The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts Read online

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London, SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

  Copyright © Annie Darling 2016

  Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

  Cover illustration © Carrie May

  Annie Darling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008173111

  Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008173128

  Version 2016-04-26

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 7

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 10

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 14

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 15

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 16

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Ravished by the Rake

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  We Hope You Enjoyed Annie’s Book!

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  * * *

  From the London Gazette

  OBITUARY

  Lavinia Thorndyke OBE, April 1, 1930 to February 14, 2015

  Bookseller, mentor and tireless champion of literature, Lavinia Thorndyke has died aged 84.

  Lavinia Rosamund Melisande Thorndyke was born on 1 April 1930, the youngest child and only daughter of Sebastian Marjoribanks, the third Lord Drysdale and his wife Agatha, daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Cavanagh.

  Lavinia’s eldest brother, Percy, was killed fighting for the Loyalists in Spain in 1937. Twins, Edgar and Tom, both served with the RAF and died within a week of each other during the Battle of Britain. Lord Drysdale died in 1947 and his title and family estate in North Yorkshire passed to a cousin.

  Lavinia and her mother made a home for themselves in Bloomsbury, just around the corner from Bookends, the shop gifted to Agatha on her twenty-first birthday in 1912 by her parents in the hope that it would prove a distraction from her work with the Suffragette movement.

  In a column she wrote for The Bookseller in 1963, Lavinia recalled: ‘My mother and I found solace among the shelves. To compensate for our lack of a family, we were happy to be adopted by the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice, the Mortmains in I Capture the Castle, the Marches in Little Women, the Pockets in Great Expectations. We found what we were searching for in the pages of our favourite books.’

  Lavinia was educated at Camden School for Girls, then took up a degree in Philosophy at Oxford University where she met Peregrine Thorndyke, third and youngest son of the Duke and Duchess of Maltby.

  They were married at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden on 17 May 1952 and started wedded life in the flat above Bookends. On the death of Lavinia’s mother Agatha in 1963, the Thorndykes moved into her house in Bloomsbury Square and many a young writer was mentored, nurtured and nourished around their kitchen table.

  Lavinia was awarded an OBE in 1982 for her services to bookselling.

  Peregrine died in 2010 after a short battle with cancer.

  Lavinia remained a familiar sight in Bloomsbury cycling from her home to Bookends. A week ago, after a recent collision with another cyclist resulting in nothing more than scrapes and bruises, Lavinia died suddenly at her home.

  She is survived by her only daughter, Mariana, Contessa di Reggio d’Este, and her grandson, Sebastian Castillo Thorndyke, a digital entrepreneur.

  * * *

  Lavinia Thorndyke’s wake was held at a private members’ club for ladies of a literary persuasion on Endell Street in Covent Garden, which she’d belonged to for over fifty years.

  In a wood-panelled reception room on the second floor, its windows looking out on to the bustling streets below, people gathered to remember. Even though the mourners had come straight from Lavinia’s funeral, there was a rainbow of colours on display. Women in floral summer frocks, men in white suits and crisp sherbet-coloured shirts, though one man was wearing an egg yolk yellow blazer as if it were his personal mission to make up for the lack of sun on this grey February day.

  But then Lavinia’s instructions had been quite clear in the letter she’d left detailing her funeral arrangements – ‘Absolutely no black. Cheerful colours only’ – and maybe that was why the atmosphere was less funereal and more garden party. A very raucous garden party.

  Posy Morland was dressed in the same shade of pale pink as Lavinia’s favourite roses. She’d unearthed the dress from the back of her wardrobe where it had hung limply for nearly a decade, hidden behind a leopard print fun fur that Posy hadn’t worn since her student days.

  Over the subsequent years, there’d been a lot of pizza, quite a bit of cake and huge amounts of wine. No wonder the dress strained against her breasts and hips, but it was what Lavinia would have wanted, so Posy tugged ineffectually at the tight pink cotton and took another sip of the champagne, which had been another of Lavinia’s express wishes.

  With the champagne flowing, the conversation in the room had reached a deafening crescendo. ‘Any fool can put on a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream but it takes real guts to do it in togas,’ she heard someone bray in a booming luvvie voice and Nina, who was sitting next to Posy, giggled, then tried to mask it with a delicate cough.

  ‘It’s all right, I think we’re allowed to laugh,’ Posy told her, because the two men in the corner behind them were guffawing so uproariously that one had to stop and clutch his knees. ‘Lavinia always said that the best funerals turned into the best parties.’

  Nina sighed. She’d matched her gingham dress with her hair, which was currently a vibrant Prussian blue. ‘God, I’m going to miss her.’

