A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Tuesday, and the Hollis bequest has arrived on two trolleys: forty-one boxes that smell of pipe smoke and wet coats. Dorothy Hollis read everything twice and argued with the margins as if the authors were still sitting across from her. I have been sorting since eight, stacking the hardbacks on the floor beside the radiator, because the shelves are full and Mr Pryce insists we are a shop, not a warehouse.
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By four I had built a tower of her favourites. A Stevenson with its spine cracked in two places. A sea atlas with coffee rings over the Azores. A Lisbon cookbook, and a bundle of seed catalogues tied with garden string. At the top sat a small black volume with no title on the spine. Inside, the first page held one line in soft pencil, pressed so hard it dented the paper: I've lived a thousand lives. Beneath it, in a different hand, fainter and later, someone had written only: Which one would you keep?
I stood there with the radiator ticking behind me and tried to answer, and found I had no list ready. Mine has been a single life so far: a flat above a launderette, a job that starts at seven, a sister in Harrogate who rings on Sundays. Dorothy, it seems, had kept the others in pencil in the margins.
I wrapped the stack in brown paper and wrote SHELF on the label. Then I took the black book back out, carried it to the counter and set it beside the till, where anyone paying for a cup of tea would have to look at it. Mr Pryce can have his warehouse. I think I'll keep this one.
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