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

more closely at the pictures. There’s another of his grandmother, if that’s who she is; the woman in the photo at the Shed. And maybe this is his mother? A faded seventies Polaroid of a very beautiful woman in a high-waisted Laura Ashley frock, laughing at the camera. He said his parents were fashionably bohemian in the late sixties, before he was born. I should look them up; there might be pictures on the internet, and I’m curious. I never get the impression he’s close to his mother, so it’s unexpected that he has a photograph of her. If it’s her.

Tucked into the frame of the mirror is a photo of Edward himself, fresh-faced and grinning, in a student sitting room with two other young men, all smoking, the coffee table covered in beer bottles. It’s a funny thing to see a young version of someone you’ve only known in their forties. They all look like the boys on my own degree course, the two that aren’t Edward with long hair, while his is just big, cut short at the back and back-combed, Jesus and Mary Chain-style, on top. Bless. Skinny black jeans, Dr Martens propped on the table, the corner of a poster above their heads that I confidently identify as Béatrice Dalle in Betty Blue.

A little glass dish full of cufflinks, a pocket watch on a stand, a pair of hairbrushes that look antique, battered silver with someone else’s initials – RVTM – on them are also on the dressing table. There’s a card with an Edward Hopper painting on it. I pick it up – I do feel bad for doing so but can’t help myself – and open it to read the message.

Super weekend, darling, look forward to the next one. Yours ever, Corinne x

Huh. Who’s Corinne then? And does Lara know about her?

On the wall by the mirror is a drawing of the house, Hollinshaw, and another, an old print, of a ruined castle, the traditional Scottish ‘tower house’ type. And a photograph of the Shed, sky blue above the black wooden walls. Other than this and the dresser, though, there’s not much else in here; it’s as if there’s so much in the rest of the house, there was nothing left for his bedroom.

I turn out the light and cross the landing to the final room: the study. Ah, so that’s why there’s not much in his bedroom – it’s all in here. Crammed bookshelves, postcards of paintings on any spare bit of wall, dust, CDs, even a pile of cassette tapes. The ancient stereo is a stack of silvery minimal separates – must have cost a bomb in 1995 or something. Records too, in crates on the floor. I stoop to have a quick flick. He only ever listens to classical music in the shop, but having discussed music so extensively at the Shed, I’m not confused to see the Nick Cave and Smiths albums. They certainly fit with the boy in the photograph. Black Sabbath, Can, Prince and David Bowie, The Clash, Nirvana – I wonder how often he listens to any of this now. What’s on the turntable? I lift the lid carefully. Bauhaus. Gosh.

The desk, which is a yellow Formica-topped kitchen table, sits in front of the curtain-less window, which is also open. It’s above the dining room, and has an interesting view of rooftops and the trees in the garden. I lean across to wrestle with it, but it works much better than the one in the bedroom, and the sash slithers downward, landing with a thump. I twist the screw and turn to the desk. There’s a typewriter. This makes me chuckle; he would have a typewriter, although I know he uses a laptop for his writing. The typewriter is pushed to the back of the desk; a totem, presumably, rather than something he uses. There’s paper, too, all different sizes, drifts of it, none of it typed, all covered in his unexpectedly tidy writing, in pencil mostly. A jar of pencils in varying states sits on the windowsill. At the front of the desk is a neater pile of paper, held down with a smooth white pebble.

I glance at the top sheet. I know it’s rude, and I’m always wary of other people’s words in case I read something embarrassing. It might be embarrassing because it’s awful – a dreadful poem, maybe – or because it’s true. Truth can be too exposing sometimes, too naked. I read something once that a flatmate had written, pinned to the wall by her desk, about ‘creeping through life avoiding the landmines of love’, or something along those lines – I can’t remember exactly – but I remember it felt so true and naked I found it hard to speak to her afterwards, as though she’d told me a secret. I suppose it was a secret – after all, she didn’t ask me into her room. I used to flit through all their rooms, my housemates, when they were out. I didn’t pry exactly. I’d never have opened a drawer or read a diary. I just liked to stand in their rooms and look at their posters and books, and know they’d never know I’d been in there.

Won’t

Can’t

Mustn’t

Shan’t

This is what Edward has written. Feeling foolish and guilty, I roll the sleeve of my cardigan over my hand and lift the pebble, as though afraid of fingerprints. I push the top sheet aside. Underneath is a much smaller piece of paper, on which he’s written:

Silver strands

Golden sun

Golden sand

Is the sand actually golden? TRY HARDER.

And sideways on the same piece of paper:

Limpet/limpid?

I turn it over.

Pewter softness

Rain-washed

Clouds and lichen

Just bits, not actual poems; only notes. I’m faintly disappointed. I look at the next sheet, where he’s written:

‘COMMON’

Just like that, with angry quote marks, one of which has gone through the paper. I stare at the word, feeling the blood rise in my cheeks. It’s funny to be embarrassed when you’re alone. Has he written