Chapter 14
Mindful that I was increasingly in danger of being accused of using Mum and Dad’s place as a glorified hotel and needing peace and quiet in which to further develop the idea I’d come up with after losing spectacularly at the pub quiz, I decided to drive home that night rather than stay with Josh in Wynmouth.
He was a bit sulky about it, but only in a play-acting kind of way, and I wondered if Marguerite’s earlier supposition that he was mad for me might actually be true. I didn’t currently have the bandwidth to think too deeply about it, or what my own feelings for him might be morphing into, so focused instead on what most needed my immediate attention.
When the cottage phone rang early the next morning, it turned out to be Algy.
‘There, look,’ he said a short while later when I had joined him at the manor and we were watching the cat-cam footage on his computer screen. ‘That’s her. That’s little Luna.’
Filling the screen for just a few seconds was a small, scrawny black cat, wolfing down the food that Algy had put out at an alarming rate.
‘I wonder what scared her off,’ he tutted, peering even closer as the feral feline looked in one direction, then bolted out of view in the other.
‘Maybe it was the panther,’ I suggested while stifling a yawn.
I hadn’t slept particularly well, but I had almost made up my mind about my plan and as far as I was concerned, that was hours awake in bed well spent. Though perhaps not as well spent as they would have been if I had been awake with Josh…
‘Hardly,’ tutted Algy.
‘And you’re absolutely sure that’s her?’ I asked him.
He gave me a withering look.
‘Of course, I’m sure,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’d recognise her anywhere. Though she’s much thinner than I remember.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘at least you know she’s still here and getting some of the food you’re putting out. Even if she isn’t exactly looking like a picture of health, you know she’s still alive.’
Algy nodded at that.
‘My concern now though,’ he sighed, ‘is that she possibly isn’t getting as much of the food as I thought she was. My guess is that whatever scared her off could have snaffled the rest and that potentially means she’s barely getting more than a few frantic bites each time she comes to eat.’
Annoyingly, the batteries in the camera, which obviously hadn’t been fully charged, had gone flat right at the wrong moment and that meant it hadn’t recorded whatever had come along next, but we knew something had because Luna had pelted off.
‘I was going to suggest we try and set something up to catch her,’ I told Algy as I set the batteries to charge, ‘but having seen her in action, she seems so flighty and nervous, I don’t think she’d fall for whatever we came up with.’
‘I think you’re right there,’ Algy said forlornly. ‘First, we need to focus on a way of getting more food to her. Just to her.’
‘Any idea how to do that?’
‘None,’ he sighed heavily. ‘It might help if we knew where she kept disappearing to…’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘let’s set the camera back up with fresh batteries and think further about that once more footage has come in. I’m sure we’ll think up something between us.’
‘Perhaps a walk around the garden might get the ideas flowing,’ Algy then suggested.
‘Nice try,’ I said, standing up. ‘But no dice.’
‘You can’t put it off forever, you know.’
‘Thankfully,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to be here forever.’
Algy looked hurt, but it hadn’t been my intention to upset him; I just wanted him to talk about something else. Anything other than the garden.
‘Are you really in such a rush to leave Wynbrook again?’ he asked sadly, but he didn’t give me time to answer. ‘Because I wish you weren’t. It’s so wonderful having you back here, Daisy. You know I think of you, and your parents of course, as family, but you especially. You’re the granddaughter I never had. It’s really put some pep back in my step knowing there’s some young blood here and about the place.’
The hardest lump had formed in my throat as Algy spoke. I knew he had family of his own, a son if memory served, but he had been estranged from him for a very long time. I had only been small when the fallout had occurred and the sad situation had never been resolved and was only ever rarely talked about and always when Algy was out of earshot.
I didn’t think it was my place to broach it, but I did wonder if that, combined with his tumble and the possible loneliness my parents had speculated over, might be responsible for some of the melancholy he had been feeling before my return, or was potentially still feeling if his current words were anything to go by.
‘There’s always Nick,’ I pointed out, unable to commit to saying I’d stay for longer than the next few weeks. An assurance that I’d stay would doubtless lift Algy’s spirits, but then I’d crush them if an opportunity to leave Wynbrook presented itself sooner. ‘He’s the same age as me.’
‘He’s always busy running the fruit farm,’ Algy pointed out. ‘And doing a wonderful job of it,’ he hastily added. ‘But that means I barely see him.’
