heat outside? Check, although Meg noticed it was a new ancient person. Not Scowly Steven, who always used to tell her off for being too loud. There were shelves of old-fashioned sweet jars behind the new old scowly person, a basket full of freshly baked bread and doughnuts on the counter and shelves all around filled with approximately one of everything – a tin of beans, a packet of jelly, a tin box of teabags, reminding Meg of when she and Sarah used to play ‘shops’. She wondered if Binty’s still had one of those old-fashioned cash registers, with the ping.
‘Morning,’ said a scowly voice.
‘Good morning!’ said Meg brightly. ‘How much are the doughnuts?’
‘Five for two pound.’ Oh, they were cheap! She’d get a magazine and a bar of chocolate as well. ‘I’ve never seen you before,’ said the woman peering over the top of horn-rimmed glasses and stroking her beard. ‘Are you a tourist?’
‘No. I used to live here.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Er … Meg Oxbury.’
‘The hooligan? Oh, I’ve heard about you! Your poor sister!’
‘Oh. Right.’ Meg was taken aback. ‘Well … er, five doughnuts please?’
Meg hurriedly paid for her purchases and dashed out of the shop as quickly as she could. Hooligan! What an exaggeration! She hadn’t been that bad. Clutching her brown paper bag of doughnuts, Meg strode round the path which circled the green.
‘Morning.’ An old man in a flat cap greeted her as he walked past. This was better; someone who actually looked pleased to see her.
‘Morning!’ she replied chirpily. She’d forgotten everyone greeted everyone else in the country. No one said ‘Morning!’ in London – people avoided each other at all cost. Woe betide you if you caught someone’s eye on the Tube, and if you dared say ‘hello’ to anyone, they called the police.
She walked the perimeter of the green, perched on the village’s Witching Stone outside the pub, and munched on one of the doughnuts. She supposed she should find ‘hooligan’ funny. Silly old bat. How did she even know about Meg? And Meg had just enjoyed some drunken skirmishes, that was all. Teenage shenanigans. Some people liked to make a big old fuss about nothing. Including Sarah. Especially Sarah.
It was only eleven o’clock; the whole rest of the day to fill. Perhaps Meg would have a mosey down to the village hall, see if anything exciting was happening there; there certainly never used to be. That’s where Sarah had said she held the art class, wasn’t it? And the library used to be there. She’d go and have a look. Perhaps she’d soon be bored enough of Tipperton Mallet to actually take both of them on. Lord knows she needed something to do. God, she missed London.
Back Lane, which ran down to the village hall, was flanked by slightly larger cottages than those on the green and set back on the right-hand side, on a raised grassy knoll, was an old red phone box. It had been there for donkey’s years. She peered in as she passed. It was always nice to see one; the ones remaining in London absolutely thrilled the foreign tourists. Meg expected to see a broken receiver dangling from a battered cradle; some dog-eared cards offering dubious services; at least one shattered pane of glass; and possibly an old phonebook, yellowed apart from the blackened corner where it had been set alight by bored teenagers. Just like it had been when she’d last stepped a scuffed Adidas trainer inside.
‘Oh, wow!’ she exclaimed out loud. Why this was delightful, and so, so cute. The phone box was a library. The whole back panel had been fitted with wooden shelves and was floor-to-ceiling crammed with books. A small sign hung from the top shelf with string saying, ‘Please help yourself and donate your old books. Thank you.’ Sarah’s familiar handwriting.
This was the library her sister ran; the big one in the village hall must have closed.
Meg pulled open the door and stepped inside. She adored the smell of books – sometimes she went into London City Library, if she was near, just to breathe in that gorgeous library smell – and it was not what these phone boxes used to smell of, that was for sure. It was lovely in there; there was also a tiny white table and chair, suitable for a toddler – Meg may have sat down on it were it not for her cowpat-splattered rear.
She had a browse. There were self-help books and non-fiction on the top two shelves, children’s books at the bottom and general fiction in the middle. Meg’s eyes scanned along. Modern chick lit, thrillers, historical romances; quite the little goldmine. She might take something out – Lord knows she had plenty of time on her hands. Her eyes alighted on a very familiar title. Little Women. One of those old navy bound classics, with the gold-embossed writing. Funny, it looked like Sarah’s old copy. Meg pulled it out. Oh my goodness, it was Sarah’s old copy. She opened the dust cover. Yes, inside in neat, childish handwriting, ‘This book belongs to Sarah Oxbury’. It had probably been doing the rounds of village readers for years. Meg smiled. Sarah had read Little Women to Meg when she was, what, six and Sarah had been sixteen? They’d loved that one of the sisters was called Meg; they’d laughed at the funny bits and been sad at the sad bits. Sarah had sat on the end of Meg’s bed and had read a chapter a night in a soothing, steady voice. What a different sixteen-year-old Sarah had been to Meg’s. Sensible, careful, quiet and organized. Then again, the sixteen-year-old Sarah didn’t have dead parents.
Meg decided in a fit of nostalgia she would read Little Women again. She took it, shifting the other books up slightly to fill in the gap. Was it OK to just take it? She presumed it wasn’t a library where you had to have a card, or your book stamped? What did Sarah have to do? Just keep it tidy? Then she headed further down the lane to the village hall, a red-brick Thirties building with a pitched roof and white pillars out the front. The double doors were open, so she wandered right in to the front entrance.
‘Garfield?’
The Great Dane was bounding out of a side room towards her and barking like an explosion in a biscuit factory. Meg shrunk back against the wall in mild terror.
‘Garfield!’ An elderly lady dressed in a red jumpsuit and flat silver mules bustled up the corridor, a pile of papers in her arms and her hair swept back from her face in an enormous Princess Anne cottage loaf. ‘Step away from the young lady! There’s a good boy.’ Garfield stopped, gave a long drawn-out sound like Chewbacca having a yawn, then trotted over to the lady who patted him on the head. ‘There’s a very good reason it was a Great Dane which led the Twilight Bark to get news of the missing puppies out in 101 Dalmatians.’ The woman smiled at Meg.
‘Yes, that’s quite a bark,’ agreed Meg. ‘I met Garfield earlier,’ she added. ‘Is Jamie here?’ She hoped not.
‘Jamie? He’s gone to the surgery. Are you looking for him?’
‘No, I met him earlier, too. I thought Garfield was his.’
‘No, Garfield belongs to me. Jamie just walks him for me. He’s my son,’ she added.
‘Oh, right.’ The village was still as close knit as ever, then. She’d never seen this lady before, though; the family must have moved to Tipperton Mallet after she’d left.
‘Did you get that from the library?’ enquired the woman, looking at the book in Meg’s left hand.
‘Yes,’ said Meg. ‘I hope it was OK to take it?’
‘Yes,
