The Traveller's Guide to Love by Helen Nicholl

Author:Helen Nicholl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstaff Press Ltd
Published: 2015-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

In all the years I have lived in Northern Ireland, I do not think I have ever had a visitor on whom the rain did not fall for at least some – and frequently all – of their stay. Frederika was the exception. She flew in to glorious sunshine and the weather held until she left.

At first I cursed the fact that I had sent Archie off on holiday and committed myself to the shop, but in the end it turned out very well: Freddy was entirely happy to explore the city on her own, returning periodically to Archibald’s Antiques to catch her breath and dump her purchases, and once introduced to the Good Intentions Bookshop, she could only be prised out with difficulty.

On the Wednesday afternoon Archie rang to say he would be back the following day, so it was in happy anticipation of the rest of the week off that I closed the shop and went in search of my sister. I found her, as expected, in the bookshop, where she was deep in conversation with a long-haired young man who sported a checked keffiyeh and an array of badges proclaiming him to be in favour of anarchists, whales, Jesus, Greenpeace and Palestine, and against capitalism, fracking and homophobia.

‘Hello, Dylan,’ I said. ‘I see you’ve met my sister. When did you get back?’

‘Last week,’ he replied. ‘And oh boy, Johanna, is it ever good to be back here! One more day in the States and I would have gone crazy.’

‘Poor Dylan has an arch-conservative family in deepest Missouri,’ I explained to Frederika. ‘He goes home once a year hoping for a bit of truth and reconciliation but is always disappointed. Still, at least this time you seem to have come back unscathed!’ This was perhaps unkind, being a reference to a previous occasion when Dylan had returned sporting a black eye.

‘And what are you doing here in Belfast?’ my sister enquired.

‘I teach a course in conflict resolution,’ Dylan told her, ‘but, like Johanna, I help out in the bookshop when I can.’

‘Well, good for you!’ said Frederika. ‘Of course, as a South African, the whole subject of conflict resolution is of enormous interest to me, but to get back to what we were discussing a moment ago, what Deepak Chopra really meant was …’

I decided that this was as good a moment as any to excuse myself; besides, I could see Dolores signalling to me with her eyebrows, so I went over to the counter.

‘He’s found a soulmate in your sister,’ she said. ‘Apparently they are both into Guerilla Gardening and Cosmic Ordering – or maybe it was Cosmic Gardening and Guerilla Ordering. Whatever – they’re as mad as each other. I like her, mind you, and she’s bought a whole clatter of books.’

A pile of books to one side of the counter bore witness to this: Frederika appeared to have cleaned out the section loosely known as Loony Fringe.

‘She used to be a top investment banker,’ I told Dolores, ‘until she went to India and found Enlightenment.

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