‘I can lend you a jumper,’ Emily offered, glancing doubtfully at Kate’s outfit, and producing from beneath the counter a hoodie that had seen a lifetime of better days. Kate made no complaint as she pulled it on over her dress, distracted by a ribbon of memory, tangled around so many others; this was Emily’s hangover jumper. Adding a pair of fingerless gloves to the outfit brought further relief, and she cared not for the lack of sartorial elegance; the chill inside the barn was of old, neglected stone.
The jumper looked every bit as incongruous as Emily had feared, but Kate only tossed her head, struck a funny pose and made them both laugh. And the jumper was an invisible thread between them, bringing them snapping back together. The memories surged, unfettered, like moths shaken free from the fabric.
Laughter was the overriding memory. Laughing long and loud and often, in a succession of crumbling student flats. Wine-nights in vibrantly painted kitchens amongst the detritus of a thrown together meal, and lazy weekend mornings watching old films on the sofa, beneath Kate’s duvet because they so often couldn’t afford to turn the heating on. Boys came and went and other friends hovered on the periphery. But always Emily and Kate. Together. A unit.
Since the first days at South Morningside Primary School. A playground that resonated with the cries of major victories and minor conflicts, with melodies of skipping rhymes and football feuds and the brutal games of tig – a place of conquest, chieftains and queen bees and imperative allegiances; of friendships forged that might eventually wither, and one day die.
Or else last a lifetime.
The jury was still out on whether Kate and Emily’s friendship would stand the test of time – for a while both had been doubtful they’d ever see each other again – but here Kate was, which was a good start. They would need all the laughter they could muster to undertake this venture together, to repair what was broken – the barn with its rotting timbers and decaying books, and their friendship. Every word, every smile, every girlish giggle so reminiscent of old times, broke through the barricade and began the painstaking process of shoring things up.
‘You could offer the customers jumpers to keep them warm,’ Kate said, only half joking, plucking at the sleeve of the threadbare hoodie. ‘Keep them in a basket by the door.’
Emily’s tone was gloom-laden. ‘That presupposes there will be any customers.’ Kate looked stern at that and Emily quickly smoothed over her doubts with a paper-thin, unconvincing smile. ‘Cup of tea?’ she offered brightly.
Ah, the Emily of old, thought Kate, healing all the ills of the world with tea. And when tea failed: Merlot. ‘Sure. Is there electricity?’ Again, only half in jest. She was quickly realigning her ideas of this bookshop; the cheerful images that had sustained her across the ocean were fading now. This was not a bountiful business yet: nowhere near. It was not even a germ of one; it was just four walls and a roof and piles of books, and Emily so weighed down by the last few years that all the hope and verve had been squeezed out of her. Emily, who had been the schemer, the imaginative one, who had masterminded all their games and commanded Kate and the brothers to her will during Solway summers past.
Emily drew herself up with all the dignity she could manage. ‘Yes. No need to look so surprised. No coffee, I’m afraid. But come and look around.’ Walking Kate around the small shop, she visibly swelled with pride, a queen in her domain. For all its faults, every stone and timber of the shop was her own and she loved it. ‘The electrics are actually not bad,’ Emily said, leading Kate through a little door at the rear of the shop. ‘The lights flicker occasionally, but … look, there’s a kitchen here and a toilet through the back, and some outbuildings where we can keep the spare stock.’
The use of the word ‘we’ did not go unnoticed, but hovered in the air between them, somehow tangible and reassuring. The brightening of Emily’s tone cheered Kate.
She peered through the postage-stamp window, coated with decades of dirt, and nodded, enjoying Emily’s enthusiasm. Her arrival, she realised, had stoked Emily’s fire, released little tendrils of optimism that flared from her like smoke – shades of the little girl with grand schemes who had learned her obstinacy at her grandmother’s knee. But, at the same time, Kate could also see how fragile Emily’s confidence was, how very breakable her friend had become.
They stood in the cupboard-sized kitchen, which boasted a small sink, a cracked countertop and a merrily bubbling kettle, and stared at each other, breaking into foolish, incredulous grins and feeling just as shy and unsure as that first day in the school playground, when Emily had shared her crisps for no better reason than that Kate didn’t have any – and Emily had known instinctively that this wasn’t an oversight but a matter of course.
Back then, Emily and the Cottons were all twelve-year-old Kate had to cling to; they had become her life raft in the maelstrom of her mother’s depression and drinking. Lily Vincent had succumbed to her demons before Kate was born and even a small daughter dependent on her hadn’t been enough to drag her out of the slough of despair she found herself in. Kate had learned to survive, relying on her wits and a sense that there was some other life, just waiting to be uncovered. That she had managed to do more than simply survive – had crafted a new life for herself and dared to dream of a future in which she could achieve something – was entirely down to the Cotton family.
Emily laid out a box of tea bags, two cracked mugs and some sour-smelling milk – they opted to drink the tea black. Wrapping their hands around the mugs, they wandered back through the shop, their thoughts unconsciously unspooling in perfect harmony. The moment had a vibration, shared thoughts humming between them. This is awkward. This is brilliant! Why didn’t we do this before? And, Why are we doing this now?
They exchanged shy sidelong glances. Emily weighed her words, a furrow between her brows as she considered how to broach the question. Why had Kate come? She must surely have left so much behind in New York: a career, boyfriend, friends – all abandoned for a cold, damp summer in Wigtown, renovating a dilapidated bookshop with an erstwhile former friend who probably didn’t deserve her sacrifice. ‘I had no right to expect you would come,’ Emily said finally, struggling with the enormity of her gratitude. ‘Or even to ask it of you.’
Kate sipped her tea and looked at her levelly. ‘You had every right to ask it, and expect it too. You’re my best friend.’
‘Still? After all this time?’
‘Time makes no difference, Em.’
Emily’s grey eyes were trembling with a mix of hope and doubt, the intensity of her gaze unnerving beneath heavy brows. ‘Doesn’t it?’
The look – the hope – was too much for Kate. Time was not the problem, but rather the nature of their parting; immediately after university, Emily running off with gorgeous, unreliable Joe, quite determined to make a life with him in spite of her family’s objections; and Kate, tired of fighting Emily on the subject, still heart-sore over her own lost love and desperate to put as many miles between her and her mother as possible. She stuck a pin in a map and came up with New York. It seemed glossy and glamorous, ambiguous, anonymous: the ideal stage for her reinvention.
Time mattered only in as much as all the moments lost, and all the things they hadn’t said.
Kate knew what she needed to say to mend the moment, what Emily needed to hear. ‘Not to us.’ Her words were emphatic and brooked no argument. They’d work the rest out later.
She set down her lipstick-printed mug on a nearby table and her boots rang on the flagstones as she made yet another loop of the shop.
Completing her circuit, she paused, lips compressed in contemplation as her plans began to form, spider-webbing in her mind. She had flown through the night, navigated airport queues and driven for hours in a rented car for this. She had had next to no sleep, but she barely felt tired at all now. When she turned back to Emily, her eyes were bright. ‘It’s going to be great,’ she enthused. ‘We’ll start with a good