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Mia shrugged, and Charlie reached over to hold her hand.
“I just can’t imagine this place not being here, you know?” She glanced up at him, and Charlie nodded. He’d been in town less than two years, but he’d spent more Saturday nights at midnight movies than in his bed. He thought Walt only kept showing them for Mia.
“And what’s Walt going to do?” Mia asked, releasing Charlie’s hand to twist her fingers together. “This place is his life. He’ll have to go home to Susan.” Charlie didn’t know Susan Hamilton very well, but from Mia’s intonation, he gathered that under these circumstances, retiring to spend more time with the family was not a good thing.
“You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?”
Mia twisted her hands the other way. “He was my dad’s best friend. And he was good to me when Dad left.”
Suddenly Charlie liked Walt Hamilton a great deal more. Not enough people had been good to Mia, the way he heard it. Reaching over, he took Mia’s hand again as the curtains parted and the title music began to swell.
“We’ll do what we can to help him,” he promised. It wasn’t much of a promise, he knew, but Charlie really wasn’t sure what else he could offer.
* * * *
Kevin was whistling in the kitchen, a tuneless, repetitive annoyance of a sound. Same as yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Charlie rubbed a hand across his forehead and stared at the numbers in front of him while the elderly couple constituting a third of the Sunday lunch rush paid Magda entirely with change and shuffled toward the door.
Charlie sighed and shut down the spreadsheet. It wasn’t as if the StarFish figures were looking any better today than yesterday.
Magda began the laborious process of sorting the huge handful of coins into the appropriate trays. “Has enough time passed for me to mention the idea of closing two days a week again?”
“Never.” Charlie shut the laptop with unnecessary force.
“Just for lunches?” Magda tried.
“No.” Magda gave a loud sigh, and Charlie went on, “It’s a slippery slope. We close two days, people stop coming on the others too. So we close a few more. This is my dream, Magda. I’m not giving up on it yet.”
“I know that,” Magda said, her tone soothing. “But we’ve got to do something, and you know it. StarFish can’t continue the way it is.”
“Yeah.” Charlie dropped his head to the counter, folding his arms around it. Of course he knew Magda was right; she nearly always was. But it wasn’t time yet. There had to be something else he could try.
Magda lifted herself up to sit beside his head on the counter. “Okay. Let’s look at this logically. What do we have going for us?”
“Really good herring,” Kevin said, emerging from the kitchen. “And very attractive waiting staff.” Charlie looked up in time to see the leering smile Kevin sent Magda’s way, and shared a sympathetic look with her.
“Apart from that,” Magda specified. Kevin looked stumped, and started to step backward into the kitchen. Charlie dropped his head again, only to have Magda yank him up by the hair. “Have faith.”
“In what, exactly?” Charlie asked.
“In us.” Magda sounded very definite, so Charlie thought he’d better listen. “We have a lot going for us. We have this wonderful restaurant with fantastic dishes and the very pretty menus I designed. We have our energy and our determination. We have...” She trailed off.
“Oh God, we’re screwed.”
But Magda came back with more force than ever. “We have your cottage!” she said, slapping Charlie on the arm.
“My cottage?” Charlie asked, confused. “It’s a falling-down stone building on top of a cliff. I’m really not sure how it’s going to help us.”
“It’s a wasted asset,” Magda corrected him. “You could do it up, rent it out, or even sell it if you had to. My brothers run a building firm not too far away–I’m sure I can get them to do us a deal to help out with anything you can’t do yourself. Might give us the extra to keep going a bit longer.”
Charlie thought it might just give them both dry rot, but at this point he was willing to try anything. “Okay.”
* * * *
The cottage was even worse than he remembered.
Magda tugged at the rotten wood of the front door, and flakes of paint came away on her hand. “I see what you mean about nobody wanting it right now.”
Charlie wandered around to the side of the house, where the living room window had looked out over the sea and the cliffs. The glass had been smashed, and the wooden frames were falling out. He headed round to the front door. “This is a disastrous idea.”
“Let’s look inside.” Magda pulled the collapsing door outward, forcing it half off its hinges. “There’s got to be some redeeming features. Why else would you have bought it?”
