The Bookshop on the Shore Read online

  Dedication

  For Deborah Schneider,

  who is brave, awesome and brilliant

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Part Four

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise for Jenny Colgan

  Also by Jenny Colgan

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  When I was very small, I read every single children’s book in the small section of our tiny local library (except for the big green book about reptiles and amphibians, of which I was terrified).

  I read books about calligraphy, about table tennis, about Brownies (I was a dreadful Brownie and hated it; I only ever got one badge – the reader’s badge, yes), books about how to become a spy, and about the Bible, as well as every single story book they had.

  I thought that was the point: you read, so you read every book in the world. When I got my adult card, aged thirteen, I lasted about half a shelf of Louis L’Amour before I realised that it probably wasn’t going to work out for me (although I got through a lot more Tom Clancy than you might expect in a teenage girl).

  So with that out of the way: hello, and thank you so much for choosing The Bookshop by the Shore – I know you have a lot of choices. I promise you, I know.

  This book isn’t a sequel to The Bookshop on the Corner or The Little Shop of Happy Ever After (depending on where you read it). Here is a funny story: authors don’t always choose the titles of their own books, it may surprise you to learn, and long titles were fashionable at the time we chose The Little Shop of Happy Ever After but I always found it a bit of a mouthful.

  Then my old American editor, whom I adore, said, ‘Well, I’m not sure about the UK title. Would you mind if we changed it?’ and I said, ‘Sure!’

  And he said, ‘What about The Bookshop on the Corner?’

  And I said, ‘Well, the thing is, it’s a travelling bookshop, so it’s not really on a corner, is it?’

  And he said, ‘So, I thought, you know, a bookshop that’s handy to you is what I liked about the title.’

  And so I said, ‘Okay, well, how about I park it on a corner,’ and he said, ‘Great,’ and that is why the only difference between the UK and US editions is the number of times the sentence ‘the van parked up on its usual corner’ appears.

  Anyway, this book isn’t a sequel, but it has a couple of the same characters: Nina and Surinder are here, but it’s Zoe’s story, entirely.

  It’s also a story too about how if you love books, well, then I always think you have a layer of protection against the world, which sounds strange, but that is what I truly believe.

  If you read, I think it means you don’t always have to take your own word for it. It means there are more heads to be in, more lives to be lived than simply your own. My son isn’t a big reader (nor a particularly precocious child) but I do remember when he read the Harry Potter series he came up to me and said, astonished, ‘It’s not like a film – it’s like actually being there, Mum.’ And I still believe reading is the best form of direct brain-to-brain communication humans have yet figured out, until Facebook makes us all have implants at least.

  Reading can be an escape – I like watching commuters particularly, unaware of the grey morning breath around them, rapt in Thomas Cromwell’s England or Michel Faber’s Martian worlds or George R. R. Martin’s wild eyries.

  In the last bookshop novel, I talked a bit about where and how I read, and lots of readers helpfully contributed their own ideas. One of the interesting things that came up was the line between ‘real books’ and books read on download and audio. Some people – not many – were hardliners, all ‘oh there’s nothing like a real book’. But what was interesting was how many more love the freedom of carrying a library on their phone or in their pockets, and what I notice more and more is people using their Kindles at a large font, taking away the need for reading glasses – how useful is that?

  They’re also easy for propping up in the gym and I take mine in the bath every day (I turn the pages with my nose) and haven’t dropped it in once, and trust me, nobody is clumsier than me. Also I love audio books as it means you can still be reading when your hands are busy trying to walk the dog.

  Although with download, I do slightly miss being able to spy on what other people are reading. I wish they’d put the title of the book you’re reading at the top of each page as well; I am constantly forgetting the titles I’m reading and then someone says to me ‘What are you reading right now?’ and I flail for a bit and they look at me as if to say ‘Oh, ri
ght, sorry, I thought you were a bookish person’ which is very, very annoying.

  Oh and I also got cross at a dinner once when this woman was going on and on about how she would never read on download, that there was nothing like a real book and – I promise I normally am never rude to people but she was being truly insufferable – I said, ‘Well, they’re really only for people who read a lot’ which was mean of me but quite satisfying also.

  So I think what I’m trying to say is: love whatever you read. Enrich your life with books, of any type. If you aren’t enjoying a book, try another – life is far too short.* I’m still trying to read every book in the world. You’re a reader. You understand.

