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Jack asked the question on a Tuesday.
It was unseasonably cold, even for late November, and Jack was helping Trottie patch up some dodgy looking cracks around the door of the wallpaper shop, through which the most uncharitable of drafts had been whistling all morning.
A particularly cheeky gust chose that moment to rattle through the frame, and Trottie paused in the business of ripping up old stock—copper zigzags, much too Art Deco for the discerning modern customer—to blow on her hands. “I’m not one to make a bet lightly, but I’d put a tenner down that it’s going to be a winter for the record books.”
Jack paused mid-stuff, a particularly garish metallic silver chevron peeking out from his frozen fingers. The eyes that blinked at Trottie reminded her rather of an owl she and Book had seen once, on a ramble when they were teenagers. Her mother had been terribly worried about what they got up to, on those walks, away for hours and hours, only sandwiches and binoculars between them.
They remained some of the happiest moments of Trottie’s life.
The owl had been young, hopping from branch to branch with the clumsy grace of the newly fledged, craning its neck this way and that, trying to ascertain what, precisely, Trottie and Book were.
It had been adorable then. And it was still adorable now, two wars, two marriages, and more heartbreak than most lifetimes later.
Jack’s blink was as slow and careful as that owlet, his fingers curling around the paper bits like talons grasping for purchase on a branch. Trottie’s heart squeezed.
The things that had been done to this boy, to hesitate to even ask a question....
“What is it, Jack?” She kept her voice on the casual end of kindness. It wouldn’t do to spook the lad.
Their assistant hesitated a moment, and he was theirs, rather than just Book’s, official employee paperwork and everything. Just as so many things in their lives together. It baffled many, that distinction; not his, not hers, but theirs. It had baffled her mother, god rest her soul. It had baffled the officiant at their courthouse wedding. It had baffled their neighbours when their joint shops had opened their doors.
And she suspected it was what was baffling their assistant now. Just as it had once baffled his father.
But Jack, like Felix before him, came about things in his own way, in his own time.
“Why wallpaper?” Hands full of crumpled paper gestured to the shop at large, the befuddlement clear in the gesture.
Trottie turned away then, pretending to straighten the latest delivery from Morris & Co—sprigs on stripes, very in vogue—giving herself a moment to hide a smile. And perhaps a tear.
Felix had asked why she liked books. They really were very much alike, despite everything.
She turned back with a flourish, brandishing fresh sacrificial material for the cracks—triangles in a most garish shade of turquoise—a glib answer on her lips, and faltered.
Jack’s expression was more open than she had ever seen it, save that painful moment in their attic, when he’d asked if Trottie was his mother. Trottie’s heart turned over again. Oh, if only things had been different. If only Felix had told them sooner....
“I always loved patterns and colours, even as a little girl. Could never be kept from my doodles, even in school. My mother despaired of me.” Trottie’s laugh was tinged with more fondness than such recollections once would have been, yet the bitterness of remembered pain lingered.
Jack’s gaze was clear and steady, and for a moment, Trottie was reminded of nothing so much as a younger Book. He’d always been good at that, knowing when she needed space to gather her thoughts, needed companionable silence to find the deeper truth there was to tell.
Trottie remembered the day they’d opened the wallpaper shop, a crowd of curious onlookers gathered despite the bitterly cold autumn day, not unlike this one. Book had stood to one side of the door, Felix to the other, the pair using the pomp of the circumstance to risk complementary waistcoats, swirls of blue and red, gold and yellow, all worthy of William Morris himself. They had ushered those curious onlookers through the door and towards Trottie, positioned strategically behind her counter, sheers at the ready, waiting to turn them into would-be shoppers.
It had worked beautifully. By closing time, Trottie wasn’t sure which of the three of them was the most proud. Back in the bookshop’s kitchen, they had toasted together with champagne, arms twined about shoulders, laughter shaking through their group hug, Book and Felix’ voices united as one in a cry of, “To Trottie!”
