Chapter Two
Rupert
Oh my God, could I have been any more… well, me? At this point I might as well go and live out on the moors as a hermit with only the sheep for company. At least they wouldn’t think I was rude and awkward as fuck.
Unless it turned out sheep were actually incredibly judgemental. Then I’d be in trouble.
I groaned and rubbed my face as I leant against the inside of the back door of the shop, dislodging my glasses and smearing the lenses with my knuckles.
“You are such an idiot,” I muttered to myself.
“He wasn’t saying you were uptight and overdramatic.
He was talking about Darcy. And now you’ve fucked everything up. Again!”
The ache in my chest and the insidious voice in my head begged to differ though. After all, why would Milo have mentioned Darcy being overdramatic if he didn’t have a reference point? Clearly, I made him think about other people who were overdramatic, which meant he thought I was.
But Milo hadn’t said it like it was a bad thing. Not completely.
I mean, it clearly bothered him, but it didn’t seem like a huge issue. More like, it was part of who Darcy was and Milo was used to it.
It didn’t mean he’d accept it in anyone else though.
And while I was on that subject, I shouldn’t have mentioned Darcy being dramatic in the first place. That was horrifically rude and judgy of me, especially since Darcy had been nothing but kind and considerate since he’d taken over the lease next door.
“Rupert, darling, it’s ten o’clock on a Thursday morning, it’s too early for you to have a meltdown.
” Norman’s sharp words cut through my spiralling thoughts, and I looked up to see my shop assistant looking at me with a kind but no-nonsense smile.
“Especially if it’s over that man with the heinous haircut and moustache. ”
I chuckled as I straightened up, put my glasses back into place, and started to remove my coat. “He’s shaved it all off, even the moustache. He said he was bored.”
“Really? How does that look?” Norman raised a grey eyebrow, an amused expression playing across his softly wrinkled face.
Norman was well into his eighties, although he refused to give me his actual age, and the sharpest, sassiest, and most fabulous man I’d ever met.
He was effortlessly stylish, always put together, and never without a cutting word, which he invariably maintained was the best accessory a man could have.
He’d been a big part of the London theatre scene in his youth, but fifteen years ago he and his husband had decided they wanted a change of scenery, and pace, and had moved to Heather Bay.
I still wasn’t sure why here, given how far the small North Yorkshire town was removed from the bright lights of London—or even any city—but Norman had always shrugged and said he and Sidney liked the peace.
To keep himself busy, Norman worked for me part time, and I was forever grateful for his theatrics and his ability to charm people. He was also very good at dealing with anyone rude or demanding, reducing them to silence with a calm stare and one or two devastating sentences.
Luckily, I’d never been on the end of any of his truly cutting remarks. And I never wanted to be.
I was not well equipped to handle being emotionally devastated.
“Really. So, if we hear screaming, it’s likely just his friends finding out. I think it suits him though.” There were a couple of beats of silence as both of us strained to listen. I could have sworn I heard arguing through the walls.
“Screaming really isn’t becoming,” Norman said, smoothing out the front of his waistcoat, which today was a gorgeous deep plum with gold buttons. “Oh, before I forget, Mrs. Lambert wants to know if we’re starting to take Christmas orders. She wants to send hampers again.”
I sighed and reached into my trouser pocket for a glasses cloth. “It’s not even October yet.”
“I know, I told her, but she wouldn’t listen. Frightful old bat.”
“I’ll get some order forms printed, and the online one set up. We can start from the first.” I had another few days before then and it wouldn’t be difficult to adjust last year’s forms.
Despite my push to move things online, we had a lot of customers who struggled with digital literacy and asking them to order via the website would simply make things more difficult.
I didn’t have the time, or the patience, to spend hours explaining to people what they needed to do or how things worked.
It was just easier to get paper order forms printed and leave them on the counter for anyone who wanted one.
Although it would mean more work for me in the sense of having to remember to add them to my list of orders to be filled, but I was apparently a sucker for punishment because I was always adding more to my plate.
And I’d need to add a note to my diary to do the forms before Norman and Mrs. Lambert came to blows.
If I didn’t write it down, it would never get done, because it would simply cease to exist to my ADHD brain. However, it did give me an excuse to buy beautiful diaries each year, so I supposed that was one tiny positive.
“Make it the seventh,” Norman said. “That will give me time to summon up an ounce or two of Christmas spirit. And I shall enjoy the look on Mrs. Lambert’s face when I tell her she has to wait another week.”
I chuckled. Norman was nothing if not petty. “The seventh it is then.”
“You’re a good boy, Rupert. Now, I need you to help me get those boxes of bonbons off the shelf in the storeroom. I can’t lift them this morning.”
“No worries. Did I put them up too high? Maybe next time I—”
“Rupert, half of the storeroom is too high for me these days. And besides, Sidney will kill me if I fall off another ladder. He’s already upset with me because I told him he couldn’t wear that dreadful yellow waistcoat of his to Angelo’s birthday next weekend.
Yellow has never been his colour, and he refuses to accept it.
At this rate, I’m sure he’ll wear it to my funeral, just to spite me. ”
“I don’t think he would,” I said, biting back an amused smile as I followed Norman to the storeroom and began lifting down the heavy boxes of sweets we needed to restock.
“Oh yes he would. It’s how he’d punish me for daring to die before him. He’s vindictive like that.”
“And yet you’ve been together for, what, fifty years?”
“Exactly. It’s why he’d be so cross if I died first. He’d consider it stealing the spotlight again.
