Chapter 27
27
Ruth
Audrey Franco was the first customer over the threshold on Saturday morning, which was unusual. Suzie had messaged to say she’d be half an hour late. Although I’d slept, I felt hungover even though all I’d had to drink at the wake was mineral water.
‘Ruth,’ Audrey said. She stepped around the counter to where I stood by the till and took one of my hands in hers, giving it a firm squeeze. Her hand was cool and clammy. I did my best not to shudder. ‘My sincere condolences, you poor, poor girl. Brings you up short when one of your siblings passes, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, it does,’ I said and gingerly extracted my fingers from her moist grip. The community grapevine was obviously doing its job. ‘And thank you, Audrey, for your kind words. What can I get you this morning?’
She blinked and her attention shifted to the morning’s muffins under the mesh cover. Chocolate chip, warm and fragrant. ‘Hmm. Seeing as how I’m here, I might as well have a muffin and a cappuccino.’
‘Why not? Sit yourself down, Audrey, I’ll bring it over.’
She paid and sat down by the window at table one, her back ramrod straight. She wore powder blue capris and a matching floral blouse, her blue-rinsed hair freshly permed. I wondered if she ever relaxed.
The front door opened just as I delivered Audrey’s order. It was Hamish and my heart gave a crazy little skip, which I did my best to ignore.
‘Good morning, Ruth,’ he said and smiled.
‘Hello,’ I said to Hamish and ‘Enjoy,’ to Audrey, who was now more interested in this unknown man with the killer smile than her muffin and cappuccino.
He followed me to the counter. ‘How’s Elliot this morning?’
‘Embarrassed, remorseful, annoyed that he’s here and at my mercy, not that he’s said anything.’
‘Hungover?’
‘Not as much as he should be. Coffee?’
‘Please, and a bacon and egg sandwich.’
‘Have here or take away?’
He glanced at Audrey and then around at the otherwise empty cafe. ‘I’ll have it here. Thanks. Table three.’ He took out his wallet.
I shook my head vehemently. ‘No way, Hamish. Not after what you did to help last night.’
He reluctantly put his wallet away.
Suzie arrived at nine thirty full of apologies, but no explanation. Then the usual Saturday morning crowd began steadily trickling in and it wasn’t long before I was inundated with food orders. George came in like a breath of fresh air and took over at the coffee machine while Suzie zipped around delivering food and drinks. Too busy in the kitchen, I managed to gulp down a coffee and a toasted cheese sandwich, made with the crusts of course, and I didn’t notice when Hamish left. What Elliot was up to, I had no idea.
Some Saturdays I didn’t mop the floor at the end of the day. Today was one of those days. We’d almost had to chase out the hangers-on when two o’clock came and went. George left and Suzie minutes after him. She’d been subdued all shift. I wondered what dramas she had going on in her young life. There was always something.
I was dead on my feet when I eventually turned off the kitchen light in the cafe and went through to the flat. Elliot hadn’t popped into the cafe for a coffee and breakfast, which I’d offered for him to do, and I was trying not to think the worst, that is, that he’d popped across the road to the hotel instead.
Except for the hum of the refrigerator, the flat was silent. No sign of Elliot inside or out. No note. My concern upped a notch. I rang his mobile number and immediately heard its shrill ring. It was on the bedside cupboard in the spare room, charging. The bed was made. His suit trousers were flung over the back of a chair and the dress shoes he’d been wearing yesterday were beside the bed. I’d thrown in a pair of sneakers when I’d packed his bag, along with shorts, track pants and a couple of T-shirts and pyjamas. There was no sign of his wallet.
The hotel, that’s where he’d be, propped up at the front bar with the other regulars. I groaned, the sound loud in the silent room. So what if he was at the hotel? He was an adult and I wasn’t his keeper and neither did I want to be. It wasn’t my job to find him and bring him home.
Anger, red hot and searing and aimed mainly at Robert for dying, flashed through me. Remorse followed immediately. If Elliot wasn’t home in half an hour I’d go searching for him. In the meantime, the list of jobs I had to do was endless. Best I get started.
