Secret Scribbled Notebooks Read Free

charity, and the proceeds go to projects in East Timor and refugee support. I went there sometimes because it had an air of possibility, and I love all places where books are gathered en masse. At Hope Springs the books were like flotsam and jetsam that had been washed up by the tides. All sorts of unexpected little treasures were possible. I imagined that the books would be encrusted with barnacles and salt, spilling sea water when you opened them, but I only ever saw an occasional silverfish and a lot of dark spotting on the pages, like the marks on old people’s hands. But against the evidence of all those sad, unwanted books, I went there the afternoon after Anastasia was born because I felt a trickle of hope (hardly a spring) that there might be something there that Sophie would like.
    The shop is staffed by volunteers, a changing cast of people who give the general impression of advancing age and wispy beards and unironed clothing. But on this particular day there was a boy there, not much older than me, with a slim, slightly stooped body, olive skin, and a graceful, rather hooked nose. He stood beside me and gave a hint of a smile as he placed a book on the shelves. His fingers were long and brown and slender, and so were his eyes. Every part of him was brown and slender. Someone, somewhere, had constructed him perfectly.
    There is nothing like browsing in a bookshop for covertly observing someone. I felt that the boy was observing me too, but we were both also eavesdropping on the conversation between two other customers. They were middle-aged people with shapeless bodies clad in jeans and big shirts, and were lamenting the lack of standards in written English these days: the mis-use (or even non-use) of apostrophes, the bad grammar that cropped up even in Published Books, and the dirty-mindedness and lack of plot in these same Published Books. Finally they walked out of the shop, and the boy and I looked over at each other at the same time.
    â€˜I hope you know where to place an apostrophe,’ he said, softly.
    â€˜I most certainly do. A badly placed apostrophe is something that really turns my stomach.’
    â€˜And I hope you always observe the correct English usage.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t dream of corrupting our fine language. And as for Plot –if I ever write a book, I will make sure it has a good, soundly constructed Plot.’
    â€˜I don’t know how these Modern Novels get published,’ he said, shaking his head, still in the same deadpan voice.
    â€˜It’s a scandal and a disgrace.’
    At that same moment I found a book by a writer called Virginia Woolf. It was called A Room of One’s Own , and though it looked very dull from the outside, with a stained hard cover with no dustjacket or picture on it, I opened it and liked the way the words were put together. It was about women and fiction and looked just the thing for Sophie. I also found (I’d been looking in the ‘Women’s Literature’ shelves –how ridiculous, bookshops never have a section called ‘Men’s Literature’) a book whose cover photograph attracted me at once. On it, a woman reclined on a bed with her hands behind her head and stared frankly at the camera, her pale face framed by a mass of dark hair. This is who I am , she seemed to be saying. She wore a lacy-looking blouse patterned with dark leaves, and had an exquisite china-doll face, with thin eyebrows and a cupid’s-bow mouth. The Journals of Anaïs Nin , the book was called.
    I took the two books to the table that was used as a counter, and the boy came over to serve me. He smiled when he saw what I was buying, but he didn’t comment and, despite our earlier banter, I felt suddenly tongue-tied. I paid for the books and left without asking his name or anything, but once I was out on the street I regretted it. I wanted to go back at once, because I couldn’t wait to see him again, but I was too shy to