Chapter Thirty

Ash puffed out her cheeks. "So, there's nothing that you need me to sign or… anything?"

Snythe looked at her over his glasses. "Nothing, Ms. Wells. Your role in this little play is over, I'm afraid." He sat back. "Once again, you have my deepest apologies. There really was no way we could have known."

"I suppose not," Ash said. By right she should be angry at having her life disrupted in this way, upended, something offered and then snatched away. She couldn't quite bring herself to be more than mildly irritated though. She'd found Pen, and that had to count for something.

"We honestly did try everything, and you were by far the closest match that we found. I mean, there were enough small coincidences to tie you to the deceased that you really did seem like the best possible choice at the time."

"What happens now then?" Ash asked.

Snythe sighed. "Well, we've found the woman. She's in Australia and we're arranging a power of attorney for her so she can deal with the inheritance from abroad. That's really all I can tell you."

"Right," Ash said. She didn't really know why she'd come, except that she'd wanted some kind of closure perhaps. Snythe had been polite, walking her through things, but he was right, she had no business here anymore. "Thank you then, I suppose."

"Sometimes," Snythe said, "I'm extremely happy that I don't practice in a more litigious country, the United States, for example." He gave her a toothy grin. "I don't imagine you'll be attempting to sue me."

"Wasn't thinking of it," said Ash. She took pity on him, this really wasn't his fault. She thought that in his shoes she'd probably have made the same kinds of decisions. After all, how was he supposed to know that the niece Mary bequeathed the shop to wasn't actually a biological niece at all? "I won't be making any kind of complaint either, so don't fret."

His grin widened. "In that case, I am in your debt. Should you need legal help in the future I hope that you'll call on me."

"I hope I won't need to," Ash said, getting up. "But thank you anyway."

She walked out of the smart office and started her walk home. Her fingers itched to pick up the phone and call Pen, but she behaved herself. Pen had a business to run, she couldn't be phoning all the time.

Honestly, she'd thought this would be easier. She'd thought that the distance would mean little. They had phones, WhatsApp, Facetime, plenty of ways to stay in touch. In fact, she messaged Pen far more often now than she had in Tetherington.

It just wasn't the same though.

As much as Pen had annoyed her at the beginning with her constant visits and gifts of cake, she missed it now, she realized. She missed having her pop in during the day. And now that she was on the subject, she sort of missed having George around to make her cups of tea. And stroking Fabio's belly. And, she thought, as she entered her flat building, she'd literally never seen her postman in London. Presuming she had one and it wasn't just a host of different people.

It was still the right decision though, she told herself. It really was. She liked Pen a lot. More than she'd ever liked anyone ever before. But living together so soon in such a small space was not the way to proceed.

If she'd have kept the shop, on the other hand, well, that would have been different. If the place had been hers and they could have kept working at things, she could have made a home there.

She sighed as she walked up the stairs, the lift was still broken. For such a long time, London had been enough. Her life had been enough. Work and walks and concerts. She'd managed to fill the hours quite nicely. Now she wondered how she'd ever done it.

It just seemed like there was too much time in the day.

And, as odd as it seemed, she missed talking to people.

She went into her empty flat and closed the door behind her to echoing silence and suddenly just couldn't deal with it anymore.

Flinging open a cupboard in the kitchen she searched through the contents until she found a box of biscuits she'd bought the Christmas before. They'd been two for the price of one and she'd never opened the second box. Grabbing it, she went straight back out of the door and into the corridor.

Clutching the biscuit box in one hand, she knocked with the other.

"Yes?" Amanda said, opening the door. "Oh. It's you." She looked surprised.

"Yes," said Ash. "Um, it's me. I just… I… Er, this." She held out the box of biscuits and Amanda took it. "I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for looking after the flat and hoovering and the plants and everything. So, um, thanks."

Christ, if this was what passed for conversation in her brain no wonder she didn't have any friends. Amanda looked down at the box in her hand, and Ash thought that probably she'd done the wrong thing. She was so desperate for company that she wreaked of it. But when Amanda looked up, she was smiling, a smile that reached her eyes.

