Inventory

The annual stocktake was the worst night of the year. Twelve thousand books, two people, one clipboard and a deadline from the accountant. Hamid and Clare had done it together for six years, since they bought the shop on a whim and a bank loan, and every year they swore they would computerise everything.

They never did.

They started in Travel at eight in the evening with a flask of coffee and a bag of crisps. By ten they had reached Cookery and were arguing about whether a book with no cover counted. By midnight they had reached Philosophy, and Clare was sitting on the floor reading aloud from a crumbling copy of Montaigne while Hamid pretended to count.

'You're not counting,' she said.

'I'm listening,' he said. 'It counts as work.'

They had known each other a long time. They had shared the shop, the debt, the leaking roof and every terrible customer. There had always been something unspoken between them, something they had stepped around for six years, like the wobbly floorboard by the till.

In the narrow gap between Philosophy and Poetry, reaching for the same shelf, they bumped together. Neither stepped back.

'What number were we on?' Clare whispered.

'I have no idea,' said Hamid.

The kiss knocked three books off the shelf. They did not pick them up. The clipboard lay forgotten on the floor among the fallen paperbacks.

The accountant received the stocktake a week late, with a note that said only: Approximately twelve thousand. Give or take.