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

He comes back with a damp tea towel, and presses it to my head. I feel foolish, standing there while he dabs at me.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘It did. Not too bad now.’

‘I like the way your hair is silver underneath,’ he says. ‘Does the hairdresser do that?’

This makes me laugh heartily. ‘No, it’s grey, you idiot. Or are you teasing?’

‘No, it’s… But you’ve hardly any grey on top, it’s all underneath. And it’s really not grey, is it? Definitely silver.’

He’s lifting up sections of my hair now and looking at it, his fingers on my scalp. No one’s touched me for such a long time, it makes me tingle all over in an inappropriate way. I feel my ears burning. I’m probably very red as well. I clear my throat, embarrassed.

‘That’s just how it grows,’ I say. ‘It’s odd isn’t it? It’s been like that for a while – seven or eight years.’

‘Not odd,’ he says, ‘it’s… pretty. Or stylish, I don’t know. Aren’t you lucky? My grey hairs come through much coarser than the dark, and stick out weirdly.’

‘You hardly have any.’

‘No, not yet. My grandfather didn’t go grey until he was nearly seventy. I get more in my beard.’ He rasps a hand across his chin, and then goes back to pushing my hair about. He seems quite fascinated by it. My hair’s very fine, but there’s a lot of it; it’s almost shoulder length, growing out from what was quite a neat bob earlier in the year. I sort of want him to stop touching me but also sort of don’t. I’m very conscious that there are other things going on and hope he hasn’t noticed, after all there’s no cold breeze to explain the state of my nipples. Jesus. I think I must be a lot drunker than I realized. I put a hand up to touch the cut on my head, and he seems to realize that running his fingers though my hair, which is basically what he’s doing, is a bit odd.

‘Shit,’ he says, ‘sorry, I forgot what I was… Well. Your hair is cool.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Are you hungry? I could start dinner,’ he says. I wonder if he means to distract me.

Twelve

For dinner, Edward has bought steak. I can’t help thinking today has been quite expensive for him. When I try to say this, however, he reacts as though I’m being offensive, and won’t discuss it. We drink more wine, and that bottle is empty too. We wash up the plates, have a cup of tea, smoke another joint, and walk on the beach, talking expansively, and in places hilariously, about the books we studied at university, about our fellow students, our lecturers, about the change from grunge to Britpop, about the expansive, world-changing power of dance music. If we were somewhere with a signal, and electricity, we’d be playing each other our favourite tunes. It’s fun; proper, friendship-making, bonding fun.

Back at the Shed, we watch the sun go down behind the hill, across the bay. I’ve stopped drinking because I’d begun to feel hazy and unfocused, and because I was feeling a bit self-conscious… and because it seems sensible not to get drunk, properly drunk, with my boss. When I had a real job, I used to avoid drinking with my colleagues. Partly because I didn’t want to see them being drunk, partly because I could never relax and partly because I used to worry I might tell someone the truth about what I was thinking.

Never because I was worried I might want to kiss someone inappropriate. I’m not saying I never thought about anyone else at all during my marriage, but there was never a chance that any situation would arise where something might happen.

Not that I think there’s any chance here. Or even that I’d want there to be. I don’t think I actually fancy Edward, but today he’s been quite different from usual, and I think this is perhaps more what he’s truly like, or would be if he’d let himself. I quite like the surly rude version because it’s amusing, and because I like to ignore the surliness, but this more relaxed version is much nicer.

I suppose I’m interested in him, and that’s partly because of his past. Not the sister-in-law shagging – although that is really interesting – but the aristocratic stuff. Like a lot of lower-middle-class people from a working-class background, I have a complex attitude to posh people. Intrigued and disgusted. Horrified but fascinated. Imagine knowing the names of people in your family from the eighteenth century. Imagine if your ancestors had been able to read and write for at least five hundred years.

It’s colder now, a sharper breeze from the north-west. I shiver and fetch my jumper, huddle a blanket round myself. It might be better to go inside and sit on the sofa, but that seems defeatist, somehow.

Edward says, ‘I might open that other bottle of wine. What do you think?’

‘But will we be okay to get home? You said earlier you thought you’d had too much to drive.’

‘I was thinking maybe we could stay?’ He looks unsure, frowning. I feel a slight sense of concern. Was this his plan all along? Surely not – it seems complicated and unlikely. Doesn’t it?

‘Stay?’

‘Yes – you could sleep in the bedroom, if you wanted. Or on the sofa, which is a lot better.’

‘But what about you?’

‘I can sleep on the floor. Or outside. Like I say, I usually do. There’s a – you know – a sleeping mat thing.’

‘I hate sleeping in my clothes.’ True as this is, as soon as I’ve said it, I wish I hadn’t.

He doesn’t react, however, at least only to say, ‘There should be some T-shirts in the bedroom. Be enormous on you; probably come down to your knees. Very modest.’

‘You’re only like five inches taller than I am,’ I say, outraged by this for some reason.

‘Yeah, Titch, whatever,’ he says, and this