Twenty-Five
Claire is working the next day in the takeaway part of the café, while Eddie and Dexter set up the restaurant for the party tonight. So I spend the morning showing Rosie around St Felix once more.
We visit the harbour and the beaches. I show her where I used to live with her grandparents and then we walk back down into the town through Harbour Street. I’m hoping to stop in on Rose at the flower shop. I haven’t seen her in ages, and the last time I was here she wasn’t looking too well, although she insisted she was absolutely fine.
We call in at the bakery – now called the Blue Canary rather than Mr Bumbles – and meet the new owners, interestingly called Ant and Dec. Apparently Dec is the nephew of the previous owner, and he and his partner Ant now run the bakery together.
They’ve obviously inherited the old recipes too, because their pasties and cakes still look as delicious as ever.
‘I used to know your uncle,’ I tell Dec as I pay for our lunch. ‘I used to come in here for my lunch when it was Mr Bumbles and I worked as a Saturday girl at the flower shop down the road – that was a long time ago now, though!’
But instead of smiling at my joke, Dec looks concerned.
‘You knew Rose?’ he asks.
‘Yes, I was just going to pop in and visit her before we enjoy these.’ I hold up the paper bags containing pasties and cakes. ‘I haven’t seen her in ages.’
‘You don’t know, then?’ Dec asks, returning from the till with my change.
‘Know what?’
‘Rose is in hospital.’
‘Hospital? Why, what’s wrong with her?’
‘I’m not really sure I can say – but we think it might be cancer
.’ He whispers this last word for some reason, as people often do. ‘She was taken ill suddenly a few months ago and admitted to a local hospital. But her daughters quickly arranged for her to be transferred into a specialist hospital down in London. That’s all I know, I’m afraid.’
I stare at Dec for a moment. Another piece of my St Felix rock has broken away. First it was my parents, and now Rose.
‘You were obviously close to her?’ Dec says, as Ant continues to serve the other customers.
‘Yes, I always call in at the shop when I’m back in St Felix. Gosh,’ I say as I think about Rose. ‘I can’t believe she won’t be there making up her bouquets. Is the shop closed or is someone from her family running it for her?’
‘It was closed for a while, but volunteers from the local women’s guild have been running it for the last week or two to help Rose out and try to keep the business going.’
‘That’s good of them. But no one from Rose’s family has been in touch? Her daughters are florists, aren’t they? I remember Rose telling me it runs in the family.’
‘I really don’t know. But I do know how much we miss her in St Felix. She’s a special lady, that one.’
‘Yes, she is. Thank you for your help,’ I tell him, still thinking about Rose.
‘Enjoy your goodies,’ Dec says. ‘I hope they’re as good as you remember them.’
‘I’m sure they will be.’
Rosie is waiting outside the shop for me.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’ she asks, taking my hand as we walk down the street towards the harbour again. ‘You look a bit white.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. I just had some bad news, that’s all.’
‘What news?’
‘The lady who I used to work with in the flower shop. That flower shop over there,’ I say, pointing as we pass on the opposite side of the street. ‘The Daisy Chain. I just found out she’s in hospital.’
‘Oh, that’s sad. I hope she gets better soon.’
‘Yes, so do I. Do you know I chose the name Rosie for you partly because of her? She’s called Rose too.’
‘That’s nice. What was the other part?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said you called me that partly
because of the lady you used to work with – what was the other part?’
I smile at Rosie; she is so smart and on the ball all the time.
‘Let’s find somewhere to eat our lunch first, and I’ll tell you. We’ll go to one of the places I always liked to go when I was younger.’
We walk around to Morvoren Cove and climb up over the grass to the little viewing spot I always liked to go to on my lunchtimes. And I’m overjoyed to find that no one is already sitting there as we peep round the brow of the hill.
‘This is amazing,’ I tell Rosie as we sit looking out over the sea. To our right is Eddie and Dexter’s café, now called The Mermaid of Morvoren. Right now, it’s busy with a queue of people waiting outside for drinks and sandwiches. ‘I can’t believe I’m sitting up here again after all this time, and I have my beautiful daughter sitting next to me.’
‘It’s a fab view, isn’t it?’ Rosie says as a breeze lifts up off the sea, blowing her long dark hair away from her face.
‘It is that.’ I sigh. ‘I could sit and watch the sea for hours. It’s always changing, and yet in another way, it never does. That reminds me, I was going to tell you about your name.’
‘Yes, you were,’ Rosie says before she takes her first bite of Cornish pasty. ‘Ooh, this is good.’
‘Even though you were partly named after Rose from the flower shop, I also chose it because your full name, Rosemary, means “dew of the sea”. I wanted you to have a name that was related to St Felix in some way, because even though I’ve lived in Scotland for so long, I’ll always think of here as home.’
‘That’s really nice, Mum,’ Rosie says after she’s swallowed her second mouthful of pasty. ‘I like it here too. It’s very . . . ’ Her little face screws up in concentration as she tries hard to think of the right word, before deciding on one. ‘Fresh.’
‘Yes, it is fresh, isn’t it? It’s the air, I think.’ I take a deep breath. ‘It’s very clean.’
Rosie does the same. ‘I wish Grandma and Grandad still lived here,’ she says. ‘Then we could come back here and stay with them.’
I automatically assume Rosie means holiday with them.
‘Yes, we could. But at least Claire is still here, so we’ve been able to stay with her on this holiday.’
‘No, I mean stay
with them – like live with them?’
It’s always funny when I hear Rosie, who understandably has picked up a slight accent, use a Scottish turn of phrase when I still hear the English use of the word.
‘Oh, I thought you meant stay
as in holiday.’
‘No.’ Rosie looks confused for a moment. ‘Oh right, I get it. You heard the English stay.’
I nod. ‘But you would have liked that, would you? To live here with Grandma and Grandad?’
‘Oh, yes. I mean, I like the wee house they live in now. But I would have liked to stay, I mean, live
in a big house here like Alice, George and Freddie do.’
‘Yes, that would be lovely, wouldn’t it? One day, maybe,’ I say wistfully. ‘Perhaps not right now, though. I mean, you have school and all your friends in Scotland. You’d miss them if we moved all the way down here.’
Rosie considers this. ‘Yes, but I’d make new friends. And school is school.’ She shrugs and tucks into her pasty again. ‘Could I have these every day if we did move here?’
‘Er, no. Pasties are an occasional treat only.’ But as I begin to eat my own pasty, I can’t help but dream as I look out over the waves, of what it might be like to move back here again to St Felix.
‘Let’s wish, Mum,’ Rosie says, lowering her pasty for a moment.
‘What for?’
‘Let’s wish that we can come and live here again one day.’
‘All right.’ I nod, knowing full well that is all it will ever be – a dream. Property is far too expensive now for me to be able to afford to buy or even rent anything in Cornwall, let alone St Felix.
‘Close your eyes . . . tightly!’ Rosie tells me. ‘Right, I’m doing the same. Now we wish!’
And as I sit in my favourite spot in all of St Felix, with my world sitting by my side gripping my hand tightly, I put all my sensible, realistic, even pessimistic thoughts to one side, and I wish. I wish really hard.
And as I do, I hear a sound I haven’t heard in a decade.
The sound of a large tail splashing in the waves below us.