Chapter 22
22
We arrived at the Copper Pot half an hour early, Lily retrieving the key from an ornamental kettle hanging by the door. By the time the others started to arrive, we’d pushed a load of the wooden tables together to form a craft station, and I was arranging cakes onto platters while Lily set out various drinks.
Celine was the first through the door, carrying a sewing machine as well as a full carrier bag dangling from each forearm.
‘Hey, Lily!’ She beamed, before hesitating when she saw me. ‘Oh, Emmie. No one told me you’d been roped in as waitress. That’s so kind of you to help out. Means us island gals can have a real proper catch-up.’
‘Emmie’s here as a guest,’ Lily said, in a no-nonsense, mum voice.
‘Oh?’ Celine said, sounding distracted as she started setting up her sewing machine next to Lily’s. ‘I thought we agreed that, with it being so last minute, we’d stick to family and close friends only.’
‘Family, close friends and the woman who saved the day by giving up her holiday to cater the whole damn thing with four days’ notice,’ Violet said, who’d appeared in the doorway as Celine was speaking.
‘Yes, of course. Sorry, Emmie, no offence.’ She scanned the room for a plug socket. ‘I mean, I’d have expected you to be spending the evening with Pip, rather than a bunch of strangers.’
‘We aren’t strangers!’ Lily snapped. ‘Celine, are we going to have to ban you from talking to Emmie like we did with Poppy after Pip took her to the school Christmas disco? We all know you want to marry my brother, despite him ending things two years ago, the main reason being that every other half-decent farmer who’s remotely in your age bracket is already taken. But Pip will make up his own mind about who he wants to be with, and you making passive-aggressive digs at his friend won’t do you any favours.’
Whew. I buried my head in the bottom of the fridge. These island women didn’t beat around the bush.
They reminded me of my mother.
‘Besides,’ Jasmine, Hugh’s mum, added, having arrived right behind Violet, ‘we might be old-fashioned around here but this isn’t some sort of medieval tournament where he’s forced to pick one of you. From what I heard, all that poor man wants is to focus on his farm. Take the hint, Celine, have some self-respect.’
Ouch.
‘Okay, so firstly, even if I am still interested in Pip, it’s nothing to do with how old he is. Little Lander and Craig Kelly are much closer to my age.’
‘That’s why I said half-decent,’ Lily muttered.
‘And secondly, me and Emmie are friends. I wasn’t making a dig because I know her and Pip will never be a thing. She’s only here a few days and knows nothing about farming. Hardly credible competition given my and Pip’s history.’ Celine glanced at Jasmine. ‘Not that this is a competition, of course. I only said what I did because we’re the worst at being cliquey when we get together. Anyone who hasn’t grown up knowing the old stories and silly in-jokes is bound to feel like a bridal-shower gooseberry at times. I mean, Emmie, can you even sew?’
‘Um, yes. I can manage bunting.’
‘Oh.’ Celine looked taken aback. ‘Did you bring fabric?’
‘Flora, Jack and Beanie donated an old item of clothing each,’ Lily said. ‘They didn’t want to be left out, so Emmie will sew their flags.’
‘Well, that’s perfect, then, isn’t it?’ Celine trilled, with nothing in her expression to suggest she’d been called out for being mean, or that the comments about her and Pip were embarrassing or unwelcome. I couldn’t help thinking about the milk jug, though. I could believe that Celine trashed my rented bike and bought me a lobster roll, without batting an eyelid. Breaking into my bedroom at Sunflower Barn, however, still seemed excessive.
As the evening wore on, I tried not to feel like a bridal-shower gooseberry – or like someone who was being secretly targeted by an unknown enemy.
It helped that, in the modest-sized café, at least one Hawkins sister was always close by, and more often than not, they remembered to explain the in-jokes and whisper essential backstory to the increasingly outlandish tales of life on a tiny island, including what sounded like an alarmingly unsupervised stint at boarding school. However, while Iris’s friends were perfectly nice, after brief exclamations about how they couldn’t wait to try my infamous pasties, it was only right that the attention was all on the bride-to-be and celebrating twenty-five years of female friendships. It was tempting to wish I’d had the option of spending the evening with Pip, rather than ‘a bunch of strangers’, but the truth was, as the women laughed, teased, sewed and played a rowdy game identifying who said different quotes about either Iris, Hugh or both of them, what I really wished was that I hadn’t reached twenty-six having never experienced anything like it.
It was reminiscent of the moment I’d walked out of Siskin airport into the salty air and clear skies of the island and felt as I’d been birthed from an aeroplane womb into a whole new reality.
While so frighteningly new and alive , this was something I ached to understand, to be a part of, to belong to.
