Chapter Sixteen
Erin marched across the heath towards the village, her heart pounding with the exertion.
Sweat dripped down her back and soaked into her bra strap.
Her shift didn’t start for another hour and a half, but she didn’t want to be alone in the flat.
She knew her thoughts would spiral if she wasn’t distracted, and she didn’t need to berate herself for having let her guard down any more than she already was.
As she passed a young couple walking arm in arm across the grass, she tried to work out what her predominant feeling was.
Disappointment was definitely top of the list. She’d felt attracted to Adam, she’d stopped trying to deny that, but the only reason she’d gone against her own rules and her instincts was because something about him told her he was a good man.
Now she’d discovered he was an absentee father, and she couldn’t think of a single viable excuse for that.
Surely no one with a truly good heart could desert their own child?
Her breath came fast when she arrived on Brigade Street, so she stopped to regain her composure before she entered the café.
Jack came into view, a tea towel thrown over his shoulder again, like some kind of waiter in an American movie.
He turned towards Riley, who was next to another table, moving her hands as she spoke, then he threw his head back in a guffaw that reminded Erin of her father.
This was what she needed, to be around true friends and family: people she loved and trusted. People who would never let her down.
Jack did a double take when she came through the door. ‘Thought you were going for a walk with Adam?’
‘I did,’ said Erin. ‘Just a short one, and now I’m back.
’ Customers’ conversations buzzed around the room and her shoulders instantly dropped a notch at the cheerful atmosphere.
The sun shone through the far window, its yellowy beams catching the vase in the grate, spreading dappled rays of colour across the wall and floor. ‘Glad to see we’re busy.’
‘It’s been a good morning.’ He glanced around with a satisfied smile and Erin wished her mother was there to see his pride in the place they all loved, before remembering how little time was left before she was forced to tell them the truth.
‘That’s what I like to hear.’ She spied Joe sitting in one of the leather armchairs, Tybalt on his lap, his gaze on the pages of a book. ‘Can you bring me a ham salad sandwich and a tea over there?’ She pointed at Joe’s table. ‘And whatever Joe’s having.’
‘On it.’
She picked her way over, stopping to pet a spaniel who was lapping from one of the bowls of water they kept for visiting dogs. ‘Hi Joe.’
He raised his head, a grin instantly lifting his crinkled cheeks when he saw her. ‘Erin, how are you?’
‘Good, thanks. Mind if I join you?’
‘I’d be heartbroken if you didn’t.’ He sounded like he meant it and she was even more grateful than usual for having this gentle father-figure still in her life.
He would have made a wonderful dad if he and Nuala had been able to have children.
Erin often thought she was the one who benefitted most from their childlessness.
They’d practically treated her as their own, which meant she hadn’t felt entirely untethered when her mother died, bereft as she was.
Friends of hers described feeling orphaned when they lost their last parent, even in their fifties.
She still had Joe, and he was a firm foundation in this rocky world.
She sat in the adjacent chair to his. ‘What are you reading?’ He slipped the dog-eared envelope he was using as a bookmark between the pages and closed the book, before turning a cover with soft purple, pink and green hues to show her. ‘Love After Love,’ read Erin. ‘Any good?’
‘It’s heartbreakingly beautiful. It’s all I can do not to wail like a wounded moose,’ he said, his Irish accent sounding strong with the emotion in his words. ‘I’m nearly at the end.’ He turned the book to show her how few pages were left after the ad hoc bookmark.
‘I can leave you to finish it, if you like.’
‘No.’ Joe put a hand out to stop her. ‘You stay where you are. I suspect it might be better for me to read the last bit in the privacy of my own home. No one wants to see a fine, strapping young man like me sobbing in a public place.’ He stroked Tybalt’s back and the cat began to purr.
‘If you’re sure?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re your own worst enemy, you know? I have no sympathy for you. You should have followed book group rules and read the last page first, then you’d know what was coming.’
He chuckled. ‘You’re not wrong. I could have saved myself all manner of pain.’
‘Is it that emotional?’ She eyed the book, wondering whether she should read it herself. It was sometimes cathartic to have a good cry over a fictional story rather than her own.
‘It’s a fine story, to be sure. It’s about an unconventional family in Trinidad, and how a secret drives them apart. It’s hopeful too, thank the Lord. It came up as a suggestion when I was searching for books to go alongside my last pages.’
‘What did you search up?’
Joe dropped his gaze. ‘I’m a bit embarrassed to say.’
Erin nudged him with her elbow. ‘I won’t judge you. You know that.’
He glanced up, a shy smile lifting one side of his mouth. ‘Love in later life. Do you think I’m an old fool?’
