, sitting in his chair crocheting blankets to send to war-ravaged children in Bosnia, an unusual hobby for an eighty-year-old man, which just made him all the more eccentric and engaging, like the time I’d gone in one day and found him with multicoloured streaks of long fake hair attached to his wiry white locks and sparkly rainbow nails because he’d let a child in the shop give him a makeover.
On this particular afternoon four months ago, he dropped a bombshell – he was retiring. He’d been the bookseller at Once Upon A Page for as long as I could remember, from when I was two years old and my mum took me there to buy the latest picture books, to when I was a pre-teen desperate for the newest Judy Blume, to now – when I still spend too much of my paltry wages on books. He was a permanent fixture in that shop – the kind of friendly old face who makes you feel welcome, who knows something about everything, and would always, always be there. I could never imagine seeing someone else behind the counter.
And then he dropped an even bigger bombshell. He wasn’t selling Once Upon A Page – he was giving it away to someone who wanted to take over running it. And to make it fair, in the months leading up to his retirement, he was selling tickets for a prize draw to choose the winner.
At £30 a ticket, and a strict one-per-customer rule, it wasn’t cheap. The amount of books I could’ve bought for that … I couldn’t really afford it, and I thought it was absolutely pointless because the only thing I’ve ever won in my life is head lice from a boy in primary school, but I don’t think that counts. Robert’s excitement about his plan was even more infectious than the head lice, and it was impossible not to get swept away on the daydream of somehow being the winner. How amazing would it be to own a bookshop? To get to live and breathe books every day? To get paid for stroking books, arranging books, talking about books, recommending books, and thrusting books into the hands of unsuspecting strangers?
I read book blogs online and am a member of countless Facebook groups, but to actually get to do it in real life, to step out from behind the computer screen and share my love of books with real people? It would be amazing.
I’d dutifully bought my compulsory-purchase-with-ticket book – a cookbook for Mum because I still live in hope that she might actually follow a recipe one day – and handed over money that really should’ve gone towards the electricity bill, and for a few nights afterwards, I’d gone to sleep dreaming about being a bookseller, about that gorgeous little shop being mine, about me sitting behind that polished mahogany counter, handing out free bookmarks and crocheting blankets for Bosnian children. Well, maybe not the crochet part. Last time I picked up a crochet hook, I got fired from my job at the haberdashery shop for nearly having a customer’s eye out.
And then I never thought about it again. Every time I’ve been in since, Robert’s been sitting there with his crochet hook and yarn, and he hasn’t mentioned another thing about retiring. I thought he must’ve changed his mind. And let’s face it, I would never win, no matter what. Luck is never on my side.
Until now. I haul myself back up off the floor and perch on the edge of the bed, leaning forward for another look at the email, still convinced it can’t be real.
Maybe this is why I’ve never had any luck in my life. Maybe it was all being saved up for this moment. Maybe fate or the universe or whatever powers that be decided I would have the worst luck in the world, just so on this ordinary day in May, I could win a bookshop, and a new chapter of my life could start.
***
Once Upon A Page is in the tiny Cotswolds village of Buntingorden, about forty-five minutes away from the rabbit-hutch-sized box someone’s had the nerve to call a two-bedroom flat that I currently share with an apparently irresistible twenty-something who barely grunts at me if we happen to be forced to pass in the hallway, smells like mouldy cheese, and never apologises for eating my food, even when I scrawl ‘Hallie’ all over the packaging, feeling like a college kid sharing a house for the first time, not the mature, adult woman I supposedly am. Waitressing doesn’t pay well enough to have grown out of flat-shares by now.
I say a cheery goodbye to the driver as I jump off the bus and skip down Buntingorden High Street the next morning. Skip. I’m thirty-five. I’m not sure what’s worse – still living in a flat-share or skipping in public. I’ve been here many times before because my sister lives in the Cotswold Hills just beyond. There’s no traffic through the street, so the bus stop is at the upper end and I walk the rest of the way because it gives me an excuse to go past the bookshop every time I visit her.
The high street looks like it belongs in an award for prettiest high streets in the UK. The honey-coloured stone buildings are tall and the street is narrow as it winds towards the green hills beyond. The cobbled road is smooth under my feet, and the endless fronts of independent shops lined up before me are bright and colourful, with flags bearing logos flapping above their doors, and gingham-patterned bunting in an array of colours criss-crossing overhead all the way along the street. Old-fashioned Victorian streetlamps with modern-day bulbs dot the path, holding up baskets with pretty flowers spilling out. Near the top of the street is the town square, where there’s a Gothic fountain burbling away, surrounded by a hexagon of steps, plenty of benches, and concrete planters full of more flowers with bees buzzing around them. Once Upon A Page is directly opposite this little nature idyll in the middle of the otherwise bustling street.
I stand outside the shop window that displays a selection of books for children and adults, surrounded by garlands of artificial green leaves and spring flowers. Robert’s goldfish is swimming in a bowl at one shaded side. I breathe it all in for a moment. The smell of coffee from the sandwich deli down the street mixes with the mingled floral scent of the hanging baskets and the indescribable mix of fragrances coming from the candle shop next door. There are bowls of