‘Did you look into the teaching position at the school?’ The question was out before she had time to worry about whether he’d read too much into her query, think that she was more interested than she knew she should be.
‘Daniel passed on my number,’ he shrugged, ‘so it’s out of my hands unless they call me.’
Etna had done another circuit of the kitchen and the bakery with Joseph, both still admiring the newness as she talked about perhaps one day sprucing up the interior of the tea rooms, upgrading the kitchen units to some of these fancier ones the girls now had. She was particularly impressed with the corner cupboard and the way the shelves inside unfolded to provide a more efficient storage space.
‘You know,’ began Jade, ‘your dad has that look newcomers get when they come to the Cove.’
‘What look?’
‘Tourists often come in here and they get a certain twinkle in their eye when they talk about the village and everything it has to offer, like it’s a gem they’ve stumbled upon without realising they’d been looking for it.’
‘You can get all that from a look?’ he teased.
She shook her head. ‘You mark my words, he loves it here.’
‘Do you ever tell the tourists about the cove itself or keep that a local secret?’
‘It depends – if I really like the look of them I’ll whisper the secret in their ear, but otherwise, I don’t bother.’
Celeste was busy telling Etna and Joseph what the grand reopening day for the bakery would entail.
‘Do you need an extra pair of hands on the day?’ Linc jumped in.
‘You’ve only been free for, what, five minutes and already you’re at a loose end?’ Jade wondered.
‘Something like that. Honestly, put me to good use if you need to. I’m not due at the shack until later on because we’re still waiting for delivery of a skip.’
She didn’t want to think too much about the uses she could find for him, because none of them involved this place. ‘I think we’re all set but thank you, I appreciate knowing we can call on you if we need to.’
‘I can help you out right now, just say the word.’ He regarded the boxes, many of which hadn’t even been opened yet. ‘You look as though you’ve got a lot to do.’
‘Take him up on it!’ Celeste urged. ‘The more pairs of hands the better.’
‘I suppose you could unpack some of the remaining boxes for me,’ Jade relented. ‘Leave the items on the left of the sink and I can wash them. Then you could empty the dishwasher and put all the clean, dry items onto the benchtop in the middle. How does that sound?’
‘Happy to help.’ He sent a smile her way and one Jade had to admit she treasured, thrilled to be working alongside him for a while. And at least if he was here Celeste wouldn’t be able to grill her about what had been on her mind lately. She had to come clean soon, but she wasn’t looking forward to it at all. Because Celeste’s disapproval might just cast too much doubt in her mind.
By the time Linc set off for the waffle shack when Daniel texted to say the skip had been dropped off, Celeste looked like a pressure cooker that was begging to have its lid taken off. ‘Nice of him to help,’ she said but Jade knew the simple comment was likely a prelude to a deeper conversation.
Jade stacked the final box with the others, inside a larger one, dumped them all in the shed after she’d moved the tins of leftover paint shoved in there out of the way, and locked up the bakery for the night. The girls went back to the cottage for a well-earned cup of tea and, with the back door open to let the fresh air filter through the kitchen, the lounge, and creep upstairs to cool off their bedrooms, Jade leaned back against the kitchen chair she was sitting in. ‘I’m going to ache tomorrow.’
‘Me too, but it’ll be worth it.’ Celeste took a mouthful of tea. ‘Any regrets?’
‘None, you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You had me worried for a minute.’
Celeste tapped her fingers against the side of her mug, the ring on her right hand making the familiar sound it always did – a ting as the metal came into contact with the china. ‘I wasn’t just meaning regrets about taking on a business. I was wondering if you’d ever regretted leaving Dario behind.’
Jade had expected another comment about Linc, the man who lived locally for the time being, not about her ex who lived in another country. ‘You haven’t asked me about him in a long time. What’s brought this on?’
‘Because I know there’s something bothering you.’ She sat forwards in her chair. ‘You always said you and he made the best decision, that it wasn’t meant to be.’ She hesitated before admitting, ‘And I know you still carry a photograph of him in your bag.’
Jade didn’t fly into any accusations of snooping. Her sister had seen the photograph months ago when she went to find the business card passed to them by the manager at Aubrey House residential home. Jade had dropped it into her bag and forgotten to take it out; Celeste had gone to get it and pulled out the picture, one eyebrow hooked questioningly, and Jade hadn’t volunteered any information whatsoever. They hadn’t talked about it since.
‘Not anymore I don’t.’ She wasn’t going to let slip that actually it had been Linc finding the photograph that finally prompted her to put it away along with all her other travel memories as though it was nothing in particular, just part of the grand trip they’d done once upon a time – another sight she’d seen, another experience she’d had. When she’d left Italy Jade had thought that despite their joint decision not to make contact, Dario would be in touch. She’d checked her emails constantly just in case, she’d had to resist searching his name online too many times, and she hadn’t done very well with that at all; it was so easy nowadays to check up on someone. The last time she’d typed his name into the search bar she’d seen he’d done exactly what he’d stayed behind to do – run the family business. There’d been a local write-up about it, most of which Jade couldn’t fully understand with her limited grasp of the language, but she’d deciphered enough to know the article was an accolade. Dario was a success story; they were both masters of their own universes, as he’d once put it. Jade sometimes wondered whether Dario checked her name on the internet the way she’d done with him, or was it a girl thing? But his lack of contact, and, even more, the way Linc looked at her that day when they talked about the photograph, had at last made her realise how crazy she was to still be thinking about what might have been. And ever since she’d put the photograph away, her mind had cleared enough to focus on what her personal life could really be like without him in it. And she was OK with that. She was moving on, at long last.
