Make Me Believe (Believe #1)

CHAPTER THREE

EMMA

"Sorry I'm late, Mr. Andersen," I shout as I shut the door behind me and head to the staff room in the back. We have our own small drawers with a personal key where we can put our belongings when we're at work.

"Don't worry about it," he says from behind me, and I turn around. "But you're usually on time, so I was starting to get a bit worried about you, Emma."

Mr. Andersen is this quiet, older man, probably in his fifties, and his thinning hair is almost completely white. He tends to wear clothes that would have been better suited for a 19thcentury English lord. Today, he's wearing pale, almost white, trousers, a white shirt and a cream-coloured pullover as well as a black tie. He has brown loafers on his feet. It's an outfit that looks a lot like cricket attire to me, actually. Not that I play cricket, of course, but it isconsidered the English national sport, apart from football, so I can't help but know a lot about it. Plus, my dad watches it on the telly all the time when it's the season.

"I had a late night and overslept," I explain, and it's a total lie, of course. After having nursed my coffee and getting lost in my gloomy thoughts while listening to the birds chirping about outside on my balcony this morning, I tried to distract myself by cleaning my entire flat. "It won't happen again, I promise," I vow to Mr. Andersen.

"Now, it's perfectly alright, Emma. And when will you stop calling me Mr. Andersen, by the way?" His eyes always hold amusement when he asks me this, and today's no different. "I've asked you countless times to simply call me by my birth name, Andreas."

He asks me this very frequently, and my answer is always the same.

I shrug. "I suppose it's the Brit in me: you don't really call your employer by their birth name. Besides, that's not how I was brought up, so I guess it won't ever happen, Mr. Andersen." I beam at him.

He shakes his head, smiling wryly. "We had a new delivery come in after you left yesterday. Mind getting these new books sorted and settled in? I know you enjoy that particular part of the job." He turns to go out into the shop and I quickly follow him.

"Of course." I nod even though he can't see me. "I'd love to. And yes, you're right, I love opening the crates, seeing what hidden gems lie in wait for the world to discover." Excitement bubbles inside me, popping wildly in my tummy. "I mean, it feels like it's either my birthday or Christmas when new books arrive!"

I know I sound nuts, but what can I say? I'm a bookaholic.

Mr. Andersen laughs and pulls out his pipe from his pocket - it's not lit, of course, but you never see him without it. "Good." He turns away. "I'll be at the front desk if you need to ask me anything."

I nod, satisfied with the task before me, and I head to the storage room.

I don't knowthat much about Mr. Andersen even though I've worked at his shop for almost a year. I'm not even sure if he's married or not. I know that his favourite author is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - the man who invented Sherlock Holmes– and I also know that he used to be an English professor at the university.

But I don't know the story of how he came to be a bookshop owner. I once tentatively asked him about it, but only received a cryptic answer from him: "Life tends to offer a person certain opportunities he never even contemplated on pursuing. And sometimes you're forced to reinvent yourself and take a different path than the one you had in mind."

A quiet and cryptic man indeed.

When I open the first box of books in front of me, the memory of the day I applied for a job here suddenly pops into my head. I was really nervous because I thought he would simply take one look at me and show me to the door.