The Library of Lost and Found

She and Joe used to dance in the sea at dusk, whatever the weather. They sat on a blanket on the floor of the teardrop-shaped cave and read aloud from books together. He scratched their initials onto the cave wall, and she painted her toenails petal pink for him.

For five years he’d been part of her life, helping to fill the gap that Zelda left behind. Martha had imagined marriage, and their carpets scattered with brightly coloured picture books. But then she’d made a huge decision and her dreams had fallen apart.

These days, Martha knew she wouldn’t ever win a beauty contest, but when a reader sidled up to the desk, rubbed their chin and said, ‘I don’t know the title of the book, but the cover is red, and I think there’s a picture of a dog on the front,’ she had the answer.

‘We’re talking about you, not me,’ she said hurriedly. She made Suki a cup of tea and placed a heart-shaped biscuit on her saucer. She took a blue satin cushion from her shopping bag and plumped it up. Drawing Zelda’s book from her bag, she set it on the table.

‘Urgh. Is that one of ours?’ Suki dabbed her eyes. She positioned the cushion behind her back and bounced against it several times.

‘No. I saw someone lurking outside the library, last night. I think they left it for me.’

‘You came to work?’ Suki frowned. ‘For the author event?’

Martha nodded.

‘But Clive was supposed to tell everyone that Lucinda couldn’t make it. Her publisher called him.’

Martha quickly lowered her eyes. ‘He didn’t tell me.’

Suki’s face fell. ‘Oh God, sorry, Martha. I didn’t know. I was occupational with Ben and the baby.’

‘It’s fine,’ Martha said, even though it wasn’t. ‘It means that I found the book. It’s from someone called Owen Chamberlain.’

Suki sat more upright. ‘Oh, yeah. Chamberlain’s is the new bookshop behind Maltsborough lifeboat station. Well, it’s new but sells old books.’ She picked the book up and leafed through it. ‘These illustrations are gorgeous.’

‘There’s a message inside from my grandmother, Zelda. But she passed away three years before the date.’

Suki frowned. ‘That’s weird, like an Agatha Christie mystery or something.’

‘Or, perhaps a mistake. That’s the more obvious conclusion.’

‘Are you going ring him?’

Martha hesitated. Recalling Lilian’s disparaging words about the book made her palms itch. ‘My sister said to leave it alone.’

‘But the desiccation is to you, not her.’

‘It’s dedication,’ Martha corrected her. She stared at the phone on the desk, and thoughts of Zelda crawling on the library floor came back to her again. Even now, she still missed her.

‘I suppose I could call him,’ she said, finally. ‘To tie up loose ends with the situation.’

‘Definitely.’

Martha slid the handwritten note out of the book, to read the phone number, but as she did, the library doors opened. A breeze lifted the note from her fingers. It swept into the air and down onto the floor like a feather.

‘Yes.’ Lilian spoke loudly. ‘You do have to stay here…’

Will and Rose appeared round the corner first. They both wore jeans and baggy hooded tops, and their droopy mouths said they’d prefer to be somewhere else.

Thirteen-year-old Will’s spiky hair was platinum blond, a contrast to the black of his thick eyebrows. Rose was three years younger. Her hair was the colour of autumn leaves, a soft copper. It fell in spirals around her oval face.

Lilian nudged them forward and rubbed the corner of her eye. ‘Hey, how are you, Martha?’ she said. ‘I’ve stopped by for my Ahern.’

‘I’ve got it here. And I’ve brought the old book I told you about.’

Lilian raised her palm and briefly closed her eyes. ‘Okay, but I need to ask you for a favour. Do you mind looking after the kids? I’ve got an errand to run.’

Will rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, sure. You’re going to Chichetti’s in Maltsborough, Mum. Your friend invited you to lunch.’

Lilian fixed him with a stare and gave a stilted laugh. ‘Well, yes. Annie and I will eat, but we also have other things to do.’ She stepped closer to Martha and lowered her voice. ‘I want to talk to Annie about something. It’s important. The kids will be no trouble. They’ll just read books and things.’

Martha had received a telling-off from Clive when Will and Rose last hung out at the library. He accused her of mixing business and family life. ‘I’d love to help, but—’

‘Great,’ Lilian said, with a sigh of relief. ‘Thanks so much. I’ll be back by two. Or two thirty. Perhaps three… Now, I have to dash.’

