Chapter 6
SIX
Zack is submitted to some pretty intense local scrutiny as we sit in our corner seat in the Starshine Inn. Ella and Jake live here in an apartment at the back, at least for the time being, so she pops out to say hello. Jake himself is serving, and greets him with a drink on-the-house before he checks him in. Archie arrives, with Cally and the little girls in tow, and brings them all over to introduce them.
Cally, it turns out, is a huge reality TV show fan, and she’s a little bit star struck meeting the man who was behind several of her favourites.
Zack handles it all with a calm and friendly manner, but looks a little tired by the time he’s also been introduced to Rose, Archie’s apprentice, and her mum, Lucy.
“Is that it?” he says quietly, as he sinks back into the red-velvet booth. He’s only on cranberry juice, which is a waste of a free drink in my opinion.
“Nope. Plenty left – and one of them is George, my father-in-law. He’s awesome. Don’t worry, nobody actually expects you to remember names – and you’ve already dealt with the nosiest one of the lot.”
“Who’s that?”
“Me. The Inquisitor General of Starshine Cove.”
“Self-appointed?”
“No, we had a ceremony in the woods at midnight. I have a pointy hat and a cloak back at home… the girls have apparently gone to Dorchester for the night, by the way, according to the message that has only just landed, and will be back later.”
“Oh,” he says, looking a bit deflated. I’m guessing he was desperate to see Marcy, who has with typical teenage daughter flair decided to dump him for the night. “Will they be late, do you think?”
“Oh yes. Possibly as late as midnight.”
“Ha! That’s probably when they normally go out in London. How is Marcy adapting?”
“Really well actually. She’s great.”
He looks suitably pleased by this, as we all are when someone compliments our offspring. I mean, we had something to do with it, didn’t we?
He sips his juice, and says: “Do you worry about them? Your kids?”
“Of course I do. And they give me plenty of reason. James, my oldest, still doesn’t seem settled. He works in IT and moved to Jersey for a job, but I’m not sure it’ll stick. Dan… well, he’s fine now, but he had meningitis the summer before last and it was touch and go for a while. Sophie, so far, hasn’t presented me with any huge concerns – which is a concern in itself, because it will definitely happen at some point or another!”
“I’m sorry about Dan,” he says. “That must have been hard, on your own.”
“Well, I don’t think I’m on my own in the same way most people are. Yes, I miss Simon – obviously and desperately – but this place, as you might have gathered already, is pretty much like a family anyway. A big, messy one with a rude sense of humour. Ella was by my side, and George, and everyone else rallied around to keep the café going and make sure the sky didn’t fall in.”
“So you don’t feel lonely? You don’t feel, I don’t know, isolated?”
He’s looking at me with quiet intensity, and I know it would be easier to lie. To simply smile and say it’s impossible to feel lonely when I’m surrounded by such a cosy community – when the truth is that you can feel lonely anywhere, can’t you? In a crowded room, at a party full of friends, in a busy café. Loneliness isn’t just external, it’s internal as well.
“Yes, sometimes,” I reply, feeling slightly guilty for admitting it. I have so many blessings, and admitting to someone that I’m not perfectly happy feels like I’m disrespecting that. “It’s not my default setting, but yes – every now and then, I feel like I’m the only woman on the planet.”
“Detached from everyone else – like you’re just pretending to be part of that world, when inside you feel very different?”
I nod. “I suppose that’s exactly it. It’s been more noticeable since the kids left – or maybe I’ve just had more time to pay attention to the way I feel, you know? Which I’m not sure is actually a good thing!”
“I know what you mean. And I’m sorry to pry. I just… thankfully, I suppose, I don’t know many people in our position, and it’s good to talk to someone about it.”
“I get that. I have people to talk to here – sad story, I’ll tell it to you one day – but it’s not always easy. I’m worried about upsetting them – imposing my pain when they could do without it. And anyway, like I said, it’s not all the time – mostly I’m okay. I have a great life here, great friends, family, everything I could ever wish for.”
“Everything?” he says, raising one eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a grin. I can’t look away from his eyes, and I actually feel my heart rate speed up, a small boom echoing around inside my chest. Maybe I’m about to have some kind of cardiac event. This man is dangerous to my health.
“Everything,” I reply firmly, sounding a lot more sure than I feel. “Except for another G&T. My glass seems to be empty.”
