involved in running a pub, he’d agreed to take sick leave. The pregnancy of Janice’s daughter-in-law in Switzerland had run into trouble about the same time that Isaac was brought in, so the couple flew off to move into Max’s spare room, Janice to help look after the other two children in the family and Tubb to rest for a few months. Lily had had a year and a half to get to know and like Tubb by then, to value the man who grumbled and griped a bit but loved his pub and the village. She’d seen the little acts of kindness behind his gruff exterior and been delighted for him when he’d found love with Janice. She missed him but phones and computers made it easy to keep in touch. She missed cheerful, unflappable Janice too.
Zinnia hugged Lily goodbye and allowed herself to be ushered off the premises, then Lily returned to the decorations. Swiftly, she hung baubles on the mini trees.
Isaac reappeared. ‘Vita should have been in by now but she’s just rung. Her husband’s been held up coming home to take over childcare so I’ll bottle up.’ Isaac began rearranging mixers as he restocked the shelves. ‘Kind of you – and your sister – to take on the decorations. I should have asked what usually happened.’
Lily paused in her clearing up, arms full of boxes and a roll of tape like a bracelet around her wrist. ‘Last year I did it with Janice.’
He gave one of his slow nods, dark eyes hard to read. ‘Should I pay you additional hours? What would Mr Tubb expect?’
Lily felt laughter bubbling. ‘He’s not big on paying additional hours,’ she admitted frankly. ‘A few things happen around here on a voluntary basis over the festive season, like the decorations, Christmas lunch and running the raffle. He pitches in himself so nobody minds.’
He raked his fingers through his hair and it fell back into the same gleaming layers. ‘But you have your own business too, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m an exhibition designer. But I like Christmas so putting up the trees and stuff was fun.’
‘OK, thanks.’ With customers and staff alike Isaac was warm, articulate and cheerful but his resting expression was often serious with hints of thoughtfulness. It was, as Zinnia had indicated, hot.
‘Um,’ she said. ‘Nobody calls him Mr Tubb, by the way. He’s just Tubb from the pub. Or you can call him Harrison, like Janice does. A few of the older customers call him Harry.’ When he merely produced another nod Lily edged through the counter flap to dump the boxes then wheeled the vacuum cleaner out of its nook ready to slurp up the threads of tinsel from the carpet. Seven minutes to opening time. Just right.
The bar was almost ready for the six o’clock session and Isaac could hear the chefs clattering in the kitchen as Lily returned from stowing the vacuum cleaner. He was still getting to know the staff but already had Lily down as one of the easiest to deal with: punctual, reliable and with a sunny nature, though that hadn’t stopped her standing up for herself with her sister, judging from the snatches of spirited discussion he’d overheard.
He made a mental note to find a way of acknowledging her giving up her time unasked. Or unasked by him, he corrected himself. Apparently Janice, who he didn’t know well as she’d been preparing to leave for Switzerland when he’d arrived, had felt comfortable casually suggesting Lily give up her time. Almost two weeks he’d been here but he felt like the new boy at school putting on a show of fitting in, covering up how hard he was trying to process the ways his life had changed in a few short months.
He went to the safe to gather up an armload of coin bags as Vita rushed in, apologising breathlessly as she dragged off her coat. He reassured her and made an adjustment to her hours worked, then went into the bar he considered dated with its open fire and dark wheelback chairs, signed into the till and began to count in the float as he had on innumerable other occasions in other jobs, latterly at Juno Lounge.
‘The Juno’, where he’d been licensee and leaseholder, had been an edge-of-the-city pub in Peterborough that hadn’t closed on weekday afternoons as The Three Fishes did. Opening for breakfast, it had gone through until closing time with extensions at weekends for the busy function room. As it had once been a chapel he’d kept some of its original pews, adding sofas, an eclectic collection of dining chairs and oversized glass light fittings hanging from the Victorian cast-iron beams with their ornate tracery. Its style was quirky, semi-industrial chic.
Had been, he reminded himself, feeling the familiar swell of unhappiness that, through pure bad luck, Juno Lounge was no more. The furnishings and equipment had been auctioned off. The red-brick building was ornamented with the brewery’s ‘lease available’ sign and awaiting a new leaseholder when it could be reopened in a few months’ time to bring it back to life with chattering diners and laughing drinkers as it had been …
… before it failed.
It was no comfort that he hadn’t been at fault. Once a venue had no customers, it had no value. Juno Lounge had limped then staggered and, as a leaseholder, Isaac’s work had been cut out to wind it up fast enough to hang on to some of the money he’d made in the preceding six years.
He hadn’t hung on to Hayley but he wasn’t sure why he’d expected it. Hayley wasn’t into failure. Kindly but unequivocally she’d ended their relationship and he’d made no attempt to change her mind. When you were in trouble you saw people’s true colours and he hadn’t cared for hers.
She’d actually been the one to hear through the grapevine that a fill-in manager was needed at The Three Fishes and, apart from irritation that it had been her who found the temporary job for him and that it was at such a brass-and-beams pub, Isaac had been filled with relief. It was good to have money coming in and refreshing to be back in the countryside. His dad had been a tenant farmer and Isaac had loved his childhood spent on the fenland farm half an hour north of here between Cambridge and Spalding.
‘What do you think?’ The voice jolted him from his thoughts and back into the cosily traditional bar of The Three Fishes, where, he realised, Lily Cortez was on the other side of the counter smiling, palms upturned in a gesture that welcomed him to admire the fruits of her labour.
He closed the till and joined her to gaze at the strings of coloured lanterns looped jauntily along the beam above the bar, reflecting in every glass in the rack below. Tinsel spiralled around the thick wooden posts and the bar-top Christmas trees twinkled with a rainbow of baubles and lights. Santa ornaments dragged their toy sacks along wooden beams towards silver stars and golden bells and a thick swag of greenery twisted with tinsel festooned the mantelpiece above the open fire.
‘Great,’ he said. Last year, Juno Lounge had been artistically decorated with silver twigs and golden wire with red origami stars but that had been his place. This wasn’t. When you went in somewhere as relief manager you kept everything as the publican wanted. The homely decorations exactly suited The Three Fishes. He gave her a smile. ‘Very jolly and welcoming. Thanks for all your efforts.’ Her eyes were a clear blue, he noticed, like the reflection of the sky in a lake he’d once camped beside with Hayley in New Zealand – if you could count living in an upscale motorhome camping. Hayley liked the outdoor life only if she could also look after her nails, skin and hair.
Lily’s smile flashed, making those eyes sparkle. ‘It was fun.’
‘Thank your sister too,’ he remembered to tack on, though the sister had done little but give Lily a hard time about something, from what he’d heard. The alarm on his phone pinged to inform him it was six o’clock and he sent one last glance around the bar. ‘Perfect timing. I’ll open the doors.’
Lily and Vita were on duty with Isaac that evening. They worked together well, chatting to punters,
