‘We should have made him something to eat,’ said Annie, pulling her cardigan closed across her body and coming back into the warmth of the shop. ‘You scared him away.’
‘You’re the one who told me to poke him,’ Harri complained, shutting the door once more. He looked at their empty, slightly dishevelled shop.
Annie replacedThe Young Man’sValentine Writerback on the display table where it belonged. She wondered if the old man had read any of it before he nodded off. He’d been so deeply asleep, like he belonged in that armchair.
‘What now?’ Harri was saying.
Annie looked around. ‘Five-minute fix-her-up?’
Harri smiled. ‘What’s that?’
‘I did it at the library. Five minutes, reshelve as much as you can.’
‘Then we call it a day?’ Harri seemed to like this idea.
They’d only just set about tidying when the door jangled open. Annie plastered on a smile before turning to welcome the visitor. Only, it wasn’t a customer. It was Mrs Crocombe, and she had her notebook open in her hands and a very determined look in her eyes.
Chapter Seven
Mrs Crocombe Being a Menace
‘So, what do you say?’ Mrs Crocombe tipped her head and blinked innocently.
‘Blind dates?’ Harri asked, incredulous.
‘Double dates,’ the old menace confirmed.
‘And you’ve already asked this Anjali and… who was the other one?’
‘Kit,’ Annie said.
She’d obviously absorbed the details of the matchmaking plan better than he had, including the bit where Mrs Crocombe had unflinchingly announced that Anjali, Harri’s date, ‘is a vet and a She’ and ‘Kit’s a chef and a They’ and she’d wanted to know in a very direct way whether any of that was going to be a problem. Annie had shaken her head, untroubled.
Harri was less inclined to be set up with a stranger, even if she did love animals and is a ‘lovely girl, from one of the best families on the promontory’, whatever that was supposed to mean.
‘I’m not really dating, at the moment,’ Harri said as firmly as he could under Mrs C.’s wily grey-eyed gaze.
‘One date can’t hurt. Not when Anjali’s been on my list for five years and said no to absolutely all my suggestions so far, but she said yes to you.’
‘She did?’ Harri wished he was above manipulation like this, but his heart had lifted a little in spite of himself.
‘It’s just dinner at the pub,’ Annie said.
Of course she was up for meeting two random locals for a meal. She was the dictionary definition of an extrovert. Harri could be found indexed under ‘homey, bordering on antisocial’.
‘Go on, I’ll be with you the whole time,’ Annie cajoled. ‘And you did say you were dying for some fish and chips and a cider.’
‘Best cider in the county ’ere,’ Mrs C. jumped in with a conspiratorial wink thrown at Annie.
‘You’re not going to hear the wordno, are you?’ Harri sighed, letting his shoulders drop.
Annie leaned closer to Harri’s ear with a gritted-teeth smile, hissing, ‘If we say yes now, the villagers will place their bets and we can get on with our vacation in peace.’
All it took was a nod of Harri’s head and Mrs Crocombe slashed a pencil line under their names and hobbled right out the door, delighted with herself. ‘Tomorrow, six-thirty at the Siren, table by the fire, booked in the name of Crocombe,’ she said as she went.
Harri fixed Annie with a firm look. She only chuckled and set about her five-minute fix-her-up.
Harri, however, couldn’t settle for the rest of the evening. Not even as Annie cooked and served up his favourite soft-shell tacos, using up the dregs of the red wine from their first evening here in the beef and black bean filling.