I rattle the remaining ice in front of him and pull a sad face. He shakes his head in amusement and heads off to the bar.
I lean back against the wall, and use a beer mat to fan my face. Am I having palpitations? Yes, a little bit. I take some deep breaths, close my eyes, and let the moment pass. Okay, so Archie was definitely right. I do fancy Zack. I suppose I always did – but back when I first met him, that wasn’t unusual. I fancied loads of people. Now, though, not so much – in fact not at all. I tell myself it’s fine, it’s normal, it’s human – and it’s certainly nothing to panic about. Fancying him doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it, and besides, it’s probably not mutual.
He returns with more drinks, and I suddenly find myself noticing every little detail about him. I notice the golden hairs on his tanned arms, and the length of his fingers. I notice the way the sunlight sparkles on the silver in his hair, and the fact that he has unfairly thick eyelashes for a man. I notice the scent of that cologne again, and the way his T-shirt moulds to a body that looks to be in superb shape. I notice it all – it’s as though now I’ve admitted this evil fancying thing to myself, a tsunami of the stuff is crashing over me.
He tears open two bags of crisps and spreads them out on the foil like a makeshift plate. Bear immediately goes on high alert.
“I like what you’ve done there,” I say, helping myself to one.
“Well, it’s all in the presentation, isn’t it? And I know I said I wouldn’t think like this, but Jake, who owns the inn? He’s… well, he’s…”
“Really hot?”
“Yes! He’s exceptionally good-looking. He’d make the perfect Fred Sirieix for that rural dating show…”
“Ha! Good luck with that. Jake doesn’t even like having his photo taken, never mind being on telly.”
We concentrate on the crisps for a few moments, then he says, out of the blue: “What about real family? I mean, blood family – not real, because I totally get what you’re saying. You don’t have to be related to someone for them to be your family. But even back when I first knew you, I never really found out anything about your past.”
“That’s because my present was so big it blotted out the sun.”
“Yes, exactly – you were a force of nature. These days, I’m less na?ve – we research everyone before we use them in a show.”
“In case someone turns up a tweet of them having a racist rant later, or finds out they used to run an illegal cock-fighting ring?”
“Sadly more common than you’d think – at least the first one. But we never really did that with you, did we?”
“Well, I never ran an illegal cock-fighting ring, and I certainly never had a racist rant. As to your original question – about family – I don’t have any. My parents died when I was eleven, and I was raised by my grandmother. She was pretty old school working-class London, lived through the Blitz and took no shit from anyone – she’d had a tough life and it made her a tough woman. She passed away when I was seventeen.”
He takes this all in and nods. I rarely talk about that part of my life – yet another chunk of the past I don’t enjoy thinking about – and I’m starting to realise Archie was right about yet another thing. I have a tendency to chop my life up into sections, rather than seeing it all as part of a whole.
“And you were out on your own then? At seventeen?”
“Yes. I had a home – the little terrace she’d lived in her whole life – so I wasn’t under the arches in a cardboard box or anything. I’d been working in pubs and cafés for a while, and then I managed to blag my way into the kitchen at one of the bigger restaurants, pretty much without any qualifications apart from an A in home economics and a winning smile.”
“Ah, the eighties – things were different then!”
“Yep. Rah-rah skirts were cool, and Spangles were still on sale in the corner shop. All was well with the world. How about you – do you still have family?”
“Not really. My parents aren’t around anymore, and my brother lives in New Zealand. Rowena’s family is pretty big, but they’re in Ireland. I suppose it’s always played on my mind, since I lost her – worrying that if anything happened to me, the girls wouldn’t have any parents. Every year they get older, I feel a bit more relieved.”
“I understand that. I always knew that mine would always have people here, which is comforting, but yes, there is that underlying worry isn’t there? Even now, when they’re technically adults – I know I was independent at their age, but I still worry. But look – we’re both fit and well, Zack, living on our extremely healthy diet of booze and crisps. I don’t think either of us is going to be shuffling off any time soon.”
He glances away for a moment, seeming to think that through, then nods firmly. “You’re absolutely right. Now, tell me all about your Spring Feast.”
“I can go one better than telling you. The actual event is the day after tomorrow – but tomorrow night, as is Starshine custom, I’ll be having a trial run in the café. I hope you weren’t lying about your waiting experience.”