talking about something else.’
‘This is the problem,’ she says.
‘With us?’
‘With everything. No one’s saying what they want.’
‘I don’t know what I want.’
‘You must know what you want or you wouldn’t want to talk about it while you pretended we’re talking about something else.’
‘Amy’ll come back,’ I say. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘She’ll definitely come back,’ Lola says, and flicks her eyes at the letter. ‘But maybe Henry does something different this time.’
I drive Martin home and lift the talking ban because I like Martin but also because he and Henry have become friends, and I’m wondering if they talk about Amy or me. I can’t ask him directly, but I’m hoping he’ll spill something by accident.
We discuss the cataloguing at first. Martin’s finding things in books too, but not like I am. He’s finding things people leave by mistake, the accidental histories of people.
Mostly, we talk about George on the way home this afternoon. He fills me in on what happened after the party, how they made up and then he blew it by telling her she had a problem. He’s been buying her coffee all week as an apology, and today he made progress. He does this double punch in the air that reminds me of Cal. ‘She smiled at me today when I handed over the coffee, so I asked her if maybe she wanted to meet up tonight and she said yes. We’re going out later. Just as friends, of course.’
‘Of course,’ I say.
He looks so excited that I feel like I should say something to him. If it were Cal sitting next to me, about to go out ‘as friends’ with a girl he really liked, I’d tell him to be careful. I don’t tell Martin that, though. It’s not like I’m being careful about my feelings for Henry.
I’m smiling when I walk into the restaurant, an Italian place not far from the warehouse. I’m looking forward to seeing Rose. She’s been working all week, and we’ve hardly had a chance to talk. I’m looking forward to seeing Henry. I liked helping Martin. I’m thinking about garlic bread and smiling even more when I see Mum sitting at the table with Rose.
‘Surprise! I missed you so much that I took the day off school,’ she says, in a voice that sounds falsely cheerful.
When I kiss her on the cheek, she tells me I smell nice. I feel guilty for finding the energy to use make-up and Rose’s perfume this morning.
‘You look happy,’ Mum says.
‘I had a good day,’ I tell her, and she smiles and says she’s glad. It feels as though she’s not glad, though, but I wonder if I’m imagining it. I reach for the bread and offer it around and Rose fills in the quiet that comes after by saying she’s heard great things about this restaurant.
‘Excuse me,’ Mum says quietly before she goes outside to have a cigarette.
‘She’s mad at me,’ I say to Rose, and she looks genuinely surprised.
‘Why would she be mad? You’re all she’s talked about since she arrived. But she made the mistake of meeting me at the ER.’
I look at her through the window and wonder if I will ever just go forwards, past all this, to being happy. I wonder if we go back again and again all our lives. Everything about her is different since Cal died. She was lean and strong before, muscles carved by the water.
‘Does it bother you?’ I ask Rose. ‘Don’t you think about Cal all day long, with the machines beeping and the people dying?’
‘I don’t think about Cal there, no.’
‘So you get used to it?’ I say. ‘Used to death?’
She pours a glass of wine. ‘I guess it’s that no two deaths are the same. It’d be terrible if they were.’
Rose changes the subject by quizzing me about the bookstore. I focus on her questions so I don’t stare at Mum after she comes back to the table. I tell them about the Letter Library and how Michael wants me to catalogue it before they sell.
‘It’ll go quick,’ Mum says, and Rose agrees the building is fantastic, and Mum shakes her head and says, ‘They won’t keep the building. They’ll knock it down to build flats. All around here flats are going up. Behind you at the warehouse, there’s another lot.’
It’s not Mum’s fault that the plan might be to demolish the shop. She’s right about the flats. But now I can’t stop thinking about the bookstore knocked down and gone.