I don’t often recall in detail every time I am part of a family. I remember the big events: the wars, the births, the weddings, and the deaths. That is why I am here, after all, and I write everything down as faithfully as I can. Still, time marches on so quickly and I am happy to let it pass. Until I find the man who will make me decide that time has to slow down so I can stay.
One day I will meet the person who will make me feel. He will be strong and certain and perfect for me, and I will want to ascend to become human just to be with him.
And yes, I know it is a him. I’ve always known.
For the longest time, Joshua Blakeman stood unmoving on the path outside the shop. People walked around him, some tutted, some brushed past like he could be pushed out of the way. Not one person stopped and asked him if he was okay. He never expected them to. He was a strange man wrapped tight in a winter coat with a beanie covering his head and a scarf obscuring his mouth, and he was blocking their way to work.
Behind him the number fifteen bus wheezed its way to a stop, and some of the people who had shoved past him now fought to get places on the bus. Josh heard no cursing or arguing; everyone found a place silently. He knew what that was like. For the past seven years, he had used his messenger bag and puffed up his five ten to intimidate and bully his way to a space in the standing-room-only spot on the Underground trains. He’d become so good at it that with judicious use of his bulky bag, he could get from Baker Street to St Paul’s in under fifteen minutes.
But that was yesterday. That was a whole lot of yesterdays. Way before his breakdown. Way before everything went to shit and he ended up here standing and staring.
This was his life now, this small rat run between the Tube and the bus at St Paul’s. No one even knew it was here, or at least no one ever stopped. There was no Starbucks, no Costa, no newspaper sellers, no history of anyone famous living in the square. There was absolutely no reason at all for a commuter to take a moment to see what was in Horus Gardens. Tourists would sometimes wander into this place, this small silent square, and sometimes, very rarely, they stayed. The green was somewhere to sit in peace before the next stage of the day. They could be going to Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London, they might have tickets for the London Eye or a cruise on the Thames. They all had purpose, and all they left here in the square was litter.
“Fuck’s sake,” someone cursed in Josh’s face as they barrelled into him. They didn’t add anything, just moved away, leaving Josh with the scent of last night’s garlic and this morning’s deodorant and aftershave.
Josh wondered how near to a breakdown that person was. Were they weeks away, hours, or had they only just sold their souls to commerce and were still fresh as a newborn?
“Sorry,” he offered, even though the person had long gone.
He didn’t move, though. He just stared at the sign in front of him, the big letters CLOSED painted in scarlet on a board covering the door, and at the swirls of white that misted the windows.
In there was everything Josh didn’t want, and everything he needed.
“Jesus Christ,” a woman snapped as she swerved to avoid him. “Bloody immigrants.” She left the scent of Chanel and the insult was a new one. Idly, he glanced down at himself. He wore a Marks and Spencer overcoat, Levi’s jeans and leather boots, and the scarf wrapped around his head was cashmere, John Lewis’s finest design. Still, he was standing here like an idiot, and that meant he was instantly labelled as whatever kind of nuisance people could think of to lay on him.
“Sorry,” another man said as he caught Josh’s knee with his briefcase. The man clearly wasn’t sorry. Josh knew that dismissive and irritable tone of voice well. He’d used it enough himself.
Finally he stepped closer, just one small move, the keys a heavy weight in his pocket. Then another step. By some miracle no one else collided with him, before finally he reached the entrance of Chapter One and the recessed door. At least in this sheltered area, the ice didn’t force itself through the wool of his coat. Here there was silence and he wasn’t going to be in everyone’s way.
He pulled the keys from his pocket and worked his way through them to find the one marked FRONT. The neat capitals in his dad’s handwriting sent a chill through his heart that wasn’t entirely due to the late October winds. Fumbling at first, he finally managed to get the key in the lock and opened the door. The jingling tone of a silver bell announced his arrival, and he had to shove hard to push an accumulation of junk mail and letters aside. Some of them looked official, but he’d already sorted the bills due online and over the phone. All of the places who dealt with the book shop had a home contact address for Josh and his mum. He could worry about the mail later.
