Pages & Co. Bookwandering Adventures – Volume One

Tilly’s idea of her mum was stitched together from a patchwork of old photos and other people’s memories. No one knew where Beatrice Pages had gone, and this lack of facts meant that the hole her mother had left had torn, ragged edges that were slow to knit back together.

‘Love, we’ve told you everything we know, and what the police think. It’s not good to dwell on what happened,’ one of her grandparents would say.

‘But the police think she was unhappy and just left to start again somewhere. I don’t understand why she would have done that just after I was born if she …’ Tilly found it hard to voice the end of that thought.

The reassurances always came. ‘Tilly, she loved you very, very much. We know that without any doubt at all.’

‘I just don’t understand why she would leave if she loved me so much.’ Tilly couldn’t help but come back to the same question she always asked, feeling the prick of tears as she spoke.

‘We don’t understand either, Tilly, my love. We wish we did,’ Grandma would say, and Grandad, as always, would quietly wipe his eyes with his tartan handkerchief.

Tilly pulled her mind back to the box in front of her. Inside were piles of old books, the paper yellowing and the covers tattered and ripped. Tilly stared at them, not sure where to start, but as she went to pull out the top book she heard Jack calling from the shop.

‘Tilly! Vanilla! I’m smearing honey on your book as I speak!’

The bubble popped and Tilly sighed and pushed the box to the side of the kitchen. She wanted to save it until she had uninterrupted time to look through it properly, the way she made sure she had time to savour a new book.

She went back through to Jack in the bookshop. ‘I couldn’t find any vanilla; you should ask Mary,’ Tilly said.

‘Well, go on then.’ Jack gestured impatiently. ‘Go and ask her.’

Tilly opened her mouth to make an excuse, wanting to return to the box of books. But the words weren’t there, so she turned and grabbed an umbrella from by the door, but skidded on something squishy underfoot. She looked down to see a half-eaten sandwich on the wooden floor. She tutted to herself as she picked it up.

‘Honestly, who eats marmalade sandwiches?’ she said to herself as she threw it in the bin outside the shop, and crossed the road to Crumbs, the café run by Mary Roux.

Mary and Jack had a long-standing, mostly affectionate rivalry that was almost entirely one-sided. Mary was always lending Jack things he was missing, and offering him baking tips.

The bell above the door jangled as Tilly went in. She didn’t spot Mary straight away, but she noticed Oskar, Mary’s son, sitting at a table at the back, eating toast. A moment later Mary’s face appeared behind the counter. She was carrying a plate of cupcakes iced in pastel shades, which she handed to a couple with a happily gurgling baby.

Mary grinned when she saw Tilly and beckoned her over once the family had sat down.

‘What can I help you with?’ Mary asked. ‘Has Jack been experimenting again?’

‘He’s trying to make pop cakes, like the ones in the Enid Blyton books,’ Tilly explained, ‘but he’s run out of vanilla and he wondered if he could have a little bit of yours, if you can spare some?’

‘Of course, of course,’ Mary said. ‘Sit down. Let me grab some from the kitchen. Do you want some lunch while you wait? You look a bit peaky.’

‘I’m okay,’ Tilly said. She looked up at Mary, testing how she felt about sharing the news about the box with her. ‘I just found some of my mum’s old stuff. It’s put me in a bit of a funny mood, I guess. I don’t have much that was hers.’

‘Oh, love. I can see why that might have thrown you,’ Mary said before planting a kiss on the top of Tilly’s head. Her hand rested on Tilly’s shoulder a little longer than it usually did and then Tilly felt a squeeze as Mary headed off towards the kitchen. ‘Sit down. I’ll be right back.’

As the door through to the kitchen swung shut Tilly looked at Oskar and tried to make eye contact. He didn’t ever seem to be in Crumbs when Tilly was there, and he’d gone to a different primary school, so although they shared some lessons now they’d never really spoken much.

She tried to wander over casually.

‘Have you started your English homework yet?’ she asked, and Oskar looked up.

‘No?’ Oskar said in surprise. ‘It’s literally the first day of the holidays. But we have to read a book by an author we’ve never read before, right?’

‘Yep,’ Tilly said happily. ‘Best homework ever.’

‘I was thinking … I might come and find something at Pages & Co. later. Maybe? If that was okay?’ he asked.

Tilly beamed. ‘That’s a great idea. I can help you find something, if you want? What do you like to read?’

Oskar scuffed his feet together and looked down at the table.

