be moved out of the way in anticipation of the rescue truck’s arrival.
She should be grateful that Bea was being so lenient, even if her appearance had made Oliver retreat so hastily that she could only offer a shouted ‘thank you’ as he hurried away. Stuart seemed to have stalked off to nurse his wounded pride, though she wasn’t about to check. She would be happy if she never saw him again.
In the quiet that followed, Charlie thought back to their final argument. She had found out from Andrew, one of Stuart’s friends, that her boyfriend had been cheating on her with Annalise, a sultry, dark-haired analyst who worked at the same bank as him in London. She hadn’t confronted him immediately. She hadn’t wanted to believe he’d been cheating.
She’d gone into Cheltenham and found a beautiful teapot shaped like a narwhal. In the midst of her worries, it had made her smile, so she’d bought it and taken it back to the flat. Stuart had told her it was hideous, and that she couldn’t have it out on display while he was there. She had flipped, and it had all come spilling out. He hadn’t seemed remotely sorry for betraying her, and he certainly hadn’t uttered the ‘s’ word. Stuart Morstein was the definition of unapologetic.
Charlie sighed. She felt weary all of a sudden. Maybe they were all right; Bea and her dad and Juliette. Some time away from it all would do her good. Forget the mistake, Hal had often said to her. Remember the lesson. Could that be what today’s disaster was telling her? Get away from it all, change your perspective. Don’t take on too much all at once.
She heard the beeps of the approaching tow truck, stood up as best she could on Gertie’s off-centre floor, and went to greet the poor person who was going to have to pull them out of the mud.
‘Oh goodness,’ Juliette squeaked down the phone once Charlie had recounted the whole sorry incident to her. ‘Please, please come. Stay for two weeks – four, six – whatever you want. We can go on boat tours and for fish and chips in Padstow, and take Marmite for long, character-building walks on the beach. You won’t regret it – Porthgolow is the perfect place. It’s so picturesque. And,’ she added, laughing, ‘it’s Cornwall, so, you know, full of tourists. You could even do a recce, see if it’s somewhere you think your café bus could work in the future.’
Charlie peered out of her bedroom window. It was her old room in her mum and dad’s house, but it had been turned into a guest bedroom, with yellow-flocked wallpaper and a peacock blue vanity stand. Outside, her dad was walking slowly round the garden, on the phone to someone, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Marmite trailed behind him, racing back on himself whenever he got too close to the smoke. Vince had only started smoking again since Hal had died, and she wondered if she could use her dog as a reason to guilt him into stopping again.
‘Char?’ Juliette prompted. ‘What do you think?’
‘The café bus was a disaster.’
‘You were bound to have teething problems. Besides, they shouldn’t do any kind of event on that field. It used to flood all the time. Gertie didn’t stand a chance.’
‘But she will in Porth-whatsit?’
‘Porthgolow. We have all sorts of fairs and shows in Cornwall, and the variety of food trucks I’ve seen beats the Cotswolds hands down. But I’ve never seen a bus, so you’d be unique.’
‘Gertie needs a lot of work. The stuff Clive did would have been OK for today if it hadn’t been for the whole sinking issue, but if it’s going to be a proper café bus, with tables and an oven and storage and a serving hatch, then it needs a full makeover.’
Charlie heard a chirrup down the phone and wondered whether it was Ray or Benton. She had only met the cats once – Ray a Siamese, Benton a white Persian – when she’d made the trip down to Juliette’s old house in Newquay the previous year. She wondered if they’d mind a Yorkipoo invading their space.
‘We can talk about Gertie when you’re here,’ Juliette said. ‘How feasible, and expensive, all this conversion business is. Come and have a holiday. You’ve dealt with so much recently, Char. Losing Hal …’
‘Losing my boyfriend and my uncle in quick succession, and being forced into a break by my boss because I’m too calamitous to be trusted?’
‘You’ve also gained a bus,’ Juliette added enthusiastically. ‘But it can’t be easy at the moment, and I’m not sure you’ve taken time to process it all. Come and dip your toes in our beautiful blue waters, soak up the salt and the spray. Rejuvenate, revitalize.’
‘Do a whole load of yoga?’ Charlie asked.
‘The benefits are incredible,’ Juliette pressed. ‘You’ve never given it a chance.’
‘I promise I will. This time.’
She heard Juliette’s sharp breath. ‘So you’re coming, then? Soon?’
Charlie watched a couple of starlings wheeling in the grey sky. ‘Yes,’ she said, her stomach lurching at the suddenness of her decision. ‘I’m coming. How does next week sound?’
She wasn’t sure if the noise was one of the cats, or Juliette squeaking with delight.
‘Next week sounds perfect. God, Charlie. I can’t wait to introduce you to my beautiful village. You’re going to fall in love with it, just like we have.’
Charlie hugged her mum and dad goodbye the following Monday morning. She was expecting an outpouring of emotion, but their smiles were warm and, she thought, a little on the smug side.
‘Goodbye, darling.’ She was swept into her mum’s perfumed embrace.
‘Take care, my girl,’ her dad said, squeezing her shoulders. ‘Of you and that dog and that bus. Are you sure you want to take it?’
Charlie turned to look at Hal’s bus. Her bus. She had not survived her mud bath unscathed, and looked as bad as she had before Clive had worked his magic, if not worse. There was some scratching along the bumper where the tow truck had got hold of her, and the makeshift serving area had come away from the wall. Everything was dishevelled, splattered with dirt or coffee stains, broken or dented.
Charlie had vowed that she would fix her up, and do it properly this time. She had decided, at the last minute, that she would take her down to Cornwall instead of her old Golf. Juliette had told her that she needed time away from everything to think, but how could she make any decisions when she was in Cornwall and the bus was here, in the garage? If she had Gertie with her, then they could give it a second run, somewhere with beachside car parks and market squares with firm, unyielding concrete. She was sure there would be somewhere in Juliette’s village where she could park a vintage bus.
‘I’m going to take her,’ she said confidently. ‘I know it’s a long drive, but we’ll stop on the way. And it’ll be worth it once we get there.’
‘All right then, treasure. Be safe.’
‘I will, Dad. And you look after yourselves. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.’
As Charlie put Marmite in his crate, then lifted herself into the driver’s seat, she wondered if her parents would be OK without her. Her dad was still so upset about Hal, and her mum did such a good job of appearing capable and brusque, she was worried they would circumnavigate their large house entirely separately, dealing with
