How to Fall Read Free Page B

take and almost slipped. He swore as the books slid to the floor, but managed not to spill his coffee, which impressed me. I might have wondered what his problem was if he hadn’t been giving me the look I was starting to expect: shock mixed with suspicion. And what looked like – but surely couldn’t have been – fear . . .
    ‘Are you OK?’
    ‘Fine.’ He didn’t look at me again as he set his mug down on the desk and turned to rescue the books he’d dropped.
    ‘Sorry.’ I picked up the paperback that had fallen at my feet –
To Kill a Mockingbird
– and handed it to him.
    ‘Why are you sorry?’ He concentrated on flattening the pages that had creased when the book fell.
    ‘Because I startled you.’
    He didn’t bother to deny it. ‘No harm done.’
    ‘Harper Lee is looking a bit battered,’ I observed.
    A glance at the back of the book, then the grey eyes met mine again. He looked amused and I wondered if I had imagined him going pale under his tan when he saw me first. ‘She wasn’t exactly pristine before.’
    There was absolutely no reason for me to blush, but I did it anyway. To cover it, I said, at random, ‘I was just going upstairs.’
    ‘Be my guest.’
    I started up the staircase, acutely conscious that he was watching me. I risked a look down from near the top, and felt a jolt of surprise that was halfway to disappointment. He was sitting down with his back to me , already absorbed in his book. And why not? I was just another customer.
    Even so, I wandered around the upstairs room as the floor creaked, dithering about which book to choose from the thousands that lined the walls. It wasn’t that I wanted to impress him, I promised myself. But romance was out. Crime didn’t seem to strike the right note either. Distracted, I found myself wishing I knew more about Freya. Had she been an intellectual? Did she read novels? Did she read anything at all? The room was large, with a pair of sagging leather armchairs in the middle and dormer windows that looked out on the wet street below. A door in the corner was marked PRIVATE ; that would be where he had made his coffee, I thought, and then wondered why I cared. I went as far as one of the windows, stepping up on a low shelf to peer out at the street. As I turned away, I half saw myself reflected in the glass and looked again – a ghost version of me, shadows for eyes, washed-out skin, and hair that hung in straggling tails. A drowned me. They had found Freya in the sea, I recalled with a shiver that surprised me, then made me laugh. I was getting to be as bad as everyone else in Port Sentinel, as edgy about nothing, about a coincidental resemblance. I turned the shiver into a shrug and jumped down off the shelf , careless of the noise I made. I was there to buy a book, after all, not wallow in creepiness. And I still didn’t have a clue what to choose.
    In the end, a cheap paperback edition of
Cold Comfort Farm
came to the rescue. I knew the title but not what it was about, and levered it off a crowded shelf to have a look. Sitting in one of the armchairs, I lost track of time as I read the first few pages, and then a few more. I hadn’t expected it to be funny, but it was. I made myself stop reading eventually, checked I could afford it, and went back down the stairs with the grace and dexterity of a three-toed sloth. The boy could run down if he liked. I didn’t mind sacrificing speed if it meant I wouldn’t make a fool of myself by falling. I was so busy concentrating on looking nonchalant that I didn’t notice the boy was gone until I put my book down on the desk. In his place sat a balding middle-aged man in a tweed jacket, the bookshop owner of my imagination. He didn’t crack a smile as I handed him two pound coins, tossing them into the till with something approaching disdain.
    Taking my book, I hesitated for a second, then plunged. ‘Where did your assistant go?’
    ‘Who? Oh – Will. He was just looking after the shop for