Page 13 of The Breakup Bookshop

‘Come any time,’ Donna calls over her shoulder as she crosses the road to her salon. ‘We can have a right good blether.’

Before any more holes are drilled into my wall, or anything else can distract me from my long list of tasks, I set to work tidying the shop. I pull at the stepladders that I was using earlier to daub paint samples on the wall. Folding them up, I place them on the floor, then turn around to pick up the paint tray. Within seconds, a loud scraping noise, a short ‘waaaaahh’ and a loud thump vibrates around the room.

I spin around and there he is. Rory’s lying on the ground, clutching his ankle, his face scrunched into a tight grimace.

‘Where the hell did the ladders come from? Was that my punishment for drilling a hole in the wall?’

‘No. Although you were only drilling the hole to rub it in.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard me saying outside that my drill hadn’t arrived. You were making the petty point that if I’d bought it from you, I would have one.’

It sounds ridiculous now I’m saying it out loud, but I’m not about to back down.

He frowns at me, then his ankle. As he tries to move, he grimaces. ‘I didn’t hear you say anything about a drill. And I was usingmydrill to fix some shelves. It had nothing to do with you.’

Moving towards him, I extend a hand to help him up from the ground. He glares up at me, and we lock eyes.

‘No thanks. We’re a disaster waiting to happen. First the wood, then the hole in the wall, now the ladders…’

He manages to pull himself upright on a nearby chair, without my help. Shit, what if he has broken it?

‘You’ll need to get it looked at,’ I say, with a pang of worry. ‘I’ll take you to the hospital.’

He shakes his head. ‘I’ll hop along to Dr Peters at the surgery and see what he says. It’s just at the end of the road.’ He stops and his lips curl. ‘But I’ve got a huge stock delivery coming that I need to be in for…’

‘I can wait in the shop for it?’ I offer, glad of the opportunity to make up for his terrible luck in my presence. ‘It’s no problem.’

‘No, don’t worry, I’ll just—’

‘Rory.’ I adopt a serious tone. ‘It’s not up for discussion. I’ll look after the shop and take in the delivery; you go and see the doctor. It’s my fault, with the ladders and all anyway. Let me help.’

‘Fine. Take my number, in case you need anything.’

‘I won’t. I can handle it.’

He ignores me, reeling off his phone number, which I tap into my phone.

‘You’re welcome,’ I mutter, as he hobbles out of the shop.

5

Rory’s shop has more customers than I anticipate.

I thought I’d be able to sit with my feet up, playing on my phone, especially when I discovered that Rory has phone receptionin his shop. I’d been balancing outside on a bin while he could just tap away in here, in the warm and dry, without a care in the world.

Unbelievable. Rory 5, Ava 3.

Yes, I’m still keeping score.

How many people ordinarily come into a DIY store anyway? It feels like he’s lined all these people up to ask for a host of random stuff: shower seals, thermostats, hand tools, sockets, cables – you name it, the people of Ullapool want it. A village of DIY fiends, apparently. I’m up and down Rory’s little ladder like a jack-in-the-box searching for whatever they want, determined not to call him. I want to prove that I can run his shop myself, even if I have no idea what an armoured cable is and why you would ever need one.

Luckily, it appears that Rory is meticulously organized. Every single thing in the store is labelled within an inch of its life, all present and correct. His workstation is also perfectly primed, with a desk organizer containing all the usual suspects – rulers, rubber bands, a calculator – but also, strangely, some fancy art equipment, like a tin of pencils and a couple of brush pens. A notebook featuring his to-do list lies open. The majority of items have been diligently ticked off. I wonder if he gets the same dopamine boost from marking items as complete that I do. Sometimes, just to give myself a little thrill, I’ll even write a task down after I’ve completed it, so I get to cross it out immediately.

As I put an adjustable spanner away, I spot a sketchbook lying open on a desk. The shop is quiet for once and I can’t resist checking it out. Rory’s name is written in black ink in the top right-hand corner of the front page, like a child’s school jotter. I can’t help but smile – it’s cute.

I’m not sure what I expected to find as I flick through the pages, but it’s not this.