traced the lines of her mother’s writing with a fingertip, trying to picture her mum at her age carefully inking a little bit of herself on to the paper. Tilly felt as though there was a delicate thread stretched between her and her mother that she had only realised was there when this book had tugged on it. Grandad had always told her to write her name in her books, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that her mum did the same thing when she was little.
‘It’s about creating a record of who’s read and loved each book,’ he would say. Grandad was always hunting in charity shops for copies that had someone’s name in, or messages from people who had given books as presents. ‘I love thinking about other people reading the books I love, or why someone gave that book as a present – those names and messages are like tiny moments of time travel linking readers from different eras and families and even countries.’
Tilly wondered why her mother had cared for these books, for they were clearly very well loved. Tilly wanted to know if her mother had loved these characters for the same reasons she did. Had Anne Shirley made her mum laugh in the same places? She closed her eyes and imagined a parallel life where she could ask her, where she could go downstairs and find her at the kitchen table, chopping salad leaves with Grandad, or rubbing flour and butter together to make crumble topping with Grandma. Their house was always full of laughter and music and conversation, but Tilly could hear the silence where her mother should be, like an orchestra without a cello section.
She was pulled from her imagination by a gentle knock on the door, and Grandma popped her head round.
‘Hi, sweetheart, how are you getting on? Grandad said you’d found a box of your mum’s books?’
Tilly nodded as Grandma stepped into the room and picked up the copy of A Little Princess. She held it to her chest like it contained a small part of her daughter in its pages. ‘I’m going to start thinking about dinner soon,’ she said, still hugging the book tightly. ‘Do you want to come down and help close the shop up beforehand? It’s a bit chilly up here.’
Tilly nodded and followed Grandma downstairs. And, even though she knew the kitchen would be empty, she couldn’t help but picture opening the door to her mother. But as she went in and felt the warmth of the room envelope her she rooted herself once again in the present.
Later that evening, over a meal of chicken roasted with garlic and lemons and rosemary, with crusty bread and green beans, Tilly felt the hard gem of her sadness thaw a little, leaving questions as it melted.
‘Do you know what sort of books my dad liked?’ she asked, and Grandad seemed to choke a little on a mouthful of bread.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Grandma said as she patted Grandad on the back. ‘We didn’t really know him very well at all.’
‘Do you think my mum would have known his favourite books?’ Tilly asked.
‘I’m sure she did,’ Grandma said. ‘I’m sure they talked about books along with everything else you talk to the person you love about.’
‘Why don’t we have any photos of him?’
‘Well, for the same reason that we don’t know what his favourite books were: we just didn’t get to spend any time with him before he died.’
‘Do you think Mum left because my dad died?’
‘Oh, my love,’ Grandma said. ‘I don’t know is the honest answer. I’m not going to pretend to you that it didn’t break her heart not being able to be with your father for longer, or that she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how things might have worked out differently. But then she had you, and she had a little bit of him back again, and that’s part of the reason you were so precious to her.’
‘I wonder which bits of me are from him?’ Tilly said.
Grandad smiled. ‘Well, you didn’t get your hair or your height from us. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that you might have inherited your literary tastes from our side of the family.’
‘But Tilly,’ Grandma said, ‘you may have a bit of him and a bit of her and a bit of us all mixed in there, but the best bits of you are all your own, that much I know. Now. Whose turn is it to do the washing-up?’
When Tilly had been small she had read with Grandad every night before she went to bed. Every evening after dinner, Tilly and Grandad would curl up on the big, squishy sofa in front of the fireplace and Grandad would read aloud a chapter or two of whichever book they were engrossed in. Together they had gone sailing with the Swallows and Amazons, met the witches of Miss Cackle’s Academy, and visited worlds balanced on the backs of elephants.
As Tilly got older the tradition had gradually faded; first they started reading their own books next to each other, exploring vast and separate worlds while sitting side by side, and then Tilly had started taking her books up to bed to read and before she knew it, and without anyone making a particular decision about it, they didn’t read together any more.
Later that evening, with her mum’s copy of Anne of Green Gables still closed, Tilly crawled out of bed and crept back downstairs. Her grandma was reading with a cup of tea at the kitchen table and looked up when Tilly came in. Seeing the book in Tilly’s hand, she just smiled and went back to her own. Tilly pushed the door to the shop open and saw Grandad on the sofa, lit up by the flickering light of the fire. She crawled up beside him and put her mum’s copy of the book on his knee. Without saying anything he put his arm round her, and when Grandma came through with three mugs of hot chocolate he put his own book down and began to read.
‘Oskar’s here,’ he said to Tilly, smiling. ‘He said you’d promised to help him find a book.’
‘Have you never been here before?’ she asked, making Oskar jump a little.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said sheepishly. ‘And yes, of course I’ve been in before; it’s where Mum gets all her Christmas presents. But I’d forgotten how …’ He paused.
‘Magical?’ Tilly suggested. ‘Exciting? Beautiful?’
‘Yes, but that’s not what I mean. It’s not what it looks like, it’s how it makes you feel, isn’t it? Is there a word that means somewhere adventures live?’
‘I don’t think so, but there should be,’ Tilly said.
‘But anyway,’ Oskar said, collecting himself, ‘it’s cool, is what I mean. But I haven’t been in for ages. I’m not up this