I knew for myself how busy Nick was, especially at this time of year, so couldn’t dispute that or suggest that Nick could spend time up at the manor in the evenings. He was generally too worn out to sparkle socially.
‘It feels to me like everything is grinding to a halt,’ Algy then said morosely. ‘We’re all getting older and I haven’t got around to instigating half of the plans I had for the place.’
I knew the cut-flower garden was one of those plans and had I not had such upsetting memories associated with that part of the garden, I would have seized on that and asked him to show me and share his vision.
‘The cut-flower garden, for example,’ he said, staring into space, while he neatly followed my thoughts. His expression told me that he wasn’t now trying to manipulate me into visiting, he was simply letting his mind freely flow, ‘is full of blooms. Fragrant sweet peas and Sweet Williams, cosmos, stocks, cornflowers and Alchemilla mollis, to name just a few…’
I unconsciously inhaled the biggest breath, easily imagining both the heady scents and the simple but stunning raffia hand-tied bunches such beautiful flowers could create.
‘But there’s no one to oversee it and now it’s getting choked with weeds, too,’ Algy continued in a different tone, and the picture in my mind turned into something far less attractive. ‘And everything will soon run to—’
‘Seed,’ I interrupted. ‘I know how often those flowers need cutting to keep more coming throughout the season.’
They needed daily, sometimes twice-daily, cutting and had the garden been opened to the public as Algy had originally planned, they would have had it.
‘Exactly,’ he said sadly, then carried on in a louder voice, ‘but I didn’t get you here to bang on about that, Daisy. I do know, and I do understand how you really feel about the garden. It wasn’t my intention to bring it up again.’
‘I know that,’ I said gently, knowing that he was telling the truth. ‘I can sense that, but I’m sorry that you’re feeling so sad about it all.’
‘Inevitable, I suppose,’ he shrugged, ‘when you’re shuffling towards the end of the twig and there’s no one to come along and keep feathering the nest you’ve left behind.’
‘Trust you to express it like that,’ I said, with a small smile.
I leant over and kissed his soft cheek, feeling choked.
‘Come on then,’ he rallied, ‘let’s get this camera back up. I daresay you’ve got a million things to do today, haven’t you?’
‘Just one,’ I told him, ‘but it’s really important, otherwise I would have stayed.’
Thankfully, Algy was sounding a little brighter by the time I left him. Whether that was genuine or put on for my benefit, I couldn’t be sure. Obviously, I hoped it was the former and that our time together was doing him some good, rather than making him hanker for what he’d once had family-wise and then been denied. Had I not had other fish to fry, I genuinely would have stayed with him longer, but I was desperate to check in on Penny and then see Josh ahead of my next shift in the pub.
‘All quiet on the western front?’ I smiled, when I arrived at the café and found everything under control and a couple of empty tables.
‘I told you I could manage,’ said Penny, who was wiping down the countertop.
‘And that’s nothing to do with the weather today, is it?’
The sky had turned grey and there was a rather mean wind whipping in from the sea, so the beach was all but deserted. I was grateful for the cardigan I’d grabbed ahead of leaving Wynbrook, but my bare legs were goose-pimpled all over.
‘It might have some bearing.’ She frowned, looking out at the cloud-covered view. ‘But like I said yesterday, it’s a learning curve and I’m still finding my feet.’
‘Have you tweaked the menu now?’
‘Yes,’ she said, letting out a breath. She was clearly disappointed about that, but I hoped that if my plan worked, she’d soon be able to put more of her own dishes back on the chalkboard again. ‘So,’ she smiled stoically, ‘what can I get you? Or are you just passing through?’
‘Passing through to where?’ I asked, making a show of looking around. ‘My options are somewhat limited in Wynmouth.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re missing city life,’ Penny said laughingly, ‘because I won’t believe that for a second.’
I gave her suggestion a moment’s thought.
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘You’re right, I’m not, and especially not at this time of year.’
I had often dreamt of escaping to the Wynmouth seaside and swimming in the open sea when I was stuck in the stuffy apartment in the summer, trawling through the employment agency websites looking for yet another job. Penny knew I was a country girl at heart and it was that that she had alluded to.
‘And of course, I meant passing through as in on your way to see Josh,’ Penny then said as she set about making me a latte, knowing that’s what I would be most in the mood for. ‘Or have you just come from Crow’s Nest?’
