Chapter 7 #2
Nancy was back and Gayle admitted, ‘I haven’t called them.’
‘You haven’t told them? Gayle… Those poor girls.’ She was looking at Gayle so intensely that Gayle began to shuffle in her seat. She pushed her hands into the front pockets of the turquoise gingham half-apron all the staff wore over dark-coloured bottoms teemed with a white shirt.
‘Those girls wouldn’t be coming otherwise.
You and I both know that. And I need them to.
I don’t want them coming for my funeral some day and clearing out my house before I’ve had a chance to talk to them.
I need to make my peace.’ And she might not have long to do it, not with the way she’d been feeling lately.
She suspected her fate was creeping up on her like a thief on her tail down a dark alley, and she wasn’t going to go out before she’d put the past to rest. This gathering would be her chance to feel alive while she still was, to see friends on the island smile and enjoy themselves with her as the host and see the business she was so proud of, but most of all she wanted to see the Rafferty sisters who had always had her heart even though they might not have realised it.
She hoped she still had a little piece of theirs too, but she wasn’t so sure that was the case.
She was definitely playing with fire where Susanna was concerned.
Susanna had her father’s tenacity, and while Addie was determined, she was gentler, a lot like her mother had been.
She hoped that both girls would be relieved that she was alive.
She suspected they’d be furious too, but when she’d realised her mistake she’d seen it as the best way to get them here.
Over the years she’d written to the girls a few times asking them to come and sort through Harry’s things.
She’d contemplated making it easy for them by sending it all back to the mainland, but she knew that keeping her brother’s belongings meant she still had a tie to the girls, a tie that might mean they would come back some day.
Perhaps she should’ve added in those letters that she wanted to see them too rather than hiding behind the pretence that it was all about their father’s things.
Maybe that would’ve made them come. But instead, she’d left things alone as much as possible.
Addie had replied once to say they would arrange a date.
Susanna hadn’t responded to any of the requests, and so over the years Gayle had thrown her energies into running the Sweet Life Café, her pride and joy, and what remained between them all was a simple exchange of Christmas cards, or birthday cards, the contents of which grew more sparse as the years rolled on.
In between those times it was radio silence.
As she tried to eat a little more of the pie so Nancy wouldn’t pick up on anything being wrong, she gazed over to the large window at the front of the café.
Customers took up space in the outdoor seating area and as she’d approached earlier she’d noticed that plenty of people were still taking advantage of the mild September weather by sitting on the balcony upstairs, accessed from an internal door at the rear of the café.
On a clear day, weather permitting, you could just about make out the Jurassic Coast from the edge of the balcony.
She hadn’t been back to the mainland for years.
What was the point? She was happy here, she had plenty of people around her, and she had the local news.
Okay, so it was a bit blinkered, but the world could be a bitch of a place sometimes, and at her stage of life she’d seen enough doom and gloom.
She wanted to spend her twilight years with nothing but the island, her friends and pudding for company.
At least that’s what she’d thought. But she’d been kidding herself.
As soon as she’d suspected her health was deteriorating it was Susanna and Addie she’d thought about more than anything.
Her heart skipped a beat now thinking of the real world she’d closed herself off from.
The real world where the Rafferty girls lived.
Would they actually come back? Would they give her a chance to talk things through with them when they saw she was still alive?
Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d be so angry they’d jump straight back onto the ferry and that would be that.
She set her cup on top of her plate along with the serviette, but before she could take it out to the kitchen herself Nancy appeared.
‘You all done?’ she asked as Gayle got down from the bar stool she’d just about been able to shuffle onto.
‘It was a big slice,’ said Gayle when Nancy noticed she hadn’t eaten all her pudding. ‘I’ll see myself out.’
Outside, she looked up at the little sign which hung from two short chains and swung slightly on the breeze.
She could still remember the day it went up, telling everyone who passed that this was the Sweet Life Café, and it was open for business.
The name was written in fancy lettering on the menus too, on the aprons the staff wore, on a blackboard detailing daily specials and placed outside in the sunshine on dry days, or beneath the canopied wide porch if it looked like rain.
The tarmacked surface of the street today, like on other days, had a light layer of sand that had either been blown up from the beach or brought up by foot passengers or the minibus that transported visitors to their accommodation and Bay Street.
The Sweet Life Café had kept its character so well over the years.
She wondered whether Susanna and Addie would see any joy in it at all.
She doubted it. Susanna had been desperate to escape the island, and when Addie began to mellow and show signs of wanting to hang around and perhaps even bake like her aunt, Gayle had almost got excited until she remembered her promise.
She’d pushed Addie away after that, not abruptly, but subtly over time, and it had been one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do.
In the hours before Harry had died, he’d asked Gayle to make sure that Susanna and Addie never fell out like they had, that his girls would always be there for each other.
