The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this piece.

A STORY FOR ALICE GREY

CHAPTER ONE

THE PERFECT GIFT

“I wish birthdays were banned!” Lily O’Neill exclaimed to the deserted street, as she left yet another shop empty-handed. She had been present hunting for hours without success. The sun was now low and red in the sky, and the streetlights were coming on. Around her, the shops were beginning to close. Security gates were being pulled shut, displays were being brought in from the windows and cleaners were shaking pans of dust out into the street. She grimaced as she checked at her wristwatch: quarter-to-six. Her mother had told her to be home at six, which meant that she had just enough time to check out one more shop. She hoped that it had the perfect gift for Alice.

Lily sighed. That was her major problem summed up in a single sentence. She could not settle for anything less than the perfect gift. All the usual presents - soaps and perfumed bath salts, gift vouchers, little books that no-one ever read, novelty items with the person’s name - were just too cliché. To her, they said that the buyer had spent less time and trouble picking the gift than wrapping it. That went double for people who had it wrapped in the store. Besides, Alice was her best friend. She deserved better.

Continuing down the street, she weighed up the possibilities of each shop she passed. Alice lived in a flat, so a pet was out of the question. The stylish boutique probably had something suitable, but she doubted she could have afforded even a pair of socks from there. The same went for the jewellery store, not to mention that her friend hated wearing it. The art store was closed. At last, she paused before the bookstore on the corner.

She had never been into this particular shop in the past. It was the sort of old-fashioned one that had proliferated in the centre of town before many of the buildings had been torn down to be replaced by a smart, new mall. Its front was panelled in dark wood, and the glass of its window was thick and dusty. A sign hung above the door, jutting out into the street, but its paint was so faded that she could not read what it said.

Lily stepped closer to peer inside the shop and see whether it was still open, but her attention was distracted by something stuck in a corner of the window.

It was a small, yellow card. The few words on it had been printed using a typewriter, and the ink was slightly smudged. Lily dug inside her handbag for her glasses, and, after looking around to check that no one from her school was anywhere to be seen, settled them on her nose.

Even above her unruly, red curls and the three freckles on the bridge of her nose, Lily’s least favourite feature about herself was the shortsightedness that made glasses necessary. She wished her mother hadn’t read that contact lenses caused eye infections in one of the health magazines of which she was so fond. Ever since then, contact lenses had joined chocolates and cell phones on the list of things that were forbidden in the O’Neill Household.

Once the hated glasses were in place, Lily looked at the card to see what was typed on it:

PERSONALISED STORIES.

INQUIRE WITHIN.

A sudden smile coming to her face, Lily pushed open the door of the bookshop with a jangle of chimes. She had heard of these personalised books, and one of them would be the perfect gift for Alice. They were usually pretty corny - generic stories into which they pasted a few random names and facts about the person - but she knew Alice would get a kick out of receiving one of them. She was a confirmed bookworm, and she already spent most of her time in a fantasy world. And, deny as it as her friend might, Lily knew that she wrote about it too. She had caught her friend scribbling in a fat, black notebook, only for her to hide it clumsily the instant she became aware of Lily’s presence. She had never seen what was written in it as a result, but she knew it couldn’t be geometry or French for Alice to be so protective of it.

Inside, the bookshop was cool and dim. It smelt mustily of old paper, leather and dust. Shelves crammed with books lined the walls of the room, while piles of them teetered all over the floor. A spiral staircase in the middle of the room led up to a second level, which was also packed with books from what she could see of it. Alice would have been in heaven, but Lily only felt uncomfortable. Unlike her friend, she was not an avid reader. She was perfectly happy with her monthly subscription to Sixteen.

Picking her way through the aisles formed by the wobbly stacks of books, she looked around herself for the counter. She eventually spotted it in the corner, almost obscured by what seemed to be a solid wall of novels. A girl of about her own age was sitting behind it, her feet resting on the desk and her face half-hidden by a book. From what Lily could see of her, however, she looked very bored. Lily didn’t blame her. Her last summer job had been hell. It had been at a video store, and she hadn’t been able to go to a movie for weeks after it without feeling vaguely sick.

“Hi!” Lily said brightly, as she stepped over the last pile of books that separated her from the counter.

The girl set her book to one side, and lifted a quizzical eyebrow at her, “Yes?”

“I came to ask about the advertisement in the window for personalised stories. It said to inquire within,” Lily continued, undeterred by the clerk’s unfriendly greeting. In the same job, she had learnt that the only worse thing than an angry customer was a cheerful one.

A strange emotion passed through the girl’s eyes. If Lily had not known better, she would have sworn it was fear, “You don’t want that. Trust me, you really. . . .”

“And since when do we tell the customer what he or she wants?” a rich, musical voice asked from above them. The girl paled visibly, and Lily looked up in surprise to see a woman descending the spiral stairs. Handsome rather than beautiful, her dark hair was pinned back in a practical style, and her blue eyes were vivid beneath the thick ink strokes of her eyebrows. Her mouth was broad and had an amused tilt to it. Her fingers were ink stained, as were the cuffs of her white, linen blouse.

Lily guessed she was the owner of the bookstore, because the clerk continued, “No, we don’t. I’m sorry. I’ll . . . .”

“You’ll allow me to handle this customer,” she finished for her, then smiled dazzingly at Lily, “I do apologise for her. She’s new here and hasn’t learnt the finer points of customer courtesy. If you’ll come with me, I’ll help you with getting exactly what you want.”

With a sympathetic smile for the clerk who seemed too shaken to reciprocate, Lily followed the bookstore’s owner up the spiral staircase to another desk. This one was strewn with sheets of paper - some of them blank; others of them covered in a tiny handwriting. An old typewriter rested in one corner with a sheet fed into it but nothing printed on it. The woman settled herself behind it, and motioned for Lily to take the seat opposite her.

“You want me to write you a story?”

“One of those personalised books, yeah, but it’s not for me,” Lily said quickly, “It’s for my friend. Her name is Alice Grey.”

“Alice,” she repeated the name, “So, this will be a story for Alice Grey. Tell me all about her . . . .”