The Bookshop on Fernside Road

The bookshop on Fernside Road was the kind of place in which time seemed to move more slowly. Its owner, a man whose name nobody could remember, opened it only on Wednesdays. Customers, most of whom were regulars, rarely asked questions. They simply took a book, left some money and went home.

One Wednesday in November, Ava, a student whose thesis was already late, went in looking for an old atlas. Sitting behind the counter was a young woman she had never seen before. “The owner is away,” the woman said without looking up. “I’m only looking after the shop.”

Having searched the shelves for twenty minutes, Ava found the atlas wedged between two cookery books. Opening it, she noticed a folded piece of paper marked with a circle in red ink. The paper, written in tiny capitals, listed seven addresses.

Intrigued, she asked the woman about it. “I know nothing,” she said. A man standing by the door, who had been listening all along, cleared his throat. “Those are the houses where the owner leaves books for strangers,” he said. “Nobody knows why.”

The next morning, Ava visited the first address, a house in which the curtains were always closed. A shelf by the gate held a dozen novels and a handwritten note: Take one. Leave one. Say nothing. She chose a thin paperback and left a postcard from her university in its place as a thank-you.

She never met the owner. Still, every Wednesday she walked past the shop and thought about the strangers whose lives had been changed by a stolen hour with a book.