so I tell her about Dad. About how I feel like I’ve crushed him by voting to sell the shop. ‘He’s gone somewhere and it feels like I made him leave.’
‘I’m worried about your dad, too,’ she says. ‘But he’d be the first to tell you he’s not your responsibility. You made the right decision, Henry. I can’t talk more now, but I promise I’ll call you back, and I promise that this will all be fine.’
I hang up, and almost call her straight back to ask if we can slow things down with the sale, but then I turn around and see Amy.
She’s dressed in green, shoulders showing, pearls in the streetlight. It’s the dress she was wearing when she said she loved me for the first time, and seeing her in it transports me straight back to the moment.
I try not to look happy to see her, because we haven’t spoken since the night I was gaffer-taped to a pole. But I am happy to see her. I can’t help it, I’m really happy to see her.
‘I’m sorry about Greg,’ she says.
I’m about to say, ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine.’ But actually it’s not fine and we need to talk about this. ‘It’s been two weeks since you saw your boyfriend throw me in the car. You didn’t think to call before now?’
‘I wanted to,’ she says. ‘But Greg and I were breaking up.’
As soon as she says it, I forget I’m angry. She’s breaking up with The Dickhead. She looks through the bookshop window, and then motions for me to follow her down the street. I stay where I am for all of five seconds and then, as if I’m under some sort of spell, I follow.
‘I can’t do this anymore, Amy,’ I say. ‘You can’t push me around like this. I can’t keep waiting for you to come back to me.’
‘I won’t leave again,’ she says. ‘I’m sure this time.’
She sounds so sure.
‘You’re still selling?’ she asks, watching the people arrive for book club.
‘I’m pretty sure we’re finalising the deal any day.’
‘And you still have the ticket?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
People say hello on the way past and I say hello to them, all the while trying to look normal, when really I’m feeling anything but. The last few people walk inside, leaving us on the street alone again. The book club is starting and I should go back inside.
‘Kiss me,’ she says, and I do. I kiss her with renewed confidence, the confidence of a guy who’s found out that he is, in fact, a great kisser.
The kissing goes on for a long time. When we stop, we don’t have a lot to say, so we kiss some more. Time passes but I don’t feel it. Amy is back. The Dickhead is gone.
She leaves, and I head back inside, slightly dazed, but happy, until I see Rachel, and then I’m dazed and unsettled.
The book club is at the part where the group has finished the book under discussion, and they’re ready to start in on individual suggestions. Josie goes first. She started coming here about eight years ago, the first time to buy a copy of James and the Giant Peach. I was ten, a Roald Dahl expert, and Dad sent me over to the shelves with Josie to locate the book. We had a conversation about all of Dahl’s works, the most frightening of them being The Witches, and I remember her laughing as I checked out her feet. I told Josie that we had all of the books, and she told me it was all right, she just wanted this one. ‘But thank you.’
After she’d gone, Dad explained that she’d lost her son, and said it was nice of me to spend time with her. I remember feeling slightly guilty. I’d spent time with her because she knew every sentence of the Roald Dahl books. I wasn’t actually trying to be nice.
Josie’s book suggestion to the group tonight is When Things Come Back. She holds up the book to show the cover, and I realise she’s going to talk about her son dying. I start to warn Rachel, but she puts her fingers to her lips to make me quiet. When I’m not, because she needs to hear that this might upset her, she covers my mouth. I cover her ears without thinking. ‘What you doing?’ she whispers.
‘It’s about death,’ I whisper back.
‘It’s okay, Henry,’ she says, and pulls my hands away from her ears.
I pull