Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
T hree months ago, my life imploded. The day before my wedding, I caught my fiancé, Scott, in our bed with a woman he’d met on his stag do in Majorca.
‘Can we at least talk, Alice?’ Those were the first words out of his mouth as he stood in the doorway to our bedroom, with a sheet wrapped around himself, a strange woman huddled in our duvet on our bed and an array of discarded clothes over the carpet.
He reached out to touch my arm, making me flinch. His delusional words will forever echo inside my head. ‘We’ve paid for a wedding, and I still love you. She doesn’t mean anything to me.’
The woman baulked at what he said. ‘That’s not what you told me on your stag do when we were on the beach.’ He turned to glare at her.
Blinking back tears, I’d turned on my heel and raced into our toilet to be sick.
Betty brings me back into the present with a tap on the arm. ‘It will get easier, I promise. Bet your father is chuffed to have you and Lucas living with him.’
‘Dad’s treating me like I’m an invalid.’
To my surprise, Betty shoves the entire custard tart in her mouth and leans closer. Flicking my eyes to the table I decide to just talk and silently pray that Betty’s dentures can handle Ronald’s rubbery custard tart. ‘This is a bit embarrassing, but Dad’s standard response to all my illnesses and problems in life is still – after thirty-six years – to put me under a blanket on the sofa and overfeed me his homebaked chocolate brownies until I feel better.’
Three months ago, Lucas and I had arrived back in Blue Cove Bay. Whereas Lucas was over the moon to be living with Grandpa by the seaside, I was tear-stained and devastated at Scott’s actions, the end of our whirlwind relationship and our cancelled wedding. Dad initially ordered me to lie on his old threadbare sofa, with two pillows stuffed behind my head, his travel blanket draped over my legs and a constant supply of chocolate brownies within easy reach.
‘Lying on Dad’s sofa, day in, day out, eating brownies and staring up at four walls got too much for me and my sugar levels, so I begged Ronald to give me this job.’
Betty is still trying to chew down on her custard tart. Her twinkly blue eyes have darkened, and her face has become shadowy. Why the hell didn’t I remove the custard tarts from the counter?
Lucas comes to the table. He stares at Betty with a puzzled look on his face. She now has an audience. I swat away his finger which is trying to get inside one of his nostrils.
Betty is still chewing. The sound of Betty’s dentures finally cutting through the custard tart fills me with relief. It takes her a good minute to mash the tart down and then swallow without choking. Finger mopping her mouth, Betty smiles. ‘Well, that was an experience. That tart was like a piece of tough steak.’ She rubs her chest and drains her cup of tea. ‘I can think of worse ways to recover from what you’ve been through. Thankfully, you have Brian baking cakes for you and not Ronald. Your father bakes the best chocolate brownies. I remember the days when we would all queue for his little bakery to open.’
A faint smile pushes its way onto my face at the mention of Dad’s old bakery.
Betty takes out her hankie and cleans her glasses. ‘When your mum passed away, we all wondered how he’d cope raising a young daughter on his own. We should have known Brian would do an excellent job.’ Her twinkling blue eyes flood me with warmth. ‘He’s always been an overprotective father.’
Betty puts on her glasses and casts me a puzzled look. ‘Now, everyone wants to know why you’ve chosen to work for Ronald in this…’ Betty surveys her surroundings with a look of disapproval. She stares at the old starfish on the wall which has come loose from its hook and is dangling precariously over Ronald’s first attempt at a coastal painting. No one can believe he’s stuck a ￡50 price tag on it. To say Lucas could do better is an understatement. Betty turns her nose up at the chipped paint on the walls, the shells missing from the sides of the counter and the malnourished teacakes in the glass jar. ‘…awful place of Ronald’s?’
The reason why I am working in Ronald’s teashop is not only due to me climbing the walls with boredom on Dad’s sofa but also because things are a bit tight financially at home. It’s up to me to put things right. As Scott didn’t have much money to put towards the wedding, I stupidly agreed to use my savings. Dad also used his own money to pay for the reception.