  Love,

  Jenny

  xxx

  Part One

  ‘The view from up here is different,’ said Robert Carrier, extending his wing. ‘When you look at things the same way you’ve always done, nothing changes. When you change perspective, everything changes.’

  ‘But this doesn’t look like the city at all,’ said Wallace in amazement. ‘It’s all sky.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Robert Carrier, fixing his beady eyes on the slightly grubby boy. ‘There are many different types of sky.’

  From Up on the Rooftops

  Chapter One

  ‘So, tell me about the crying?’

  The woman sat, kind but formal, behind the tatty scuffed old NHS desk. A poster on the wall suggested a confusing acronym that you would have to remember if you thought you were having a stroke.

  The idea that you would have to remember an acronym while also having a stroke was making Zoe very anxious, even more than being there in the first place. There was a dirty Venetian blind just about covering a bunker window that only looked out onto another red brick wall, and coffee-stained rough carpet tiles.

  ‘Well, mostly Mondays,’ Zoe said, taking in the woman’s lovely shiny dark hair. Her own was long and dark too, but currently tied roughly with something she hoped was a hair tie and not, for example, an elastic band dropped by the postman. ‘And, you know. When the tube is late or I can’t get the buggy in the carriage. Or someone tuts because I’m trying to get the buggy in because if I don’t take the buggy I’ll be an hour late even though he’s too big for it and I know that, thanks, so you can probably stop with the judgemental looks.

  ‘Or when I’m caught up at work and I can count every minute of how much it’s going to cost me by the time I’ve picked him up and it makes the entire day’s work worthless. Or when I think maybe we’ll take the bus and we just arrive at the stop and he shuts the doors, even though he’s seen me, because he can’t be arsed with the buggy. Or when we run out of cheese and I can’t afford to get more. Have you seen the price of cheese? Or . . .’

  The woman smiled kindly while also looking slightly anxious.

  ‘I meant your son, Mrs O’Connell. When does he cry?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Zoe, startled.

  They both looked at the dark-haired little boy, who was cautiously playing with a farm set in the corner of the room. He looked up at them warily.

  ‘I . . . I didn’t realise,’ said Zoe, suddenly thinking she was about to cry again. Kind Dr Baqri pushed over the box of tissues she kept on the desk, which did the opposite of helping.

  ‘. . . and it’s “miss”,’ said Zoe, her voice wobbling. ‘Well, he’s fine . . . I mean, a few tears but he doesn’t . . .’ Now she knew she really was going to go. ‘He doesn’t . . . make a sound.’

  * * *

  At least, thought Zoe, after she’d cleaned herself up, slightly gone again, then pulled herself back from the brink as she realised to her horror that the NHS appointment they had waited so many months for was nearly up and she had spent most of it in tears and looking full of hope and despair at Dr Baqri, Hari now squirming cheerfully in her lap. At least Dr Baqri hadn’t said what people always said . . .

  ‘Einstein, you know . . .’ began Dr Baqri, and Zoe groaned internally. Here it came: ‘. . . didn’t talk till he was five.’

  Zoe half-smiled. ‘I know that, thanks,’ she said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Selective mutism . . . has he suffered any trauma?’

  Zoe bit her lip. God, she hoped not.

  ‘Well, his dad . . . comes and goes a bit,’ she said, and then slightly pleadingly, as if wanting the doctor to approve of her, added, ‘Th-that’s not unusual though, is it? You like seeing Daddy, don’t you?’

  At the mention of his father, Hari’s little face lit up as it always did, and he poked a chubby finger enquiringly into her cheek.

  ‘Soon,’ she said to him.

  ‘When’s the last time you saw him?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Um . . . three . . . six . . .’

  Zoe tried to think back. Jaz been gone all summer, truth be told. She constantly told herself to stop following his Instagram feed, but it was like a nasty addiction. He’d been to about four festivals. There were lots of shots of him in different multicoloured hats.

  ‘Well,’ said the doctor, who had played a sharing card game with Hari, taught him how to click his fingers, played peekaboo with him and got him to find things she’d hidden around the place, all of which the four-year-old had tried to do, nervously and constantly tearing back to clamber in his mummy’s lap, his dark eyes round and scared.

