Page 29 of Carry Me Home

I pick up a cloth and start wiping down the counter by the window. It doesn’t need it. My hands need to be busy.

‘I’m just saying,’ Tilly continues, needles resuming, ‘it’s nice to see you back. And it’s nice to see that dog of yours. And it’s nice to see Tom Darcy smiling again, which according to Dot he’s been doing since yesterday evening. Draw your own conclusions.’

‘I’m not drawing any conclusions.’

‘Suit yourself.’ She turns her attention to her knitting, and the conversation moves on to safer topics – the weather, the tourists, the ongoing drama of the parish council’s attempt to install new benches on the harbour front.

I let it wash over me and try not to think about Tom Darcy, standing outside a closed café, looking at fuchsias that weren’t his, eighteen times.

Maisie arrives at half three, still in her school uniform, bag dragging on the floor behind her, and Chips’s lead in her other hand. Since Reuben has been signed off childcaring duties, I have Maisie some afternoons after school, just like I used to before I shut the café temporarily.

Wait. Chips’s lead.

‘He was outside,’ she says, before I can ask. ‘Just sitting by the door. I think he wanted to come in but he couldn’t work the handle.’

‘He’s supposed to be inside. I put him in the garden for five minutes.’

‘He escaped.’

‘Clearly.’ I take the lead from her and Chips wags his tail, entirely unrepentant. ‘Thank you for catching him.’

‘I didn’t catch him. He came to me.’ She climbs onto a stool, her feet dangling a good six inches from the floor. ‘Dad said you were back. He said I shouldn’t bother you on your first day but I’m not bothering you, am I?’

‘You’re not bothering me.’

‘Good. Can I have a cinnamon bun?’

‘You can have a cinnamon bun.’

She eats it the way she always does – pulling it apart in layers, saving the gooey centre for last, giving her full attention to the task. Maisie does everything with full attention. She’s eight years old and already has the focus of a surgeon.

‘Isla says the baby is kicking,’ she tells me, through a mouthful of pastry.

‘That’s so exciting. How do you feel, becoming a big sister?’

‘I’m going to teach it things. Dad says I can’t teach it to climb trees until it’s at least two, but I think that’s too long to wait.’

‘Two seems reasonable. Babies are quite small.’

‘I was small and I learned to climb trees.’

‘How old were you?’

She considers this. ‘I don’t remember. But I was probably younger than two.’

I decide not to argue with this logic. ‘What else are you going to teach it?’

‘How to find crabs. How to skip stones. The names of all the boats in the harbour.’ She ticks them off on her fingers, sticky with cinnamon. ‘Isla says I can help choose the nursery colours. I said yellow because yellow is friendly. She said that was a good choice.’

‘Yellow is a very good choice.’

‘I know.’ She finishes the last of her cinnamon bun and licks her fingers with methodical thoroughness. ‘Dad says they’re calling it Peter if it’s a boy.’

The words land in my chest, soft and sharp at once. The same landing as yesterday, when Tom said I think Peter is a good name delicately.

‘I heard that too,’ I say. ‘I think it’s lovely.’

‘Were you sad? When Isla told you?’