Sliding the amended order sheet across the counter, Charlie watched Joe’s eyebrows grow closer to his receding hairline as he read. ‘Business not much better for you either, then.’
‘It’ll pick up in the summer,’ Charlie said with a confidence he didn’t really feel. He wasn’t sure StarFish would make it to another winter if it didn’t.
‘It’s already June.’
‘When the school holidays start,’ Charlie clarified. That gave them another month to hope.
Joe tossed the order form into an empty filing tray. ‘You know what we need? A night off. A night of the blissful forgetfulness only supplied by drinking too many pints of ale at the Crooked Fox. Tonight. You in?’
‘Can’t,’ Charlie said with a shake of the head. ‘Mia’s coming over for a tasting session for the new menu. Then we’re heading over to the Coliseum.’
This prompted an impressive eyebrow waggle from Joe. ‘A date? A real one? A really real date?’
‘No. A standing arrangement where Mia tells me which of my dishes suck and what has too much chilli for the locals, then we go to the cinema to see something in black and white, pretty much every Saturday. You know this.’ Everyone knew this. Everyone knew that he and Mia were just friends. Mia made very sure of that.
‘Yeah, yeah. I know this.’ Joe leaned farther across the counter. ‘What I don’t know and what, to be honest, is the only interesting thing to speculate about here, is when you’re going to finally just snog the hell out of her.’
‘Joe…’
‘Hell, bring her to the pub tonight. Couple of rum and Cokes and she’ll be begging you to kiss her.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Charlie said. ‘We’re friends.’
‘Only because you think she’s too screwed up for love. What with her dad, then Dan, and whatever the guy in London was called driving her crazy.’ Joe rolled his eyes as he said it. ‘And because you’re too hung up on Becky the Bitch.’
‘She’s not crazy. She’s just…’ Charlie searched for the right words to describe Mia. Beautiful, sensitive, insecure, utterly uninterested in him… ‘Wary. Wouldn’t you be?’
‘If it were me, I’d have emigrated to Australia. Only place people might not still be talking about what George Page did. Not to mention the whole Dan debacle.’
‘Besides, I don’t want another relationship. They only end badly.’ He’d much rather have Mia as his friend than as someone he’d once loved and now couldn’t bear to look at because she’d ripped his heart out and fed it to the fishes.
‘That we agree on, my friend,’ Joe said, nodding sagely. ‘Next week for the pub, then?’
‘It’s a date,’ Charlie promised with a grin.
Amazingly, Charlie thought while walking home along the front, he did feel better. Enough that he could go back into his kitchen and not want to attack the freezer with a chef’s knife. Maybe it would be okay. There’d be walk-ins on Saturday night. And it wasn’t even July yet. Things would pick up when the sun arrived, when the holidays started.
He just had to be patient, that was all.
Reaching the corner of Water Street, where the town met the coastline, he saw the StarFish sign hanging a few feet away. The scent of the sea and the sound of distant waves rolled up from the beach, and he remembered exactly why this had been the perfect place for his dream restaurant, with his dream girl. The place to raise a family and grow old.
Well. He still had the restaurant, anyway.
And maybe Mia was right. Maybe he would make it back to London one day. Even if he wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing. Aberarian, as Mia often told him, had many charms.
He paused at StarFish’s door as he saw Mia farther up the street, and it took him a full thirty seconds to realise that not only was she not alone, he also didn’t know the man she was with. Or why she was holding his arm. Or what he’d said to make her laugh so openly, her face shining and bright with the sort of relaxed joy Charlie had never yet managed to get her to show.
Charlie blinked. Mia hadn’t noticed him at all, and was already leading her friend farther along Main Street, towards the tiny rundown cinema. She’d tell him all about it later, he was sure. There was probably a perfectly innocent explanation.
Except it didn’t need to be innocent, did it? Because he had absolutely no claim on her anyway.
Depressed once again, Charlie pushed open the door and retreated into the dream restaurant that had become a nightmare.
Becky waited until she saw Tony and Mia take the turning down Water Street, towards the Esplanade, before she ducked out of the newsagent’s doorway and over to the A to Z shop next door.
It had been a good idea, having Tony lure Mia away first; this was a family matter, after all. And Mia, for all they’d been friends as kids, before the thing with her dad, was never going to be family. She’d wondered how he’d managed it, but not for very long. Tony always seemed to manage to get what he wanted one way or another, often leaving the other party thinking it had been their idea in the first place. It was one of the reasons Champion Casinos were such a success.
The other reason, of course, was that Becky got what she wanted pretty much all the time, too. When they worked together, they were unstoppable.
The thought made Becky smile. Aberarian was going to roll over and beg for them to save it.
It was a good feeling, knowing she was just one deal away from ruling her old hometown. She hadn’t been ready last time she’d come back. They hadn’t taken her seriously. But this time, they weren’t going to have a choice.
Becky had always known that she would come back to Aberarian one day. It had a strange pull on a person, this place. Even as a teenager, when she’d longed to escape to university, to London, to real life, she’d always known she’d return. When it was time. When she was ready to settle down, start a family, grow up – there had never been any doubt in her mind that Aberarian was where she would do it.
Three years ago, she’d thought it was time. She’d seen her future stretching out before her, Charlie at her side. But when Tony had contacted her with a new business idea, a chance for her to really make her mark… how could she say no? She was still young, she still had time. This was her chance to truly shine, before she settled down.
So she’d taken it. Who wouldn’t?
Well, apart from Charlie, of course. Guilt throbbed in her middle as she remembered his sleeping face, the morning she left. He’d loved her, enough to move to Aberarian for her. And, more importantly, he’d stayed. He was still waiting for her.
And she was ready at last.
Becky smiled, watching the A to Z shop sign creak in the wind. It might not be easy, but this was her chance to make everything right. She’d have her business, and she could
