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Noémi grabbed the ever-present dustpan and brush and descended to her hands and knees.

It all seemed so unfair. It wasn’t as though the shops further up Bloom Hill in the heart of the village ever suffered with a lack of customers. It was small, but thriving, with plenty of affluent Cotswold shoppers ready to spend their money at the deli, the gift shops, and Posh Fish ’n’ Chips. But halfway down the hill on Hazel View Avenue, their little row of shops had become almost forgotten.

‘If this next month will be make or break, we need to get drastic,’ said Daniel, with far too much gusto.

‘Not drastic exactly.’ Noémi wagged a finger as Daniel tried to swap their traditional mantelpiece garland for a string of glittery blue baubles. She liked things how they’d always been.

‘But we’ll need to do things differently?’ Daniel dispensed with his controversial baubles and lined up a row of Nutcrackers over the fireplace.

Also nice, but the cute wooden soldiers lived by the till. Everybody knew that. Noémi shook her head.

In truth, she had planned big changes once. But life events had slammed the brakes on that, and it was probably best not to get too wild. Her mother’s failing memory did at least sometimes recall the past. When Noémi brought her to visit and things were too different, it disconcerted her. Or worse still, her mother had no recollection of where she was at all.

‘Ouch.’ Noémi looked down at her finger, which she’d nicked on a piece of broken crockery while she’d had an eye on Daniel’s frivolities. And that’s what happened when you threw caution to the wind. She gave it a quick wipe on a tissue.

‘A nice book club,’ Felix piped up. ‘That’s what we need, to get more people in.’

‘That could work,’ Noémi said carefully. A book club sounded cosy enough – as long as it wasn’t too loud and didn’t put off the quieter shoppers.

‘I met my Doris at one of our book clubs.’ Felix’s eyes took on a damp sheen. He’d lost his wife when Noémi had been much younger, and he hadn’t been quite the same since. ‘She came in for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, where they get down to business in the chicken shed. That set them all giggling.’

‘Sounds like my kind of party,’ said Daniel.

‘We’d have to make sure it didn’t get too raucous,’ Noémi interjected. ‘People come here for tranquillity.’

‘And to buy books,’ Daniel reasoned. ‘Maybe you could sell other book-lover products too?’

‘Like … stationery?’ Noémi mused. Her bookish self loved pretty notebooks, stunning writing sets, pencils that smelt of fresh wood …

‘We could get rid of this dusty old section and have a new bookish merch area. Tote bags, T-shirts …’

‘This is a bookshop, not H&M.’ Noémi bristled. She didn’t mind a few lovely extras, but she wasn’t into fashion retail. And what did he mean, dusty old section?

‘If you sold a few of those rare books at the back of the shop, you’d probably make a packet,’ said Daniel.

‘Nobody around here wants to buy them,’ said Noémi, not adding thank goodness, because she knew it was odd for a bookseller not to want to sell her books. But those ones were special.

‘Some customers say our variety of books isn’t what it used to be,’ Felix added. He scratched his head, looking around.

Maybe their selection had become less adventurous since that time. But who could blame her for preferring books with limited danger? Not that she begrudged people’s right to enjoy a good murder story, or to pore over books about bog snorkelling. She just no longer rushed to order them in.

‘I’ll consider it.’ Having the heart to change things in her quiet little shop might challenge her more than she’d thought.

The evening unfolded as they worked together, stringing up garlands and lights, dressing the tree (with Noémi secretly moving things when the others got it wrong) and listening to ‘Fairytale of New York’ on repeat, because who didn’t love The Pogues and those dreamy Irish accents?

‘We’ll work something out,’ Daniel promised Noémi as he was leaving, pulling her into an even tighter hug than usual. He’d offered to walk Felix home. ‘Tomorrow morning, usual place? We could ask others for advice. Because we cannot let this be the shop’s last Christmas.’

‘No pressure,’ Noémi wheezed, from inside his determined clinch.

It was traditional on the last Monday of the month for the staff from the street to huddle at the coffee van, bright and early, for unofficial gossip. Though it would be embarrassing to share her struggles, she had to do something. And they were a brilliantly quirky bunch.

‘Tomorrow,’ Noémi agreed.

But before that, there was someone else she was bursting to check in with. Perhaps they would have wise advice on this uncomfortable new position she’d found herself in – wedged somewhere between a rock and a hard place.

Noémi’s Save Our Bookshop (SOB) List:

Start a book club? (Nothing too wild.)