  ‘The shop won’t be the same without Lavinia,’ said Verity, who was sitting on Posy’s other side and wearing grey because she’d argued that grey wasn’t black and that she didn’t have the complexion or the disposition to wear cheerful colours. ‘I still expect her to come barrelling through the door all excited about a book she’d stayed up half the night reading.’

  ‘And how she’d always refer to five on a Friday afternoon as champagne o’clock,’ Tom said. ‘Never had the heart to tell her I don’t like champagne.’

  The three women and Tom, who comprised the staff of Bookends, clinked their glasses together and Posy was sure that all of them were taking time to scroll through their favourite memories of Lavinia.

  The breathless, girlish voice, her perfect 1930s English, like a character from a Nancy Mitford novel.

  How she’d read everything, met everyone, but was still excited at the thought of new books, new people.

  The roses in the same shade of pink as Posy’s dress that she’d buy on Monday and Thursday mornings and arrange carelessly but so artfully in a chipped glass vase she’d bought from Woolworths in the 1960s.

  The way she’d call each of them darling and how that ‘darling’ could sound affectionate, reproachful, teasing.

  Oh, Lavinia. Sweet, funny Lavinia and the hundreds of tiny kindnesses she’d heaped on Posy. After Posy’s parents had died in a car crash seven years ago, Lavinia had not only given Posy a job but let Posy and her little brother Sam stay on in the flat above Bookends that they’d always called home, and so she was sad that Lavinia was suddenly gone, she really was. It was the kind of sad that sat deep in Posy’s bones and rested heavy in her heart.

  But there was also worry. A gnawing anxiety that had taken hold of Posy’s internal organs and kept tugging at them every few minutes or so. Now that Lavinia was gone, who knew what would happen to Bookends? It was highly unlikely, verging on impossible, that a new owner would let Posy and Sam live rent-free in the flat above the shop. It just wasn’t good business sense.

  On Posy’s meagre bookseller’s salary, they certainly couldn’t afford to rent anywhere other than the tiniest of shoeboxes somewhere far, far away from Bloomsbury. Then Sam might have to change schools and, if money was too tight to stay in London, they might have to move to Wales, to Merthyr Dyfan, where Posy hadn’t lived since she was a toddler, and camp out in their grandparents’ two-up, two-down and Posy would have to try and get a job in one of the few local bookshops, if they hadn’t all closed down.

  So, yes, Posy was sad, desperately sad and aching from the loss of Lavinia, but also she was worried sick, hadn’t even been able to choke down a piece of toast this morning, and then she felt guilty for being worried sick when all she should have been feeling was grief.

  ‘Have you any idea what’s going to happen to the shop, then?’ Verity asked tentatively and Posy realised that the four of them had been sitting there silent and lost in their own thoughts for long, long minutes.

  Posy shook her head. ‘I’m sure we’ll know something soon.’ She tried to smile encouragingly but it felt more like a desperate grimace.

  Verity grimaced back at her. ‘I’d been unemployed for over a year before Lavinia gave me a job, and that was only because she said that Verity Love was the most splendid name she’d ever come across.’ She leaned closer to hiss in Posy’s ear. ‘I’m not a people person. I don’t do well in interviews.’

  ‘I’ve never even had a job interview,’ Posy said, because she’d worked at Bookends forever. She’d spent twenty-five of her twenty-eight years on earth at Bookends where her father had been manager and her mother had taken over the tearoom attached to the shop. Posy had learned her alphabet as she was shelving books, and her numbers as she counted change. ‘I don’t have a CV and if I did, it wouldn’t take up one sheet of paper.’

  ‘Lavinia didn’t bother to look at my CV – which was probably for the best, because I was fired from my last three jobs.’ Nina held out her arms for their inspection. ‘She just asked to look at my tattoos and that was that.’

  On one arm, Nina had a trailing design of drooping rose petals and thorns that framed a quote from Wuthering Heights: ‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’

  On the other arm, for a change of pace, Nina had a full sleeve depicting the Mad Hatter’s tea party from Alice in Wonderland.

  Then the three girls turned to look at Tom because it was his turn to confess his unsuitability for employment outside Bookends. ‘I’m a PhD student,’ he reminded them. ‘I could easily pick up some more teaching or research work, but I don’t want to. I want to work at Bookends. On Mondays, we have cake!’

  ‘We have cake every day,’ Posy pointed out. ‘Look, none of us know what’s going to happen so I suppose we’ll simply carry on as normal until … um, we don’t. Let’s just take today to remember how much we loved Lavinia and—’

  ‘Ah! There you all are! Lavinia’s waifs and strays! Her merry band of misfits!’ declared a voice. A deep, pleasant voice, which could have been described as attractive, if the things that were said in that voice weren’t always sarcastic and cutting.

