Bookshop Girl Read online

  I’d like to thank my agent, Polly Nolan, for making my I’d-like-to-thank-my-agent dreams a reality. You’re one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. Thank you for looking after me and Paige.

  Massive-duty-free-airport-Toblerone-sized thank you to my editor Fliss, and everybody else at Hot Key, for believing in Paige, for making this happen, and plying me with pink Starbursts.

  The first ever person I showed this to was Jen Bell – who was pretty busy being a bestselling author, hello – when she told me to go for it. Thanks, babe, I owe you one. A really massive one.

  Thank you to my first ever bookshop family. The people I had around me when I was Paige’s age (and was tripping over art-school boys rather than starting any kind of high-street revolution). Emma Mileham – you gave me a job when I was sixteen, you made me a Bookshop Girl. Andrew and Grace – you made working in a bookshop so fun back then that I’ve spent the past decade pretty sure that I don’t want any other kind of job ever.

  To my hilarious, talented, supportive friends who have read parts of this, and listened to me whinge and cry and blabber on and on and on and on about where this is going – thank you. Spesh thanks to Dave (for slipping into the psyche of a teenage girl so easily) and to Jo and Catrin and Gianni and Clare. Thank you, Neil, for christening Paige Turner.

  To my darling best girls, Bree and Cere. I don’t know who or where I’d be without you. Thank you for holding my hands when I need a wee on the night bus home. You raise me uuuup so I can stand on mountains. You make everything I do feel glamorous.

  Maurice Mariotti, you’re so dreamy. I fancy you even more than Paige fancies Blaine Henderson. I love you even more than chips and mayonnaise and the happy bit at the end of Dirty Dancing. Thank you forever for being my number one fan.

  In the process of writing and sharing this, everybody kept loving the Mum character. ‘She’s so funny’ and ‘she’s so close to Paige’. I hadn’t even meant for that to happen. I hadn’t even noticed it happen. Well, not on paper. I always knew that my mum, the woman responsible for choreographing a dance routine to the Big Brother theme tune and turning every single interaction with a shop assistant into A Funny Thing That Happened Today, is the best friend I’ll ever have. Thank you for the lifetime of material you’ve provided me and Oscar with. I’d say this is for you, Mum, but you wouldn’t want me to do it for you. You’d want me to do it for me.

  Chloe Coles

  Originally from Northampton, Chloe studied illustration at Cambridge School of Art before moving to London. Now in her twenties, she has worked in bookselling since the age of sixteen, squeezing it in around school and university and other jobs. She’s previously worked at Waterstones, Blackwells and Heffers and now works as a Children’s Specialist and Assistant Buyer at Foyles Charing Cross. All of her hair is her own. People ask her about that. A lot. Chloe sings (‘shouts’) in a band with her best friend.

  Follow Chloe Coles on Twitter @ChloeColes_

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  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

  HOT KEY BOOKS

  80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE

  www.hotkeybooks.com

  Copyright © Chloe Coles, 2018

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Chloe Coles to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 9781471407109

  This eBook was produced using Atomik ePublisher

  Hot Key Books is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre Ltd,

  a Bonnier Publishing company

  www.bonnierpublishing.com