Dad tells us that the bookshop is destined to be demolished. I want to just fucking cry, and then I want to rewind to a month ago, and make a different decision. I’d give up my world ticket, I’d give up Amy, I realise, to have the shop back. I didn’t know what it would feel like. There’s a gap in me, a gap in the future.
I look into my future tonight, stare down the road of it, and I’m walking past a block of ugly high-rise, flats, and I’m telling my kids that there, right there, was the most beautiful building – the building where I grew up.
‘Where is it now?’ they ask, and I tell them I threw it away to be with a girl who didn’t like what I did for a living, a girl who was a little bit in love with someone else, a girl who only came back to me when she was lonely. In short, kids, your dad really fucked up. If Amy loves me then she has to love me working in a bookshop. I can’t believe I didn’t demand that before.
I can’t look at Dad tonight. I’m too ashamed. I’m too sad. I study the tablecloth, every inch of the pattern. I concentrate on the circles. I trace around them with my eyes, finding the end of one, and following it around to the other. It’s the same tablecloth that’s always been here. The whole restaurant has them. I’ve never noticed all the little circles before.
Rachel holds my hand, which is the only good thing about the dinner. I could get through quite a bit with her holding my hand, I think. She’s my best friend, poor or not. She’s my best friend, despite having seen me drool on pillows. She’s dragged me out of the girls’ toilets when I was wedged between a bowl and a sanitary disposal unit. She still wants to spend the last night of the world with me even though I ditched her the last time.
I try to look at the bigger picture. It’s not a choice between Amy and Rachel. Even if I can’t have Rachel as more than a friend, it occurs to me now, with extreme clarity, that I don’t want Amy. I don’t want to go overseas with her. I want to be here, with my family, helping them with the fallout of the sale.
The conversation turns from transmigration to 50 Shades of Grey, so I block my ears and close my eyes. Under my lids is a world without books. I look around for a while; feel the flatness of it, the general grey of the landscape – the rubble and bleakness of it. I choose to open my eyes.
I go to the bathroom to work out the speech I want to give, the thing I want to say to change our family back to what it was – basically what I’ve been thinking at the table, but a little more ordered.
I come back but everyone’s headed for the door.
‘I’m going home, to the bookshop,’ George says to Mum. She leaves with Martin. Dad walks in the opposite direction, despite me calling after him. I’m not sure where he’s going, but he’s going there with a purposeful stride. Mum’s giving Lola a lift to Laundry. She offers Rachel and me a lift too, but I kiss her on the cheek and tell her I’ll call later.
‘I know this was my fault,’ I tell her.
‘It’s not your fault, Henry. It’s no one’s fault.’
Rachel and I watch until she’s in her car, and then we start walking. ‘How could I have let this happen?’ I ask. ‘How could I not know how it would feel to lose the bookshop? I’ve got a great imagination.’ I say it over and over all the way to Laundry. I’m trying to make myself believe it. ‘Flats,’ I keep saying. ‘Flats.’
‘It’ll be okay,’ Rachel keeps saying.
‘How?’ I ask her when we’re standing in line, waiting to go inside. ‘How will it be okay? It is the end of the world. It is the actual end of the world.’
‘It’s not.’
‘You’re right. The end of the world would be better than this.’
‘Henry,’ she says, and out of nowhere. ‘I love you.’
And it’s a small spot of light in the darkness.
It’s brilliant, unbelievably brilliant. Life is still shit, but it’s great at the same time. Honesty and bravery are contagious, so I take Rachel’s hands. I’m shaking a little, which