* * *
Almost an hour passed before Elliot crossed my mind again. Lucky for him, I wasn’t his keeper, because it turns out I wasn’t very good at it. My phone rang just as I was contemplating where I’d begin the search. It was Hamish.
‘Ruth, Elliot’s here with me, in case you were wondering. He went for a walk and happened upon me out in the front yard. Serendipitous really … he’s been helping me install the skylight. You didn’t tell me he was an engineer.’
‘I don’t remember you asking,’ I said, waspishly and without self-reproach. It’s how I reacted when I felt I was being ganged up upon by men. Just ask my brothers—make that brother . Tears prickled and I blinked them away.
‘Ruth, are you all right?’
‘Tired and bereaved but otherwise okay. Please ask Elliot if he’ll be home for tea.’
Hamish cleared his throat and I did feel a moment’s remorse for being a bitch. It was Elliot who should be on the receiving end of my ire, not Hamish. He’d been nothing but kind and he was grieving too.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t be. Do you want to go to the hotel for a counter meal tonight? You’ve been cooking all day.’
‘Thanks, but no, Hamish. All I want is a quiet evening at home followed by an early night.’
‘Fair enough … hang on a sec—’ he said and I could hear Elliot’s voice in the background. ‘Right, the plan is this: we’ll finish up here and then grab a counter meal. Okay?’
‘Tell him I’ll leave the door unlocked.’
‘He said he won’t be late, Ruth.’
‘Sure … Thanks and I’ll see you later.’
The day had been clear and hot; mid thirties. Not much of an afternoon sea breeze. The tea towels on the clothesline were dry an hour after I’d pegged them out and I stood and folded them into the basket. The cement was warm under my bare feet.
After folding the tea towels, I soaked the sad-looking pot plants with water and picked a handful of ripe cherry tomatoes and a sprig of basil, crushing a leaf with my fingertips and inhaling the spicy smell. The tomatoes accompanied by a wedge of cheddar, olives and a few crackers was all I wanted to eat.
The seven o’clock news was on and I was ironing my ‘uniforms’ when Elliot came in looking sheepish.
‘How was the pub meal?’
‘Fair,’ he said. He peeled off his sneakers and put them outside the door. ‘I might have a shower. I’ve been up a ladder in Hamish’s ceiling space and it was hot as Hades.’ He padded through to the spare room. His complexion was pasty grey, his thinning hair in sweaty spikes.
He was almost to the door when he stopped and turned to face me.
‘I need to apologise for yesterday, Ruth. I must have been awful and you were so gracious. I would have left me to sober up in a ditch, but you took care of me. And this afternoon, I was only going for a walk around the block to stretch my legs, but then I went further than expected and ran into your bloke … realised I didn’t have my phone.’
‘He’s not my bloke, Elliot. He’s just someone who comes into the cafe from time to time. And he’s been kind to me.’
‘If you say so. Towel?’
‘Yours is the striped one behind the bathroom door.’
His lips quirked into an almost smile. ‘You’re more like Mum the older you get. You even sounded like her just then.’
‘Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and miss her. The cakes I bake for the cafe are all her recipes. I flick through her recipe book at least two or three times a week. It’s almost as if she’s there with me. There’s only you and me left now, Elliot. Doesn’t that feel weird to you? Mum and Dad and now Robert.’
‘Bloody horrible is how it is. I feel as if half of me has been ripped away, the good half. Robert always was the better person.’
‘But you’re easier to get along with.’
‘Then it’s lucky for you I’m the one you’re stuck with, as unfair as that feels to me right now. But you probably would have been better off having Robert around. And Lana didn’t deserve to be widowed.’
He looked lost, forlorn, a seven-year-old boy not a seventy-something man. I went to him and hugged him.
At first he stood rigidly in my embrace. I didn’t let go and slowly his muscles loosened, his arms slid around me and he hugged me in return.