Irritated with myself for still caring about the pack in the first place, I closed the laptop with a thump and lay down with the coffee by the side of the bed. I may not have always enjoyed the restrictions that came with being a member of the pack, and may have often craved more independence, but now I just felt lonely. They’d been my family; I’d have died to keep them safe and I knew that most of them at least would have done the same for me. And now I had no-one.
Chapter Two
The next day dawn broke early. I’d had a restless night, tossing and turning, worried about what I was going to do next. I’d decided, around 3am, that I’d give myself two days to find work here in Inverness and then if nothing turned up I’d head elsewhere. Maybe I could travel to a bigger city like Birmingham and lose myself in the anonymity of life there. There would be a pack for sure, but I was confident I could keep out of their way in the masses of humanity. If there were more people then there would be more jobs. I might even be able to make a few friends and put down some semi-permanent roots. This nomadic lifestyle that I’d been leading so far was starting to grate on me.
After a freezing cold shower in the communal bathroom, I pulled on the smartest clothes I could find and hit the streets. Without a National Insurance number, the Job Centre was out but I might always be able to find some small adverts looking for help in a few of the newsagents’ windows. Deciding to venture to the busy Victorian Arcade first to try the little tourist shops there, I set out with a renewed confidence and vigour in my step.
The first few places I tried were polite but firm. It was out of season and they had no need for anyone else, especially someone just wandering in off the streets. Trying to keep my spirits high – no-one would employ a grumpy cow after all - I moved onto the book shop, named Clava Books.
Unlike the other stores on the arcade, Clava Books was dingy and looking as if it had seen better days. A bell on the door jangled as I went in. A muffled voice called out from the back that they’d be with me in a minute so I took a moment to browse the little shop’s offerings. Dotted around the uneven wooden floor were piles of books placed haphazardly around. I almost caught one leaning edifice with the corner of my foot and just managed to pull back in time before the whole thing went toppling to the ground. It didn’t appear to be the most organised shop in the whole world and I wondered idly if there was much business to be had at all in the arena of old books that had seen better days.
There were numerous Gaelic tomes on the shelves, some incredibly dusty, as well as a sprinkling of the usual coffee table photo books of the highlands of Scotland. I picked one up and flicked through, stopping at the pages of Clava Cairns, a 4000 year old group of burial cairns. No doubt this was the bookshop’s namesake. Kind of creepy, if you asked me, to name a shop after a cemetery. Admittedly there was a rather beautiful full page photo that had been taken at night, with several people holding flames aloft and staring towards the back of a group of higgledy-piggledy stones. Druids perform the Winter Solstice welcoming ceremony read the caption underneath. On reading that, the vestiges of a thought flickered at the back of my mind. Before I could fully form the words, however, my musings were interrupted by a series of clatters and thuds from towards the back of the shop.
Eventually an older woman with graying hair tied up in a neat bun, emerged from a dark wooden door. “Aha!” she said, with warmth in her voice. “So you’re interested in the Cairns, are you?”
I gently closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. “Of course,” I murmured. It was important to appear as if everything about this shop was fascinating if I wanted to get a job here.
I clearly didn’t do a very good job of looking interested, however, because she gazed at me with somewhat of a skeptical expression on her face. “Have you been to visit the Cairns yourself?”
“Erm, no,” I admitted. “But they are high on my to do list,” I quickly added with a hopeful smile.
“So it’s work you’re after, is it?”
I started. How had she known that?
“It’s written all over your face, dearie. Sorry, you don’t like being called dearie, do you?”
Okay, now I was getting freaked out. Were my thoughts really that transparent?
The old lady smiled benignly and patted my hand. “I’m Mrs Alcoon,” she said, warmly.
I couldn’t help smiling back despite her formality. “Er…I’m Jane. Jane Smith.” I’d kept my surname since moving to Inverness; Smith was obviously a common enough name to arouse absolutely zero suspicion. Using Mackenzie as well would have just been inviting trouble, however, so I stuck with the plain moniker I’d given myself when I’d found work at Arnie’s pub.
Mrs Alcoon raised her white eyebrows briefly before murmuring, “Really? Jane? Funny, you don’t look like a Jane.”
I coughed slightly then cleared my throat, stirring myself to at least appear confident even if I was more than slightly alarmed by the elderly woman’s prescience. “What can I say? My parents just lacked some imagination.” It occurred to me that if my name really was Jane, I’d be feeling rather insulted by myself right about now.