‘But about the book—’ Martha picked it up and proffered it to her sister.

Lilian froze, then tentatively took hold of it. She briefly flicked through the pages and her lips pursed into a thin line when she reached Zelda’s message.

‘Have you noticed the date?’ Martha prompted.

Colour seemed to seep from Lilian’s cheeks. She cleared her throat. ‘Zelda probably wrote it down wrong, that’s all.’

‘That seems a strange thing to do.’

Lilian handed it back. She hitched her handbag up on her shoulder. ‘I don’t know why you’re getting obsessed with that crappy old thing, especially when you’re surrounded by so many lovely books. Just chuck it away. It’s probably full of germs.’

Martha heard the irritation in her sister’s voice and decided not to press things further. But although she smiled and said, ‘Well, okay then,’ she couldn’t help wondering why Lilian was so dismissive of the intriguing little book.

Will took off his boots and stretched his legs out, creating a hurdle to the history section. ‘Any chance of a brew?’ he asked Martha.

Rose sat cross-legged in front of the YA shelves. She stabbed at her phone screen with her index finger. ‘I’d love one, too. You make the best cups of tea.’ Her eyes shone as a neon-yellow trophy exploded.

‘Of course,’ Martha said. ‘Would you like a biscuit, too? Freshly baked.’

Will and Rose nodded in unison.

Branda was the next person who needed help, with her photocopying. Her real name was Brenda, but everyone switched the e to an a without her noticing because she only wore clothes she classed as a ‘dee-signer brand’. Three years ago, her husband left her for a family friend, so Branda hit him where it hurt – in his wallet. Today she wore a crisp white shirt with hand-painted eagles on the shoulders, and a black leather skirt with bright yellow stitching. Her bluey-black hair was coiffed into a small crispy beehive.

‘I’ll do it,’ Martha said, wrestling the paper out of her arms. ‘You have a nice sit-down. Do you have extinguishers in the Lobster Pot? Your candles could be quite a fire hazard.’

‘I only use the best beeswax, Martha,’ Branda said. ‘Extinguishers would spoil the restaurant aesthetic. I stow them away in the kitchen.’

After that, Martha showed a young man with multiple face piercings how to search for jobs online. She changed a plug on a computer that didn’t fit the socket properly, even though she should report electronic stuff to Clive. She issued a new library card and replaced two lost ones. A man from the garden centre asked where he could buy brown fur fabric, because the staff wanted to dress up as woodland creatures. He wanted to go as a ferret. Martha located a book in the sewing section on making costumes for children. ‘You can tape pieces of paper together and scale up the pattern in size,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’ll do it for you.’

‘You make everything so easy for people,’ Suki said, as the man walked away with the book and a six-feet tall piece of paper with a man-sized ferret outfit sketched on it.

‘Thank you.’

‘Too easy… Have you called Chamberlain’s yet?’

‘I’ve not had the chance.’

‘You’ve got time now. Think about yourself, for once.’

Martha felt a lump rise in her throat. It happened now and again, if anyone displayed unexpected thoughtfulness towards her. She tucked in her chin and swallowed the lump away, but she also felt a weird flutter in her stomach, as if she’d swallowed something that was still alive. A new bookshop and the opportunity to find out more about the old book were a real temptation. She wondered how Owen Chamberlain had traced her, and what he knew about the book and Zelda’s message. ‘Well, okay,’ she said.

She dialled the number for Chamberlain’s but didn’t get a reply, so she rang a further three times in a row. ‘I don’t know how Mr Chamberlain expects to make a living if he doesn’t pick up the phone,’ she said. ‘Did you know that eight out of ten businesses fail in their first year of trading?’

‘That’s a lot. Go over to Maltsborough to see him,’ Suki suggested. ‘I think the shop closes at one thirty today, and doesn’t open again until Wednesday. I’ve got things covered here.’

But Martha had duties to perform. The library didn’t close for another fifty-three minutes. She looked over at her niece and nephew, still studying their phones. ‘I can’t go. Someone might need me.’

As the morning ticked by, Martha carried over Skulduggery Pleasant, Divergent and Percy Jackson and placed the books on the table beside Will. He smiled but didn’t pick them up.

