15. Fifteen

15

PRESENT

I t’s called ‘ insta love’ according to Paris. It’s her least favorite trope.

“It’s love at first sight, basically,” she tells me, pausing in the act of shelving a new delivery of romantasy novels the morning after the book signing. “When the two main characters meet and they instantly know they’re destined to be together. The Snow Globe is one example of it, obviously, but there are loads more. It’s, like, super popular, for some reason.”

She looks at me as if she might be about to hold me personally responsible for this; which honestly wouldn’t surprise me.

“Was that what it was like, then?” she asks, curiosity getting the better of her, and forcing her to drop the ‘cool girl’ act for a second. “With you and Elliot? Was it just like in the book? Did your eyes meet across the bookstore, and then, WHAM! That was it?”

I take the books from her and start organizing them according to the color of their spines, even though I know she’ll just put them back into alphabetical order again as soon as I’m safely in my office.

“No, of course not,” I reply, my eyes fixed on what I’m doing. “We didn’t meet in the bookstore. And I don’t believe in love at first sight, anyway. Or ‘insta love’ or whatever you want to call it. It’s definitely not what happened to me and Elliot. Everyone knows how that turned out.”

“We don’t really , though,” points out Paris bluntly. “No one knows. In the book, he waits for her in front of the Christmas tree in the village square, like they agreed, but she doesn’t turn up. We never find out why. It’s like he meant to write a sequel at some point, but just never got around to it.”

“The thing with the Christmas tree didn’t happen,” I tell her, still focused on the books. “Elliot just made that bit up.”

The question of what did happen hangs in the air between us, like a piece of mistletoe on an unsuccessful first date. Strangely, not even Levi has ever dared ask me about the real ending of my relationship with Elliot. No one has; not even Dad. Which means Elliot is the only person who knows; because, God knows, it’s as much of a mystery to me as it is to anyone else.

“Is it weird?” Paris asks, having allowed a respectful amount of time to pass between this question and her last one. “Him being back here?”

“Yeah,” I admit, pulling my hair back and securing it with a pencil I grabbed from my desk earlier. “It’s pretty weird. I wish I’d had some time to prepare for it, you know?”

“To, like, get your hair done and stuff?” Paris says, watching as I wrestle with the hair in question, which continues to evade my attempts to wrestle it into submission. “I totally get that. That’s what I’d do too, if I was going to be seeing my ex. And I’d make sure I was wearing something, like, super hot.”

“Um, I just meant time to, you know, mentally prepare,” I reply, a little taken aback. Now that she’s mentioned it, though, I suppose if I’d known I was going to be bumping into Elliot that day, I might have taken a bit more care with my appearance. I probably wouldn’t have worn the ‘Jane Eyre’ dress, for one thing. And maybe I should stop using stationery as hair accessories?

“Paris,” I say suddenly. “What would you wear if you were going to be seeing your ex? If you were me, I mean?”

I add this last bit because Paris is very much a ‘Gen Z’ dresser, which means she’s currently wearing jeans so wide I’m pretty sure I saw Ed the cat hiding under them earlier. She always looks amazing, but I’m not convinced the same would be true of me if I decided to try to ‘slay’ like Paris.

Paris takes a step back and looks at me critically.

“It depends what kind of direction you want to take, really,” she says seriously. “Like, are you thinking clean girl or cottage core? Edgy or party girl?”

“Um, I just want to look like me , but better,” I reply, making a mental note to look up all the things she just said later, so I can finally start to understand what the hell she’s talking about. “Just so I can look him in the eye when I see him at the book festival and not have to feel like he’s the only one who’s moved on since … well, you know.”

“Okay, so what I’m hearing is that this is as much about confidence as clothes,” says Paris. “It’s about living your best life. Empowering yourself. Embracing your authentic self.”

“That’s exactly it,” I reply, too relieved by the fact that she hasn’t just laughed at me to question what embracing my ‘authentic self’ might involve. “That’s what I’m trying to do. But what do I wear , though? To empower myself um, authentically ?”

Paris bites her lip thoughtfully.

“I’m thinking a kind of crossover,” she says. “The dark academia thing kind of works for you, but you need to sex it up a bit. You know? Because it’s one thing to love books — that’s why we all work here — but that doesn’t mean you have to dress like a Bront? sister. You know?”

I absolutely do not know, but I nod anyway, pretending to know exactly what she’s talking about. Paris, however, is not fooled.

“Holly, do you want me to take you shopping?” she asks, with the air of someone offering to do me a huge favor. “Or do you feel like you understand the assignment here?”

I glance over at her. I had thought I ‘understood the assignment’ as she puts it, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that I don’t understand anything , really; and definitely not ‘the assignment’.

