Lucy's Book Club for the Lost and Found: A heartwarming feel good romance novel(12)

Hattie was something of a kindred spirit, she thought. She and Lia were both about the same age, both avid readers, and Hattie was new to the area, and a single mum. She hadn’t yet made the network of friends who would help support her in looking after her daughter, so in a sense both her and Lia’s opportunities to escape the house were equally limited. They had seemed to get on well at the library the other day, so perhaps Hattie might be part of the solution. Lucy made a note in her book, wondering if Hattie liked dancing too.

Then there was the question of care for Lia’s mother. She was going to have to pull something very inventive out of the bag to jump this hurdle. She sucked the end of her pen, wracking her brain for any helpful nugget of information that she had squirrelled away. A few more notes were added before Lucy flipped to a clean page and added a name to the top.

Oscar. Lucy had only ever experienced real grief once before; a few years ago, when her grandfather had died. She had been tearful and missed him terribly, but that paled in comparison to the all-consuming sadness that had overwhelmed her grandma; she carried the weight of his loss around with her every day. Grief was love; that much Lucy recognised. A deep and abiding love that had suddenly found itself homeless, the object of its affection gone, leaving it behind, lingering like a lost spirit. It was a love that would change time if it could, but sentenced now only to travel back and forth through the memories that sustained it. Lucy’s grandma had told her that grief carried with it longing and remorse, burning anger at times and a blanketing cloak of despair at others, but the worst thing was that it was never at peace, never still.

Thinking about her words now brought tears to Lucy’s eyes, but beyond giving Oscar time to talk, Lucy wasn’t sure how she could ever help him. They said that time was a great healer, but Oscar’s grief seemed as raw still as it must have been when it was first created. How could she possibly begin to help him when the only suggested cure had already proved itself to be useless? Her pen scribbled across the page; time to listen was all she had.





Chapter Seven





‘I hope you don’t mind,’ said Phoebe, ‘but I thought I’d better come clean and tell you what I’d done. It didn’t seem fair otherwise, since you were so helpful the other day.’

Callum swallowed. ‘Was I?’ he said, feeling another small glow inside, but one which was rapidly replaced with anxiety as he realised what else she’d said. ‘So, what do you mean by “come clean”, exactly?’

‘I mentioned to Gary, my fiancé, that I’d been in here to use the computers and how helpful you’d been. He knows I’m a bit of a dummy when it comes to IT, but there’s so much to organise with the wedding, and he’s not very helpful.’

‘With computers, do you mean?’

‘No, with making decisions. He just agrees with everything I say about the wedding, when once in a while it’d be nice if he had an opinion of his own, take some interest. I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall sometimes. It’s his wedding too.’

Callum nodded.

‘So, I just told him how helpful you’d been, and that we’d started planning some stuff and set up an email account, that sort of thing. Well, it kind of got his attention, so I laid it on a bit.’

‘He’s not likely to come after me with a big stick, is he?’ asked Callum, only half joking, his Adam’s apple moving up and down several times as he swallowed.

Phoebe laughed. ‘No, don’t worry. Nothing like that. He’s a policeman.’

Callum could feel the colour draining from his face.

‘Honestly, you’ve nothing to worry about. I only wanted to tell you ’cause I felt a bit bad, exaggerating things like that… Well, not exaggerating, you were incredibly helpful and patient…’

It would be easy to take offence, he thought, but looking at Phoebe’s sunny face, she was completely without guile. She wouldn’t have told him otherwise. Yes, he’d been used as a not-so-subtle prod to ensure her fiancé’s interest in their wedding, but it could be worse. It had taught him quite a valuable lesson, and he filed it away neatly in the ‘things he needed to know about women’ compartment in his brain.

Besides which, was he not guilty of doing the very same thing? Of using Phoebe for his own gain. He had enjoyed teaching her yesterday. She was a quick learner, just inexperienced and a little unsure of herself, but she had listened to him, properly – not just paying lip service, but trusting what he said to be true. She followed his instructions and showed a childlike delight when she achieved something. More than that, she had been grateful, and Callum couldn’t remember a time when anybody had been grateful for something he had done. He had gone home feeling lighter and several inches taller.

It hadn’t lasted, of course. His eldest brother dumped on him minutes after he’d got through the door, but it hadn’t mattered; for the entire twenty-minute walk home beforehand, Callum had genuinely felt good about himself.

‘So, what is it today then?’ he asked Phoebe. ‘Shall we have a go at a simple spreadsheet, or do you want to do a bit more of what we covered yesterday?’

She opened her notebook. ‘I need to reply to some of the emails I got yesterday,’ she said, ‘and then I think I can go ahead and book our wedding venue. It’s after that I might need a bit of help.’