The Bookshop of New Beginnings by Jen Mouat

Author:Jen Mouat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Luke’s home life, Kate had discovered, was bleak and loveless since his mother decided that life as the wife of a small-town Scottish fisherman was not as romantic as she had hoped, absented herself from the family and returned to her homeland. She left ten-year-old Luke and his brother, Nick, with their father, a dyed-in-the-wool Galloway trawlerman, who quickly became stone-hearted and curmudgeonly at the loss of his vibrant bride. He spent a lot of time on the boat, leaving Luke to the none-too-tender care of his brother. Luke didn’t mind that very much; he had the freedom to come and go as he pleased which was an advantage. But he missed his mother; she had been generous with love and smiles. And he missed conversation – the Ross house became a solitary, silent place even with three people living in it; hence his eagerness to make new acquaintances wherever he went, talking to anyone and everyone. His father drank to drown his sorrows – when he was home from the boat which wasn’t often. Not seriously, like Kate’s mother, but enough that Luke understood.

It was easy for him to love Kate and become another stray at Bluebell Bank, almost as beloved by Lena and the brothers as Kate was. Even Dan warmed to him eventually, though he never completely lost his protectiveness; Kate knew that if Luke hurt her, he’d happily have punched him in the face.

Of course, Luke did hurt her; but by then Dan’s ardour had transformed into something else and he took Kate to bed as revenge instead. Tried to possess her more thoroughly, to make her his love; but Kate wasn’t his for the taking. She wasn’t ever fully anybody’s after Luke.

Holidays became a blur of sunshine and picnics and piling into Jasper with all manner of beach paraphernalia; long walks to St Ninian’s Cave and Cruggleton Castle, and she and Luke sneaking off to snatch a moment or two alone and steal kisses. Fooling no one. Lena turned a blind eye; leading Kate to surmise that she too had known the all-consuming passions of youth.

When the summer came to a close, as all summers did in the end, Kate and Luke parted in a flurry of tortuous goodbyes and fervent promises. Kate cried most of the way back to Edinburgh, clutching the slip of paper upon which Luke had written his phone number so tightly in her hand that the digits began to smudge from the sweat of her palm.

Every holiday for the next two years followed the same pattern: October, Easter, summer; the interminable times between them were grey, empty periods of waiting. Lessons and exams; losing herself in art while her mother slept off her latest binge; weekends and evenings in between hanging out with Emily and the Cottons. Phone calls with Luke from the pay phone down the street when she saved up enough money, or from the Cottons’ house when she grew desperate. Kate didn’t own a mobile until she was old enough to earn money to buy one herself.

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