“Shopping, please,” I reply meekly. “That would be amazing, Paris, thank you.”

She shrugs, as if it’s no big deal, but the corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly.

“We can go during my lunch break, if you like?” she says. “There’s that new boutique on the high street. It’s tiny, but it’s got a lot of great brands.”

By ‘a lot of great brands’, I know she means ‘a lot of incredibly expensive brands’. Post Snow-Globe Bramblebury is filled with shops which would probably be best described as ‘chi-chi’. But I don’t have time to drive to the nearest big town just to wander around the charity shops I usually buy my clothes from, and I do have some money saved up, thanks to my habit of never actually doing anything with my life, so it’s going to have to do.

Plus, if someone as picky as Paris approves, that means it’s got to be good; which is why, just over an hour later, we find ourselves leaving the store together, both of us being very stiff and polite as we try to acclimatize to this unexpected new turn our working relationship has taken. I’m just starting to entertain the beginnings of a daydream in which we become close friends, who’re forever popping in and out of each other’s houses, and borrowing each other’s clothes (Because I’m at least ten years younger and a hundred times cooler in this vision, obviously), when Paris suddenly says the four words guaranteed to ruin my day.

“Isn’t that Elliot Sinclair?”

I look in the direction she’s pointing, and, sure enough, there he is; strolling along the main street of the village, looking for all the world like a man who isn’t even remotely worried about bumping into his ex while wearing a pencil in his hair. And not just because he doesn’t even have a pencil in his hair. Actually, he looks like he could easily apply to be in a hair commercial, if the whole ‘bestselling author’ thing ever starts to get old. It’s kind of unfair that he looks so good, while being so … him .

Maybe he’s the one with the portrait in the attic?

It’s not Elliot I’m looking at, though, great hair aside.

No, all of my attention is currently fixed on the woman next to him; a woman who also has spectacularly good hair, as well as a face I recognize instantly as the one I last saw waving goodbye to Elliot from the doorway of her cottage a couple of days ago.

It’s Katie Hunter: and she’s smiling up at Elliot as if he’s some kind of tasty treat she’s saving for later.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a memory attempts to fight its way to the surface, before being abruptly drowned out by the wave of inexplicable jealousy that comes after it.

“Holly? Are you okay?”

I tear my eyes away from Elliot and Katie, to find Paris watching me warily, as if she’s already deeply regretting her offer to take me clothes shopping.

“I’m fine,” I reply brightly, in a tone that sounds unconvincing even to me. “Just … just looking forward to my makeover, that’s all.”

“I didn’t say anything about a makeover ,” Paris replies, her horrified look casually destroying my vision of our future friendship. “I’m not a miracle worker. But look, here’s the place I was telling you about.”

She steers me through the doorway of a little boutique, which is about half the size of the bookstore, and decorated entirely in stark white, with items of clothing displayed like works of art. I wander around cautiously, too scared to touch anything, while marveling at the fact that a place like this even exists in Bramblebury; a village which, until recently, boasted an Oxfam shop and a place selling equestrian gear as its only source of ‘fashion’.

The Snow Globe effect strikes again, I guess.

Within minutes, Paris is herding me into a changing room with an armful of clothes, which I dutifully try on, waiting for the moment when I’ll look in the mirror and think, “Yes, that’s it. That’s the woman I want to be. My life is now changed.”

But the moment doesn’t come. The clothes are all beautiful, even to my unpracticed eye, but nothing looks quite right; by which I mean nothing makes me look like Beautiful Katie Hunter — or Bloody Katie Hunter, rather, who has suddenly become the gold standard of attractiveness to me.

And meanwhile, no matter what I try on, I’m still just Holly.

“This isn’t fair,” I complain to Paris when I emerge from the changing room a few minutes later, my cheeks red from the mini workout I’ve just had struggling in and out of a selection of bodycon dresses. “If my life was a movie, this would be the moment where I take off my glasses and basically turn into another person. Like Superman.”

“You don’t wear glasses,” replies Paris, ever the pragmatist. “And your life technically is a movie, anyway. It’s just not the movie you want it to be.”

“Not yet, it isn’t,” I mutter, feeling like I should apologize to the sleekly sophisticated shop assistant at the door as we leave the store empty-handed. “But I’m working on it.”

Paris eyes me curiously, but whatever she’s about to say is lost as I step through the doorway of the little boutique and walk straight into something very tall, and very solid.

Something, in fact, very Elliot Sinclair.

“Holly,” he says politely, not sounding particularly surprised to find me almost falling over him for the second time in the space of a week. “How are you?”

“I’m great,” I reply, quickly scanning the street for any sign of Bloody Katie, and relaxing slightly when she fails to materialize. “Just been doing a bit of shopping with my friend Paris.”