‘All sorts. I started reading the first Percy Jackson book in the summer holidays and I’m really enjoying it.’

‘They’re so good, right?’ Tilly said. ‘I could not believe it when I found out who Nico’s dad was.’

‘Don’t tell me!’ Oskar said. ‘I haven’t got to that bit yet – I’m still on the first one. I read kind of slowly.’

‘Oskar’s dyslexic,’ Mary said, coming up behind them, a small bottle in one hand and a brown envelope tucked under her arm. ‘But he still loves reading, don’t you, my love?’

‘All right, Mum,’ Oskar said, brushing his mum’s hand off his head in embarrassment.

‘Right, well, you should definitely come over to the shop for your homework book, though,’ Tilly said.

‘Yes, thank you, Tilly. That would be lovely. Why don’t you pop round now, Oskar?’ Mary said, smiling widely.

‘All right, Mum, chill out, okay?’ Oskar said. He turned to Tilly. ‘I’ll come round tomorrow?’

Tilly nodded.

‘Oh, and here’s the reason you came over,’ Mary said, holding out a tiny bottle of vanilla essence. ‘Could you let Jack know I don’t need it back as long as I can try one of his pop cakes?’ She grinned, before putting the envelope down on the table between them and pushing it towards Tilly, who looked at her quizzically.

‘When you told me about your mum’s books it made me think of this,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ve had it for ages. I should have given it to you sooner but, well, when Bea left I tucked it away, and it just slipped my mind until you mentioned finding her things.’

Neither Tilly, Mary nor Oskar seemed sure what to say or do next, so Mary pulled the envelope back towards her, and slid out a slightly faded photograph that showed Bea and Mary as young women on a sofa in the shop. They sat at either end, with their socked feet touching in the middle, and both of them had books resting on top of their heavily pregnant bellies.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t taken better care of it, Tilly,’ Mary said as she tried to rub away a smear from one corner of the picture. ‘But it’s yours now, if you want it. I know it’s only one photo, but I thought you might like it anyway. I can tell you a bit more about it, if you like, but I understand if you’d rather look properly by yourself first. I can picture that day perfectly. I haven’t the foggiest what book I was reading, but your mum went on a real classics binge while she was pregnant, nostalgic for her own childhood, I suppose. That book is A Little Princess; she read it over and over. It was her favourite – although I’m sure you know that. You can come and ask me about the photo or your mum any time you like, you know.’

‘Thank you,’ Tilly said quietly, staring at the photo. That was the first time she’d heard A Little Princess was her mum’s favourite book. Mary slid the picture back into the envelope and passed it to Tilly.

‘Go on, get back to Jack, and make sure to bring me over a pop cake later.’ Mary gave her a gentle push towards the door. ‘And keep that envelope out of the rain.’

After dropping the vanilla off with Jack, Tilly went back into the kitchen to find Grandad sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall next to the box with his hanky out. Tilly slid down the wall next to him and squeezed in under his arm, breathing in his familiar smell of cashmere jumpers and old paper.

‘I’d forgotten where I’d put these,’ he said, hugging Tilly close to him. ‘They were some of your mum’s books when she was your age. She’d been rereading a lot of them while she was pregnant with you.’

‘These were her favourites?’ Tilly prompted, eager for more details.

‘Yes, well, her favourites when she was growing up. These were ones that meant a lot to her when she was around your age. The books we love when we’re growing up shape us in a special way, Tilly. The characters in the books we read help us decide who we want to be.’

Grandad paused, and Tilly noticed he had a book in his hands, turning it round and round as he spoke.

‘Ah. This one,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to show you. I mean … Well, just let me know what you think of it.’ He gave a last glance at the book in his hand and passed it to Tilly. It was A Little Princess – a copy with a yellow cover. Tilly took Mary’s photo out of the envelope and showed it to Grandad.

‘Where did you get this from?’ he asked.

‘Mary just gave it to me,’ Tilly said. ‘Look, she’s reading this exact book!’

‘You see, it was her favourite,’ Grandad said. ‘She enjoyed it when she was your age, but she really fell in love with it while she was at university. She took this copy with her and read it over and over again. She … Well, she found something new in it as an adult, I suppose. Have you read it?’

‘Yes, a few times.’

‘What did you think?’ Grandad asked. ‘Did you connect with any characters in particular?’

Tilly shrugged. ‘I enjoyed it. It’s not my favourite but I liked Sara a lot. I like how she tells stories when she feels sad, and to help her after her dad dies.’