The rush of smells hit him, the staleness of an interior that hadn’t seen daylight in nearly a year and the scent of books sitting just as the day his dad had left them. The large space was filled with bookshelves but devoid of what had given it purpose and life—his dad, Andrew Blakeman. Grief knifed Josh hard, and he stood still as the weight of it pushed him down. At least this time he wasn’t a path-block as he stood utterly still.
The last time he’d been in there, his dad was behind the counter with his dark-framed glasses and his white gloves, and he’d been working on a new acquisition, repairing a binding so the book could be sold. Josh’s fingers twitched at the thought. He’d apprenticed with his dad for a few years, until the lure of computers dragged him away. He knew leather and panels and plates, and he could finesse his way through a discussion about gilting if he wasn’t pushed too hard with questions.
A box sat in front of the counter, piled with what looked like second-hand books, a copy of Marley & Me poking out the top. His dad always had people dropping boxes of books in, and Josh had never understood why his dad hadn’t just told them to take the boxes to a charity shop.
Because any book is precious and you never know what gem or family heirloom you may find in with the Grishams and the Kings.
Ten months since his dad had died and still the words were carved into his memory like it was yesterday.
His phone sounded in his pocket, and he stripped off his gloves and pulled it out. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t keep checking the damn thing, but even after this amount of time, he still hadn’t lost the conditioning to answer. The single word, Mum, on the screen had him nearly pocketing the damn thing again, but he couldn’t do that. She would want to know.
“Hi, Mum.”
“Joshua, sweetheart, did you make it there okay?”
Josh didn’t like to remind his mum he’d managed to get into the City safely for seven exhausting years and she hadn’t worried then. That would have earned him one of those patented Mum sighs of patience and a comment on how things had changed now. That was a can of worms he did not want to open again today.
“I’ve just got inside.”
“How does everything look? Is it okay?”
Josh checked around himself. Nothing had moved from the day his dad had died. Only he and his mum had keys, and no one else had been inside. Even the notebooks were open on the desk to orders, and a small pile of local newspapers talked about the wettest December since records began. Ten months, nearly eleven, and the place was still the same.
“It’s okay,” he summarised. “Dusty.”
“Thank you for doing this,” Mum said. “I know I’ve been in to see to the heating, but I couldn’t touch the books, his books, I just…not yet.”
“It’s fine, Mum. I’ll check the pipes, sort the post, and work my way through the list.”
“And Josh, don’t forget Phil asked for a second key. If Chapter One is sold he’ll need to let in agents and prospective purchasers.”
Josh swallowed his instinctive reply. No way in hell was he talking to Phil or giving him a key to this place. Uncle Phil, his dad’s brother, had shown an inordinate interest in this small property recently under the guise of supporting his sister-in-law. He said he only wanted to help, but Josh got a bad feeling about how much Phil was hanging around. Josh’s dad had left this place to his wife, and it would be Josh selling the shop and the inventory and making a new life for his mum. Not Uncle Moneygrubbing Phil. But the minute his mum said she wanted to sell, Phil had demanded she get in proper help.
Josh will do this for me. It will be good for us all.
Now was not the time to argue with his mum. “Okay,” he said instead.
“I hope this isn’t too much for you,” she said. The words were soft, and Josh wondered if she’d even meant to say them out loud.
“Mum, I’m fine. I’ll call you, okay?” He ended the call quickly and laid his phone on the counter. The shop was dark because of the wood nailed to the window frames, and keeping the door open for light was not going to work in this cold. He flicked a switch and the overhead lights came on. The bills were still being paid on the minimal electricity, the business rates, and water. The list was endless, especially for a business that sat idle and didn’t have a balancing income.
Cold from outside rushed in on a gust of October wind, and he pushed the door shut. Finally, when he’d turned up the heating, he was able to remove his coat and hat, then go in search of a kettle. The heating had been kept on low for the entire year, with his mum popping in every so often to check all was okay. Even now he wondered why she wasn’t there organising the stock. But she seemed to think it should be him, said he could use the time to consider what he was doing next.
And what the hell was it that he was doing next anyway? He’d never work for a financial institution again, and the thought of being one of those self-employed IT guys filled him with dread.
Focus.