Martha found Little Women and Chocolat for her niece. Although Rose muttered, ‘Thanks,’ Martha could tell that the books would remain unread. She kept the two of them topped up with cups of tea.

She also tried to call Owen Chamberlain a further two times but the phone still rang out.

Siegfried Frost shuffled into the library and, as usual, didn’t say hello. The reclusive seventy-something always wore the same grey knitted hat, the same texture and colour as his wiry hair that sprang from under it. His beard obscured his lips so that, on the rare occasions he spoke, you couldn’t see them. His brown mac almost reached the ankles of his frayed, turned-up jeans. He’d moved into the old Sandshift lighthouse after the Pegasus accident.

His fingers crept towards the battered book and he picked it up.

Martha shot out her hand to stop him. ‘That’s not actually a library book.’

Above his grey whiskers, Siegfried’s eyes didn’t blink. He twisted his upper body, moving the book away from her. Flicking through it, he paused to peer at an illustration of a blackbird.

Upside down, Martha read the title of the story, ‘The Bird Girl’.

An image slipped into her head then vanished just as quickly, of her reading a story to her mum and nana. It was one she hadn’t thought of for a long time and her head felt a little floaty. She reached behind her for a chair, her hand hovering in the space above it.

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghoul,’ Suki said.

Siegfried dropped the book back on the table and shuffled away.

Martha immediately picked it up again. The ground seemed wavy beneath her feet. ‘I think I know the story that Siegfried was looking at.’ She turned the pages and located it, her eyes scanning the words. She stared at its title. Gingerly, she lifted the book to her nose and inhaled, recognizing the smell as a hint of Youth Dew. ‘I have got to read this.’

‘Sure. I’ll make you a coffee.’

Martha sank into the chair and traced her finger down the words. She read the story twice, recognizing ‘The Bird Girl’ as one she made up many years ago.

She turned the pages and other words and titles began to leap out at her. Stories told by Zelda to Martha, created by Martha for Betty. Stories the three women had shared together.

What on earth are they doing here?

‘You look very pale.’ Suki returned and placed a steaming cup of coffee on the desk.

Martha nodded. She got to her feet and knocked her hip against the desktop. Coffee splashed onto the corner of Branda’s photocopying. She took a tissue and dabbed it, her fingers feeling strangely big and clumsy. ‘I know the library doesn’t close for twenty-three minutes, but I need to go,’ she said. She surveyed the room, making sure that everyone was able to cope without her.

‘You’re going home?’

‘No. To Chamberlain’s.’

‘Oh,’ Suki raised an eyebrow. ‘Good incision.’

‘It’s decision. And sorry, I won’t drink the coffee, though it does look very flavoursome. Apologies for the spillage.’ Martha reached down and picked up her bag. Her hands shook as she placed the book carefully inside it.

Stepping into the history section, she spoke as loudly as her small voice allowed. ‘Will and Rose, put your shoes back on. We’re going over to Maltsborough.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Bookshop

As they walked to the bus stop, Martha glanced over both shoulders to make sure that Clive wasn’t around to see her leaving work early. She asked Will and Rose if they’d prefer to go to the bookshop with her, or to meet their mother at the restaurant.

Will lowered his phone. ‘Chichetti’s does an amazing chocolate fudge cake. Can we go and get a slice?’

‘Mum sounded like she needed some time out,’ Rose said cautiously. ‘Like, without us.’

Will shrugged and returned to his game.

‘I’m sure your mum will be pleased to see us,’ Martha said, though she wasn’t convinced. ‘But I must get to that bookstore before it closes.’

‘What time’s that?’ Rose asked.

‘One thirty, I think.’

‘But it’s almost one o’clock now.’

When the bus rumbled up, five minutes later, they got on board. Will and Rose made their way to the back seat and positioned themselves as far away from each other as they could. Martha sat down between them. She touched the sparkly slide in her hair and held onto her bag.

Her upper body did a strange dance, as the bus turned and wound its way out of Sandshift and up onto Maltsborough Road. She raised her head to look down at the bay, where the sky was a shroud of mist hanging over the grey-blue sea. Siegfried’s lighthouse gleamed in the hazy February daylight, and Martha willed the bus to get a move on.