My stomach clenches as I remember the chat I had with Dad a few weeks ago. The one which started with him announcing he was increasing his hours at the supermarket. When I’d asked why he was doing extra hours, he went pale. ‘I…’ Dad stopped and cleared his throat. ‘I took out a loan to pay for your reception.’ He carefully rolled up the sleeves of his blue shirt as my heart came to a shuddering halt. ‘The hotel’s cancellation policy meant I lost a lot of my money.’
Dad explained he thought I had my heart set on a big wedding. My body began to tremble. ‘Oh God, Dad, please don’t tell me you took out a loan?’ Air became trapped in my throat. ‘You told me you had saved some money,’ I croaked, before erupting into a coughing fit.
Scott was the one who wanted a big wedding even though he couldn’t afford it. I would have happily got married in a registry office and gone to the pub afterwards. That night I didn’t sleep due to crying about how my wedding disaster had also put my father into debt.
Shame and embarrassment loiter inside my stomach. Scott owned the house in Surrey, so Lucas and I didn’t have much choice but to relocate across the country and move in with Dad. It’s going to take me years before I can pay Dad back for the money he lost on my wedding reception.
‘Awful place,’ says Betty. ‘Why aren’t you working with your friend, Frankie Jones?’ Craning her neck, she looks out of the window and peers down at the beach below, frowning. ‘I still don’t know why Frankie painted old Mick’s beach café such a dreadful pink colour.’
The Starfish Tea shop sits above the cliffs in Blue Cove Bay. Tourists who want a cup of tea with a picturesque view have an intense thigh-burning walk up far too many sandy steps. Luckily, Betty’s son runs a local taxi firm and spends most of his time ferrying her about for free. I’ve hinted to Ronald that the location of his tea shop might be one of the reasons why business is quiet, but he dismissed it, saying people will do anything for a good cup of tea and a beautiful sweeping view of the little coastal town and golden strip of beach below. If you look out of the window of The Starfish Tea Shop, you can’t miss the cerise exterior of Frankie’s business below. The Little Love Café, Frankie’s café, sits on the edge of the golden beach and overlooks the picturesque shimmering blue sea.
Eighteen months ago, Frankie, experienced what he referred to as a thirty-something life crisis. One gloomy Thursday, he reassessed his life, while eating a blueberry muffin at his desk at a swanky London PR firm.
He was supposed to have been thinking about how he could repair the image of a well-known film actor. A series of compromising photos had appeared in the tabloid press, showing the actor in the arms of his mistress, days before his opera singer wife, who had beaten cancer twice, was due to give birth.
Frankie claims that after finishing the muffin and telling his boss there was no hope for the actor, he realised his own life felt stale and he wanted to feel alive again.
So, he walked out of his swanky job, ended his volatile two-year relationship with a YouTube make-up vlogger, put his Soho flat on the market, left London and moved back home to… Blue Cove Bay, a small seaside town tucked into the Devon coastline. I am still in shock about his life-changing decision.
At a service station he called me to explain his idea – ‘I’m going to buy Mick’s old café and I’m going to turn it into a romantic-themed place called The Little Love Café . It will be perfect for loved-up couples to record live on social media their first dates, mid-week date nights, make-up dates post arguments, engagements and baby news announcements,’ he gushed without taking a breath.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Even though I’m not a fan of romance right now, I still can’t quite believe what Frankie has created. It’s a beautiful place where loved-up couples drink delicious skinny lattes, soya flat whites and iced frappuccinos, take selfies of themselves in front of a stunning pink flower wall, and nibble on a range of love-inspired cakes, biscuits, and snacks.
Betty taps me on the hand. ‘So, why aren’t you working for Frankie?’
‘The thought of working somewhere with wall-to-wall romance feels like a nightmare after everything…’ My voice becomes croaky as Scott’s face flashes up inside my head.
Betty reaches over with both hands and squeezes mine. ‘Oh, I know, Alice. You’re not going to want to watch live marriage proposals…’ She stops mid-flow, sensing she might have hit a raw nerve. She peers through her glasses and spots the photo on the table near my arm. I try to stop her, but she grabs it.
It was taken years ago on the day my GCSE exams ended. In the photo, a group of us from school are sat, tanned bare legs and sand-coated feet dangling, on our favourite rock on the beach, against a backdrop of rugged cliffs and a cloudless azure blue sky. Betty’s finger slides across to the blond-haired lad who I’m leant against. ‘Ah, I remember the Coombes boy.’
