But Ruth knew that, soon enough, Penny’s customer service Spidey-senses would kick in.
Sure enough, a moment later, Penny looked up. Her smile was bright and welcoming—an automatic reflex that faltered as soon as she saw Ruth.
Just keep going. One foot in front of the other.
Ruth plastered a polite smile onto her face as she approached. “Hi, Penny,” she said quietly.
There was a pause. A pause in which Ruth worried that this arguably reckless decision was going to backfire awfully. She became acutely aware of the pressure of eyes on her, all around her—from the old Hykeham sisters by the audiobook section to Tim Mosely, fluttering his paper loudly by the window.
But Ruth focused on Penny. And so, she saw the exact moment when Penny’s shock dissolved into… pleasure?
“Ruth Kabbah!” she cried. Except Penny was more soft-spoken than anyone Ruth had ever met, and so her cry was at the level of the average person’s murmur. “Fancy seeing you,” Penny continued, her round face splitting into a smile.
She flicked off the brake on her chair and began wheeling around the counter. Ruth, moving as if in a dream, found herself bending to accept her old mentor’s hug.
“I haven’t seen you in an age,” Penny said. She kept a grip on Ruth’s arm even after they separated, her grasp firm and motherly. “Where on earth have you been?”
“Nowhere,” Ruth said, honestly enough.
“I suppose not! My Norm said he was round just the other day, seeing to your shower. I said, ‘Did you tell her?’ I’m always asking after you, I am. He says—”
Penny, like her husband, was a talkative woman. Despite being quiet, she said a lot. She couldn’t exactly be called a gossip, because she wasn’t ever malicious; rather, her mouth often ran away with her. Ruth let the reported conversation wash over her in soothing waves.
When a lull finally arose, she dredged up the words she’d practiced. “Penny, I wanted to talk to you about…” She cleared her throat. “About volunteering. Again. I don’t know if you need anyone—”
“Ooh, yes,” Penny beamed. “Of course we do! You know we always need volunteers, especially since you girls, ah, left.” Her beaky nose wrinkled. “Nasty business, that.”
For a second, Ruth’s heart stopped and her sisterly hackles rose, but then Penny added, “The bloody council, so old-fashioned. We could’ve had a qualified nursery nurse running Toddler Time! But nooo, five minutes behind bars and all of a sudden she’s useless.”
Ruth didn’t bother to correct the behind bars comment, or to point out that the council had no control over the law. Truthfully, she couldn’t exactly speak. So she hummed agreeably instead.
Penny tutted as she returned to the desk, pulling open a deep drawer. She heaved out a huge file and rifled through its alphabetised sections until she found the correct form. “Here you are, my love. You know how to fill it out.”
Ruth stared. She hadn’t expected… well, she didn’t know what she’d expected. She’d vacillated between envisioning a warm welcome and a complete freeze-out, caught between her knowledge of Penny’s character and her soul-deep certainty that no-one would want to oppose the collective opinion of Ravenswood.
She’d begun to suspect, recently, that her certainty in these matters was… well, wrong. And here, she supposed, was the evidence.
As she filled in the application form, Ruth considered the wild possibility that Penny might be utterly oblivious to the town’s general attitude. She checked boxes and signed dates and thought that maybe the last two years had simply passed Penny by.
But when she returned to the front desk to hand in the form—which, amongst other things, confirmed her consent to undergo a legal background check—Penny leaned forward.
Her voice even lower than usual, she said, “I’m glad you’re back, Ruthie. Me and the girls missed you. Bugger what anyone else has to say.”
Ruth blinked back unexpected tears. They had snuck up on her, and now they were close to breaking free in the middle of the town library. Good Lord. How absolutely mortifying.
She shoved them down ruthlessly and murmured, “Thanks.”
“Oh, you’re welcome, love. You’ll hear back about that DBS check.”
Ruth nodded, sobering. She’d pass the DBS check, and soon enough, she’d be volunteering again. Introducing the town’s kids to comics and fantasy novels the way she’d used to. But Hannah, whose entire life had revolved around working with kids, wouldn’t be able to.
Some problems could be fixed. Others couldn’t.
30
Ruth wandered around town aimlessly. She could’ve gone somewhere—the Greengage, maybe—but it had been a while since she’d walked