Grandad smiled softly, as much to himself as to Tilly. ‘Well, now you have your mum’s copy to keep. And a photo of her reading it.’

He looked at the box of books. ‘There might be some in there you haven’t read before. Why don’t you take them up to your room and have a sort through?’ He gave Tilly a squeeze and hauled himself up off the floor. ‘Can’t leave your grandma to deal with Jack by herself for too long,’ he said and headed back into the bookshop.

Tilly put A Little Princess back in the box and staggered upstairs with it to her tiny room at the very top of the house. The walls were lined with bookshelves full of her own books, as well as ones she had temporarily borrowed from the shop, something she was not really supposed to do, but after she caught Grandma spilling tea on what turned out to be a shop book a blind eye was usually turned as long as they reappeared in pristine condition. Tilly put the box down in the middle of the floor and placed Mary’s envelope on top. She sat down on her bed, curled her knees up underneath her, and stared at them as her feelings tangled round each other, twisting and knotting her up.

Finally she pulled the photo out again and laid it on her bed before slipping a narrow album off her shelves. In the pages were a collection of photos her grandparents had let her collate that all featured her mum: as a child, with Grandma and Grandad, in the bookshop, even some in New York where she had gone to university. The photos looked back at Tilly, a puddle of memories that weren’t hers.

Tilly felt like she was being wrapped in a heavy blanket that was comforting and suffocating at the same time. Her mum’s face looked up at her from too many photos all at once. When Tilly tried to picture her mum in her mind she felt like she was trying to imagine what a character in a book looks like. You think they’re standing right next to you, but as soon as you whirl round to look straight at them everything blurs and dissolves, and the harder you try to see them, the more flighty and unfocused they get until they barely resemble a real person at all.

She tried to calm her breathing down and tucked Mary’s photo into the album, before putting it on her bedside table. Then she took a deep breath and settled down to look at the box of books instead, which felt more manageable.

‘Books are my thing,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I can do books.’

She tried to blow the dust off the top of the box, but it worked rather less well than it did in films, so she wiped it with her sleeve. There wasn’t any other writing on the box apart from her mum’s name in blocky capitals. Tilly peeled back the rest of the barely sticky tape and pulled out the copy of A Little Princess. Underneath that was a dated-looking version of Anne of Green Gables, which she picked up, but found herself just gazing at the cover, unable to open it. The top front corner was ripped off and she could see ‘Beatrice Pages’ written on the first page in a child’s handwriting.

Tilly traced the lines of her mother’s writing with a fingertip, trying to picture her mum at her age carefully inking a little bit of herself on to the paper. Tilly felt as though there was a delicate thread stretched between her and her mother that she had only realised was there when this book had tugged on it. Grandad had always told her to write her name in her books, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that her mum did the same thing when she was little.

‘It’s about creating a record of who’s read and loved each book,’ he would say. Grandad was always hunting in charity shops for copies that had someone’s name in, or messages from people who had given books as presents. ‘I love thinking about other people reading the books I love, or why someone gave that book as a present – those names and messages are like tiny moments of time travel linking readers from different eras and families and even countries.’

Tilly wondered why her mother had cared for these books, for they were clearly very well loved. Tilly wanted to know if her mother had loved these characters for the same reasons she did. Had Anne Shirley made her mum laugh in the same places? She closed her eyes and imagined a parallel life where she could ask her, where she could go downstairs and find her at the kitchen table, chopping salad leaves with Grandad, or rubbing flour and butter together to make crumble topping with Grandma. Their house was always full of laughter and music and conversation, but Tilly could hear the silence where her mother should be, like an orchestra without a cello section.

She was pulled from her imagination by a gentle knock on the door, and Grandma popped her head round.

‘Hi, sweetheart, how are you getting on? Grandad said you’d found a box of your mum’s books?’

Tilly nodded as Grandma stepped into the room and picked up the copy of A Little Princess. She held it to her chest like it contained a small part of her daughter in its pages. ‘I’m going to start thinking about dinner soon,’ she said, still hugging the book tightly. ‘Do you want to come down and help close the shop up beforehand? It’s a bit chilly up here.’

Tilly nodded and followed Grandma downstairs. And, even though she knew the kitchen would be empty, she couldn’t help but picture opening the door to her mother. But as she went in and felt the warmth of the room envelope her she rooted herself once again in the present.

Later that evening, over a meal of chicken roasted with garlic and lemons and rosemary, with crusty bread and green beans, Tilly felt the hard gem of her sadness thaw a little, leaving questions as it melted.

