Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
NINA
Dot tells me about Cara before I’ve finished my first coffee.
‘Tom’s got a visitor,’ she announces, appearing at the café counter at quarter past eight with a bag of change for the till and the expression of a woman who has been waiting all night to deliver this news.
‘A woman. Blonde hair. Very pretty. Arrived yesterday. They were at The Ship together looking very cosy.’
‘I know. He texted me.’
‘Did he.’ Dot’s eyes narrow. ‘What did he say?’
‘That his friend from vet school had arrived and she wanted to meet me.’
‘Friend.’ Dot repeats the word the way Mum repeated it at the fete. The way everyone seems to repeat it lately, like they’re holding it up to the light and finding it insufficient. ‘Is that what we’re calling it?’
‘That’s what Tom’s calling it.’
‘Hmm.’ Dot sets the bag of change on the counter with more force than necessary. ‘Well. She’s staying at his flat. In the spare room, apparently, though according to Tilly—’
‘Dot.’
‘I’m just relaying information. It’s a public service.’ She straightens. ‘Her name’s Cara. She’s a vet too. They were at university together. Tilly says they dated.’
My hand pauses on the coffee cup. A small pause. Brief enough that Dot might not have noticed, except Dot notices everything.
‘Then they’re friends,’ I say. ‘Like Tom said.’
‘Friends don’t look at each other the way she was looking at him.’
‘How was she looking at him?’
‘Like she was thinking about it.’ Dot’s expression is triumphant. ‘Make of that what you will.’
She leaves before I can respond, off to distribute intelligence. Chips watches her go, then circles back to me, sitting on my feet.
‘Don’t listen to her,’ I tell him. ‘She’s a gossip.’
Chips tilts his head.
‘Tom has friends. Of course he has friends. This is completely normal.’
Chips keeps looking at me with those patient brown eyes, and I don’t know why I’m explaining myself to a dog, except that my chest feels tight in a way I can’t account for and the dog is the only one in the room who won’t form an opinion about it.
‘Fine. Don’t believe me.’
He thumps his tail once, like he’s humouring me, and follows me back to the kitchen.
She arrives at half eleven.
The café is quiet – the mid-morning lull, just a couple of tourists by the window and Frankie nursing his usual tea.
Chips is dozing in his sun patch. I’m restocking the pastry case, flour on my apron, hair escaping, when the door opens and the heat rushes in along with a woman I’ve never seen before.
She’s tall. That’s the first thing. Tall and slim and wearing a white bikini top under a loose cotton sundress that falls exactly right – the kind of effortless summer look that I know from experience requires approximately forty-five minutes and three outfit changes to achieve.
Her hair is blonde and cut well and her legs are long and tanned and she moves with the easy confidence of someone who has never once apologised for walking into a room.
I’m suddenly, acutely aware of my apron. The flour across the front. The fact that I’ve been up since five and almost certainly look it.
Chips lifts his head, assessing. Then his tail starts wagging and he trots over to investigate.
‘Oh, hello.’ She crouches to greet him, letting him sniff her hand before scratching under his chin. Her nails are painted – a dark red, precise, the kind of detail I notice because my own nails haven’t seen polish since approximately 2019. ‘Aren’t you gorgeous? You must be the famous rescue dog.’
‘That’s Chips. He’s—’ I stop. ‘Famous?’
‘Tom talks about him. The dog with no manners and excellent taste in people.’ She looks up at me, still petting Chips, and her smile is warm and open and I can’t find anything wrong with it, which is annoying. ‘He said he sits on your feet.’
‘He does. Constantly. I’ve given up fighting it.’
‘Smart dog.’ She straightens, and Chips follows her to the counter with his tail wagging. ‘Nina? I’m Cara. Tom’s friend.’
She says Tom’s with a particular ease – not possessive exactly, but familiar, comfortable, the sound of a woman who has known him long enough to own a version of his name.
My version is Tom – flat, warm, the way I’ve been saying it since I was sixteen.
Hers is different. Hers has history I wasn’t part of.
‘He’s told me so much about you,’ she says, shaking my hand. Firm grip. Warm.
‘All good, I hope.’
‘All glowing.’ She slides onto a stool at the counter with an ease that suggests she’s comfortable everywhere. Up close she’s striking – dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, the kind of face that knows its own angles. ‘The café’s even prettier than he described.’
‘I haven’t done anything with the space. It’s been like this for thirty years.’
‘Then it’s timeless.’ Her eyes travel the room – the fairy lights, the chalk menu, the pastry case – and land on the pink bear in the corner. ‘And what on earth is that?’
‘That,’ I say, ‘is a very long story involving a coconut shy and Jude’s wounded pride.’
‘Where did it come from?’
‘Tom won it. At the village fete.’ I say it casually. It is casual. It’s a bear from a coconut shy. ‘Brynn didn’t want it, so he gave it to me. It’s become the café mascot. The tourists love it.’
