Once Upon A Page is attached to the only empty shop on the street and the two buildings are connected by a set of steps leading up to a roof terrace that’s been closed off for as long as I can remember. The boarded-up windows of the shop next door are out of place on this quaint little road and I turn away from them as I go in the warm blue door with a little bell above it that jingles every time it’s opened.
‘Hallie!’ Robert Paige gets to his feet and sets his half-finished crochet blanket on the counter in front of him as he hobbles over to give me a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. ‘Congratulations. I’m so glad it was you. This place can only be run by someone who adores books, and I can’t think of anyone more deserving.’
It still doesn’t seem real. Even as I look around the cosy shop, with its plush grey carpet, miles of wooden shelves full of lovely books, and breathe in the scent of worn leather from the sofa and chairs gathered around a low table in the reading area, and the delicious papery, sweet and musky smell of thousands of books that permeates the air, I still can’t believe it. Working in a bookshop is what I’ve dreamed about my entire life.
‘Now, of course it comes with the flat too, and the roof terrace, but the railings up there need reinforcement before you can open it to the public again …’ Robert is saying.
‘What?’
‘The flat above the shop. It’s a teeny little thing but it’s served me well. I moved in a few years ago when the commute got too much for me. It’s yours now, but you’ll have to give me a couple of weeks to arrange for my belongings to be moved out.’
I squeal so loudly that the three customers who are browsing look up from their books in fright, probably thinking I’m here to test the smoke alarms and have started an early fire drill.
A flat too! I didn’t even know there was a flat above this shop. I hadn’t really thought about it. There’s an upper floor to the shop, and I assumed the second upstairs window you can see from outside was a storage room. But a flat I can actually live in? Alone? Without a twenty-something lad who thinks a vat of Lynx is an appropriate substitution for showering regularly? It’s like all my dreams are coming true at once. I could win the lottery twice and it wouldn’t be this amazing.
A customer goes to the counter with a pile of books, and Robert pats my hand and quickly hobbles back to serve her, and I watch for a moment as he gets into a deep conversation about the books she’s chosen. He seems to know something about each one as he taps the prices into the till and then loads them one by one into a ‘Once Upon A Page’ branded paper bag. No matter how much I love books, I can’t imagine ever being as knowledgeable as he is.
My excitement about taking over this place is tinged with sadness because I’m going to miss him being here. He’s like a grandfather to everyone. A friendly, non-judgemental face, which is a welcome sight on the way home from visiting Nicole, her husband Bobby, and our mum, who lives in an annex in their garden. Robert is a purveyor of books featuring single heroines like me who are happy being single and don’t need a man in their lives and no one thinks any the worse of them for it. Books with heroines whose mothers are always trying to set them up with inappropriate men. Books with heroines whose dating escapades are enough to put anyone off for life. Books about women who can be single and childless in their thirties and still be happy and fulfilled in other ways, no matter how much my mum believes otherwise and is eternally determined to see me married off, like some Jane Austen novel where I’ll be considered a spinster and it’ll bring shame upon the family if all daughters aren’t married before the age of twenty. I’m not sure my mum has realised we don’t live in the 1800s anymore.
I try not to think about the minimum-wage job and crappy flat. I am fulfilled. I’m fulfilled by my overflowing bookshelves and my Kindle, bought through the necessity of not having space for any more books in my tiny room of the flat, and not being willing to leave them in the communal living room where Mr Lynx could get at them. He’d probably use them to swat flies or something else unthinkably awful, if he didn’t try to eat them. He seems to eat everything else that belongs to me.
I let Robert get on with serving as I go for a wander around the shop, feeling a bit like I’m floating above it, dancing on a cloud, going ‘wheeeeeeeeee’. This is really going to be mine. I don’t have to add ‘fired from pub waitressing job’ to my CV and start the demoralising misery of job-hunting again. I can give notice to our landlord. I’m actually going to have my dream job. This is even a step above chocolate taster for Cadbury’s or quality control for McVitie’s.
I let my fingers trail along the spines tucked into every shelf. Old clothbound hardcovers, new paperbacks, and non-fiction coffee-table books on every subject you can imagine. After the open area at the front, with the counter and the reading area, and the tables to display new arrivals and picks of the week, there are endless aisles of wooden shelving that run up and down to the back of the shop. Shelf after shelf of floor-to-ceiling dark-coloured cherry wood with visible knots, each one holding hundreds of books, so crowded that books are piled in front and on top of the spines facing outwards. The highest places are accessed by Beauty and the Beast-style sliding wooden ladders attached to the front of the shelves on runners. I refrain from re-creating the scene where Belle slides along when she returns her book in the opening scene of the old Disney movie. It would not be the first time I’ve wanted to, and also not the first time I’ve given it a try when no one’s looking.
Once Upon A Page is the sort of shop you could easily lose a day in. You can get lost in the rows of tall shelving, picking up anything that looks vaguely interesting, and before you know it, it’s five o’clock and Robert’s ringing the bell for closing time, and you’ve accidentally missed the last bus home, but you emerge with a hotchpotch mix including a book of poetry when you didn’t think you liked poetry, a romance novel, a book about the French Revolution, a classic that you should have read but haven’t, a travel book about a destination you’ll never visit, and a children’s book you remember reading when you were younger.
Upstairs is solely dedicated to the children’s area. Robert has always been a huge supporter of getting children into reading, and while he’s still nattering away with the woman he’s serving, I go up and have a look around. It’s changed since I was last up here. It’s a long, narrow area, with white plastic bookshelves lining the walls, not as tall as the ones downstairs and more spaced out, with room for all manner of picture books to be displayed with their colourful covers facing outwards. There’s a set of tiny chairs and tables, on which are a stack of printed colouring-in pages and a selection of coloured pens and pencils, and at one end of the floor, there’s a polka dot rug with a load of brightly coloured beanbags around it, all in front of a huge Peter Pan mural covering one wall.
I feel the first little flitter of worry about what I’m getting myself into here. I don’t know the first thing about children or children’s books, and I have to remind myself that Robert is an eighty-year-old man and is probably not the target audience either, but he manages, probably because of everything he’s learnt since he started running this shop, and I can do that too. I can learn. To work in a place like this, to own a place like this is all I’ve ever wanted. Any amount of work I have to put in is worth it.
When I go back down the wooden stairs at the right-hand side of the shop, all the customers have gone and Robert is waiting for me. ‘Would you like to see the flat? If you’d rather stay where you are, you can rent it out for a little extra income. There’s access around the back as well as through here.’
I almost laugh at the idea of not living in it as I follow him between shelves and through a little office at the back. It’s sparse for an office, with a desk and chair, a computer that looks like it was technologically outdated in the Eighties, a few filing cabinets along one wall, and a cupboard under the stairs that’s obviously for storage because the door’s open and there are folded tables and display stands spilling out. He points me through a door that leads to a narrow staircase and hands me a bunch of keys on a key ring. ‘Pop up and have a look around so you know what you’re dealing with. I fear it may be smaller than you imagine.’