He had no milk but black coffee was a possibility if there was any here. His dad had kept a small kitchen and offered browsers in the shop a choice of coffee—albeit instant—or tea. The small fridge was empty, thankfully. Josh had nightmares at the thought of what all this time would have done to any food or drink left in there.
There were sachets of coffee, and he allowed the old pipes to disgorge spluttering water at the sink until the stream was settled before he filled the kettle. With a black coffee warming him from the inside, he was more able to coherently catalogue his surroundings.
The place wasn’t damp, which was good. There was stock in there that could be rescued and sold. They wouldn’t get much for it, and a lot of the books would need to go to charity, but they could maybe recoup enough to cover the heating that would be needed to see this place through another winter.
The sign from outside the second-hand book shop lay forlorn on the floor, propped up between his dad’s small displays of periodicals and Chick Lit, and Josh crouched to inspect it. ‘Chapter One’ it read in antiquey cursive writing. It was a cool name for a book shop, even Josh had to admit that. The sign was rusting and was more than likely only fit for the garbage. He traced the metal C and moved the sign a little so that it wouldn’t press too hard into any stock that could be salvageable.
Maybe they could get something for the sign. A reclamation place or something? He’d seen stranger things happen on the TV. Someone might want it for their converted barn or some other arty farty shit he wasn’t aware of. The sign was as old as the business, and that was over a hundred years of old.
The wooden floors were dull, but a run-over with stain or something and they’d look good again. Josh added that to the list of things to do when all the bookshelves were removed. Talking of which… He examined the base of the nearest shelving system, wondering if the flooring had been put in before or after the shelves were built. The whole thing nearly reached the ceiling, but it appeared to be sitting on top of the wooden flooring, thank goodness. In fact, there was a small space under each bookshelf and a strong memory hit him.
Of him as a small boy and a Top Trumps car game and losing one of the Fiat cards under one of the behemoth units. And of his dad’s comforting voice telling him that there were plenty more game cards and that Josh should take fifty pence and go buy another set more from the newsagents next door. That singular grief hit him again. His dad had been so young to die. Only sixty-four, and with so much to look forward to.
“Everything will be okay…”
Josh looked up from the floor, startled at the words, then shook his head. There was no one there, and yet again his head was fucking with him. Voices. Now he was hearing voices. Something moved in the corner of his vision, and he stood up quickly, grabbing at shelving to steady himself. Darkness brushed over him, and he closed his eyes against the start of another headache. He was used to them now, and he waited for the pain, but there was none, only heat that made his cheeks flush and his hands tremble where they gripped the shelf for support.
This is new.
He waited until he was sure he could stand without support, then continued his investigation of the structure of the place. For the longest time, he leaned against the large oak door that led to next shop. When he was little, probably around the same time as the Top Trumps incident, he used to imagine the door led to Narnia, or somewhere else with just as many exciting adventures. As an adult he knew it was permanently locked but led to the shop on the other side. Whoever owned next door had likely bricked over it all by now, and Josh wasn’t sure why his dad and granddad had left the door this side in place. He traced some gouges in the wood. Old and worn and smooth, they formed initials and patterns that could be four hundred years old, dating back to when this row of houses and shops was first constructed in the higgledy-piggledy roads of an older London.
So much history in those marks.
Josh crossed to the cash desk and the seat behind it. Always best to find somewhere to sit so he didn’t end up on his back looking up at swirling lights, which was basically how he’d staged his dramatic exit from Swanage Brothers Investment Bank in the summer. Then again on the Tube. And again in the supermarket. Until finally they’d shoved him in a ward with wires and monitors and treated him to a lot of wagging fingers about his brain and work, with several added did he want to die like his dad?
Sitting there had him face to face with his dad’s last day. The notebook was more a diary, and one Josh was familiar with. In there was a small list, orders to dispatch, a phone number and the words “Jane Austen” next to them. Chapter One didn’t sell just books being published now, it had also had a healthy backlist of rare books that his dad delighted in finding and matching with new owners. One of the last conversations Josh had ever had with his dad was about a near perfect set of Jane Austen books that he’d found.
Josh made a mental note to check into that. Maybe Chapter One owed money somewhere, or books to someone. The notebook was as good a place to start. Taking the pen from next to the notebook, he turned the page and wrote a big TO DO at the top.