‘If you’d made it to the pub quiz,’ I said, fishing a little, ‘you’d know that I went back to Wynbrook last night.’
‘I had planned to,’ she said, turning back to me, ‘but I had the day’s receipts to sort through and a couple of orders to make and the time just ran away from me once I’d got home.’
Clearly she wasn’t going to mention that she’d been so tired after the influx of customers that she’d crashed out in her armchair as soon as she’d sat down, and I wasn’t going to bring it up. I could tell she was still trying to put a brave face on things and Nick might not have told her that he’d seen her through her cottage window, flaked out and dead to the world.
‘Well,’ I said instead, ‘we could have done with you. Sam let me join Josh and Nick, but we were all useless. We barely got anything right.’
‘The pub questions aren’t that hard,’ she teased and I almost regretted letting her off. ‘So, why did you head home? Trouble in paradise?’
‘Far from it.’ I grinned. ‘I needed a night off.’
‘Daisy,’ she said and blushed.
‘What?’ I laughed. ‘It’s true. That and I didn’t want another lecture from Mum and Dad.’
‘Trouble at Wynbrook?’ she grimaced.
‘You could say that,’ I sighed. ‘I’m grateful I’ve got a roof over my head, but I’m not enjoying staying in the cottage. It might not have been so bad if I’d never been away, but I’m used to my independence and space now. I feel like my every move is being watched, especially now Mum and Dad know I’m seeing someone.’
‘I can see how that would make things tricky,’ Penny said sympathetically. ‘And in case you were wondering, my sofa is still at your disposal.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, taking a sip of the latte, which was perfect for the chilly day. ‘I’ll definitely keep it in mind.’
Having watched Penny negotiate a surprising rush of customers, given the weather, and having refused my offer to help with any of them because she was worried I’d be worn out ahead of my shift in the pub, I felt further convinced that my plan was a good one. However, before I started to put it into place, I called in to see Josh.
‘Hey Daisy,’ he said, smiling, when he answered the door. ‘I wasn’t sure I was going to see you today.’
He quickly crossed the room to where he’d left his laptop open on the sofa and closed it with a snap, before plumping the cushions to make room for me.
‘How’s your day been so far?’ I asked him, feeling grateful to be out of the Wynmouth wind as I sat on the sofa.
‘Lonely.’ He grinned. ‘I missed you last night. How about you?’
‘If you’re asking if I missed you,’ I smiled up at him, ‘then the answer is yes.’
‘Good.’ He grinned, flopping down next to me, which caused me to tilt towards him. ‘And today?’ he asked, wrapping an arm around me as I snuggled closer.
I didn’t want to tell him about the plan I had now properly decided upon, which was all about helping Penny, in case he didn’t think it would work and tried to talk me out of it.
‘I’ve been helping Algy with his search for this little feral cat he’s taken a liking to,’ I said instead.
‘And did you find it?’ Josh asked, kissing the top of my head.
‘Sadly not,’ I told him, ‘but the camera picked it up for a few seconds, so we at least know it’s still alive and in the area…’
I had thought that would really cheer Algy up, but thinking back over our conversation, I realised it had only briefly boosted his spirits, and he was still feeling sad.
‘And was Mr Alford pleased about that?’ Josh asked.
‘Mr Alford.’ I smiled. ‘It feels funny to hear Algy called that.’
‘Well,’ said Josh, tickling my ribs and making me wriggle, ‘I can hardly call him, Algy, can I?’
I didn’t remember ever mentioning Algy’s surname, but then I wasn’t the only person in Wynmouth Josh talked to, was I?
‘If you had taken me up on the offer I’d made for you to come and meet him,’ I wheedled, ‘then you’d know that’s exactly what you could call him. Everyone does. And in answer to your question, it did please him to know the cat was still around, but not as much as I had hoped…’
‘Oh, and why was that, do you think?’
I took a moment to consider how to answer. It wasn’t my place to talk about the melancholy that seemed to be holding Algy in its grip or his estranged family. That was what I was beginning to suspect might be the root cause of his low mood, now that he was thinking about his legacy and the future of Wynbrook.
‘There are a few things,’ I said evasively. ‘He got rather upset when I mentioned that I would be leaving at the end of the summer.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Josh, twisting around so he could look down at me. ‘I’m pretty upset about that myself.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t be,’ I pointed out. ‘Because given that I still haven’t got a clue about where I’m going, there’s every chance that you could be gone long before I am.’
