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“Unless a bus of seafood convention delegates breaks down on the Esplanade, I think we’ll probably be okay with Jenny.” Charlie gave up the pretense and pushed his chopping board away from him. “Why? Whatcha doing?”
“I’ve got a date with Kevin.” Magda started cleaning up around him in a way he assumed was instinctual. Charlie only knew that, if he couldn’t find something he was still using, it was probably in the dishwasher already. “I’ll be here for the lunches, anyway, so it’s only the evening.”
“That’s fine,” Charlie said, before thinking it through. “Hang on, won’t Kevin need to ask me for time off too?” He wondered where he’d been when this dating thing happened. There were only three of them in the restaurant, most days. He’d have thought he’d have noticed.
“No.” Magda drew the word out, as if to remind him he was rather slow. “Because Kevin already has Tuesday off. It’s on the rota. You said it was pointless him coming in, because there were no bookings, and you could manage the kitchen yourself for any walk-ins.”
Joe stuck his head around the door. “You two do realize that, if you’re both in here, there’s nobody up front?”
Charlie stepped away from the counter and let Magda in to finish wiping down the surface. “That’s right, Joe. But since there are now more people in this kitchen than make it into the restaurant most days, I’m not too concerned.”
“Things going well, huh?”
Charlie shrugged. “Meh. So, what’s up?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you.” Joe boosted himself up to sit on Charlie’s expensive, sanitized surfaces, and just smiled at Magda’s glare. “All day I’ve had people in–buying next to nothing, I might add–asking if I’ve heard about Mia’s dad and saying Becky’s back in town. Now, obviously, I’ve been telling them that if the she-devil was in town, my good friend Charlie would have told me immediately. Same if there was any news on Mia’s dad...”
“Yeah, um, mate...” Charlie trailed off with an apologetic wince.
Joe waved a hand. “Joking, Charles. No, I just figured if I got the gossip, I might get a few more people in, and some of them might actually buy something in appreciation.”
“Okay, then you can confirm Becky is, indeed, in town.”
“Unfortunately,” Magda put in. Charlie gave her a look. “What, would you have preferred ‘for her own nefarious means’?”
Charlie was beginning to regret filling Magda in on his history with Becky over a stiff drink after their lunch guests left.
Joe looked intrigued, but Charlie moved on. “Mia...” He shrugged. “Who knows. She got a letter from her dad this morning. Far as anyone knows, she hasn’t opened it.”
“That’s all anyone knows?” Joe sounded skeptical.
“Yup.” He glanced over at Magda. “On that subject, anyway. Did you hear about Magda’s date, though?”
Joe raised his eyebrows. “A date?”
Magda turned her glare on Charlie, but he carried on anyway. “With Kevin, on Tuesday night.” Magda rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t seem very excited about it, mind.”
“Kevin? Really?” Charlie assumed Joe was trying to give the impression that Magda was dating beneath her, but somehow managed to hit the ‘are you crazy?’ note instead.
Magda settled against the counter, hands resting on the stainless steel behind her. “I am going to tell you boys something about love,” she said, in the tone Charlie had come to recognize as her ‘trust me on this, I’m smarter than you’ voice.
“With love,” Magda said, her voice settling into a rhythm that made her accent all the stronger, “you do not settle. With love, you do not hide. With love, you must search everywhere, hunt and seek and keep your eyes open always. With love, you cannot make assumptions. You have to trust that the right person will find you, eventually, if you are willing to be found.”
“So dating Kevin,” Joe said, frowning. “That’s you not making assumptions, right?”
“It’s me still searching,” Magda corrected.
But Charlie wasn’t really listening. Instead, he was thinking about Becky. Maybe Magda was right. He shouldn’t make assumptions. Maybe this was love finding him, finally. He couldn’t know she’d leave again. Maybe this time she was here to stay. He’d adored her once, enough to leave his home and move to the middle of nowhere with her, enough to buy a crumbling cottage and intend to restore it. Enough to imagine their future together.
Didn’t that kind of love deserve a second chance?