It was when Celine turned up the volume to Madonna, the girls’ night staple that spanned the Irish Sea, and Violet grabbed my hand, dragging me onto the tiny space they’d designated a dance floor, that I finally acknowledged quite how empty my life had been, and that whatever happened when I returned to the mainland, I would never – I refused to ever – be the same.
We were on the floor, rowing back and forth to ‘Rock the Boat’, when the café door opened and a man burst through wearing a checked suit and a yellow cap.
‘What the hell?’ Iris’s friend, Fern, yelled into the sudden silence as Celine flicked off the music.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Violet said, expression grim as she squeezed out of the line on the floor and clambered to her feet, brushing the dust off her velvet flares and scanning around for her platform trainers.
‘Barnie, this is a bridal shower,’ Lily said, not unkindly. ‘Invitation only.’
‘I know.’ Barnie lifted up the cap to wipe his clammy brow. ‘But I was with the lads, and Hugh, in the Island Arms, and they all got to talkin’ about love, and marriage, and how the right woman can tame the wildest heart, and, Violet, I couldn’t bear it any longer.’
Violet folded her arms, glancing up at the ceiling as though summoning the strength to hear out a drunk, desperate man’s declaration. ‘What couldn’t you bear, Barnie?’
‘You not knowing that you’ve tamed my wild heart.’
Eight women tutted as one.
‘Are you going to tell him, or shall I?’ Iris asked her sister.
‘It’s your bridal shower, of course I’ll do it.’ Violet sighed. ‘It’s probably my fault for not spelling it out earlier.’
‘Tell me what?’ Barnie asked, face swivelling between the sisters.
‘Are all men this clueless?’ another woman, Holly, asked me. ‘Or is it just islanders?’
‘Tell me what?’ Barnie was rigid.
A day ago, I would have been surprised that Violet didn’t take him outside, or in the back kitchen, or at the very least into a corner before answering him, but I was rapidly cottoning on to the fact that privacy and discretion weren’t how islanders did things.
‘Barnie, I have not tamed your wild heart.’
‘You have! Honestly, Violet, I knew it as soon as?—’
‘Are you going to listen or what?’
Barnie nodded mutely.
‘Your heart is as wild as a milky mug of cocoa. It’s literally island-shaped. And even if it wasn’t, you know I have zero interest in taming it. You can’t allow yourself to get carried away by Connell’s cider-fuelled ramblings.’
‘How do you know it was him?’
‘Please. He’s given that speech so many times, his own wife is sick of hearing it.’ Jasmine groaned.
‘Then you turn up here, disrupting Iris’s special night, and expect me to suddenly change my mind. I know you, Barnie Cork. I fell for your oversized, mushy island heart after you lent me your best pencil on our first day of school. But my heart is wild, as you know all too well. And, unlike Connell, I will not tame it for anyone. I will not submit my dreams to a man’s, put them to one side for a distant day I hope might eventually come, once all his plans have been fulfilled and our babies grown, by which time, my elderly parents will expect me to be taking on the farm. I will not settle nor shrink myself to fit in someone else’s safe world. Not even yours, Barnie. You are the best person I know. You make me laugh like no one else, and you know exactly how to dry my tears. If anyone could make me stay, it would be you. But you also allowed me to see who I really am. To dare to live free. I will miss you more than I can bear to think about.’ Violet paused to wipe the tears pouring down her face. ‘But I’m not destined to be the wife of a man who lives for his doughnut stand.’
‘I live for you,’ Barnie croaked, his own eyes spilling over.
Violet paused for the briefest of moments.
‘Goodbye, Barnie.’
‘You’re really going?’
‘Once my new niece or nephew is safely here, I’m leaving.’
‘Well, I guess that’s that, then. Arnie’s waiting outside.’ Barnie pulled off his cap, used it to blot his face then turned to go.
‘Will you dance with me at the wedding?’ Violet blurted.
Barnie paused, one hand on the door. ‘Since when have I danced with anyone else?’
We all sat there, in our line on the floor, until the door closed and the sound of a car pulling off faded into the distance. Violet stood to one side of us, face crumpled.
‘Does that mean Barnie’s fair game now?’ Fern asked. ‘I wouldn’t mind working on his doughnut stand.’
‘Can somebody please pour my sister a drink?’ Lily asked through gritted teeth. ‘And help me up. And tell Fern that she’d better wait until Violet is a good few thousand feet in the air before making another comment like that unless she wants to be pushed off Lithin cliff.’
‘Celine?’ Iris said, with a note of steel in her voice.
Celine flicked to an ABBA song, we turned down the lights, turned up the volume and danced our wild hearts out.