The Bookshop of Second Chances Jackie Fraser (ebook reader macos .txt) 📖

you like. Plates. Frying pan. Some sort of’ – he gestures – ‘implement. I was going to make a tomato salad, so you could chop up tomatoes. I usually drag the table over to the barbecue. I’ll go and get dressed; won’t be a mo.’

He rubs his head briskly with the towel as he moves away. The dark hair on his legs and belly is uncurled by the water, pulled dead straight. It’s odd to see someone mostly naked, difficult to know where to look. Previously I’ve never seen his feet, or even his forearms. He has swimmers’ shoulders, broad and muscular in an understated way, and an unexpected scatter of freckles across his arms and chest. I try not to look at him, feeling embarrassed. I’d be deeply resentful if I was in a bathing suit myself and thought someone was thinking anything at all about my body. Jesus.

Eleven

Later, as we sit on the bench looking out over the bay, eating pan-fried mackerel and tomato salad, I ask him if he often brings people here in the summer.

‘People? No, hardly ever. Usually come by myself. Brought Rory and one of his mates down last year. We got very drunk.’

‘Gosh, really?’

‘Yes, tragic isn’t it. They could be my kids.’ He slices his fish into pieces and avoids my eye.

‘Well…’

‘Mm. Pretty tragic. Wasn’t the plan, but they brought some beer, and…’

I consider this. ‘Rory doesn’t seem like a drinker.’

‘But he’s young though, isn’t he? Even if you’re not a drinker, you can still drink a lot at eighteen. Or seventeen. More than I can, anyway. I was sick as a dog.’

‘So no drunken parties down here this year?’

‘I’m a solitary creature,’ he says. ‘Mostly.’

After lunch, we lie on blankets on the grass, shaded by the parasol. It’s unbelievably hot, and I’m drowsy. I feel my eyes close and my head nod.

‘Sleepy?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Have a nap. I’ll wake you in an hour. If you like.’

‘Seems a waste,’ I object, but I’m drifting.

When I wake up, I feel quite odd, uncertain of where I am, self-conscious in case I snored. My neck’s stiff and I blink unsteadily at the distant sea. Edward’s not beside me any longer. I sit up awkwardly and look round for him.

He comes out of the Shed. ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘there you are. Champagne?’ He hands me a tumbler. ‘Sorry, those are the only glasses I’ve got. Except pint glasses.’

‘I do usually drink champagne by the pint.’

He laughs. ‘Oh yeah?’

I stretch, shifting on the blanket. ‘Thanks. God it’s warm.’ I raise my glass to him and then sip my champagne. ‘This is the life though.’

He grins at me. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘It’s just lovely; you’re very lucky.’

‘Hm. Am I? I suppose I am.’ He looks away, closed off again, I wish he wasn’t so touchy. Never quite himself, always… It isn’t that he’s awkward, exactly, or I don’t think it’s that anyway. There’s just something strange about him, an indefinable tension.

He sighs. ‘We used to come down most weekends in the summer, when I was a kid. I always thought my father was most able to be himself down here. At the house, it’s a bit more formal.’

I raise my eyebrows, amused. ‘A bit.’

‘And it was worse, of course, in those days. My grandfather was a formal sort of chap. He died when I was eight. I imagine he ran things the way his father had and so on, or tried to, although we were down to three staff by then. My father was more of a free spirit. Sort of. He was drinking a lot, then. They used to fight.’

I watch him. This is a lot more than he’s ever told me before.

‘Once my father inherited the title, it was as though he’d been taken over by the’ – he pauses, pulling up grass – ‘weight of history, or something. He stopped drinking, but by the time I was fifteen we were having almost exactly the same fights I’d listened to as a child.’

‘That’s quite depressing.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, it was.’

‘And, um – how old were you, then, when he died?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘And you…’

‘I’d already decided I was going to give it up, when I was still at university. He went predictably nuts, when I told him.’

‘But surely,’ I say, ‘I mean, your brother–’

‘I can’t imagine how much more furious he’d have been if I was an only child. Or, God forbid, Charles had been a girl. It would probably have killed him.’

I think about this. ‘Well, but Charles isn’t a girl, and you weren’t an only child, and it didn’t kill him.’

‘No. And I know it was the right thing to do. But he wouldn’t even try to understand it. Never forgave me.’

‘Does that… Is that a thing that worries you?’

He flicks grass off the rug. ‘No. Sort of. Sometimes. Mostly not.’

‘I suppose it’s only to be expected, that you might feel ambivalent about it. But you don’t miss the house? Or regret not being, you know, Lord Thing?’

‘Jesus, no. No.’

‘There you are then. You can’t please everyone, and parents are weird. And even parents without any history are peculiar, so…’

He frowns at me. ‘What are your parents like?’

‘Oh, well, they’re okay. They potter, you know; retired. Although they’re not pottering at the moment, the mad bastards. They’re halfway through a trip round the world. I think they’re in Cambodia. Or Laos.’ I shake my head at the idea of it.

‘Are they? Shit, you never tell me anything, do you?’

I grin at him. ‘Sorry, boss. Anyway. I don’t think they ever had any particular expectations of me, so I haven’t been able to let them down too much.’ I smile to show I’m joking, although I don’t know if I am, really.

‘There’s just you? Or have you got brothers and sisters?’

‘No, there’s just me.’

‘And your dad’s from up here?’

‘Not really. Grandad moved to Birmingham before the war, and then down to Chichester, that’s where he met my grandmother. He was an engineer,’ I add. ‘He