Mrs Alcoon raised a shoulder in a brief shrug as if to dismiss the matter. “Well, Jane, you’ve arrived just in time. As it turns out, I do need some help. Not full-time, you understand, but a little helping hand here and there would definitely be welcome. Perhaps a few mornings a week? Cleaning the shop, attending to the customers, running a few errands?”
This was going considerably better than I’d expected. “I…um…yes.” I cleared my throat again. “Yes, please.”
She smiled at me again. “Then let’s brew a pot and have a cuppa and discuss your renumeration.”
She led me off into a small kitchen off the side of the main shop area. The tiles were cracked with dirty grouting lining their uneven finish but there was a little fridge, a few cupboards and a kettle and toaster. I supposed you didn’t need much else to get by. There was also a little table with two wooden chairs against it in the middle of the small room so I took one and sat down. I was still feeling rather shocked that this was going so well and I half expected old Mrs Alcoon to suddenly burst out laughing and tell me that she’d just been playing a joke on me. To her credit, however, she busied herself with flicking on the kettle and pulling out a couple of chipped mugs and a teapot, humming away to herself tunelessly. Turning her back to me, she started pulling things out of the cupboards and getting herself organised.
Once the kettle had boiled, she filled the little teapot and brought it over, along with some surprisingly tasty oat biscuits. The proferred pot unfortunately wasn’t coffee but instead some kind of potent herbal tea that made my eyes water and my tongue sting. I swallowed it down, however, to be polite; Julia had taught me well. It turned out that Mrs Alcoon had been considering taking someone else on for a while, to help keep the shop running. I did wonder if she was actually making any money at all, given the lack of customers that had so far ventured across the threshold but I wanted to work here, not to point out the lack of business that I’d so far seen so I refrained from voicing my question out loud. She needed someone to come in four mornings a week and help out, and I promised that I would help “spruce the place up a bit as well,” as she put it. We agreed upon the princely sum of one hundred and twenty pounds a week – which was actually not much less than Arnie had been paying me at the pub and would definitely cover my main costs, even it meant I’d be continuing to scrimp and scrape – and she set me to work straight away cleaning down the shelves.
The rest of the morning passed quickly. Although no would-be customers entered the little shop’s doors, there was plenty to keep me occupied. In fact, it was fairly satisfying work. The dust was thick in many of the little nooks and crannies and the many tomes, often as old and dusty as the building itself appeared, regularly caught my interest. The lack of passing trade met my first impressions, however. Clava Books wasn’t exactly full of the glossy bestsellers that would tempt most people to venture inside. Mrs Alcoon, for her turn, disappeared into another little room at the back from where I occasionally heard the odd clank and thud of things being dropped or moved around. The peace – and immediate trust that she’d placed in me – was reassuring.
By 2pm I’d managed to clear the worst of the dust away, leaving just a few motes dancing around in the weak winter sunshine.
“Goodness, you’ve done a grand job,” she exclaimed, emerging from the door at the back of the shop. “I’ll have to find you more things to do next time.”
I felt a brief wash of worry that the old lady didn’t need me in the slightest and had just hired me out of pity. Then I wondered whether I could afford to be bothered by that and if I should just accept the charity that was being offered.
It’s perfect, however,” she continued, “ as I need to run out tomorrow morning and pick up some supplies. This way you can stay and keep the shop open – otherwise I’d have to shut it up.” She smiled without a hint of self-deprecation at all. “And that wouldn’t be good for business.”
Was she reading my mind again and soothing my worry that I was nothing more than a charity case or was all this just coincidence? I smiled halfheartedly back at her, feeling a nervous flicker of bloodfire in the pit of my belly.
“So where do you come from, Jane?” she enquired with the air of someone who was barely interested.
I stiffened further. Why did she need to know that? I tried not to let my thoughts show on my face. “Oh, I’ve lived all over,” I said airily. At least I hoped it was airily and not with the growl that I really wanted to answer with.
“Ah, a wandering traveller! Part of me wondered whether that brilliant red hair of yours suggested a Scottish heritage. Your accent doesn’t fit with this little corner of the world, however.”
I smiled weakly again and watched as she picked up a few sheaves of paper and peered at them over her glasses before rearranging them slightly and then placing then back down in a messy pile on the shop counter. Her hands gave away her age, with papery white skin covering the visible blue lines of her veins within. Taking her in a fight shouldn’t be a problem, although I knew well that appearances could be deceptive. I’d bested the strongest looking muscle bound shifters down at the pack with ease and almost been garroted in the same week by a seemingly harmless looking pixie. I’d have to be careful here.