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6

I'd had to order Ant's copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We didn't stock such esoteric titles in Bletchley's: this wasn't spacious Waterstone's, or even academic Blackwell's. We were just a tiny independent, albeit on three floors, but each the size of your average front room connected by rickety stairs. It was all very charming and Dickensian, and appealed to my romantic notion of how a bookshop should be, even down to the musty smell of Jean's cats, who slunk down from her flat upstairs and stretched out on shelves or in pools of sunlight, adding to the ambience. I think the customers bought into the whole nostalgic bit too, liking the fact that they could settle down in a faded armchair with a book and not be asked to move on. Comfy chairs were a rarity in bookshops back then, and in a way it put us ahead of our time, even if the reality was that they were there for Jean, our fifteen-stone manageress, who liked to pause mid-floor for a breather. A couple of other things gave us the edge too: we were on the fringes of the city where a lot of students lived, we had a larger than average art and architecture section, and also a contemporary music section, which was popular. We stocked the usual fiction, of course, and pretty much all the classics, but not, as it happened, Ant's request.

‘They usually get that from the university bookshop,’ Jean told me as she overheard me ordering it on the telephone. ‘Who was it, a student?’

‘He looked a bit older than that.’ I glanced down at the name I'd scribbled on a pad, even though I knew it by heart. ‘Anthony Hamilton? With a local number.’

She peered over my shoulder. ‘Oh, Doctor Hamilton. One of the youngest dons in the English Department. On a bit of a meteoric rise, by all accounts; shooting to stardom. Well, he must have dozens of those in his stock cupboard. I can't think why he's getting it from us.’ She pulled an incredulous and not altogether friendly face. ‘Perhaps he fancies you.’

‘I doubt it,’ I said quickly, knowing any single man who came in here had to fancy Jean. Ant was over eighteen and therefore ripe for the cull. I could feel myself colouring, none the less.

‘Well, he's terribly attractive, don't you think? I certainly wouldn't say no.’ She rolled her eyes and pouted provocatively. ‘Wouldn't mind getting stuck in the stock cupboard with him.’ She shot me an arch look before sauntering off to the staffroom on her thick calves, ample hips swinging, a pile of books in her arms.

Jean, a divorcee, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Sybil Fawlty, had a slightly desperate air and a double entendre for every occasion. She had to lower the tone, didn't she? I thought as I watched her go.

Nevertheless, I spent the next few days pouncing on every parcel that came in, just in case Jean or Malcolm should get to it first, and practising exactly what I would say on the telephone when it did arrive. In the event, of course, it was desperately prosaic.

‘Oh, hello, Doctor Hamilton?’

‘Yes?’

‘It's Evie here, from Bletchley's Books. Just to say, your copy of Sir Gawain arrived this morning.’

‘Oh, thanks very much. I'll pop in and get it.’

‘Okey-doke, bye!’

‘Bye.’

As I put the phone down a hot flush swept over me. Okey-doke? When had I ever said that? That hadn't been in the script. But at least I'd got my name in – all part of the plan – and I'd nonchalantly shortened the title too, omitting the Green Knight, as I gathered those in the know did. And what a deliciously deep, modulated voice he had. ‘Thanks very much. I'll pop in and get it,’ I purred.

‘Get what?’ asked Jean, appearing at my shoulder, frowning.

‘Oh, nothing,’ I flustered, hurrying away.

Over the next few days, I hardly left the shop. Whenever the door opened my head pirouetted, and I spent a lot of time in Health and Harmony, which was right at the front on the ground floor, with an excellent view of the street.

‘Having trouble breast-feeding?’ enquired Malcolm, my lovely gay colleague, who, on one of his rare forays down from Art