And with Susanna having never given up on her plan for them both to leave the island, how could Gayle have done anything other than take a step back so that she didn’t come between the sisters?
Back at the cottage she sat in the armchair for a while, fresh air floating in through the open window. Fatigue plagued her these days and necessitated frequent rest.
Her mind ran through the possibilities of what might be wrong with her. Heart problems? Those had killed her sister, Bernice, aged nine, the details of which they’d never known. Or maybe she had what Harry had died from – pancreatic cancer that had taken him quickly.
She couldn’t put off going to the doctor forever, but she had to for now.
Bad news could wait.
She sat a while longer until she had the energy to go upstairs and make up the girls’ beds in the hope that they might come.
She wanted to be prepared if they did, even though there was every chance they might not.
She hadn’t done anything with the girls’ bedrooms since they’d permanently left the island.
The truth was she’d been devastated at her own shortcomings, her failure to make them happy enough to stay here, and so she’d left the rooms exactly how they were.
She barely came up here unless it was to open the windows and get the air circulating a bit, because when she did it made her too sad.
In Susanna’s bedroom she finished sorting the bedding and pushed the last of the pillows into its case and sat down on the edge of the bed.
She’d tried so hard to make the girls happy, but had she tried hard enough?
The Sweet Life Café was her joy, and she knew the girls thought she was there an awful lot, but it was how she kept a roof over their heads, and it was how she was able to take care of them all.
Financial commitments sprang up when least expected: a new school uniform if one of the girls outgrew theirs; a school excursion to pay for; Addie wanted to play piano and lessons weren’t cheap; Susanna asked for a hamster as a pet and whilst a hamster wasn’t expensive it was at a time when money was incredibly tight.
Gayle had forked out for all the accessories because saying no to Susanna would be just another thing to come between them.
Gayle had only been thankful that the girls didn’t want to get a dog.
Maybe they did, but they just knew it would be a big ask.
Some days she waited for Susanna to make the request just to see what she’d do because Susanna, unlike Addie, seemed more determined that this arrangement of theirs was not a long-term solution.
If Gayle told her the sky was blue on a gloriously sunny day, Susanna would’ve told her it was purple.
Gayle knew it was harder for Susanna to settle more than it was for Addie because in order for Gayle to work, she needed someone to watch Addie before she was at an age where she no longer needed it.
Gayle had tried to find a childminder but hadn’t had any luck, and it was also something she could barely afford.
And so she’d had to ask Susanna to help out a lot.
It had been just another thing to come between them.
Addie had always been a little more amenable than her sister and it became more noticeable when Susanna left for university.
Addie had been so upset that day and for the first time Gayle had been able to give her the comfort a mother might have done, the sort of comfort Susanna had been providing until she was no longer there.
After Susanna left, Gayle and Addie had jumbled along together, they’d laughed and joked in the cottage, they’d watched television, and they’d baked.
Gayle had started buying baking accessories for Addie’s Christmases and birthdays, and if Susanna thought she was trying to model Addie into another version of her, thankfully she never said so.
One year Addie had made the Christmas pudding and Susanna had been so proud of her sister, she’d even had three helpings.
Addie’s love of baking became more apparent when she started experimenting – a different type of sponge cake, a new flavour of icing, varieties of dried fruits in place of what Gayle used, ingredients Gayle might not have considered.
But every time Susanna came to the island to visit her sister, Addie backed off a little and she wouldn’t set foot in the Sweet Life Café for days.
Her change of behaviour never failed to remind Gayle of Addie’s loyalty to her older sister and the promise that she had made to Harry.
She looked at the walls of Susanna’s room – still blue, but not the wonderfully aqua shade they’d once been, rather a faded version with a number of cracks and chipped paint in parts.
She went into Addie’s room and made up her bed.
In here the lip-gloss pink of her walls was less vibrant with every day that passed in her absence.
Her gaze fell to the little vase of pink asters she’d put on the bedside table.
An identical vase was filled with blue asters in Susanna’s room.
They were little touches that would likely go unnoticed. If they even came.
Being a parent to those girls – if only for a short time – had been hard, but it had given her joy too.
She wondered whether they remembered any of it.
Would they remember playing in the garden at the cottage, making a den out of cardboard boxes Gayle brought home from work?
Would they remember shopping trips where they’d buy new clothes for the season and have a fast-food lunch as a treat?
Would they remember cycling around the island, carefree and smiling and laughing so much that locals began to call them those Rafferty girls?
She went downstairs and without enough energy to make a proper dinner she settled for a ham and cheese sandwich, which she didn’t even finish.
She remained at the kitchen table until the room grew dark.
And at nine o’clock she gave up.
The girls weren’t coming today.
Maybe they weren’t even coming at all.