‘Yes, well, her favourites when she was growing up. These were ones that meant a lot to her when she was around your age. The books we love when we’re growing up shape us in a special way, Tilly. The characters in the books we read help us decide who we want to be.’
Grandad paused, and Tilly noticed he had a book in his hands, turning it round and round as he spoke.
‘Ah. This one,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to show you. I mean … Well, just let me know what you think of it.’ He gave a last glance at the book in his hand and passed it to Tilly. It was A Little Princess – a copy with a yellow cover. Tilly took Mary’s photo out of the envelope and showed it to Grandad.
‘Where did you get this from?’ he asked.
‘Mary just gave it to me,’ Tilly said. ‘Look, she’s reading this exact book!’
‘You see, it was her favourite,’ Grandad said. ‘She enjoyed it when she was your age, but she really fell in love with it while she was at university. She took this copy with her and read it over and over again. She … Well, she found something new in it as an adult, I suppose. Have you read it?’
‘Yes, a few times.’
‘What did you think?’ Grandad asked. ‘Did you connect with any characters in particular?’
Tilly shrugged. ‘I enjoyed it. It’s not my favourite but I liked Sara a lot. I like how she tells stories when she feels sad, and to help her after her dad dies.’
Grandad smiled softly, as much to himself as to Tilly. ‘Well, now you have your mum’s copy to keep. And a photo of her reading it.’
He looked at the box of books. ‘There might be some in there you haven’t read before. Why don’t you take them up to your room and have a sort through?’ He gave Tilly a squeeze and hauled himself up off the floor. ‘Can’t leave your grandma to deal with Jack by herself for too long,’ he said and headed back into the bookshop.
Tilly put A Little Princess back in the box and staggered upstairs with it to her tiny room at the very top of the house. The walls were lined with bookshelves full of her own books, as well as ones she had temporarily borrowed from the shop, something she was not really supposed to do, but after she caught Grandma spilling tea on what turned out to be a shop book a blind eye was usually turned as long as they reappeared in pristine condition. Tilly put the box down in the middle of the floor and placed Mary’s envelope on top. She sat down on her bed, curled her knees up underneath her, and stared at them as her feelings tangled round each other, twisting and knotting her up.
Finally she pulled the photo out again and laid it on her bed before slipping a narrow album off her shelves. In the pages were a collection of photos her grandparents had let her collate that all featured her mum: as a child, with Grandma and Grandad, in the bookshop, even some in New York where she had gone to university. The photos looked back at Tilly, a puddle of memories that weren’t hers.
Tilly felt like she was being wrapped in a heavy blanket that was comforting and suffocating at the same time. Her mum’s face looked up at her from too many photos all at once. When Tilly tried to picture her mum in her mind she felt like she was trying to imagine what a character in a book looks like. You think they’re standing right next to you, but as soon as you whirl round to look straight at them everything blurs and dissolves, and the harder you try to see them, the more flighty and unfocused they get until they barely resemble a real person at all.
She tried to calm her breathing down and tucked Mary’s photo into the album, before putting it on her bedside table. Then she took a deep breath and settled down to look at the box of books instead, which felt more manageable.
‘Books are my thing,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I can do books.’
She tried to blow the dust off the top of the box, but it worked rather less well than it did in films, so she wiped it with her sleeve. There wasn’t any other writing on the box apart from her mum’s name in blocky capitals. Tilly peeled back the rest of the barely sticky tape and pulled out the copy of A Little Princess. Underneath that was a dated-looking version of Anne of Green Gables, which she picked up, but found herself just gazing at the cover, unable to open it. The top front corner was ripped off and she could see ‘Beatrice Pages’ written on the first page in a child’s handwriting.
Tilly traced the lines of her mother’s writing with a fingertip, trying to picture her mum at her age carefully inking a little bit of herself on to the paper. Tilly felt as though there was a delicate thread stretched between her and her mother that she had only realised was there when this book had tugged on it. Grandad had always told her to write her name in her books, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that her mum did the same thing when she was little.
‘It’s about creating a record of who’s read and loved each book,’ he would say. Grandad was always hunting in charity shops for copies that had someone’s name in, or messages from people who had given books as presents. ‘I love thinking about other people reading the books I love, or why someone gave that book as a present – those names and messages are like tiny moments of time travel linking readers from different eras and families and even countries.’
Tilly wondered why her mother had cared for these books, for they were clearly very well loved. Tilly wanted to know if her mother had loved these characters for the same reasons she did. Had Anne Shirley made her mum laugh in the same places? She closed her eyes and imagined a parallel life where she could ask her, where she could go downstairs and find her at the kitchen table, chopping salad leaves with Grandad, or rubbing flour and butter together to make crumble topping with Grandma. Their house was always full of laughter and music and conversation, but Tilly could hear the silence where her mother should be, like an orchestra without a cello section.
She was pulled from her imagination by a gentle knock on the door, and Grandma popped her head round.
‘Hi, sweetheart, how are you getting on? Grandad said you’d found a box of your mum’s books?’
Tilly nodded as Grandma stepped into the room and picked up the copy of A Little Princess. She held it to her chest like it contained a small part of her daughter in its pages. ‘I’m going to start thinking about dinner soon,’ she said, still hugging the book tightly. ‘Do you want to come down and help close the shop up beforehand? It’s a bit chilly up here.’
Tilly nodded and followed Grandma downstairs. And, even though she knew the kitchen would be empty, she couldn’t help but picture opening the door to her mother. But as she went in and felt the warmth of the room envelope her she rooted herself once again in the present.
Later that evening, over a meal of chicken roasted with garlic and lemons and rosemary, with crusty bread and green beans, Tilly felt the hard gem of her sadness thaw a little, leaving questions as it melted.
‘Do you know what sort of books my dad liked?’ she asked, and Grandad seemed to choke a little on a mouthful of bread.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Grandma said as she patted Grandad on the back. ‘We didn’t really know him very well at all.’
‘Do you think my mum would have known his favourite books?’ Tilly asked.
‘I’m sure she did,’ Grandma said. ‘I’m sure they talked about books along with everything else you talk to the person you love about.’
‘Why don’t we have any photos of him?’
‘Well, for the same reason that we don’t know what his favourite books were: we just didn’t get to spend any time with him before he died.’
‘Do you think Mum left because my dad died?’
‘Oh, my love,’ Grandma said. ‘I don’t know is the honest answer. I’m not going to pretend to you that it didn’t break her heart not being able to be with your father for longer, or that she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how things might have worked out differently. But then she had you, and