Page 22 of The Book Swap

“Oh, I love these,” she says, crouching down and opening the doors. “Might get a book for my journey back.”

I stand, watching her. My chest tightens. The library isn’t hers. It’s mine. And Eileen’s. And Margins Girl’s.

“Oooh. Wuthering Heights would be a cheery read!”

I can’t help looking around, in case the deliverer of my books is approaching the library right now. My heart does a tiny one-two boxing motion at the thought, which is mad. She could be fifteen. Or fifty. She could be a man who says “dreamboat.” It’s stupid to even care about seeing her, but I want to. To say thank you, for everything she’s ignited in me.

“Christ, someone’s totally destroyed this copy of Great Expectations. There’s writing all over it.”

I jump down so fast I crack my knee into Helena’s back.

“Ouch!” she cries, reaching her hand behind her to rub where I made contact.

“Sorry,” I say, but I stretch past and pull out the Dickens book, flicking straight to the back. Has she done it? I’d understand if not. Maybe it was just me who got something from the notes. But I can already see replies from Margins Girl, on the last page. I scan it until I reach the bottom, warmth spreading through my body as I see the final note, written in much neater handwriting than that which is scrawled across the pages of the book. Meet me in Wuthering Heights? I can’t believe it. She’s replied. Reaching back into the library, I find the book, where Helena just returned it.

She looks across at me now, frowning.

“Might learn something,” I say, shrugging. “Sorry. Is your back okay?”

The rest of the walk to Brixton is spent as though there’s a ticking time bomb in my hand. All I want is to safely deposit Helena at the tube and run home, for a date with Margins Girl, and Brontë.

“You’ve perked up, suddenly,” Helena says, as I laugh at some comment she’s made, my mind on the handwriting I saw in response to mine.

“Mind if we pop into Pret so I can get a sandwich for the train?”

“I think there’s one at the station too?”

She’s already walked in, reaching for my hand to pull me in behind her. I throw my head back, sighing. I’ve never known time to stretch as much as it does now.

“Club sandwich?” I suggest, picking it up. She leans forward to read the ingredients, then shrugs, putting it back.

“Their wraps are good,” I add.

“Might get a salad,” she says, scanning the bottom row of the fridge. I open up Great Expectations on a random page, scanning it for a response in different writing.

You’re SO right, it says, and I smile, trying to see what they’re agreeing with.

“Can you order me an oat latte?”

It’s two in the afternoon by the time I get home and sit down on the sofa, my heart racing.

I read all the replies, savoring them.

It’s like you know what I’m going through, the writing says, beneath the passage about partings being welded together. That was the bit which made me choose this book. It resonated with Margins Girl too. Not only that, but she has revealed something personal about herself. There are more:

You’ve successfully made me feel bad about the silent treatment I’m currently giving my mum...

And by a line about success and failure, she’s written, At least she has some success thrown in! Which makes me laugh and feel sad, all at once. Who is this person who feels made up entirely of failures and partings?

There’s one bit underlined that I hadn’t commented on. The part where Miss Havisham explains what real love is. “It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter.”

And that’s why we don’t do it! she’s written.

Greedily, I pick up Wuthering Heights. All I want to do is flick through it, and read the book through her comments, rather than Brontë’s words, but I know that isn’t the unspoken agreement we’ve made. I skip through the editor’s preface, and start on Chapter One, throwing myself into 1801.

By Chapter Three I’ve got my notebook from my desk, jotting down observations about the writing that might help my own novel. The structure. Any comments from the margins that I want to remember. I shake my head at the skill of the writing. The thought that’s gone into how to tell the story. I reply in the margins, marveling not only at the writing, but how astute Margins Girl has been about the book. A few of the comments are in a different colored pen, perhaps added at a different time.

Imagine loving someone so much that you’d die without them? To be fair, I’d have made a similar speech about my guinea pig, Hazel, once upon a time. When she died, Mum helped me bury her in the garden and I insisted on lying beside her in a sleeping bag, so she didn’t get lonely. Think I lasted ten minutes, but the sentiment was there.