‘I suppose,’ he said, looking troubled.
‘Do you know where you’re going after you’ve tired of here?’
‘I don’t think I could ever tire of here,’ he sighed, ‘but no. I’m still undecided.’
‘You must be bored witless,’ I teased. ‘You’ve not left the village since you arrived and there’s only so many hours you can spend on the beach and in the pub.’
‘Well, thankfully,’ he said, inching even closer to me, ‘I’ve found myself the most amazing distraction to stop me getting bored.’
‘Oh, have you now?’ I giggled.
‘Yes,’ he said, quickly standing up and pulling me to my feet in one swift movement. ‘Come on, distraction. Let’s see how you can amuse me today.’
‘How is it possible that you’re late for your shift, Daisy,’ Sam said with exasperation when I breathlessly rushed into the pub, ‘when I know for a fact that you were only next door in my cottage?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I grimaced. ‘How did you know that’s where I was?’
‘George was in this afternoon and said he saw you going in,’ Sam told me, as I smoothed down my hair and stashed my bag under the bar.
‘That’s village life for you,’ said Tess, who was out of the kitchen for once.
‘And village gossip,’ I added, feeling frustrated that wherever I was, my every move seemed to be noticed and commented on.
‘George was under the impression that telling me how close to the pub you were would put my mind at rest about you turning up on time,’ Sam added, defending his friend.
‘Did you think I might be late then?’ I asked.
‘Let’s just say,’ Sam said sardonically, ‘it did cross my mind and as Marguerite isn’t coming in this evening, I really need you on top form.’
It wasn’t my intention to mess up, but for some reason that evening, I couldn’t seem to get anything right. I muddled orders, spilt soup and even smashed a glass ahead of upsetting an entire bowl of ice.
‘Like I said earlier,’ Sam huffed, as I started scooping up the ice and mopping the floor so it wasn’t such a lethal trip hazard, ‘top form.’
My ineptitude did, however, make the conversation that I needed to have with my boss somewhat easier.
‘Have you got a minute?’ I asked, as the last customer left and Sam bolted the door.
‘I was going to ask you the same thing,’ he said, looking thoroughly fed up.
‘In that case, would it be all right if I spoke first? It would be nice to say my bit before you fire me.’
Sam didn’t appear surprised by what I had said and I guessed that either a sacking or an official warning had been heading my way. If he agreed to what I had in mind, it was going to be a novelty for me to leave a position under my own terms. Even if that was only by the skin of my teeth.
‘Go on then,’ he said, offering me a seat at the table closest to the bar, ‘let’s hear it.’
I got the distinct impression that he thought I was about to plead for my position on his team and his surprised reaction when I didn’t, confirmed that.
‘If it’s all right with you,’ I began, ‘and judging by my performance this evening, I have a feeling it will be, I’d like to stop working here, with immediate effect.’
‘Oh,’ he said, his eyes widening, ‘right.’
‘Marguerite mentioned that she’s keen to stay around here for quite a while and I think she’d love it if you offered her my hours behind the bar. With her taking my place, you wouldn’t be left in the lurch over the summer season because let’s face it, she’s the consummate pub professional and, more often than not, I’m a hindrance rather than a help.’
Sam smiled at that.
‘You can dispute that if you like.’ I smiled back.
‘I don’t think I can,’ he laughed.
‘So, you’re happy to let me go?’
He actually looked thrilled, not just happy.
‘Yes,’ he said, sounding relieved, ‘I’m happy to let you go.’
‘I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out. I didn’t think it would take me so long to get the hang of it and I hadn’t realised the place would always be so busy.’
‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘you gave it a shot and you were getting there, most of the time. Your time-keeping needs some work though.’
‘I blame Josh,’ I said, passing the buck and then taking it back again. ‘No, I don’t. I do need to be more diligent about turning up on time.’
‘So,’ Sam asked, ‘what’s next? Is there somewhere new on the horizon or are you taking a break?’
‘There’s somewhere new,’ I told him. ‘It’s only going to be part-time again, but it would have been hard trying to juggle working here and there.’
‘And where is there?’
‘As soon as I’ve told my new boss,’ I said laughingly, ‘I’ll come in and tell you.’