‘You mean Noah?’ Pausing, I lean over and stare at sixteen-year-old Noah.
Betty holds the photo closer and screws up her eyes to get a better look. ‘You and the Coombes boy were childhood sweethearts.’
I nod. ‘Noah was my first love.’ I decide to miss out the bit about how we had a pretend wedding on my sixteenth birthday on the beach as Betty doesn’t need to know that and my father is still unaware. Lord knows what he would say if he knew.
Noah wrote me tiny love letters on little scraps of paper and inserted them into my pencil case when I wasn’t looking, he wrote me poems in our English class, and he held my hand under the desks in maths lessons. He was the boyfriend who was perfect in every way… until he broke my sixteen-year-old heart.
‘I was surprised at seeing you and the Coombes boy together. Your father never had a good word to say about the Coombes family.’
Fidgeting on my chair, I scratch my itchy neck. ‘I should have listened to Dad. He was right about that family.’
Betty leans closer to me, her nose twitching inquisitively. ‘A few weeks after this photo was taken Noah told me his dad was emigrating to Ireland. He swore to me that he would write me letters, emails, call me and save up enough money to visit me.’ I pause and take a deep breath. ‘He said we’d one day meet again down by our rock in Blue Cove Bay.’
Our rock is a small one that sticks out from the slate grey cliffs that hem Blue Coves Bay’s beach. It has a peculiar angular shape and if you squint it looks like the side profile of an ogre’s head with a nose, forehead, and jaw. You can climb up the side and sit on the top of it to watch the world go by or listen to beachgoers below comparing their suntans. I first discovered the rock after Mum died. If you sit on the rock and look up, you can see the edge of the coastal path. Sitting on the rock used to make me feel closer to her. When Noah came into my life, the rock became our meeting place. As teenagers we would run and escape up there. For a long time, it was our happy place.
Betty laces her fingers together. ‘The Coombes boy didn’t come back to meet you by your rock. I wonder why that was.’
Shaking my head, I let out a sigh. ‘He never wrote back or called, Betty. I know it sounds silly, but I’ve always wondered why he did that. Noah and I had something special back then and we both cried the day he left. I honestly believed him when he said we would one day meet again by our rock.’
‘You both were very young.’ Betty takes another glance at the photo. ‘A handsome boy like that would have been very popular with those Irish girls.’ She stops and stares at my face. ‘I’ve said the wrong thing again – haven’t I?’
Years of Noah Coombes agitation rises inside me. ‘Betty, I know Noah and I were only sixteen and he probably did hook up with a new girl the minute he stepped off the ferry but…’ My neck and shoulders stiffen. ‘I can’t forget about what he did. If I am honest, I’m still mad at him for leaving me hanging on. I know it sounds silly, but I carried on writing to him and he never replied.’
Betty fishes out a ball of tissue from the sleeve of her lilac cardigan. ‘I think you’re still mixed up about what happened with your wedding. Heartbreak can dredge up all sorts of painful memories.’
I let out a heavy sigh. ‘I’m not getting my heart broken again. Frankie thinks I’m being negative when I talk like this but falling in love with scumbags and getting hurt is taking its toll on me. No one is going to get a chance to hurt me again.’
Lucas goes off to wander around the tea shop. Betty leans over to whisper, ‘I see Pete Towns was in that photo. His mother was never happy with the haircuts I gave her. I don’t like to speak bad about the dead, but she was a miserable woman who had coarse black hair. It was like cutting wire. I hear Pete’s bought a house on the outskirts of town.’
‘Yes, he has.’ Guilt at declining Pete’s invite to his housewarming party creeps over me.
Betty frowns. ‘Wasn’t Pete close to the Coombes boy?’
It takes a lot to push the words off my tongue. ‘They were best friends.’
Betty flashes me a mischievous smile. ‘Good job Noah didn’t return – eh?’ She glances over at Lucas who is busy sticking his tongue against the front window. ‘Lucas looks more like Pete every day.’
A familiar uncomfortable feeling passes through me.