‘Tom won you a bear.’ Cara says this slowly, looking at the bear, then at me, then back at the bear. Her expression doesn’t change but her eyes do – a flicker, a small recalculation, the kind of adjustment you make when a piece of information slots into a picture you’ve been assembling.
‘He won a bear,’ I correct. ‘And gave it to me. There’s a difference.’
‘Of course.’ She smiles. ‘It’s very sweet.’
I turn to the machine, grateful for the excuse. ‘Coffee?’
‘Please. Whatever you recommend.’
‘Tom said you’re a vet too? From university?’
‘Same year. We suffered through anatomy together. Bonded over shared trauma.’ She watches me work, chin propped on her hand – the same gesture I make, I realise, when I’m watching someone and thinking.
‘He’s very good, you know. Tom. One of the best in our year.
Half our professors thought he’d go into research, but he always said he was going home. ’
‘He loves Sea Salt Bay.’
‘He loves it here,’ Cara agrees, and the pause after here is so slight I might have imagined it. ‘It’s obvious, the way he talks about the village. The lifeboat. The practice. You.’
‘Me?’
‘You feature heavily.’ She says it lightly. Pleasantly. Like a weather report. ‘The café, the shortbread, the espresso machine he’s apparently always fixing. He once spent twenty minutes telling me about lavender simple syrup and I’m not sure he realised he was doing it.’
‘That’s very Tom. He gets fixated on details.’
‘He does. Very specific details. Very specific to this café.’ She picks up her coffee and takes a sip. ‘This is incredible, by the way.’
‘Thank you.’
‘He wasn’t wrong about the coffee.’ She sets the cup down. ‘He’s not wrong about much, is he?’
I don’t know what to do with this conversation.
Every sentence Cara says is perfectly friendly and perfectly pleasant and sits on top of a second sentence I can almost hear but can’t quite catch.
She’s not being unkind. She’s not even being competitive.
She’s just – looking. At the café, at the bear, at me, at the place Tom talks about when he talks about home.
She’s reading the room, and I have the unsettling feeling that she’s reading it more clearly than I am.
The door opens, saving me. Isla comes in with Maisie trailing behind, nose in a book, and Isla’s hand resting on the swell of her belly – properly showing now. She has that unmistakable pregnant glow mixed with the exhaustion of growing a human in a heatwave.
‘Nina, I need something cold,’ Isla says. ‘Iced. Frozen. Anything. This baby is cooking me from the inside.’
‘Iced latte coming up.’
Isla collapses onto the stool next to Cara. ‘Sorry, am I interrupting?’
‘Not at all. Isla, this is Cara – she’s visiting Tom. Cara, Isla. And Maisie, behind the book.’
‘Still here,’ Maisie says without looking up. ‘Still listening. Still judging.’
Cara’s expression shifts, gaze widening with recognition. ‘Isla Quinn?’
‘That’s me.’
‘I’ve seen all your films. The Sound of Water made me cry for three days. You are so talented.’ Cara has the decency to flush as she gushes.
‘Please continue,’ Isla says, flashing her Hollywood smile. ‘I’m enormous and sweating and I need the ego boost.’
‘You’re glowing.’
‘I’m melting. But thank you.’ Isla accepts her iced latte. ‘When’s the last time someone melted glamorously? Never. That’s when.’
Maisie turns a page. ‘Very Hollywood.’
‘Thank you, darling.’
Cara looks between us with genuine delight. ‘Tom really undersold this village. Film stars. Dramatic rescues. Adorable dogs. What else is he hiding?’
‘The ghost in the pub cellar,’ Maisie says. ‘But nobody believes me.’
‘There’s no ghost,’ Isla says.
‘There’s absolutely a ghost. I’ve heard it. It sighs.’
‘That’s the pipes.’
‘Pipes don’t sigh, Isla. Pipes clank. This is spectral.’
Cara laughs – real, delighted – and I watch her watching my life.
The chaos and warmth of it. Chips has wandered back to me, sitting on my feet, and I curl my toes against his warm side and feel the tightness in my chest loosen slightly, the way it always does when Chips is there.
This small, unexpected world I’ve built. The dog. The friends. The café.
All the things I didn’t know I needed until they arrived.
Isla and Maisie leave after twenty minutes. Cara watches them go.
‘That was Isla Quinn,’ she says. ‘In your café. Drinking an iced latte.’
‘She lives here. Her partner Kit’s on the lifeboat crew with Tom.’
‘Tom definitely didn’t mention that.’ She shakes her head, still smiling, then reaches for her bag. ‘This was lovely. Thank you for the coffee.’
‘Anytime.’
‘I mean it.’ She stands, slinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘Tom said you’d make me feel welcome and you have. He knows you very well.’
‘We’ve been friends a long time.’