  ‘It’s a social anxiety disorder.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s very unusual –’ The doctor examined her notes. ‘ – for a child not to speak even to a parent. Is there anything about the home he finds unsettling?’

  They lived on the ground floor of a horrible Victorian conversion on a main road in Wembley. The pipes clanged; the upstairs neighbour often came home drunk and blared music deep into the night. Sometimes he brought friends home who would bang on the door and laugh loudly. Getting the money together for a deposit on a new place – not to mention paying the rent – was a pipe dream. The council had offered her a B&B which she thought might be even worse. Her mum couldn’t help – she’d moved to Spain years ago and was finding it more expensive day by day, eking out a pension in sterling and working in a horrible bar with pictures of fried eggs in the window.

  Also, since she’d accidentally got pregnant with Hari, Zoe had spent a lot of time pretending she was fine, that everything was okay to her family and friends. She couldn’t bear facing up to how serious everything really was. But it was having dramatic consequences.

  Dr Baqri saw Zoe’s face.

  ‘I’m not . . . I’m not blaming you.’

  Zoe’s lip started to wobble again.

  ‘You know,’ said Dr Baqri. ‘You seem well bonded. He’s timid, but I don’t think he’s traumatised. Sometimes – sometimes it really is just one of those things.’

  There was a very long pause.

  ‘That,’ said Zoe, in a low voice, ‘is about the nicest thing anyone’s said to me for ages.’

  ‘We normally start on a system of rewards for effort,’ said Dr Baqri, handing her wads of charts and lists of goals. ‘Nothing but encouragement, of course. Something nice for a whisper . . . a treat for a song.’

  Zoe blinked, trying to figure out where money for treats would come from when she was already terrified of what they’d do when it got too cold for Hari to wear his summer sandals every day.

  ‘We could try medication if this doesn’t work.’

  Zoe just stared at her. Drugging her beautiful boy. This was the end of the line – literally: it had taken them two hours to traipse across London on a boiling day to see a consultant-level speech therapist, the waiting list they’d been on having taken eight months to get them there.

  ‘Do you talk lots to him?’ said Dr Baqri.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Zoe said, finally glad there was something that didn’t appear to be her fault. ‘Yes! I do do that! All the time!’

  ‘Well, make sure you’re not talking too much. If you understand everything he needs and wants, there’s no motivation. And that’s what we need.’

>   Dr Baqri stood up. Seeing Zoe’s stricken face, she smiled.

  ‘I realise it’s hard that there’s not a magic bullet,’ she said, gathering up the booklets.

  Zoe felt the lump in her throat again.

  ‘It is,’ she said.

  It was.

  * * *

  Zoe tried to smile encouragingly at her little boy. But as she sat on those two crowded, noisy buses, schoolchildren shouting and screaming and watching videos loudly on their phones and kicking off, and too many people crammed on, and the bus moving painfully slowly, and Hari having to sit on her lap to make room for other people and giving her a dead leg, and trying to count up what it had cost, her missing another shift, and how her boss Xania was really at the end of her tether, because she kept taking time off, but she couldn’t lose this job – everything just seemed so overwhelming. And even when they finally got home, closing the grubby woodchip internal door behind them, Hari stumbling with tiredness, there was a letter lying on the mat in the post that was about to make everything substantially worse.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Who did you rent the barn out to? Can’t they help?’

  Surinder Mehta was sitting in the kitchen of her little house in Birmingham on the phone trying to give constructive advice to her friend Nina, who was doing that usual thing people do when you give them constructive advice – rebutting all of it point by point.

  Nina ran a mobile bookshop in the Highlands of Scotland. This was about to become temporarily tricky given that she had also fallen in love with a very attractive farmer, and it had been a particularly long, dark and cosy winter and frankly, these things happen. Up in Scotland, she stroked her large bump crossly. They hadn’t got round to putting it on the market.

  ‘They’re farmhands! They’re busy!’

  ‘There must be someone who can help. What about that girl who used to tidy up for you??’

  ‘Ainslee’s at college now. There’s just . . . Everyone around here already has three jobs. That’s what it’s like here. There’s just not enough people.’

  Nina looked out of the farm window. It was harvest and all hands were on deck. She could make out distant figures in the fields, bent low. The light was golden, the wind rippling through fields of barley. She’d been spared harvesting this year but was still going to have to cater for quite a lot And so she’d come back to the farm to make soup for everyone working late.