"How lovely," she said. "That's really kind." She hesitated for a second. "Do you want to come in? For a coffee, I mean. Unless you're busy and need to rush off or something."

"No," Ash said quickly. "No, um, I don't have to rush off. A, er, a coffee would be nice."

"Come on in then," Amanda said, beaming.

Uncertainly, Ash walked into the flat, letting herself be shown into the living room.

"Just have a sit down, I've already got the machine on, it'll just be a mo," Amanda said.

Now that she was sitting down, Ash thought she might have made a mistake. Okay, so she wanted company, someone to talk to, but Amanda? What were they supposed to talk about? She looked around anxiously, looking for some kind of point of reference and had just picked up the book that was sitting open on the coffee table when Amanda came back in bearing two cups.

"Oh, ignore that, it's just my silly addiction," Amanda said.

Ash looked at the cover of the book and it was very familiar. Too familiar. "A Crown of Hearts and Desires," she read.

"It's really nothing, just a little something to pass the time. You must think I'm so silly."

"No," Ash said, putting the book down. "In fact, I've read it."

"You have?" Amanda said, putting the coffees down. "The plot's quite good, but I'm finding the romance a little stretched."

For just a second Ash seriously considered recommending one of the lesbian romance books that George had given her. But that probably wasn't Amanda's problem, was it. It was more likely that the romance plot in A Crown of Hearts and Desires was actually not very good at all. "It wasn't my favorite," she said instead.

"Do you read much romance?" Amanda asked, settling down in an armchair opposite her. "I wouldn't have put you down as the type."

"Um, I've just started actually," Ash said politely, picking up her coffee.

"Then you've plenty to look forward to. I've got stacks of books if you want some," Amanda said. She leaned forward a little. "To be honest, I just can't get enough of them."

Ash cocked her head to one side. "Why?" she asked. She was honestly interested. She'd wanted to ask customers at the bookshop but couldn't bring herself to potentially offend them.

Amanda laughed. "You'll think it's stupid."

"No," said Ash. "Go on, try me."

"I like them because they're not real," Amanda said. "Because every morning I wake up and put breakfast on the table and settle arguments and comb knots out of hair and find car keys and all the rest of it. And sometimes, sometimes, I want the life in these pages. When there's nothing but love and sex and all the rough edges of life are smoothed over."

"But if you want that, then, well, why are you here?" Ash asked.

Amanda laughed. "I didn't mean that I hated my life or anything like that. I have love here, because this is what real love is. It's lost car keys and knots in hair and being irritated but biting your tongue. It's all the things altogether. The escape, the fantasy is nice, but it's not real." She smiled. "I told you it was stupid. But having a little bit of both, the reality and the fantasy, that's what works for me."

"Someone once told me that selling romance books was like selling dreams," Ash said carefully.

"Sounds about right," Amanda said. "And there's nothing wrong with dreams. As long as you remember that when you make those dreams into reality that, well, reality will put its stamp on them."

"Huh," Ash said. "I never thought of it like that."

"Tell me what you're reading then," Amanda said, settling back with her coffee.

So Ash did.

IT WAS NONE of her business, but that didn't stop Ash picking up Mary's journal. She'd spent long enough wondering about the woman, long enough mystified by her life and how she'd lived it. So it seemed sort of fitting to turn to her now that she was wondering about her own life.

The diary was a simple one, just like Pen had said. A line a day, no more, though Mary had stuck in enough post-it notes to make the book bulge at the seams.

For the most part, it was predictably pedestrian. A line about a knitting circle, a line about a book she'd read, something about Billy the postman here, something about Fabio there. As Ash flicked through it, she smiled. Line by line she built up a picture of a life well-lived, a life led as part of a community, the ins and outs of a little town. And she found that she missed Tetherington more than she'd expected.

It wasn't until a handful of pages in that she found the first really personal entry.

He is twice my size and yet half my heart.

One line. No post-it necessary.

And the pure simplicity of it, the raw honesty of it, was enough to bring stinging tears to Ash's eyes.