Joe, however, didn’t look convinced. “Tell you what, mate. While Cupid’s young dream is off having romantic notions, how about you and me hit the pub after you close up?”
If he got any customers. Chances were, StarFish would be closed before ten. “Sounds like a plan.”
“Good,” Joe said with a grin. “Then you can fill me in on the two women in your life, and whether they’ve had a cat fight over you yet. Wouldn’t want to miss that.”
“Good night, Joe,” Charlie said meaningfully.
Joe jumped down from the counter and held open the doors to the restaurant. “Ah, the path of truth love and all that nonsense. I guess it can’t be hearts and flowers in Aberarian all the time.”
Charlie led Joe through the carefully laid wooden tables to the front desk. He really wasn’t in the mood to have this conversation again.
“This is the point where you pretend not to know what he means,” Magda prompted helpfully.
“He knows,” Joe said, folding his arms across his chest and leaning against the reception desk. “I’ll just pretend he asked.”
“Can I just pretend you answered?” Charlie asked.
“No.” Joe grinned at Magda, then turned back to Charlie and went into his usual speech. “Why, I mean Becky and Mia of course! Personally my vote’s on Mia. Everybody knows it’s only a matter of time. You two were made for each other!”
“I hate you,” Charlie said, without any real feeling. His attention had already been drawn away to the beautiful auburn-haired woman on the other side of the street.
Magda saw Becky too, because she pointed and said, “I know somebody who doesn’t seem to know it yet.”
Charlie ignored her, and Joe’s resulting chuckle. Because watching Becky, he could see in her walk the way she moved with him, the way she loved. And maybe Magda was right after all. Maybe he had to be open to love and let it find him again.
And if his head was telling him that was stupid, well, maybe it was time for him to listen to his heart for a change.
* * * *
The Grand Hotel was just how Becky had left it two years ago–old-fashioned, shabby, and smelling of overbrewed tea. Not exactly the Savoy.
Apart from anything else, she was still lugging her own bags across the lobby.
While Tony flirted with the world’s most unhelpful receptionist, Becky inspected the rack of local attractions leaflets, noting half of them were over a hundred miles away, and the others weren’t particularly attractive. A craft community in the old mill in Felinfach, a dance club for pensioners in some inn outside Coed-y-Capel. Nothing to exactly set the pulse racing. God, this community really needs me.
Up in her single-masquerading-as-a-double room, Becky settled on the lumpy mattress and dust-ridden coverlet and watched Tony pull out his mobile phone and check his messages. She knew from past experience Tony would treat her room as his own. The man had no sense of personal boundaries.
Eventually, he hung up on his answering machine, and Becky sprawled back a little on the bed, resting on her elbows and crossing her legs, waiting for him to notice.
Instead, he moved to the window to look out over bloody Aberarian.
“You know, Bex, I’ve been thinking.” He drummed his fingers on the windowsill. “Places like this are very insular. Very cliquey. You have to win over the influential people.”
“You think Ditsy was the wrong place to start?” Becky refrained from reminding him he’d been the one to say, ‘Let’s
start with your aunt. Better the devil we know.’
Tony shrugged. “I’m just not sure how much say she or Mia or Charlie, for that matter, have in what goes on here.”
Becky sat up. No point being seductive if he wasn’t even looking. “I think you’re wrong about Charlie. Yes, the A to Z shop is an anachronism, but StarFish is a modern business. Just the sort of thing we want to encourage.” She ignored the small part of her that said she just wanted an excuse to spend more time at StarFish under the guise of work. Of course, StarFish was her business, wasn’t it? She could spend as much time there as she wanted...
“I suppose it might be worth hanging onto Charlie.” Tony turned back from the window, and Becky tried to regain her previous pose without looking too obvious. “He needs us–or rather his restaurant does. I got the impression your aunt would rather let the shop decline into cobwebs. But Charlie... He’s young. He’s got to be ambitious.”
Not really, Becky wanted to say, but didn’t. The limit of Charlie’s ambition was probably the restaurant. He might be willing to fight for StarFish.
