kings and toads. You know, the usual fairy tales.’
Sophie was only half-listening, as she was scrolling through her phone, looking on Amazon for the book, but it was clearly long out of print.
She sighed, then jumped up and kissed her gran on the cheek. ‘I’ve got to go, Gran.’
Bessy looked shocked. ‘What about your sandwich and scone?’
‘Sorry, Gran, it’s my first day back, and I have already been gone a long time.’
‘I’ll put them in a bag for you.’ She grabbed a bread bag, complete with breadcrumbs still in the bottom, and shoved a buttered scone and the sandwich into it. She also pulled out a packet of crisps and handed them to her granddaughter as she followed her down the hallway. ‘Promise me you’ll eat it all.’
‘Yes, Gran. Whatever you say.’
‘I’ll be feeling those hips when you come around again. Make sure there’s something on them.’
Sophie couldn’t help but smile.
Making her way hastily back to the Tube, Sophie felt light. This letter was the key to the whole story. Vivienne had been telling the children something relating to the story about the swallows. But what was it? It was so important she’d shouted it out at her execution. Maybe she’d wanted to remind Marcus of the same story.
Sophie knew more than anything she needed to find that book, and she knew exactly where to go for it.
41
On her way home from work that night, Sophie stopped off at her favourite second-hand bookshop, squeezed down an alley from a modern shopping high street. Arcadia was a cavern housing every kind of book. It was a place she loved to come to escape. Old-fashioned bevelled windows hinted at its roots as a pharmacy years before, with two stone steps and a small wooden door that even she had to stoop to get inside.
But once she was there, she was greeted with everything that gave her joy. Rows and rows of books from floor to ceiling on dark mahogany shelves and even more stacked on the floor in careful piles. And the bookshop owner, a Mr Kersley, was living his dream. He’d retired from academia ten years before, and now it was his greatest joy to bring the classics back to the masses. You wouldn’t be able to find the latest edition of a top-selling paperback, but if you needed to understand Greek mythology or the structures of Rome’s hierarchy during the twelfth century, then this was your place.
It was kept as silent as a library, which Sophie loved, with a number of haphazard but comfortable chairs placed throughout the shop for patrons to enjoy with a cup of coffee that Mr Kersley’s wife, Beryl, liked to prepare for her customers. Sophie was a regular.
‘Hi there, Sophie,’ called out Beryl as Sophie stepped down into the shop. ‘Would you like your usual?’
‘That would be wonderful,’ responded Sophie as she allowed the ambiance of the ancient books and the world below their covers to welcome her in. The smell of coffee, leather and oak embraced her as always.
Mr Kersley always wore a shirt and a woollen cardigan, but each day a different-coloured bow tie. He looked up from his heavyset glasses that were a throwback to Michael Caine in the 1970s, and his smile did nothing to move the heavy wrinkles on his brow. He took off his glasses and beamed.
‘Well, if it isn’t my favourite city lawyer. Are you looking for more books about the Blitz? I’ve got an interesting stack in about the Houses of Parliament, and not just about the Guy Fawkes plot to blow it up, but something much more fun. Are you game?’
Sophie smiled. ‘I might be. Though I’m actually on the lookout for something completely different.’
‘Ah,’ he said, walking from behind his counter to meet her. ‘Pray tell?’
‘Well, it’s a book that’s out of print, I believe.’
‘That’s not a problem for us.’
‘I think it’s a story about fables. A relative of mine owned it during the war, so I’m guessing it was written a while before that. But there’s one story, the story the book is named after, I think it may be called “The Call of the Swallows”.’
He knitted his heavy brow and chewed on the corner of his spectacles as he contemplated the name. ‘“Call of the Swallows”,’ he said deliberately. ‘I have a recollection of a book with that name. Give me a moment.’
He went back to his desk and looked through the shop’s inventory on his computer.