The Book Keeper by Sarah Painter

Author:Sarah Painter [Painter, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Siskin Press Ltd

* * *

Island meetings took place at The Rising Moon, which meant that everyone had just eaten a good dinner. Luke didn’t know what this meeting was about and hadn’t had time to ask anybody beforehand. He had spent the day contacting bookshops listed in the secret ‘crescent moon’ ledger and trying to work out whether there was anything that linked them, other than being bookshops.

His mind had been running over his research and the gnawing guilt that he had swapped his obsession with finding his brother for a new project. And that he wasn’t feeling anywhere near bad enough about it. Tobias was standing and talking for a few minutes before Luke properly tuned into the subject. Kate Foster. The woman who had visited the island a couple of weeks ago and asked about the dilapidated cottages near to Esme’s place, had returned.

‘She proposes to renovate the cottage on the end in the first instance, but has plans for the other two later on. They are in an even worse state, but she intends to rent out the renovated cottage to summer visitors to raise the capital to renovate the others.’

‘Well, that’s not going to work,’ Seren said. ‘What about the two-night rule?’

Tobias nodded and then looked around the room. ‘Any more thoughts? The floor is open.’

Luke wasn’t going to open his mouth. He was still a newcomer, he knew, and he wasn’t about to rock the boat.

‘How does she even remember the island?’

It was the question that everyone was thinking, but Esme was the one to voice it.

Tobias shook his head. ‘I have no idea, I’m afraid. We,’ he indicated Bee, ‘had hoped that you might have some thoughts.’

Esme’s cheeks flushed and she shook her head.

‘The cottages are a wreck,’ Fiona said. ‘It might not be a bad thing to have them looked after.’ Hamish was sitting on her lap, gazing around the room with wide eyes, one hand firmly wedged into his mouth and a trail of dribble running off his chin. ‘We might need some more accommodation in the future. If our community expands.’

‘Euan might want his own place one day,’ Esme said. ‘We want him to be able to find that on the island.’

Fiona smiled at the other woman and nodded.

Matteo wrote on his pad and slid it across to Seren, who read it and passed it on. When it got to Luke, he read: Is it just business? Does she plan to move here?

After Tobias had seen the question, he said, ‘I believe she wishes to use one of the cottages as a holiday home.’ He pulled a wry smile.

Seren tapped the table. ‘We don’t need to worry about any of that. She will forget about this idea, about the island soon enough. People say things all the time.’ She looked around, challenging somebody to argue with her assessment. ‘I serve visitors and they often say stuff like ‘it’s so peaceful I could stay a week’ or ‘we must come back’, but they never do.

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