Chapter 7

7

The doorbell of Meyer’s Pharmacy dings out as I blast the door open. I’m immediately hit with the comforting smell of soap and tinctures that lingers here. Jan, who works the till, jumps in shock, the phone she’s been watching dropping onto the glass countertop with a clank. She throws her arms upwards like I’m a burglar and she’s planning to take me down. When she realises it’s only me, her shoulders soften and she returns to one of the pro-shot musicals she’s always watching in between customers.

Jan’s daughter, Leanne, pops out from behind the partition, her perfectly microbladed eyebrows drawn into a V, lip gloss shining beneath the artificial lighting. She’s the pharmacist here and Jan’s and my boss. She doesn’t resemble any pharmacist I’ve ever met before. She looks like an Instagram influencer—skin poreless, hair balayaged and wavy, eyelashes artificially abundant. And then there are her clothes—she has a side passion for fashion, which means that she’s forever coming into work in designs of her own creation, usually severe, fashiony-coloured fields of neon fabric with huge sleeves that sometimes dangle into her salad at lunchtime.

“What’s with the slamming?” Leanne hisses, her eyes dipping down to the clear Perspex wristwatch she always wears. “And you’re late.”

When I first started working here three years ago, Leanne kept trying to get me to go out for after-work drinks with her. I kept putting her off on account of two things:

She was suspiciously friendly. No-one should be that happy, handing out bumhole cream to the general public day after day.

If the friendship didn’t work out (and experience has taught me that they never do), then it would be awkward at work. And while this job doesn’t exactly set my heart alight, it’s literally in the building opposite my flat, it’s easy enough packaging tablets, and the pay was enough to manage the cost of living. I did not want to muddy those boundaries.

I march up to the counter. “I need the next nine days off.”

“But you never take days off,” Leanne says, a brief look of concern crossing her face before it settles back into her unimpressed frown. “And it’s really late notice.”

“I know.” I shrug apologetically. “But I’m desperate and you know I wouldn’t ask unless I needed to.”

Jan presses pause on Broadway Box HD. “Is everything alright, Delphie? You look a little bit pale.”

I wave her concern away. “Yeah, totally fine.” Technically dead, less than ten days to find and kiss the possible man of my dreams or else I die for a second time. “I just need…you know…a break. Um…Things are getting on top of me.”

Leanne crosses her arms. Her sleeves are not dangly today but billowy, like someone has puffed them up with air. “You want to go off sick for that long? Because if that’s the case, then technically you need a doctor’s note. Do you have one?”

I shake my head. “Oh, come on, Leanne. It’s not busy season. You can manage for a few days. I’ll do the stock take when I get back.”

Leanne tuts. “Your tone is very rude and snippy for someone asking for a favour, Delphie. What if stock runs out before you come back? What if the local residents of Paddington and Bayswater don’t receive their lifesaving medicine because you couldn’t arrange appropriate notice for annual leave?”

“Bloody hell, don’t be so dramatic,” Jan pipes up, fiddling with the gold clover pendant that never leaves her neck. “I can help you, Leanne. Let the girl take some time off. She don’t ever ask.”

I squint at Jan. Why is she on my side? What’s the catch? She only ever talks to me to ask whether I know who Stephen Sondheim is. I always say no, because I do not, and she always says that I’m missing out on the greatest works of art that have ever existed.

Leanne narrows her eyes, and I see that her eyeliner is Ultramarine Violet to match her shoes. “If I give you nine days off without notice, you’ll need to do me a favour too.”

“Fine. What is it?”

Leanne lifts her chin. “You will come for after-work drinks with me next Friday.”

I gawk. It’s been three years since she’s stopped asking. Why is she so bothered about this? When have I ever given off friend vibes? I have cultivated the opposite my entire adult life. Maybe it was that one night when we shared a bottle of wine after closing up shortly after I first started here. She just magicked the booze out of her bag, and I’d had a shitty day so I said yes to a glass, and she just kept topping it up. I got so tipsy I barely remember it, but she must have had a downright lovely time because she won’t let up on trying to get a repeat experience.

“Oi, if you’re going out then I’m coming too!” Jan tuts. “It’d be discrimination otherwise. Leaving me out just ’cos I’m older than you lot.”

“Fine!” I say. “Jeez. We’ll all go out! First round’s on me!” I add, because on television that’s what people who go out for drinks say.

Leanne nods slowly, a smile of satisfaction spreading across her perfectly symmetrical face.

---

I nip back home to research Jonah on my laptop, but within a few seconds of staring at the stripy rug where I recently died, I’m too creeped out and I decide to go to a library instead. Out on the street I check my phone to find out where the nearest library is. Some would say that’s definitely something I ought to know after twenty-seven years of living in London, but following school and university, I’ve bought most of my books from online shops.

The nearest one to me is Tyburnia Library, which is within walking distance. I very rarely travel outside of Bayswater—why would I when it has everything I need?—but when I do, I always prefer to walk, preferably with my headphones on full blast so that no-one can talk to me. If they do, I can just pretend I didn’t hear them, because headphones. I may not have it all figured out, but I’m not a complete idiot.

I walk down the bustling Praed Street, dodging and weaving around the other people in my way, eyes laser focused on some unknown spot in the distance. My headphones blast out a podcast all about Van Gogh and Gauguin’s turbulent time in Arles, and I wonder if when Van Gogh went crazy, he knew it was happening.

The library is large and old looking, its big dusty windows dotted with colourful cutouts of children’s book characters.

I push open the heavy doors and wander through carpeted rooms filled with yellowing books until I find a huge table with two other people working on laptops. Perfect. I sit down, open up my own computer and immediately type into Google “Jonah T London.”

Twenty-three million results.

At my groan, one of the other people at the desk shushes me. I glare at him. There’s a gentle tap on my shoulder.

I spin around in my chair to find a tall, skinny man who looks to be in his early forties peering down at me curiously. He’s wearing a satin waistcoat over a white shirt. His face is impish, his hair a wispy ash blond. “Hello.” He points at a little golden badge on his waistcoat. I’m Aled. Can I help you?” His accent is pure warm Yorkshire, round and agreeable. “I heard you groan from just over there and I thought, ‘That’s the sound of a bookworm in distress.’ Can I assist?”

I grimace at my computer screen.

“Actually, yes. Do you have, like, records of people? Addresses and phone numbers and things?”

“For members of the public? You want someone’s address? Use a search engine!”

“I just did! But there are millions of results. I’m trying to find someone and there isn’t much time.”

“You sound panicked, love!” Aled purses his lips. “Is…is this serious?”

“It’s literally life-or-death,” I mutter distractedly, scrolling down the Google results and then clicking onto the images page. Nothing of use.

“Hmmm, I see. I see.” Aled rubs his hands together. “I may not have access to private phone numbers, but I think I do have something that can help. A little something called…books!”