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“Water!” Dad said brightly, running the kitchen tap. “Huzzah!”
Laughing, I tested the bathroom taps. “Here, too! Gross water, but water all the same.”
“All right,” he said. “The good news is that with a deep clean, this space will be liveable for you.”
“It sounds like you’re tired of living with your grown-arse daughter.”
Dad held his hands up. “I said nothing.”
Laughing, I looked around the open plan space. “It feels like the perfect size, honestly.”
“Yes. And you’ve got the door to the main part of the bed and breakfast there. That’s the one we couldn’t open before,” he pointed out. “And that one at the other end is through to the office for easy access.”
I bobbed my head. “So… start here?”
“No. Let’s start with the horror movie prop that is the badger in the kitchen,thenwe’ll start in here.” He smiled. “This won’t be as bad as you think, Lottie.”
Now who was the optimistic, naïve one?
I eyed him wearily. “Let’s hope those aren’t some of your famous last words, Dad.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Awake wasn’t the kind of party I wanted to go to.
Actually, most parties weren’t the kind of party I wanted to go to. I was more of a slumber party kind of girl—pyjamas, pizza, and falling asleep halfway through whatever movie was on the television.
But wakes were just… Well, they were morbid, weren’t they? Who wanted to party after burying someone?
I understood the point of them, and of course it wasn’t like I was attending a rave complete with glow sticks and sambuca shots. It was a casual get together at the local pub to celebrate Grandpa’s life. To share memories and happy moments with others who loved him so he’d live on in spirit, but it was hard.
I didn’t know any of these people anymore.
And I was sure that I wasn’t the teenager they all remembered—especially the locals who were closer in age to my parents.
Mum’s drugged sleep earlier had done her the world of good. She’d slept for six hours before waking up like a new person, and while she claimed it was knowing that Grandpa was at peace, me and Dad were pretty sure it was the sleeping pills.
Not that him being buried and the whole ‘saying goodbye’ process had nothing to do with it. Funerals were final, like the first step of closure on the path of grief, but you know.
It was the sleeping pills.
The wake so far had been an endless stream of reintroductions and reminiscing, as I’d expected. Mum was sitting at the bar with Robert Burton, who owned the butcher shop on the high street and ran it with his two adult sons, Brandon and Tyler. Brandon was about my age while Tyler was younger, and Brandon and I had been friends back when we were teens making terrible decisions like getting drunk underage and going rock pooling in the dark.
Ten out of ten, do not recommend.
I’d never managed to get rid of that scar on my left shin.
Louis and Elizabeth Fletcher, who ran Home Cookin’, a cosy restaurant not far from the butchers, were also there. I remembered them being slightly older than Mum and Dad, but they’d always been friends, and they’d offered to cater the wake at cost price.
I’d been picking and pinching at their delicious food all evening, and I was definitely going there for lunch this week, that was for sure.
There were so many other people here. Heather and Kate Cooper ran the coffee shop and had moved to Fox Point several years ago with Kelsey, Kate’s teen daughter from her first marriage. Apparently, Grandpa used to stop in for a cup of tea every morning until he’d moved away, and they missed him terribly and wanted to pay their respects. They’d even offered us all a free drink on the house the first time we stopped by.
Yet another place I planned on visiting this week.
I’d need an itinerary for Lottie’s Fox Point Tour soon enough.
Laura and Richard Holmes owned the café at the other end of the high street, and they were here with their daughter, Hayley, and her fiancé, Stephen. Melissa Jenkins who owned the record store had arrived—apparently her sons were on holiday in Spain—along with the Edwards family who had run the garage for as long as I could remember.