Maltsborough was Sandshift’s wealthier neighbour. It had a run of smart seafront bistros, a bank, a grand hotel with turrets, fish and chip shops galore, a museum and a state-of-the-art library that had a coffee shop, gift shop and large lights that looked like giant blue test tubes hanging from the ceiling. It attracted lots more funding than Sandshift and was where Clive sat in his office, hatching plans for budget cuts, synergy and synchronicity.

Chichetti’s was a new Italian restaurant on the high street with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the promenade. It was the kind of place where eating pasta and being seen were of equal importance to diners.

Martha, Will and Rose stood in a line, on the pavement outside, looking in.

Martha spotted her sister’s gold pumps near the window. She raised her hand to wave, but then paused with her hand mid-air. Lilian was leaned forward over the table with her face pointing down. Another woman, who Martha presumed must be Annie, had an arm wrapped around her shoulder.

Martha slowly lowered her hand but Will didn’t seem to notice there might be something going on. He rapped loudly on the window and gave a double thumbs-up to his mum.

Annie shook Lilian’s shoulder, and she sat up abruptly. She knocked her glass of white wine with her wrist and it wobbled. A passing waiter reached out and steadied it.

Lilian blinked hard at Martha, Will and Rose. She got up so quickly her stool rocked, and she sped towards the smoked-glass front door.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked breathlessly, as she stepped outside. Her eyes were pink and glistening above her puffy cheeks. ‘It’s only twenty past one.’

Martha swallowed. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. Just a spot of, um, hay fever.’

‘I have a packet of tissues in my bag. They’re extra-soft and have aloe vera in them…’

‘I’m fine,’ Lilian said. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Sorry for bringing the kids early, but I want to get to that bookshop before it closes. Will and Rose don’t want to join me. I think they want food instead.’

‘I’m really hungry,’ Rose said.

‘Me too.’ Will nodded.

Lilian knitted her hand into her hair and didn’t speak for a while. She took a deep breath and held it in her chest. ‘I suppose that’s fine. We’re just about to order dessert.’ Then her eyes grew harder. ‘I hope this isn’t about that old book?’

Martha felt as if she was shrinking in size, like Alice in Wonderland after drinking from a potion bottle. ‘The shop doesn’t open again until Wednesday,’ she said meekly.

‘I told you to leave it alone.’

‘I just want to find out where it came from, that’s all.’

Lilian pressed her lips together. ‘It’s your choice,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t know why you’re so interested in that stupid old thing, anyway. You could join us for a lovely dessert instead.’

‘Oh yeah, go on, Auntie Martha.’ Rose said.

‘The chocolate fudge cake is really gooey.’ Will licked his lips.

Martha stared inside the restaurant, at a waiter who glided past carrying an enormous ice cream sundae. Her mouth began to water. ‘I, um…’

‘And I need to ask you for another favour,’ Lilian added.

‘Yes?’ Martha said. She fumbled in her bag for her notepad and pen and flipped to her current task list. ‘What is it?’

‘Will you look after the kids, the weekend after next? I need to, um, work away.’

‘I bet it’s at a posh spa,’ Will quipped.

Lilian fixed him with a brief stare, then found a smile for Martha. ‘I have a few things to sort out. Can we make it an overnighter?’

Martha wrote this down and thought about it. Now that they were getting older, Will and Rose hadn’t slept at the house for a couple of years. Her parents’ old bedroom was full of bags and boxes. ‘I’m happy to have them during the day, but there’s not enough space for them to—’

‘Great,’ Lilian interjected. ‘Thanks, Martha. Now, let’s grab that dessert.’

Martha’s mind ticked between her two options. She was here now, but Chamberlain’s closed in a few minutes. She placed her notepad in her handbag and fastened the zip. Lilian’s eyes still looked tense, but it could be because of the pollen. ‘The restaurant looks lovely, but perhaps some other time.’

A veil seemed to slip across Lilian’s features. She wrapped her arms around Will and Rose’s shoulders. ‘You seem to remember our grandmother as some kind of fairy godmother figure,’ she said sharply. ‘It really wasn’t the case.’

Martha’s mouth fell open a little. ‘Zelda was wonderful. She was bright and fun, and always—’

Lilian shook her head. ‘Sometimes, Martha,’ she said as she placed her hand against the restaurant door, ‘it’s easy to remember things differently to how they actually were.’

