AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s fine. Really.” Mia moved to the fireplace so she didn’t have to watch him watching her anymore. “So, Magda says you’re planning on selling this place?”
Charlie didn’t answer. Mia didn’t dwell too long on what that might mean. Instead, she kept talking, feeling the words bubble out of her like she had no control over them at all. “We used to come up here all the time when we were kids, you know? I always dreamt about owning this cottage one day. I was going to paint it white and blue with tiny wooden boats along the mantelpiece.” She ran her hand along the wall where a mantelpiece had once stood. “And I was going to spend my days lounging in the windowseat, reading and watching the waves outside.”
With a self-conscious smile, she turned to Charlie, only to find him still staring at her. “Anyway,” she went on, “I just wanted to stop by and say, don’t worry about last night, everything’s fine. And to set up a new time to talk about fundraising.”
Charlie dropped his measuring tape onto the sunken wood of the windowseat. “Do you want to do it now?”
“No, no.” Mia took a step back toward the door. “Actually, I’ve got some fliers to photocopy and hand out, so I’m off to the library.” She pulled the draft flier she’d drawn in the early hours of the morning out of her bag and waved it around, hoping he wouldn’t look at it too closely. She was definitely going to have to redo it before she made copies. She thought she might even have spelled festival wrong at one point. “I mean, they’re only for the locals, until we get a new name and a few more things sorted. More a call for help than anything else, really. But I’d better...”
Mia stepped backward again, almost to the front door now, wondering why she’d even come. For God’s sake, if a hand on her thigh could make her so insensible, heaven help them both if he ever kissed her.
Except he wouldn’t, Mia thought glumly, escaping down the cliff path and leaving Charlie confused in the cottage behind her. Because he was doing up Becky’s dream cottage, and he wasn’t planning on selling it. Which meant... Mia shook her head. She didn’t want to think about what that meant.
* * * *
After a long, frustrating and confusing day, Mia wasn’t particularly pleased to see Magda arrive at the A to Z shop just as she was closing up for the night. Then Magda held up a bottle of white wine, and Mia decided maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
“What can I do for you?” Mia asked, taking the wine from her hands.
“Provide glasses?” Magda replied, and shut the door behind her.
Mia laughed. “You’re a lot easier to please than most of the people I’ve spoken to today.” She led Magda through to the shop’s back room and pulled out the cloudy old wineglasses she suspected Ditsy might have stolen from the Crooked Fox a decade or two ago.
“Do this often?” Magda asked, watching Mia root around in the drawer for the corkscrew.
“Usually only when we’ve finished going over the books,” Mia said. “The numbers tend to get a bit swimmy if we start any earlier.”
“Very sensible.” Magda took the offered corkscrew and set about opening the bottle while Mia slumped into the chair opposite her at the table. “So, what was so terrible about your day?”
Mia swallowed down a groan. “I’ve been trying to get people on board for the Fish Festival. Starting with the shopkeepers.”
Magda gave her a sympathetic wince, and a full glass of wine. “Not keen?”
“I think Becky and Tony got to them first.” Mia sipped at her wine. It was the same stuff she’d been drinking with Charlie the night before. She put the glass down. “They all seem to think a casino will bring them more business.”
“Could be true,” Magda said, pushing the cork into the bottle neck. “But then, I wouldn’t have thought the people who come for the casino are the same sorts of people who’ll buy buckets and spades and novelty tea towels.”
“Well, Tony’s got them convinced they’ll buy something.” Mia sighed. “Of course, if it wasn’t me trying to talk them round...”
“They’d probably be just as difficult,” Magda said firmly. “This is their livelihoods at stake.”
“I suppose.” Mia picked up her glass again and just stared at it. “So, not that this isn’t lovely, but did you just come round here to drink wine?”
“Not entirely,” Magda admitted. She gave Mia a sharp look. “I would have suggested we do this at StarFish, but Charlie gets a guilty look every time I mention your name today.”
Mia decided not to answer the implied question there. “Do what, exactly?”
Magda pulled a notebook from her bag. “I’ve had some thoughts about the festival. I think we need a theme.”
“A theme?” Mia decided to drink the damn wine. “What sort of a theme?”
“Well, I was thinking, since the proceeds are going toward saving the cinema, it should be a film theme. Did you know the beach here was used as a set for a movie in 1949?”
Mia nodded. “Smuggler’s Rest. It was one of my dad’s favorites.” Her mind flashed briefly to the two letters sitting on the P shelf. “He loved anything to do with smugglers or A to Z Jones.”
“Maybe we could get a copy,” Magda suggested. “Walt could play it on a loop at the cinema on the day of the festival.”
“That’s...a great idea.” Mia reached for her own festival planning file, tucked away on the shelf. “What else?”
One hour and a bottle of wine later, they had two pages of ideas for the film theme, ranging from the truly excellent to the truly mediocre. Mia decided she’d figure out which was which when she’d had a little less to drink.
She sighed. “Of course, none of this is any good at all if we don’t get the town on board to help.”
Magda tipped the dregs of the wine into Mia’s glass. “A problem for tomorrow.”
“Actually, if you’ve got another bottle, I might have an answer to that too.” Ditsy stepped into the back room, her camel coat hanging over her shoulders. “I saw the light on in the shop,” she explained, and as she moved over to the table, Mia saw Jacques standing behind her.
Mia moved out of her chair to let her boss sit down. Jacques could find his own seat. “I think I’ve got another bottle in the fridge upstairs.”
Five minutes later, when the four of them were sat around the table with full wineglasses in front of them, Mia said, “So, Dits. What’s the great idea?”
Ditsy took in a deep breath. “Now, you’re not going to like this. But bear with me.”
It wasn’t the world’s greatest start, but Mia listened anyway.
Pulling a well-thumbed pack of index cards from her handbag, Ditsy said, “The trick to survival in this town is knowing more about other people than they know about you.”
She unwrapped the elastic band holding the cards together, and an awful sense of foreboding flooded through Mia.
“Between us, Jacques and I know more about the people of this town than they know about themselves. These cards hold everything we know. Every affair, every cheat, every lie, everything about everyone. You take that information, use it carefully, and I guarantee you’ll get anyone you need on board.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Except the vicar. I’m still working on him.”
“You want us to use gossip and secrets to make people help us?” Mia shuddered, remembering all the times people had thrown her own past in her face. Ditsy was right. She didn’t like it.
Beside her, Magda raised a hand. “Just to be clear…isn’t that blackmail?”
Ditsy’s face twisted. “Well, we’re not asking them for money, so…”
“That doesn’t make it all right,” Mia said. “Ditsy, we can’t do this.”
Across the table, Ditsy gave her a steady look, then pushed the cards towards her. “Just take them. In case.”
Mia stared at the cards for a long moment. Could she do it, if she needed to? To save Aberarian?
“I don’t want to do this,” she said. But she took the cards anyway.
/> * * * *
The Coliseum lights were on when Mia stopped by Wednesday evening, which she took as a good sign. Perhaps Walt was rallying, after all. She skipped up the steps into the foyer and paused at the unfamiliar sight of Susan Hamilton standing behind the box office, wearing a red and white striped apron.
“I don’t know how Walt does this all day,” Susan said, leaning against the counter. “You’re the first person I’ve seen since Jacques dropped off the mail at two.”
Mia shrugged. “He loves it here.”
“He used to.” Susan sighed and offered Mia a bucket of popcorn. “Shame to see it go to waste.”
“Is he here?” Mia asked. “I wanted to update him on the festival plans. Well, you too, I suppose,” she added, belatedly remembering that, as a committee member, Susan probably had more right to the update than her husband.
