What happens to your own life when you start caring for a parent at nineteen?
The Student with the Wrong Book
The young man who came into La Pagina che Fa le Fusa on a grey Thursday in February asked for a book that did not exist.
“It’s for my exam,” he said. “Constitutional law. The second edition. My professor said it would be in any bookshop.”
Moira Hopes checked her catalogue, the distributor’s catalogue and, for good measure, the dusty box under the counter where she kept things that had been ordered and never collected. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s a third edition from last year, and the second has been out of print since then. Your professor may not have noticed.”
The young man stared at her. He was perhaps nineteen, thin, with a university lanyard round his neck and the very particular grey look of someone who has been awake for too long. He opened his mouth to say something, and what came out instead was a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“Of course,” he said. “Of course it’s the wrong edition. Of course it is.”
Toe, the slender grey cat with white paws, who had been asleep on the law shelf, opened her green eyes and looked at him with deep professional interest.
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