Page 64 of Carry Me Home

‘Tom won it. At the village fete.’ I say it casually. It is casual. It’s a bear from a coconut shy. ‘Brynn didn’t want it, so he gave it to me. It’s become the café mascot. The tourists love it.’

‘Tom won you a bear.’ Cara says this slowly, looking at the bear, then at me, then back at the bear. Her expression doesn’t change but her eyes do – a flicker, a small recalculation, the kind of adjustment you make when a piece of information slots into a picture you’ve been assembling.

‘He won a bear,’ I correct. ‘And gave it to me. There’s a difference.’

‘Of course.’ She smiles. ‘It’s very sweet.’

I turn to the machine, grateful for the excuse. ‘Coffee?’

‘Please. Whatever you recommend.’

‘Tom said you’re a vet too? From university?’

‘Same year. We suffered through anatomy together. Bonded over shared trauma.’ She watches me work, chin propped on her hand – the same gesture I make, I realise, when I’m watching someone and thinking. ‘He’s very good, you know. Tom. One of the best in our year. Half our professors thought he’d go into research, but he always said he was going home.’

‘He loves Sea Salt Bay.’

‘He loves it here,’ Cara agrees, and the pause after here is so slight I might have imagined it. ‘It’s obvious, the way he talks about the village. The lifeboat. The practice. You.’

‘Me?’

‘You feature heavily.’ She says it lightly. Pleasantly. Like a weather report. ‘The café, the shortbread, the espresso machine he’s apparently always fixing. He once spent twenty minutes telling me about lavender simple syrup and I’m not sure he realised he was doing it.’

‘That’s very Tom. He gets fixated on details.’

‘He does. Very specific details. Very specific to this café.’ She picks up her coffee and takes a sip. ‘This is incredible, by the way.’

‘Thank you.’

‘He wasn’t wrong about the coffee.’ She sets the cup down. ‘He’s not wrong about much, is he?’

I don’t know what to do with this conversation. Every sentence Cara says is perfectly friendly and perfectly pleasant and sits on top of a second sentence I can almost hear but can’t quite catch. She’s not being unkind. She’s not even being competitive. She’s just – looking. At the café, at the bear, at me, at the place Tom talks about when he talks about home. She’s reading the room, and I have the unsettling feeling that she’s reading it more clearly than I am.

The door opens, saving me. Isla comes in with Maisie trailing behind, nose in a book, and Isla’s hand resting on the swell of her belly – properly showing now. She has that unmistakable pregnant glow mixed with the exhaustion of growing a human in a heatwave.

‘Nina, I need something cold,’ Isla says. ‘Iced. Frozen. Anything. This baby is cooking me from the inside.’

‘Iced latte coming up.’

Isla collapses onto the stool next to Cara. ‘Sorry, am I interrupting?’

‘Not at all. Isla, this is Cara – she’s visiting Tom. Cara, Isla. And Maisie, behind the book.’

‘Still here,’ Maisie says without looking up. ‘Still listening. Still judging.’

Cara’s expression shifts, gaze widening with recognition. ‘Isla Quinn?’

‘That’s me.’

‘I’ve seen all your films. The Sound of Water made me cry for three days. You are so talented.’ Cara has the decency to flush as she gushes.

‘Please continue,’ Isla says, flashing her Hollywood smile. ‘I’m enormous and sweating and I need the ego boost.’

‘You’re glowing.’

‘I’m melting. But thank you.’ Isla accepts her iced latte. ‘When’s the last time someone melted glamorously? Never. That’s when.’

Maisie turns a page. ‘Very Hollywood.’