Paris’s eyebrows almost disappear into her hairline at this, but she doesn’t contradict me, and I smile at her gratefully, relieved to be ‘showing up as my best self’, as she instructed me earlier

“That’s nice,” says Elliot. “Is that a pencil in your hair?”

He reaches out and removes it, like a magician performing a trick — only in this case, the only ‘trick’ he manages to pull off involves my hair rapidly uncoiling itself like one of Medusa’s snakes, and absolutely no one is impressed by it.

“Oh, that’s where it was,” I reply, pushing hair out of my eyes and reaching for the pencil. “I was looking for that earlier when I was … when I was…”

“It was when you were working on your new book, Holly, wasn’t it?” says Paris, coming unexpectedly to the rescue. “You were so into it you must’ve got distracted.”

I stare wordlessly at her, not totally on board with the direction she’s taking this conversation in, but not quite sure how to turn it around.

“Your new book?” Elliot says, his eyes flickering with an emotion I can’t identify. “So you are writing again?”

“Oh. Um. Yes. Yes, I am,” I reply, feeling Paris’s elbow connect sharply with my ribs. “I’m working on a novel, actually. I can’t say much about it, it’s—” I stop myself just in time, before I can let the fact that I’m just the ghostwriter slip out. “It’s still just a very rough idea. You know how it is.”

“She has a publisher and everything,” says Paris, apparently deciding that now is the moment to be my wing-woman. “So it’s a real book. She’s not just saying that to make herself look good.”

I cringe inwardly, making a mental note never to get on the wrong side of her, if this is what she thinks ‘being supportive’ is like.

“But Holly, that’s great,” Elliot says, with what looks like the first genuine smile I’ve seen from him since he arrived back in town. “That’s really great. I always said you should write a novel. So, what’s it called? Or can you not say?”

I start to shake my head, before Paris’s elbow changes my mind.

“It’s called If This Was a Movie ,” I say, blurting out the first thing that comes into my head, then cringing as I realize how stupid it sounds. Then again, Elliot did name the town in his book ‘Hollybrooke’, so maybe it’s not the most stupid thing he’ll have heard.

“I like it,” he says, his grin widening. “I really like it. It’s very you .”

There’s a tiny window of opportunity for me to ask him what he means by this rather than simply filing it away so I can overthink it later (Which is also very me , actually…), but I’m distracted by the way he’s looking at me as if we’re still close enough to chat about our lives like this — and also by the little white scar just above his left eyebrow, which proves that we aren’t, because I know it definitely wasn’t there ten years ago. Every time I see him, I notice some little detail about him that’s different, and every one of those details provides even more proof of the life he’s lived without me, and me without him.

I wonder if Katie Hunter knows how he got that scar?

“Oh! Hello there!”

The door behind us opens and Katie herself emerges from the boutique, laden with shopping bags, and looking from Elliot to me and then back again, almost as if she knows what I was thinking. That rogue memory attempts to surface yet again.

She reminds me of someone. I just can’t remember who it is.

“Katie! Um, this is Holly,” Elliot says, looking uncomfortable; as well he might, I suppose. “Holly, this is Katie.”

“Oh, yes! Holly ! Of course!”

Katie says my name in a tone that suggests she knows significantly more about me than I know about her. I’m not planning to hang around to find out exactly what Elliot’s told her about me, though. I’m not that much of a masochist.

“Right, well, we better be going, Paris,” I say briskly, linking arms with my surprised assistant manager. “Books to sell, books to write. No rest for the wicked. Nice to meet you, Katie! Come on, Paris.”

I set off down the street at a quick march, dragging Paris along behind me, and feeling quite proud of how… breezy… I managed to be.

Yes. Breezy. That’s how I’ll be from now. I’ll be brisk and breezy, and that way Elliot will never know just how much it hurts me seeing him with someone else, in the place that used to be ours.

“Holly, let me go,” Paris squeaks, as I almost knock her off her feet in my haste to get away from them. “You’re being really weird, by the way,” she adds. “Even for you, I mean.”

Oh.

So, maybe not -so-breezy, then. Maybe I’ll just be “really weird” instead.

That sounds more like the old me. I know Paris would agree.

But ‘the old me’ isn’t going to write this book, ignore her ex, and change her life, is she? No, she isn’t. Which is why, as soon as we’re safely back at the bookstore, I thank Paris again for her shopping help, then head into my office and open up my laptop.

I will write the book I just told Elliot about. And, one day, I might even forget the reason I wrote it, or the man who inspired it, the way he seems to have forgotten me.

One day.

“Hi Harper,” I type, opening up the email chain I have going with her. “What do you think about this for a plot…”