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Chapter Eighteen
Storm Nora Makes Land
‘Get yourself inside! Haven’t you heard the weather warnings?’ Mrs Crocombe called from the door of her ice-cream shop as Magnús stomped up the slope, his heart pounding and eyes wide in disbelief at what he’d just witnessed on the shore.
‘What?’ he stopped to shout back, even though they were only feet apart.
Mrs C.’s white hair was set in curlers, her frilled apron fluttering in the wind at the doorway. ‘Storm Nora! Upgraded from amber to red. Met office is telling folks to stay indoors out of the way of flying debris. It’s to last all day and night, they say.’
Magnús absorbed the information, but he only felt numb. What was this storm to him? What did it matter if this whole cursed island was blown inside out when Alex was down on the beach kissing someone else? She’d been reclaimed by her family and he’d been forgotten.
The urgency in Mrs.C.’s eyes stirred his conscience.
‘Will you be OK?’ he asked, just as the hanging baskets of winter pansies and trailing ivy on either side of the ice-cream parlour door blew horizontal. One basket unhooked itself and landed in a twiggy fuchsia bush two gardens Up-along.
‘It’s not myself I’m worried about,’ Mrs Crocombe returned. ‘There’s two hundred litres of ice cream in these freezers. If we have a power cut, that’s my winter stock spoiled.’
‘What can I do to help?’ he asked, but Mrs C. had pre-empted his offer.
‘Just get indoors, get your fire lighted and make it through this as best you can. That’s what I’m going to do,’ she told him, hiking her thumb at her living quarters above the shop.
Accepting this, he walked on, only for Mrs Crocombe to call out behind him in an afterthought, ‘Where’s the girl?’
‘Gone, I think,’ Magnús shouted over his shoulder as he marched into the little lane that led to the bookshop square.
Mrs Crocombe squinted in confusion before thinking better of running after him, instead forcing her door shut against the wind.
The big terracotta pot that had stood for years at the centre of the square with its raggedy palm tree had blown over. It now lay up against the bookshop steps and was badly cracked. Pink earthen shards, sweet-smelling wet compost and stringy roots were strewn everywhere. Magnús picked his way through them and into the shop which, he was amazed to find, he’d left unlocked, its door flapping open in the wind, the keys still in the lock inside.
‘Hallo?’ he called out after forcing the door closed behind him, finding himself breathless.
Nobody replied. He was alone again.
Like a robot, he cleared the plates and glasses from the hearth, trying not to look at the pile of rugs, jumpers and books they’d made into their nest last night.
The fire had burned out long ago and was now cold and ashy.
He washed up the mess in the café sink. Cutlery she’d held, cups her lips had touched – the detritus of what had been the most romantic, connected night of his life.
Images of the last few hours played through his mind. Had he and Alex not been on the same page? Had he imagined their connection was something bigger than it actually was? If so, how could he have got it so wrong? He’d been swept up in a dream once before and discovered he’d been fooling himself. Had he really done it again?
If Alex really had come to play – playing at running a café, playing at being a bookseller, playing at falling for him – she had been utterly convincing.
He had to look at the facts. She was gone. In spite of everything he’d believed last night, she hadn’t stuck around. Although, he had to remind himself, she hadn’t actually promised she would stay. They hadn’t made any promises whatsoever.
He tried to unpick every little thing she’d said, coming unstuck when he remembered her making fun of the way he didn’t laugh easily like British lads must. She’d mocked the calm way he spoke. That had been a clue, right there. He’d thought she was flirting, finding him adorable even, liking everything about him. Had she too found him cold and robotic, like Anna had?
He stooped to lift the jumper he’d given her to keep the cold, and the Yule Cat, at bay. When he’d put it into her hands he had meant for her to keep it and here it was, abandoned.
And yet, she’d seemed so genuine, so heartbroken and lost, like she too was desperately in need of a home and a harbour. She’d sung in the café like she was truly contented there and she’d told him that yesterday was the happiest she’d been in years. How could he have misunderstood all of that? He must be in worse shape than he’d realised. Perhaps he’d been so desperate to fix his bashed pride that he’d handed it over to anyone feigning interest in it.
Those men this morning – they’d looked so intent on reclaiming her, the same way Tom Bickleigh had looked when he’d hauled her in off the beach like he’d caught a real-life mermaid.
When he tried to replay the scene at the beach this morning it was hard not to wonder if Alex did this kind of thing all the time. Maybe it wasn’t the first time she’d bolted from home and had to be picked up and taken back. What kind of messed-up family drama had he got himself involved in?
The way she’d called out ‘Dad’ like that – it had set the doubt spiralling into distrust bordering on horror. He could still hear the tremor in her voice. You can’t fake emotion like that. Maybe he was her real dad. The way he’d hugged her had said as much. Was it all lies, about her parents being dead? Was she a fantasist and a liar?
‘Nei!’ he cried out in the empty shop while the wind whistled down the chimney and scattered white ash over the hearth stone. ‘I won’t believe that. She wasn’t lying about that. She couldn’t have been.’
