THIRTY
Ben awoke convinced that he ought to be on his way home. He was halfway out of bed before he remembered that he had yet to sign books at the shop. He listened to the world awakening around him – a bird shrilling at the dawn from a branch of the cherry tree outside the window, one of Dominic's parents plodding downstairs and back up – and leafed through books chosen at random from the several bookcases in the room. He wasn't reading, only occupying himself in order to avoid getting in anyone's way so early, and that gave him time to think.
Last night he'd fallen asleep thinking of the Milligans, having gone to bed before them to sleep off his long day. He'd heard Dominic's mother reading to her husband, whose eyes had grown too weak for him to read for more than a few minutes at a time. Whenever anything she read revived a memory for either of them she would stop so that they could share it aloud. Ben had been touched by this, but he'd thought it should mean more to him. Now, as he blew the dust off a faded book whose author he had never heard of, he wondered if it had reminded him of how he'd realised yesterday that his own books were lacking.
As he'd read through The Boy Who Caught The Snowflakes, not a line of it had inspired him in the way imagining the story had. Ellen's illustrations were truer to his inspiration than the writing was, and more genuine in themselves. He was sure that they were the source of the appeal of all the books.
Once he'd met the publicist the day had become too demanding for Ben to reflect on any of this, but now he didn't find it as dispiriting as he might have. He'd done his best with the books, and now they were separate from him. They were really Ellen's books – Howard Bellamy had virtually told him so on meeting him – but that was a reason for him to feel prouder than ever of her. The trouble was, it also made today's session at the bookshop seem even more irrelevant to his real task.
Perhaps once the bookshop was out of the way his task would become clear to him. Last night, drifting off to sleep surrounded by old books, he'd thought it had to do with Edward Sterling. He'd realised that while he had been searching for his own books in Charing Cross Road he hadn't even considered trying to track down Edward Sterling's last book. He no longer needed it, he understood that much – because being denied it as a child had caused him to retell its stories, having forgotten where he'd found them. Whatever remained to him to tell or to perform, he felt instinctively that it had been with him since before he could remember.
The knock on his door and Dominic's announcement that the bathroom was free came as something of a relief. Ben took his time over bathing and shaving, though his thoughts had given way to nervous anticipation, and then ventured down to Mrs Milligan's inescapable breakfast. 'That's it, you tuck in,' she said, dumping more bacon on his plate as soon as he'd made room. 'You've a big day ahead.'
'We've been telling all our customers for weeks how you were coming back to us,' her husband said.
'The second coming of Ben Sterling,' Mrs Milligan suggested with a wry grimace at her own wickedness.
'Mother,' Dominic reproved her, and turned to Ben. 'What will you do until this afternoon?'
'Eat, by the look of it,' Ben refrained from saying. 'I'll revisit some of my old haunts,' he said.
Outside, where all the parked cars had gone blind overnight with frost, he decided to visit the houses where he used to live. His aunt's hadn't changed much, though there were dolls in the windows and more stray twigs poking out of the shrubs in the garden than she would have allowed to grow, but it seemed small and unfamiliar. When he strolled to his and Ellen's first house it looked shrunken too, and secretive with net curtains. He was glad Ellen wasn't there to see it, although the sight of it only confirmed the impression which had been developing in him, he didn't know for how long, that the whole of his life in Norwich had been no more than an interruption.
After a pub lunch which he would have been unable to describe as soon as he was out of the pub, he strolled for a while through the historic part of Norwich, old uneven streets which no longer seemed ancient enough to satisfy him, and then headed for the bookshop. A photograph of Ellen and himself was enshrined in the window by their books. Mr Milligan opened the door and applauded him, to the bemusement of the customers. 'Here's our celebrity,' he announced, so enthusiastically that Ben had to feel pleased for him.
During the next hour the shop sold over forty of the Sterlings' books. Whenever a child brought him one to autograph, Ben wished that Ellen were there to see – that they were meeting her rather than him. As he kept up a stream of conversation, he felt as if he were talking for her. The last child was led away from the cash desk, clutching a copy of The Boy Who Caught The Snowflakes and being told that it mustn't be unwrapped until Christmas, just as Mrs Milligan bore a cake into the shop. The skullcap of white icing was inscribed well done, ben in pink so fierce it looked inedible. 'That's fantastic, Mrs Milligan,' he said. 'I wish the children could have had some. Do you mind if I let Ellen know how we did?'
'You keep asking,' she chided him, though behind her Dominic looked as if he would have liked to be asked.
She cut the cake as he dialled and tried to indicate to her that he would be happy with not quite so generous a slice. He listened to the ringing of the distant phone and eventually replaced the receiver. 'No luck?' Dominic said.
'Ellen must be on her way to the school. I'll try again later. This is really kind of you,' he told Dominic's mother as he bit through the white icing to the sponge beneath.
'We'll save some for you to take home to the family if you like.'
'That's kinder still. I'll tell them when I speak to them,' Ben said and took refuge in the staffroom, hoping that a few minutes by himself wou}d calm his nerves. Surely it was the last of the energy he'd used to entertain his audience which was making him feel as if he should be rushing onwards. One or more of the Milligans kept coming to find him, and he chattered to them, hardly aware of what he was saying. He accepted coffee, and then a refill of the mug, by which time it was four o'clock. Ellen would be home, the children weren't due to go anywhere. He went smiling to the phone, and listened to the ringing until his smile grew so stiff he had to let it fade. As the hands of the clocks in the jeweller's across the street crawled silently towards fiveo'clock Ben tried the Stargrave number several times, and each time the ringing seemed more distant in the midst of the silence and the growing dark. At last he could stand it no longer. 'I'm sure there's nothing wrong,' he lied, 'but I think I'll head back.'
THIRTY-ONE
It was almost six o'clock before he left for Stargrave. Dominic's mother followed him to the Milligans' house, trotting as fast as was safe for the plateful of cake she was bearing. He would have taken it from her to hurry her up, except that then she might have realised that he was more anxious than he was trying to appear. At least he had time to call home again while she searched for a container in which to pack the remains of the cake. But the phone in the Sterling house only rang and rang far away in the dark.
Mrs Milligan was securing the carton of cake with a festive bow when the rest of the family came home, Mr Milligan enthusing about Ben's performance at the shop. He wouldn't let Ben go until Ben had inscribed a copy of each Sterling book to the Milligans. 'You'll have a coffee at least before you set off, won't you, Ben?' Mrs Milligan pleaded while he was struggling to think of a different inscription for each book, and he seemed to have no words left with which to explain a refusal. 'We don't want the cold getting to you on your way home,' she said.
While he sipped the scalding coffee as rapidly as he could she began to wonder aloud why Ellen wasn't answering. 'Maybe she was out shopping, buying something special for the prodigal. Try her again if you like,' she said, and when he had: 'Maybe she's stopped to gossip. You know how we women are.'
'We all of us talk too much and say too little,' Mr Milligan said.
His wife took that as a rebuke. She turned her back to him and cleared away the dinner-plate and cutlery she'd set for Ben. Ben gulped the last gritty inch of coffee, grabbed his bag from beside his chair and stood up. 'Thanks for having me. Next year you may see how grateful I am to all of you,' he said, thinking of the book he planned to dedicate to them, but for an instant his plan seemed lost in a darkness which lay ahead.
Dominic carried the boxed cake out of the house and placed it on the passenger seat while Ben threw his