Martha could hear faint electronic tunes from the amusement arcades on the seafront, but the street where Chamberlain’s Pre-Loved and Antiquarian Books was located was quiet, except for two seagulls cawing and flapping over a dropped bag of chips.

Suki said the bookshop was new, but the shade of the duckegg blue paint coating the window frames and door, and the semicircle of silver lettering embossed on the large windowpane, made it look a couple of centuries old.

Flustered after her uncomfortable discussion with Lilian, Martha struggled to regulate her breathing. Her chest felt tight again and she gave it a rub. There was something about the flicker in her sister’s eyes that made her question her decision to come here.

Even though Lilian was the younger sister, she’d always taken the lead. When she first arrived home from the hospital as a plum-faced newborn, she had assumed control. She would sleep and eat when she wanted, and the rest of the family had to fit their lives around her.

Thomas loved his new daughter. He cooed at her and puffed out his chest when he pushed Lilian in the pram, showing her off to friends and neighbours. He didn’t allow any of the fun toys that Zelda bought inside her cot.

Martha could admit that, with her icy-blonde hair and blue eyes, her sister was a beautiful child. However, her father’s devoted attention to her made Martha feel like the ugly sister in comparison.

As she stood in front of the shop door, she lifted her chin. There were only a couple of minutes left until closing time and she had to follow her instincts. Twisting the brass knob, she opened the door.

A brass bell rang and she felt a little otherworldly as she inhaled the heady aroma of leather, cardboard and ink. Her eyes widened at the sight of the books lining the floor-to-ceiling shelves. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, some worn and some like new.

Her forehead crinkled a little with disapproval as she spotted a screwed-up tissue and a felt tip pen without its lid on the desk. There was a small heap of sweet wrappers, several key rings and a plastic pug dog with a nodding head. Her own house might be busy, but this shop looked disorganized, in need of a good system.

A long wooden ladder, leaning against a bookshelf, stretched from the floor and rose upwards as far as Martha could see. There was a pair of legs, with feet facing her, clad in monogrammed red slippers. The toes wriggled as if their owner was listening to music that nobody else could hear. The ladder rungs creaked and bowed as the legs climbed down.

The red slipper-wearer was tall with a circular face. His sandy hair was pushed back off his forehead and streaked white around the temples. A red silk scarf framed his open-necked black shirt and his grey suit fitted loosely over his large rounded chest. He wore four colourful pin badges. One featured an illustration of a book, and another said ‘Booksellers – great between the sheets’. Martha noticed that his hand was large enough to hold several books in its span and that he had a smear of ink on his cheek.

Martha tapped her own face. ‘You have a smudge.’

‘Oh.’ The man put down his books and lifted his scarf. He used it to rub his face. ‘I keep finding bruises in strange places… but it’s ink from the books and newspapers. There,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Is that better?’

Martha stared at his cheek, which was now denim blue. ‘You may need a mirror.’

‘I don’t think I have one.’

Taking the battered book from her bag, Martha searched for a spare space on the countertop. ‘I think you might have left this for me?’

‘Ah, you must be Martha.’ Owen smiled and held out his hand.

Martha hesitated. Although she liked to help library-goers, physical contact was something she tried to forgo. Helping her parents out of their chairs was as close as she’d got to others for a long time. She reached out and lightly shook his hand, then quickly let it go. ‘May I ask where the book came from, and how you found me?’

Owen picked it up, handling it as if it was an injured baby bird. ‘A fellow bookseller sent it to me, for repair. But it’s in such a bad state and would be too expensive to reconstruct. When I told him the price, he said not to bother. I paid him a tenner for it because I could sell some of the illustrations. But then I got The Guilt.’

‘Guilt?’

‘I can’t bring myself to disassemble books… even if they’re beyond rescue. I always end up keeping them. But then I can’t sell them, either.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Though, over the years I bet my wives would have liked me to.’

Martha blinked, wondering just how many times he’d been married. He did have an air of Henry VIII about him.

‘When I flicked through this one,’ Owen continued, ‘I spotted your name in the dedication and knew it from leaflets about the library. There aren’t any other Martha Storms in the telephone directory… so it had to be you.’

‘Were you huddled by the library door, yesterday evening?’ Martha asked with a frown.