This girl had a look that Nina recognized. She looked avaricious, hungry for books, desperate to get her hands on something.
“You again!” said Nina cheerily. “I’ll have to start charging you rent. Come on in. Have a look.”
Lumpily—her posture was terrible—the girl mounted the two little steps into the van. Inside, her face lit up. It changed her completely; she had the loveliest smile.
“It’s nice,” she said, speaking so quietly Nina could barely hear her. She moved toward the shelves, entranced, running her fingers across the spines, smiling at certain books as if they were good friends.
“What kind of thing are you looking for?”
“Oh.” The girl’s face dropped. “I can’t really afford to buy books. Hey, this is misfiled.” She took out a Daniel Clowes that had slipped between two Frank Darabonts.
“Thanks,” said Nina in surprise. The girl handed her the book and expertly continued scanning the stacks.
“You like books?”
The girl nodded. “More than anything. It was shite when they shut the library. I don’t . . . There aren’t any books in my house.”
“None at all?”
“Neh. My mum would sell them. If she knew what they were.” She didn’t say it in a self-pitying way, simply as a statement of fact.
Nina noticed that the girl’s clothes were cheap and not heavy enough for the breezy weather. She glanced thoughtfully around the post-story-time mess.
“Well,” she said thoughtfully. “You know, I could do with an occasional helping hand around here. I can’t afford to pay you very much to begin with.” She couldn’t afford to pay herself at this point, by the time she’d bought a bit of gas and put something aside for stock and the occasional sandwich. “It would only be half an hour here and there, and you could take a book at the end of it. Would that work?”
The girl’s face lit up. “Seriously?”
“It’s not a job,” said Nina hurriedly. “I don’t want to exploit you or anything like that. It’s literally just a quick tidying.”
But the girl had already started neatly arranging the children’s books in height order, so the little ones could easily pick out the brightest colors and jolliest creatures.
“Um, what’s your name?”
“Ainslee.” The girl didn’t even turn around.
“Right, thanks, Ainslee,” said Nina, and went back to the steps of the van, where she sold a full set of Regency potboilers to a local lady with an enormous Labrador, a woolly tweed dress, and a completely bizarre accent. It was only when she took out a large checkbook (Nina would have said that they didn’t take checks, but the woman was buying an awful lot of books, plus she was quite frightening) that Nina saw she was Lady Kinross. Then she didn’t know where to look.
“That’s the posh woman from up the road,” said Ainslee when she’d gone. “Her house has a hundred rooms. She hasn’t even been in some of them.”
After twenty minutes, Ainslee had straightened everything perfectly and had made a start on sweeping the floor. Nina was embarrassed and insisted on buying her a coffee, then looked around to choose a book for her.
Eventually she realized exactly what it should be, even though it was outrageously expensive: Fore Girl, a graphic novel written by a young South American girl about a female superhero in Rio, taking from the absurdly rich and giving to the poor in the favelas. It was funny, glamorous, and completely and utterly kick-ass, and Ainslee’s face lit up like a lightbulb. Her distressed, downtrodden look had lifted completely.
“Can I come again?” she whispered.
“Yes,” said Nina. “Come again on Saturday, it’s market day.”
Ainslee almost shook with pleasure. Nina noticed that she stashed her book away incredibly carefully, tucked right at the bottom of her bag among scruffy papers and dog-eared homework. Nina worried that this was to keep it away from prying eyes. Ainslee caught her looking, and blushed deeply and scurried away. Nina watched her go, wondering.
“I need to get a message to Marek,” said Nina. “Seriously, I do. No messing around this time. Work stuff.”
“You mean, start a major smuggling exercise?” said Surinder, who was kindly doing the accounts in return for food, as they explored with alacrity the excellent fresh fish, cheese and fruit and vegetables of the region. “You know, I’m not sure this is right.”
Nina sighed. “But I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know we’d be this busy.”
It was true. Everywhere they’d gone in the Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After, every market they’d stopped at, they’d been overwhelmed by people who hadn’t had a bookshop or a library in their community for the longest time.
“I know,” said Surinder. “Remember when they used to let you out of work at four P.M.?”
“On WEDNESDAYS,” protested Nina. “Not every day. Just one day. Anyway, when are you going back to work?”
Surinder shrugged. “Oh, I have a ton of vacation stored up.”
“Yes, but I thought you were going to Vegas or L.A. or Miami, somewhere more suitable for how fabulous you are,” said Nina. “Those are exactly the words you used. You didn’t say, ‘I’m just off to rural Scotland to do some accounts.’”
“I know, but . . .” Surinder looked slightly embarrassed and gazed at her feet. She was wearing . . .
“Are those new wellies?”
She was indeed sporting a pair of very fancy new floral Wellingtons.
“Because, you know, there isn’t much call for new Wellingtons in Las Vegas.”
“And how would you know?”
Nina conceded this was a fair point, but even so she narrowed her eyes at Surinder.
“Have you been calling Fat Tam?” she said.
“None of your business.”
They were at a stand-off. Nina knew from long experience that it was best to change the subject.
“So anyway, I was wondering,” she began nervously. “What would you think if maybe I asked Marek—”
“You’ll get him in trouble,” said Surinder, with a warning glint in her eye.
“It’s just that Griffin has told me about another library that’s trying to unload a lot of stock before it closes, and they’ll sell it to me pretty cheaply.” Nina had given Marek’s e-mail address to Griffin in preparation for moving the stock but hadn’t discussed it with Marek yet. “They keep on shutting libraries,” Nina said sadly.