Trottie blinked, the moment fading back into memory. The sound of clinking glasses lingered in her ears. This time, when a tear came, she made no move to conceal it. Gazing into the hopeful expression of Felix’s boy, those blues eyes so like his father’s, her words came unbidden, from the heart.
“I suppose because, when all is said and done, this is where I’m most at home.”
They both knew her answer, like his question before it, had very little to do with wallpaper.
***
Trottie had gone alone to tell her mother of her decision to marry Book. Her mother had always called Book a terrible influence on Trottie, as if it wasn’t quite the reverse, as if Book was the one leading them into this scrape and that. But then, her mother was very much of a mindset that women making their own decisions was a concept anathema with the fabric of the universe.
Which was exactly how Trottie had put it that day, in her mother’s kitchen, her finger adorned with a flashy engagement ring—because it was her favourite colour and setting—her fiance notably absent.
She went alone because she wanted to force her mother to acknowledge, for once in her life, that this was Trottie’s decision. That she was making it herself, for herself.
That she was choosing to take this life of hers, and bind it with her best friend’s. To take what was hers, and what was his, and make it theirs.
Her mother hadn’t understood. Trottie hadn’t expected her to. But she had hoped.
Book hadn’t taught her that, to see the world how she wished it would one day be, rather than how it was. To imagine something different. Something better. Something more. Sometimes, Trottie thinks she taught that to Book.
Maybe they taught each other, in the end. Maybe he’d read it to her in a book. Maybe she’d drawn it for him on the back of an envelope.
Felix had met her mother precisely once. Afterwards, he’d remarked, not unkindly, that that lady suffered from a distinct lack of imagination. Trottie had snorted rather indelicately, looped her arms through both of theirs, walking between them for appearances sake as she always did, and taken them off to drink hot chocolate and continue their vain attempt to see the stars from the bookshop roof.
They’d sat cuddled close under a rug, passing a mug between them. They hadn’t seen a single star.
Trottie would find Book up there some nights, during the blackout. The stars had been so bright, Trottie half feared the bombers would find them by their light alone. Under the twinkling light of the universe, they had huddled together and cried.
They closed the shops early on Tuesdays, and Trottie wasted no time in arranging things, gathering rugs and seats, raiding her precious stash of cocoa powder and powdered milk, setting up the burner.
She found Jack and Book in the front of the bookshop, Book attempting yet again to explain his filing system, Jack’s attention as rapt as could be, and if his eyes were a little glazed, it was with amusement rather than exasperation.
“Put the books away for the moment, boys, and come and join me on the roof.” Jack’s baffled expression glanced from Trottie’s coy smile to Book’s slowly blossoming beam and back. This time, the question came without hesitation, and any trepidation in the tone warmed Trottie’s heart, rather than chilling it.
“What’s on the roof?” Book’s laugh took them both by surprise, a thing of delight and joy, full-bodied and deep, shaking from the fiery top of his head to the polished tips of his shoes.
He gathered Jack and Trottie close, shepherding them towards the back stairs; the roof beyond, beckoning. And together, they answered.
***
Trottie never got the chance to tell Felix, but that was what her mother had always said Trottie’s problem was: an excess of imagination.
“It will do you no good, my girl, just mark my words.” Trottie had begged to differ.
Two wars, two marriages, and more heartbreak than most hearts can bare, Trottie still begged to differ.
She’d married Book because she dared to imagine a world where she could help her best friend live without fear, without apology. A world where he could be happy.
Book had married her because he dared to imagine a world where Trottie could make her own choices, without fear, without apology. A world where she could be happy.
And together, they’d imagined a world where they could help others do the same.
***
Jack loved the hot chocolate. The cold, less so. He was hesitant but hopeful about the shared rug pile.
They didn’t see a single star. Trottie wrapped her arms around her boys, and thought she’d never seen anything more beautiful.
Where ever he was, she just knew, Felix would agree with her.
After all, as he’d never tired of reminding Book, laughter in every line of his face, Trottie was never wrong.