You know, he still hasn’t forgiven me for the glowing reviews I got as Puck when we did A Midsummer Night’s Dream in seventy-nine.
But it’s not my fault he spent his entire run as Oberon looking constipated and utterly revolted by Titania.
I mean, she was played by an utterly dreadful woman—no manners and style at all—but it’s theatre, darling. One has to act around these things.”
“I’d have liked to have seen you both on stage,” I said as I moved a box along a shelf, looking for the lemon sherbets I knew we had. They’d only been delivered last week. I simply had to remember where I’d put them.
“Oh, you would have loved it. We were both so beautiful in our youth.”
“You’re still beautiful now.”
“I am a wrinkled old queen, darling, but that’s very sweet of you to say.” He smiled at me and I knew his compliment was genuine.
That was one of my favourite things about Norman: I always knew where I stood with him. If he didn’t like something, or if I’d upset him, or if he had a problem then he’d tell me. And while it always hurt to hear, he was very good at making sure we talked it through. I appreciated that.
We finished getting everything we needed to restock, and I carried things through into the shop while Norman opened the blinds and unlocked the door, flipping the little sign on the glass from Closed to Open.
I didn’t know how busy we’d be today, especially with the rain, but Saltgate Sweets had existed for long enough that it had built up a steady stream of regular clients alongside our tourist base and the online orders I’d started taking to help fill the gaps and allow those tourists to take us home with them.
“Oh, I meant to say, Milo said they’re going to be closing next door for a couple of months over the winter,” I said, as I weighed out some pineapple cubes to fill an order which had come in overnight.
“Sounds sensible. It will save them some money,” Norman said. “Ice cream is a very seasonal business, no matter how good it is.”
“That’s what I assumed. But he wanted to let us know in case we worry about not seeing them. I mean, he said he’d still be around. And Alfie too.”
“He’s the one with the pretty, gothic boyfriend? Who works at Winchester & Sons? Has very good taste in waistcoats.”
“Yes, I think so. I don’t really know them very well.”
“Alfie? Or the boyfriend?”
“Both,” I said. “The summer was so busy, and they were all getting settled in. There wasn’t much time for anything beyond pleasantries.”
Norman hummed and raised an eyebrow. We both knew I was lying, but it was whether he called me out on it.
The summer had been hectic, that much was true, but they’d all been around for weeks before they’d opened, and I’d barely done more than introduce myself.
I’d been adamant that I would, at some point, but I’d never gotten around to it.
And then things had gone downhill when Milo had taken my remarks about their outside seating crossing the line between our properties, and blocking my door, as some sort of declaration of war.
Maybe that was a bit of an overstatement.
But how else was I supposed to take him mapping out the boundaries with a chalk line? Especially considering he’d perfectly marked it with a tape measure. It was bloody irritating and had made me want to scream in frustration.
The fact I hadn’t reacted well was part of the reason things had escalated between us.
In my opinion, Milo was pushy, bad-mannered, tasteless, insolent, utterly infuriating… and somehow the most fascinating and charismatic man I’d ever met. He pushed all of my buttons, and yet, I spent half my time wondering what he was doing or dreaming up ways to get him to talk to me.
I kept telling myself I didn’t want his attention, and yet clearly, I did. Which was bloody annoying because I already knew that if I let myself get close to him it would end badly. It always did.
There was a reason I’d lived in Heather Bay for nearly ten years and still only had enough friends to count on one hand. And one of them was my employee. Another was a snake.
I wasn’t good at friendships, or any kind of relationship really, despite my best efforts. So, it was better not to try. At least then my fragile heart would be safe, and I wouldn’t hurt anyone with my temper.
“And now?” Norman asked pointedly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, apart from Christmas, winter is always quieter and you could do with making some friends.”
“I’m fine, Norman. Seriously. I don’t need friends.”
“That’s a lie. Everyone needs friends.”
“I have you, and Sidney. And Lizzie!”
Norman’s stare was withering. “Elizabeth is a snake. A beautiful one, but still. And you can’t count me and Sidney, because we’ll be dead before long.”
“No, you won’t,” I said wryly. Norman and I had conversations about his death on a weekly basis.
His gallows humour had never worried me.
But it did mean I knew exactly what he wanted for his funeral, down to the specific versions of songs and the photos I was allowed to use.
And I was very aware that if I strayed from any of it, Norman would come back to haunt me for the rest of my life.
“I might. I could die tomorrow.”
“If you do, I’ll let Sidney wear his yellow waistcoat to your funeral. And tell him you’ve always liked it but were too stubborn to admit it.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“You better not die then.”
“I definitely won’t now. Yellow waistcoat, indeed!” He shot me daggers as he straightened some jars on a nearby shelf. I tried not to laugh.
The bell above the door tinkled, and the pair of us looked up to see who it was. I was expecting it to be Ron, one of our regulars who always came in on a Thursday to get some sweets for the weekend. But it wasn’t.
It was Milo.
He’d removed his hat, giving me a much better look at his newly shaved head, and was still wearing the bright, patchwork fleece he’d had on earlier. Which I wanted to find ridiculous but just couldn’t. He made it look good.
He was smiling too, looking almost self-satisfied. But I couldn’t call it smug. More like he was very pleased and excited about something. That should have worried me, but I was too busy staring at him.
And the two tubs of ice cream he was holding.
“Hello, hello,” he said brightly, strolling over to the counter in a way that oozed confidence and charm. “I know it’s not quite tomorrow, but I have a present for you.”
Oh.