For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

and the girl was largely ignored – treatment she would gladly choose over the alternative.

She did miss the bond she’d shared with her mother. Although never vocalised, it had often felt as if they were just two friends stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her last memory of any meaningful time spent with Sylvia Wakefield was, of all things, an improvised driving lesson. It had to happen whilst Thomas was out of town since, her mother had explained, his finding out she was being taught a ‘man’s skill’ would have ended regrettably.

Was there anything unusual about a little girl’s heavily pregnant mother teaching her to drive in secret? Sure, but the urgency of the lesson didn’t need spelt out. From the late-night shouting, the girl knew of the responsibility resting upon the shoulders of their unborn child; more than anything in the world, Thomas Wakefield wanted a son. Certainly not another failed attempt, as he considered the girl. He wanted a damned SON. An ultrasound was out of the question (blasphemous as he considered them) so it was a matter of waiting for nature to reveal whether or not Sylvia had failed her husband once again – and for the final time, the woman feared. The rage that swelled from his every pore at the mention of another girl filled Sylvia with the belief Thomas may be capable of anything in the event of such a failure, a belief strong enough to warrant the extreme measure of providing her daughter with an emergency escape.

Thankfully, it hadn’t been needed. Noah had arrived – a boy, praise be – and, although the girl saw the little weasel for what he really was, she understood that she really did owe him everything. Yes, the atmosphere in the house had calmed, but more importantly he had been the driving force in her pursuit of writing.

Noah was a wonder child in the eyes of his parents. The abounding praise for the boy was always juxtaposed with regular vocalisations of her father’s contempt for Renata. (‘There’s something wrong with that girl. She’s never been right. Do you see now why I wanted a boy?’) It was this incessant scorn (‘You’re a leech on this family, child. A parasite.’) that had pushed her reading even further, not only as an attempt to correct her ‘inferior intellect’, but also as an escape.

An emergency escape, just like the driving lessons.

The writing had spawned naturally from her obsessive reading, and it was all because of that little worm of a brother. The girl, now sitting at her makeshift writing desk in front of a blank sheet of paper, wonders if the stupid worms he’ll dig up with his new spade will recognise him as one of their own. The girl giggles at the thought.

One day, months from now, she’ll find fear in a place she thought there was none: the pages of a book. Then the giggling will stop.

Soon, sitting in this clock tower, the girl will be changed forever.

Every day after school the girl stops at Harper’s Books, where she’s welcomed like royalty.

‘Ah, young Wakefield! Make way for the good lady!’ Mr Harper would announce. Despite her embarrassment, she was as yet unable to restrain a grin at this display, and so the announcements would continue. The presence of any other customers would have amplified the girl’s embarrassment. Luckily, there were few.

The deal was that the girl could borrow any books that caught her eye, so long as they were returned in perfect condition. It was, of course, mostly the romance section that won her attention, which would lead her through the pages of Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, E. M. Forster, and, having completed the classics, onto the contemporary work of Natasha Peters, Rosemary Rogers, and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Although she hungered mostly for stories of love, she’d make occasional forays to the adventure or even crime and mystery sections, these excursions becoming increasingly frequent once she’d worked through the romance section several times over.

The light, playful tone Mr Harper presented masked his awe at the rate with which the vicar’s daughter was tearing through the shelves of his shop. True to her word, the books were returned as she’d found them. Not that the books were good as new to begin with. Following the death of his wife, Mr Harper had made an obsession of reading. He’d acquired boxes of novels from every dealer in the surrounding area, and having read them all, opened the shop as a means of passing the books onto anyone that would benefit. He’d even had wooden crates made up for customers to borrow, with the words Harper’s Books stencilled on their sides. They’d need them for the stacks of books they’d be buying. He and his wife were – bloody hell, ‘he’, just ‘he’ now – financially comfortable following the lucrative combination of relentless saving and no children. He didn’t need the shop to live, but he did need to pass on the books. Why? Well, not every question needs an answer.

Mr Harper was not a religious man – a rarity in this town. He stopped attending service after his wife passed, much to the disapproval of the townsfolk. (‘MEANING! You need MEANING in your life!’ Mrs Lazenby had implored. ‘Don’t you want to know what it’s all ABOUT, Mr Harper?’) He remembered enough about Mr Wakefield, however, to fear the vicar’s discovery that he’d supplied his daughter, Renata, with ‘blasphemous’ works such as Sense and Sensibility or Great Expectations. But what he saw in the girl’s eyes upon completion of a book was the same thing he’d seen in the mirror in the midst of his grieving, deep in the solace these infinite pages had afforded him: peace. And as Mrs Lazenby had rattled on about that profound MEANING he was missing, and about the REASON for being here, as well as the REASON for