  Posy looked up at Sebastian Thorndyke’s face, which would have been a very attractive face if it wasn’t always sneering and she forgot that she was meant to be remembering how much she’d loved Lavinia. ‘Ah, Sebastian,’ she snapped. ‘The self-styled, so-called rudest man in London.’

  ‘Not self-styled or so-called,’ Sebastian said in the smug, self-satisfied high-handed way that he’d perfected by the age of ten and which always made Posy curl her fingers into fists. ‘The Daily Mail said I was and the Guardian too, so it must be true.’ He glanced down at Posy, eyes lingering over her breasts, which to be fair were testing the buttons of her dress to breaking point. Any sudden movements and she’d flash her M&S ditsy print bra to the room, which would be highly inappropriate at any time, but especially at a wake. Especially in front of Sebastian, but he’d now stopped gazing at her breasts and was looking around the room – probably to see if there was anyone present that he hadn’t insulted yet.

  You could never tell with Sebastian, Lavinia’s only grandchild. Posy had fallen instantly in love with him when she’d arrived at Bookends at the age of three and first encountered the haughty eight-year-old with a sweet smile and eyes as dark as the bitterest of chocolate. She’d stayed in love with Sebastian, following him around Bookends like a devoted and faithful puppy, until she was ten and he’d locked her in the dank coal-hole under the shop where spiders and beetles and rats and all manner of horrible, diseased, crawling creatures lived.

  Then he’d denied all knowledge of her whereabouts and it was only when her frantic mother was about to call the police that he’d confessed.

  Posy had got over the Coal-hole Affair in time – though to this day, she refused to so much as stick her head through the hatch – but Sebastian had remained her arch nemesis ever since. All through his sullen, sulky teen years, then his cocky twenties when he’d made a fortune developing horrible websites (Zinger or Minger? had been a particular low point, even for him) and now his dissolute thirties when he was never out of the papers, usually with a beautiful blonde model/actress/whatever clinging to his side.

  He’d reached peak notoriety after his first and last appearance on BBC’s Question Time when he’d told a red-faced MP, who was utterly furious about everything from immigrants to green taxes, that he needed a good shag and a cheeseburger. Then when a woman from the audience had embarked on a long, meandering speech about teachers’ pay, Sebastian had drawled, ‘God, I’m bored. I can’t do this sober. Can I go home now?’

  It was then that the papers had started to call him The Rudest Man in London and Sebastian had been playing up to it ever since – not that he needed any encouragement to behave in an obnoxious and completely offensive manner. Posy suspected that the offensive gene made up at least seventy-five per cent of his DNA.

  So, it was actually quite easy to hate Sebastian, but it was also very, very easy to appreciate his beauty.

  When his lips weren’t curled in derision, he still had a sweet smile, still had those dark, dark eyes inherited from his Spanish father (his mother, Mariana, had always had a weakness for Mediterranean men). His hair was just as dark, and coaxed into cherubic curls made for women to wind around their fingers.

  Sebastian was long-limbed and lithe (six foot three, according to Tatler, who insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was one of the most eligible bachelors in the country) and he favoured bespoke suits that clung so lovingly to his body that they were approximately one centimetre away from being obscenely tight.

  Today, in deference to Lavinia’s last wishes, Sebastian’s suit was French navy, his shirt red with white polka dots that matched his pocket square …

  ‘Morland, stop staring at me. You’re starting to drool,’ he said and Posy’s face flared as red as his shirt, and her mouth, which had been hanging open, snapped shut.

  Then she opened it again. ‘I’m not. I wouldn’t. In your dreams!’

  Her protest simply glanced off Sebastian’s Teflon-coated hide. She was working up to saying something really crushing to him, as soon as she could think of something really crushing to say, when Nina nudged her. ‘Posy, have a heart,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘We’ve just come from his grandmother’s funeral.’

  They had. And Lavinia had always been the weak spot in Sebastian’s bespoke caddish armour. ‘Come on, Granny, I’m taking you to cocktails,’ he’d announce as he swept into the shop. He never entered a room when he could sweep into one instead. ‘How do you fancy a Martini bigger than your head?’

  Lavinia had loved Sebastian, despite his many failings. ‘One has to make allowances,’ she was fond of saying when she caught Posy reading about his latest beastly act, whether it was an adulterous affair or his soulless dating app, HookUpp, which had made him millions. ‘Mariana always over-indulged the poor boy.’