she didn’t know night from day, or anything at all. When she’d slowly emerged from a cocoon of grief and loss, the world had looked completely different.
‘Maisie?’
‘Sorry. You were saying? Greg’s illness made you re-evaluate your priorities.’
He smiled at her. It wasn’t like her to use language like that but she’d been reminded of what she’d written in her resignation letter to her line manager at the pub. She’d used cold and formal words then to describe the raw pain and anger she’d been feeling over her double loss.
‘Greg asked me if I was really happy running the Fingle; he told me to get out and see the world while I was young and fit. He told me he regretted staying so long in one place and now it was too late for him. He wished he’d taken his wife and kids to live in and experience other places when he’d been younger. I stayed on to help Judy but now I’ve decided to take a break and made my plans to see the world.’
‘So you came to Britain first?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any particular reason?’
He ran his fingertip over the table top, a smile creeping over his lips. ‘Ah, that’s simple. I am British.’
OK. He was full of surprises.
‘My parents emigrated from London when I was a baby so I think of myself as Aussie. I have dual citizenship and two passports, so there shouldn’t be any problem with my right to work. Crazy, really, when I’d never set foot in the motherland before last week.’
‘OK, but why Scilly? Why not Stratford, or Scotland or Yorkshire? Cornwall even?’
‘Because Greg’s great-grandparents on his mum’s side used to live on Scilly way back in the day. He was always going on about their heritage and vowing he’d come over and see it but he never made it. He made me promise I’d include it on my trip, so here I am.’
‘Wow. What were their names? Do you know? Many Scilly families have lived here for generations so some of their descendants are sure to have known Greg’s ancestors.’
His brow furrowed. ‘God. I can’t think. He never said, or if he did I wasn’t listening hard enough. The granddad’s first name might have been Rex … or Robert. Or was it Harry? Sorry, Greg just referred to him as “the old boy”. I didn’t take too much notice of the details and, to be honest, most of what he told me was while he was in a bad way at the end. He was confused and on a truckload of meds for the pain, but he made me promise I’d come over and see the UK and his roots.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Does Greg have family? They’ll be interested in what you’ve found here and that you’ve decided to stay.’
‘He has a wife – that’s Judy – and a couple of grown-up kids … Have you decided I should stay then, Maisie Samson?’
She hesitated just long enough to give him doubt. ‘I’m still making up my mind. Here, fill in this form while I make us a coffee. I’ll be back shortly.’
Leaving Patrick with a job application and a pen, Maisie escaped to the kitchen. She didn’t want a drink but she did want time to think about her decision. His story about Greg was plausible and actually very touching. She could check out the Fingle in seconds on the Internet and chat with Judy Warner and any other referees Patrick supplied. Again, Google would be her friend when cross-checking that the bars really were owned by Greg and Judy. She was used to hiring and firing and as long as Patrick’s story checked out, she should feel confident in taking him on. Except, he was different to any other employee. Or was that simply because she fancied him? If so, that was her own lookout. Eventually, she took two mugs of coffee back to the bistro. Patrick had finished writing and handed her the form.
While he sipped the coffee, Maisie scanned through it quickly.
‘It all looks OK. You haven’t murdered anyone, have you? You didn’t list any criminal convictions.’
He laughed. ‘I haven’t murdered anyone, but …’
The hairs on the back of Maisie’s neck stood on end. ‘But?’
‘I have been in prison.’
Maisie’s heart plunged. Here we go, she thought. Here we go.
‘In Australia?’
‘Yeah. I spent six months in a young offender’s place. I got drunk and vandalised a kids’ park in one of the suburbs. It wasn’t my first offence and I did a lot of damage. I was with some mates – at least I thought they were mates at the time – and the judge said I was the ringleader.’
‘And were you?’ she asked him, amazed her voice was so calm. Of course she’d interviewed applicants with a criminal record before, and taken on some over her years as a pub manager. She’d only regretted it once when one had taken advantage of her trust and stolen some cash from the till: the other ex-offenders had tended to work twice as hard once they’d been given the chance of a job.
‘Oh yes. I was the ringleader. I was angry at the whole world back then. I thought I owed nothing to anyone.’
‘Was there a reason for that?’
‘I’ve spent too long with social workers and shrinks to answer that quickly. I don’t know. They say it was because I lost my parents “at a vulnerable stage in my formative years”. I want to be honest with you from the start. I went off the rails when I was young. I went a bit wild, quit school, bummed around, got into all kinds of minor trouble, smoked some weed, tried some stronger stuff …’
‘I’m sorry. Your parents must have been young themselves.’
He shrugged. ‘Youngish, yeah … I don’t want to bore you with my family history. I got back on the straight and narrow, thanks to Greg and Judy’s help.’
‘They sound like good people. I’m sorry about your parents. I can’t imagine losing one of mine, let alone both at once …’ She was curious about what had happened but didn’t want to ask him directly. ‘What a terrible thing to deal with when you must have still been very young too,’ was all she dared to say, but Patrick seemed to want to carry on in the same open manner.
‘I was at boarding school when it happened. It was a light aircraft crash … they were travelling between the Outback and Adelaide where we were living at the time,’ he said, evenly, as if he was so used to saying it that by now it was like relating a story about someone else.
‘Who looked after you?’ said Maisie, deciding that as Patrick had already revealed some of the details himself he wouldn’t mind her asking.
‘I stayed at school in term time and in the holidays I went to a distant older cousin’s, although she packed me off to summer camps and the like, which suited us both. Soon as I was seventeen, I left and picked up a load of odd jobs and lived off the small trust fund Mum and Dad left when they died.’
‘What about your other relatives? Grandparents, aunties and uncles in Britain?’
‘At the time, one elderly grandfather in a nursing home. An auntie on Mum’s side who had four kids and had just remarried a man with twins. An uncle who has his own family and definitely