‘I think you’re brave and wonderful,’ she said. ‘And I think you deserve to be happy more than anyone else I know.’
Riley appeared by the side of the table, then flopped into a chair beside them. ‘Don’t look now, but that blonde girl over there gets right on my tits.’
Erin couldn’t help but turn around. She recovered herself and swiftly turned back to Riley, but not before she saw a wiry girl with thick hair and a sour expression, shoving a purse into her bag. ‘Who is she?’
‘Teagan, a friend of Chegs’. She’s such an entitled cow.
Honestly, she seemed gobsmacked when I gave her the bill, as if the fact she went to some posh knob school with my boyfriend meant she expected me to give her freebies.
’ Riley scowled over at the girl, who was now making her way to the door.
‘Why is it that the more people have, the more they expect to get for nothing? Her parents own half of Keston, apparently, so she can afford to pay for a bacon buttie and a chai latte.’
This was exactly what Erin imagined friends of Chegs to be like, but she didn’t say so.
‘She certainly doesn’t seem like your kind of person.
’ She’d met some of Riley’s friends and they were as sweet and quirky as she was.
She wondered what they made of her idiot boyfriend.
Maybe they were keeping their thoughts to themselves like she was, although she was finding it increasingly difficult to do so.
‘She isn’t my bag at all. I’ve got to be nice to her, though, because she’s only just moved home after a few years travelling South America, so Chegs has taken her under his wing.
He asked me to be kind to her because none of her friends live locally anymore.
’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Even her accent grates on me. She’s got one of those posh voices with a hint of American that International School kids get, which is stupid because she was brought up in Southeast London, like the rest of us.
’ She jutted out her chin and said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been on a gap year,’ in a mash-up of RP and US.
Erin laughed, despite being desperate to point out that Chegs had a similar affectation. But Riley seemed blind to all his flaws, so she kept her mouth shut. Riley waved Jack over. ‘Can I get a mint tea, please?’
Jack dropped his head to one side. ‘Aren’t you meant to be working?’
Riley covered her mouth, a snigger escaping from behind her fingers. ‘I am, aren’t I?’ She shook her head. ‘As soon as I sat down, I forgot.’ She stood. ‘I’ve had my break and everything. What am I like?’
Erin grinned at her. ‘Back to work, you.’ She mimed cracking a whip and Riley saluted and wandered back to the kitchen with Jack. ‘She’s ditsy, that one, but I do love her.’
Joe leaned forwards and spoke in hushed tones. ‘I don’t know what she sees in that Chegs fella. He’s a right daffodil.’
‘Me either,’ said Erin smiling at Joe’s unique term for someone he didn’t respect, and glad she wasn’t the only one with reservations. ‘It’s been two years now. I expected her to see through him after a couple of months.’
‘I didn’t mind him at first,’ said Joe. ‘I could understand what she saw in him. He’s a good-looking lad, if you like the foppish type.’ He mimed pushing hair off his forehead. ‘And he’s confident, right enough, and he’s clearly got a bob or two. All very attractive traits, objectively.’
Her thoughts went to the new rental amount.
How freeing it must be to not have the constant tap of calculator keys going on in the back of your head.
‘Objectively, yeah, but you know Riley. She isn’t motivated by money.
I just don’t get why she’s stayed with him when he clearly doesn’t make her feel good about herself. ’
‘That could be the appeal, in a perverse sort of way,’ said Joe, quietly.
‘She had a tough upbringing, didn’t she?
She was never the centre of anyone’s world.
That’s got to leave you feeling like you don’t deserve much love and attention.
Maybe she has a low opinion of herself, and so she doesn’t expect much from anyone else. ’
Erin observed Riley, who was standing behind the till by the cakes, taking a card payment.
Her cropped hair, which was growing back a little more each day, accentuated her sharp cheekbones, and made her eyes appear enormous and innocent.
She was a beautiful soul and deserved to be cherished.
‘I wish she could see herself the way we see her,’ she said. ‘Then she’d know her own worth.’
Joe smiled and patted the back of her hand. ‘Don’t we all feel like that about the people we love?’
She took his hand and squeezed. The door opened and the post woman came in, wearing combat shorts and a red Royal Mail T-shirt. Her eyes searched the room before alighting on Erin. She strode over and handed a wadge of letters to her. ‘Hope they’re not all bills,’ she said. ‘See ya.’
‘Thanks,’ said Erin, leafing through the envelopes.
Her fingers paused on one with Galmouth Estates printed across the top.
That would be the new lease for her to sign, only she couldn’t sign it, because she couldn’t afford the rent.
In a matter of weeks she would have to give notice to end the tenancy.
The time was fast approaching that The Bookmark would have to close.