“It wasn’t so bad then,” Charlie muttered, following her inside. Except, the truth was, it hadn’t been far off. It had always been a project, one he and Becky were going to undertake together. The sale of his London flat, a mortgage and a small business loan had enabled him to buy the restaurant and the flat above, and left enough over for a cottage no one else wanted anyway, and a small fund for doing it up. The fund was still mostly intact, tucked away in a savings account named “Dream Home.” He’d never had the heart to break into it. Besides, it wasn’t enough to save StarFish on its own.
The mid-morning sun, wan as it was, streamed through the broken lounge window, and Charlie looked around at the room that should have been his and Becky’s refuge from the world, the place they’d have spent their evenings together. Their lives together. Then he kicked the cracked tile surround of the bricked-up fireplace and told himself, Time to move on. Time to sell the place, get it off your back. It’s not like you don’t have enough to worry about without adding the potential for a roof to fall on your head.
But despite everything, he couldn’t quite bring himself to give up on the dream. It was like Magda and her determined search for true love–ever so unlikely, but part of him, just the same.
Magda had been exploring the other rooms, apparently including the bathroom, because she returned carrying a broken white tile with a blue wave running across it, which, upon Charlie’s look, she dropped into the fireplace. “You know, it’s not quite as bad as it looks.”
Charlie raised an eyebrow, but Magda went on. “Well, I’m no expert, but my brothers trained me well, and the walls look solid. I can’t speak for the roof, but it’s held this long. New windows, of course, and probably rewiring and...”
While Magda detailed the huge catalogue of work required, Charlie mentally drifted off to try to see the potential she saw. It wasn’t easy.
His eye was drawn again to the broken window and the rotten window frame, and all of a sudden he realized that beneath them was the remains of a window seat. He remembered that window seat. That window seat was one of the reasons he’d bought the cottage in the first place.
“I always wanted to restore the window seat,” he said, moving toward it. “It would be perfect in the afternoons, with the sun coming in...” A picture formed in his head of a woman sitting in the window seat, surrounded by cushions and cozy throws, drinking peppermint tea. He was so used to imagining Becky in the cottage, it took him a moment to recognize that the woman in his vision was Mia.
“I need to sell it,” Charlie said, turning away.
“But...” Magda sounded desperate. “But...”
“But if I do it up first, I can get more for it.” And that was the only reason. He could find the money–the dream house fund for a start. If Magda’s brothers helped out, even better. He could do it, sell it, and if business was still lousy, then he could sell
up and leave town, even if it meant renting in London again. He could do it.
“I know it’s crazy, but like you said, it’s structurally pretty sound, or it was three years ago when I bought it. If your brothers can help me with the fundamental stuff, I can do the rest myself...”
“I understand,” Magda said with a soft smile. “Like I said, it’s not as bad as it looks. And you’re not ready to give up yet.”
* * * *
The church hall was packed, which in itself was a cause for concern. Mia shifted in her seat and tried to remember the last time she’d seen the place so full. Never, she decided. Town meetings were generally something you heard about from other people–normally, the locals delegated April Havers to go and take notes. As head of the unofficial gossip tree, April could get the relevant information out–and organize any necessary picketing of the mayor’s office–within half an hour of the meeting finishing. The one or two meetings Mia had attended before had echoed off the walls of the almost empty hall. But not tonight. Word had gotten around: something big was afoot in Aberarian. And people were interested.
Charlie slipped into the seat next to her, and she smiled up at him, noticing in passing the white flakes in his hair. Plaster, she realized. Good God, what has the man been doing with his harpy ex?
“Excellent,” she said. “Now it’s two against the world.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a bit paranoid?” Charlie whispered back with a low chuckle. “Perhaps they’re all here to object to any plans to stick a casino in the middle of their beloved town.”
Mia raised her eyebrows. “Maybe. But do you really think they’re going to turn down an opportunity to save their own hides?”
Charlie shrugged. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe they’re all here for a serious debate about this year’s Fish Festival. It’s going to hell in a handbasket, I’ve heard.”
Mia sighed. “I just hate not knowing how this is going to go.”
Charlie gave her a look. “You’re not good at surprises, are you?”
Mayor Fielding stepped up onto the tiny stage, settled herself in behind the podium, and the room began to fall quiet.