‘Do you know what sort of books my dad liked?’ she asked, and Grandad seemed to choke a little on a mouthful of bread.

‘I’m afraid not,’ Grandma said as she patted Grandad on the back. ‘We didn’t really know him very well at all.’

‘Do you think my mum would have known his favourite books?’ Tilly asked.

‘I’m sure she did,’ Grandma said. ‘I’m sure they talked about books along with everything else you talk to the person you love about.’

‘Why don’t we have any photos of him?’

‘Well, for the same reason that we don’t know what his favourite books were: we just didn’t get to spend any time with him before he died.’

‘Do you think Mum left because my dad died?’

‘Oh, my love,’ Grandma said. ‘I don’t know is the honest answer. I’m not going to pretend to you that it didn’t break her heart not being able to be with your father for longer, or that she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how things might have worked out differently. But then she had you, and she had a little bit of him back again, and that’s part of the reason you were so precious to her.’

‘I wonder which bits of me are from him?’ Tilly said.

Grandad smiled. ‘Well, you didn’t get your hair or your height from us. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that you might have inherited your literary tastes from our side of the family.’

‘But Tilly,’ Grandma said, ‘you may have a bit of him and a bit of her and a bit of us all mixed in there, but the best bits of you are all your own, that much I know. Now. Whose turn is it to do the washing-up?’

When Tilly had been small she had read with Grandad every night before she went to bed. Every evening after dinner, Tilly and Grandad would curl up on the big, squishy sofa in front of the fireplace and Grandad would read aloud a chapter or two of whichever book they were engrossed in. Together they had gone sailing with the Swallows and Amazons, met the witches of Miss Cackle’s Academy, and visited worlds balanced on the backs of elephants.

As Tilly got older the tradition had gradually faded; first they started reading their own books next to each other, exploring vast and separate worlds while sitting side by side, and then Tilly had started taking her books up to bed to read and before she knew it, and without anyone making a particular decision about it, they didn’t read together any more.

Later that evening, with her mum’s copy of Anne of Green Gables still closed, Tilly crawled out of bed and crept back downstairs. Her grandma was reading with a cup of tea at the kitchen table and looked up when Tilly came in. Seeing the book in Tilly’s hand, she just smiled and went back to her own. Tilly pushed the door to the shop open and saw Grandad on the sofa, lit up by the flickering light of the fire. She crawled up beside him and put her mum’s copy of the book on his knee. Without saying anything he put his arm round her, and when Grandma came through with three mugs of hot chocolate he put his own book down and began to read.

‘Oskar’s here,’ he said to Tilly, smiling. ‘He said you’d promised to help him find a book.’

‘Have you never been here before?’ she asked, making Oskar jump a little.

‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said sheepishly. ‘And yes, of course I’ve been in before; it’s where Mum gets all her Christmas presents. But I’d forgotten how …’ He paused.

‘Magical?’ Tilly suggested. ‘Exciting? Beautiful?’

‘Yes, but that’s not what I mean. It’s not what it looks like, it’s how it makes you feel, isn’t it? Is there a word that means somewhere adventures live?’

‘I don’t think so, but there should be,’ Tilly said.

‘But anyway,’ Oskar said, collecting himself, ‘it’s cool, is what I mean. But I haven’t been in for ages. I’m not up this way that much. We have someone else who looks after the café at weekends, and I usually spend the school holidays with my dad.’

‘Where does your dad live?’

‘In Paris, with my big sister, Emilie.’

‘Oh wow, I thought you were going to say south London or something,’ Tilly said. ‘It must be amazing to get to spend the holidays there. I’ve never even been outside of England.’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ Oskar said. ‘Paris is pretty cool, but Dad got remarried last summer and Marguerite’s really nice, but now it kind of feels like I’m visiting someone else’s home when I’m there. And Emilie is always out with her friends, so I decided not to go this holiday.’

‘How come Emilie lives with your dad?’ Tilly asked.

‘She decided to go to college there,’ Oskar explained. ‘She wants to be fluent in French so she can get into university there too. Her boyfriend lives in Paris.’

‘Do you miss them?’ Tilly asked.

‘Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. I miss my sister more than my dad, I think. Sometimes it feels like I’m in the way when I’m there. Not that I’m not wanted, but that it would be easier if I weren’t there.’ Oskar paused. ‘Do you miss your parents?’ he asked quietly, as though he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to talk about them.