Chapter 68. The Price Of A Beautiful Day

The bookshop had once been a bakery. Diana could see the old shape of it behind the shelves: the serving counter, the wide doorway, the patch of tiled floor where something heavy had stood for years.

Its owner, Miriam Bell, was seventy and had no patience for questions that invited her to sound charming.

“I didn't open it because books are magical,” she told Diana. “I opened it because I was tired of being sensible in a place I hated.”

Diana put a star beside the sentence.

“You can use that,” Mrs. Bell said. “My sister already knows.”

They spent two hours together. Diana asked about the shelves, the move, the first customer. The woman answered with stories that kept turning into arguments she had won or wished she had won differently.

At the back of the shop stood an armchair with a small tear near the seam.

“My husband's,” she said when Diana looked at it.

“Did he help you open the shop?”

“He thought it was a terrible