The Little Bookshop on the Seine by Rebecca Raisin

Author:Rebecca Raisin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2019-10-25T12:23:59+00:00

December

The winter chill had hit Paris, the wind was whipping down the avenues and boulevards. It was a never-ending symphony of squalls, with snow drifting down and blanketing the city in white. Our customers were arriving windswept and looking for longer, complex novels that pulled them into different worlds, with their luscious descriptions and metaphorical prose.

Another week had crept up and I sat in the front window of the bookshop, trying to make sense of the sales figures, and get the end-of-month accounts up to date. I’d doubled-checked, and triple-checked, and still the numbers stared at me from the page, like they were disappointed in me. The sales were down. And not just by a small margin. What was I doing wrong? It seemed like the outgoing expenses were more than the incoming. How could that possibly be? Over the last week the nights had slipped into mornings, as I sat head bent over the computer trying to work it all out. My eyes hung out of my head most days; I was a walking corpse. Bookshop life had never been so mind-numbing. I hadn’t read a novel in weeks, and I felt jittery without that down time. Mostly though, I was worried about letting Sophie down. We’d spoken a few times since our last Skype call and she was almost puce with anger. This store was her baby, and I was starving it, no matter how much of myself I put into it.

Outside the pre-dawn was navy blue with swirls of moody gray clouds. Again I stared at the profit and loss statement, the figures had plummeted. I couldn’t understand it. It was always so damn busy. I shoved all the documents back into the file. Flashes of homesickness grabbed me.

I couldn’t help feeling that I wasn’t cut out for this. Dealing with staff and their politics, trying to get them to turn up. Another attempt at a roster had been laughed at, and squiggled over. At times it was like I was talking to rocks. The habits the revolving staff had here weren’t about to be broken.

Maybe I should just tell Sophie I was butchering her shop, and she should come back to Paris. I’d tried my damnedest to get everything done here, and it still wasn’t right. The takings didn’t balance, we were down a couple of hundred euros, and I’d re-counted so many times. The thief seemed to still be feeling bold enough to steal even though they knew I had noticed a couple of months ago.

I shook the maudlin thoughts away. Ridge would know what to do, but our phone calls had been infrequent—I spent more time talking to the robotic voice on his voice mail. Sometimes it all got too much for me, and despite being in this big, beautiful city, I’d feel very alone. Oceane and TJ had offered a casual sort of friendship but they were social butterflies, always fluttering from one party to the next, living so zealously that I struggled to keep up, and often refused their invitations because work called.

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