The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser (e books for reading txt) 📗

He shakes his head. ‘I never post anything.’

‘I know. I could look after that. I’m quite good at social media; I used to run the Twitter account at the last place I worked. We had fifteen thousand followers.’

He sighs again. ‘I run a bookshop to avoid all this.’

‘I know. But you can still avoid it; let me look after it. Do you do events?’

Now he looks wary. ‘Like what?’

‘Well, I know there’s a new books section. So do you ever have authors for signings? Or readings?’

‘I never have done. I’m not good with people. You may have noticed.’

I ignore this. ‘No, but would you? I mean, say we could get Amy Liptrot or someone.’

‘I’d very much like to meet her,’ he says, briefly animated.

‘Yes, she’s nice and tall, isn’t she?’ I nod, approvingly. ‘And she sounds really interesting. But anyway, say she was doing stuff at Wigtown, for the Festival, or something, we could ask.’ I get my phone out. ‘The shop definitely needs a Twitter account. Can I set one up? And Instagram?’

‘What, and take photos of our sandwiches every day?’ he says, amused.

‘It’s not just for lunch pics.’ I tut, although I think that could be a cool gimmick, perhaps. Booksellers’ lunches. ‘I could take pictures of beautiful or rare books. And if we do any mending or whatever.’

‘I didn’t expect you to be so keen,’ he says. He frowns at me. ‘It’s disconcerting.’

‘Young people are great, but you can’t expect Rory to have a marketing brain, can you, however tech savvy he might be. But I’ve done a bit of marketing and there’s loads you can do nowadays that doesn’t cost anything. I don’t suppose you have a budget for marketing?’

‘You suppose correctly.’

‘Okay, I bet I can still make a difference. Increase turnover. I’m not saying by loads. But a bit.’

He’s amused, a half-smile curving. ‘We’ll see.’

Eight

When I’m not at work, I’m exploring. Every Sunday, even if it’s raining, I determinedly go out for the day, or half the day. I’ve been to Whithorn Priory, Caerlaverock Castle and poked around Castle Douglas and Newton Stewart. I’ve looked at ruined tower houses and stone circles and driven up the narrow track to Cairn Holy, a famously dramatic burial chamber. There’s no point being up here if I don’t see the sights, is there?

One unusually sunny day I drive to Drumtroddan Farm to look at the cup-and-ring marks, carved into slabs of rock five thousand years ago.

It’s quiet. Farms are strange places, either furiously busy or not, and during the day even on a big farm you’ll often see no one, and no animals, just empty buildings and rusty collections of stuff, mud and whitewash, complex arrangements of gates and fences, great bales of mysterious wire, looping twirls of pipes. As I follow the signs through the farmyard, I wonder whether they’re annoyed or pleased to have these famous carvings on their land.

I park by the big NO DOGS sign and put fifty pence in the box on the wall with its painted message – Donations Welcome. I don’t imagine they make much from the visitors, even if everyone pays, which they probably don’t. I wonder if they get a grant for taking care of the stones. Or is it just an annoyance, wear and tear on their tracks and footpaths, a whole field you can’t use for cows unless they’re friendly? I wonder all of this, but there’s no one to ask. I open a five-bar gate and close it carefully behind me, and then another, and finally a third lets me into the field. The ground is rough and uneven beneath a shaggy coat of lush green grass. The stones are at the far end, enclosed in black-painted iron railings, rusty in places, with creaking kissing gates. They don’t surround the slabs of rock generously – rather they’re tightly arranged to corral as many carvings into one place as possible. Inside the enclosure, the grass is shorter, nibbled by rabbits; there are daisies and buttercups and harebells.

The breeze has dropped and the view back to the farm is all green grass, blue sky and the red mass of the new barn and the old farm buildings huddled on the horizon. I can hear a distant tractor and rooks calling in the stand of trees to the east. The outcrop surfaces in three or four places, exposing wide expanses of lichened grey rock, carved with a startling array of rings and spirals and the scooped dishes of the cup marks. I sit down on a natural shelf and lean to trace the whirls and dips with my fingers. It’s rather impressive and pleasing. No one knows what they mean, these markings, but they must have taken some effort – they’re not just the scrawl of a moment.

At work the following day I browse Local History and ask Edward if I can scan some lovely line drawings of the rock art.

‘Have the book,’ he says, looking up to see what I’m doing.

‘It says it’s a tenner,’ I object.

He waves his hand. ‘Whatever. You can have it. There are lots of inscribed rocks round here. Have you seen any?’

‘I went to Drumtroddan yesterday.’

‘Oh yes, those are the best-known ones. There are some at Hollinshaw,’ he adds. ‘In the park.’

‘Are there?’

‘Mm. I could show you on a map, hang on. If you’re interested?’

‘That would be great.’

He comes round from behind the desk and begins to look through the maps in the Cartographic section. We have dozens of pink Ordnance Survey Landranger sheet maps for all over the country, various editions, and orange Explorers. He wrestles with number 83 and then leans to pore over it. ‘Here,’ he says, jabbing with his finger. ‘This is your house–’

‘I’ll never get tired of seeing my actual house on a map.’

‘And this is the Drive, see the old castle was here–’

‘Was there a castle? Gosh.’

‘At Hollinshaw? Yeah. There are ruins in the