The Bookshop at Midnight – Part 1: Notes in the Margins

The note was tucked between pages 84 and 85 of a battered copy of Persuasion, written in soft pencil, in a looping hand that leaned to the left.

Whoever read this before me, you cried at the bit with the letter. I can tell from the pencil marks. Me too.

Ruth read it standing up, between the poetry and the cookery books, in the warm amber light of the Edinburgh bookshop that stayed open until midnight for people with nowhere else to go.

She looked around. The shop was nearly empty. An old man was asleep in an armchair by the radiator, and a young woman with purple hair was reading in the corner by the window.

The purple hair looked up and caught her eye, and then, very deliberately, looked away.

Ruth took the book to the counter, bought it, and walked home with the note in her coat pocket, feeling absurdly like a teenager.

She wrote back the next week. She tucked a folded slip of paper into a copy of Middlemarch and left it on the shelf beside the poetry. You're right about the letter. I cried on the bus. Did you cry too?

When she came back on Thursday, the book had been moved, and the reply was waiting.

On the bus, too. Ask me again in person sometime. My name is Alina. I work the till on Tuesdays and I make terrible tea.

Ruth laughed out loud in the empty aisle. The old man in the armchair stirred and muttered something about Scotland.

On Tuesday, Alina was behind the counter. Her purple hair was tied up, and she had ink on one finger and a mug of tea that was, as promised, terrible.

"You're the note writer," said Alina.

"You're the one who said the bus," said Ruth.

"I didn't say the bus. You did. In the note." Alina grinned, quick and bright. "I'm just pretending to be brave in person."

"Are you pretending to be brave about the tea too?"

"Absolutely. Try it."

Ruth took a sip and winced. "It's awful."

"Told you," said Alina, leaning on the counter, close enough that Ruth could smell the rain on her coat. "Want to swap books properly, now we've met? You can tell me what you thought of the ending of Middlemarch, and I'll try not to be too judgemental."

"Only if you tell me why you keep leaving notes in poetry."

Alina's cheeks went pink, very slightly. "Because it's the only section nobody reads," she said. "And I wanted someone to find me there."

Ruth felt something warm and unexpected turn over in her chest.

"I found you," she said.

"Yes," said Alina softly. "You did."