laughed loudly at her own joke.
‘So, do you know which books they’ll be picking this time?’ I said, keen to get the conversation away from boys consuming their own, and others’, semen.
‘Well, they have a bit of trouble now, since they’ve read so much already, so there’s naturally a bit of double-dipping. They haven’t really found a way to control that side of things, so they just try to make sure their lists are made up of a healthy majority of titles they haven’t read before, and the ones they have they aren’t supposed to have read for a good few years.’
The book lover in me liked the sound of this, although I knew I wouldn’t be able to compete with Ernest and James in a million years. They both seemed to swallow literature, or inhale it like a long drag on a cigarette, relishing it as they went. I read for pleasure, first and foremost, whereas they seemed to see it primarily as a form of self-nourishment.
‘Do you ever join in?’ I asked.
‘Christ, no. I wouldn’t be able to keep up. It would be a humiliation.’
Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Ally with a book, or even properly studying. Perhaps she was one of those people who just sailed through coursework and exams without ever really having to try. There had been a couple of girls in my school like that. I’d envied them greatly.
We tried to enter Blackwells, but didn’t get very far. A young bookseller, in the midst of neatly arranging copies of a Stephen King novel on a small table, looked up and told us we’d need to finish our milkshakes before we came any further. Ally rolled her eyes at him and for a minute I wondered if she’d ignore him and just march in, but to my relief she stepped back outside. A few minutes later, having discarded our empty milkshake cups in a wastepaper basket the bookseller had helpfully offered us, we walked purposefully, with me following Ally’s lead, through the store towards the back. It was a vast shop, and went further back than I remembered. We found the section marked ‘Classics’ pretty quickly. I noticed it was divided up into ‘English Literature’, ‘World Classics’ and ‘Modern Classics’. Each one was full of a vast array of volumes, most of them sporting the black or light-turquoise spines that characterised a sizeable chunk of Penguin’s publishing output. There were hefty, more academic volumes of famous novels mixed in too, no doubt containing annotations, guides to the text, essays, lists of further reading and various other extras. I was about to start perusing the shelves properly when Ally tugged at my arm.
‘Come on, round here.’
She steered me around the corner of one of the shelves towards a small alcove with a table and set of armchairs. Ernest and James sat side by side on one of them, the former lounging back, his head buried in an extremely large book which I recognised as The Count of Monte Cristo. James, on the other hand, was leaning forward, running an index finger down what appeared to be a long list, written in a leather-bound exercise book.
‘Ding dong merrily, my little Christmas readers!’ Ally said loudly. I glanced around, slightly embarrassed, but there wasn’t another person in sight and the alcove was well-hidden from view of the main part of the shop.
‘It isn’t Christmas. It’s October, sis.’
Ernest didn’t even bother to lower the book as he spoke. James’s reaction was friendlier. ‘But she is indeed right that we are here with Christmas in mind.’ He nodded towards the empty sofa in front of him and then looked back at us. ‘Sit down, you two. You can join in the fun.’ Not for the first time, his eyes lingered on me slightly longer than Ally. I could feel myself reddening, so sat down quickly on the sofa, with Ally following suit slightly less gracefully.
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