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‘Its name plate was off,’ Monty replied, approaching Magnús by the fire. ‘Along with half the starboard gunwale where she hit the harbour wall. Lucky for her she didn’t go under a few feet farther out.’
He presented Magnús with his breakfast.
‘You and your brother hauled her boat in?’ Magnús asked him.
‘Yep. We were on the shore. We’d just that minute decided it was too rough for Tom to take the boat out when we heard the crack. She was trying to put in by the harbour steps and was blown right onto the wall. Luckily, she threw out her rope and Tom waded in to get it. By then, her cruiser was filling badly. It’ll be a long repair job, that. Hope for her sake it’s properly insured.’
Magnús took in the information in silence and within minutes Monty, Bella and Finan had left him to his thoughts. After smiling politely across the room at the exhausted parents and their grizzling baby, he lifted his knife and fork and listened to the weather warnings on the radio, interspersed with incongruously merry Christmas hits.
For a man used to porridge, strong coffee andskyrfor breakfast, the Siren’s Tail’s herby sausages, streaky smoked bacon, hash browns, huge field mushrooms cooked in butter, fluffy scrambled eggs and endless doorstop toast was a revelation. Monty’s speciality spicy baked beans were the biggest surprise. Odd, he thought, but so good. He ate every bite and enjoyed it with the appetite of a shipwrecked man realising he was still alive and put ashore on a bounteous island.
Every time he found himself asking why on earth he’d come to this curious place, Clove Lore seemed to provide answers in abundance. Sure, the weather was terrible, but he could add mermaids and amazing breakfasts to the best ice cream he’d ever tasted and access to his own book browser’s paradise as reasons to want to stay in England this Christmas.
