He nods. ‘Just got off the phone with her. Would you be happy, sticking around for a while, living with me – if we can find a place you like, that is?’
Yes, my brain screams.Yes, yes, yes!‘What would Ido?’ I say, ever the stubborn one.
‘Whatever you wanted. Whatever makes you happy. And I promise I’ll take care of you, and I’ll make you as happy as I can.’
‘We’d take care of each other,’ I say, and his hopeful, pleading expression melts away into relief, and I reach up to him once more, kissing him as though we don’t, in fact, have all the time in the world.
Chapter Thirty-One
Saturday, 27thNovember
Clove Lore is busier tonight than it ever was in the summer months. Everyone’s out on the beach and harbour wall, waiting for Jowan’s announcement.
The moon shines down on the crowds and the speakers crackle and buzz. There’s woodsmoke from the cottages’ chimneys in the air and the coldest of winds coming in off the still, black sea.
Every window at the Siren blazes with light and someone’s calling out from a smoky brazier down on the beach, ‘roasted chez’nuts, roasted chez’nuts’, and if this is what the rest of winter in Clove Lore is going to be like, I never, ever want to leave.
Elliot muscles back through the crowds towards me carrying two steamy mugs of mulled cider.
‘Sorry about that, the queue was a mile long. Nothing happening yet?’
‘Any second now.’ I take the cup from him, as well as a kiss, and I smile into his eyes.
‘What is it?’ he laughs. He’s wearing a puffy outdoorsy jacket over his zipped-up hoodie, scarf and beanie and I’m finding the fact he’s wearing fuzzy black gloves too adorable for words.
‘I don’t know. Nothing really. I’m just happy, that’s all.’
‘Good. Me too.’ He pulls me close, and I lean into his warmth, looking around the harbour, sipping the spicy, sweet booze.
There are two donkeys in knitted jumpers down on the shingle with pannier baskets over their backs collecting money for their stabling. Elliot told me recently that they’re struggling for money this year so he and Anjali had waived all their veterinary fees for the foreseeable future to help them out.
He was worried the court case might have hardened him but if anything it’s made him softer. Even if things with his parents aren’t perfect right now, he seems contented with life.
I’m hopeful his mum and dad will, in time, be able to apologise and things can get back on track. Right now they’re still not taking his calls. He thinks they’ll come around, it’s just they’re not the sort to admit their failings. I’ll look forward to meeting them whenever they want to come see us here.
I give Elliot a squeeze and glance up at him drinking his cider. He’s smiling and staring out over the scene. He’s valued and loved here by the community already and he’s very popular at the practice with the clients, and that means a lot to him, I know. His college did offer him his old position once again, but he wasn’t inclined to take it.
There are children with sparklers down by the boats on the shore, and I can hear Finan from the Siren, playing a guitar and Bella singing through the open door of the pub, and there’s someone else shaking some sort of jangly stick instrument that looksverylocal, like it’s made of bottle tops stuck to a branch, down on the beach. I smile at the sound. I’ve learned it’s best not to question Clove Lore traditions. You just have to go with it.
Not that we’retechnicallyClove Loreans. Our little house is way out along the main road, but still it’s in a nice green spot, with our garden full of bird-feeding stations, natural little hidey holes for hedgehogs, piles of logs for the beetles and bees and a little bench just for us. Elliot calls it our Garden of Eden.
I can’t wait for Mum and Dad, Daniel and Ekon to come and see it at our house-warming party slash Christmas day festivities next month. Gran’s looking forward to it too; she says she’s counting down the days until then, not that she’s been lonely. In fact, she’s bringing Avi with her, the poker-playing silver fox who lives three doors down from her apartment in the east wing.
Mum sent me the local paper last week and the front-page story was about a stealth Christmas yarn-bombing campaign that transformed Marygreen’s High Street. Every single shop doorway, railing and lamp post was decked out in crocheted holly and mistletoe. The report was accompanied by a picture of an overstuffed chunky-knit robin perched on top of the post box with a note in its beak – something about reclaiming the town from greedy developers and resisting the march of capitalism.
Nobody knows where the woolly décor came from. It appeared overnight and images from the only CCTV camera that could have identified the culprits had been obscured by what the investigating officer believed to be a thick layer of Brylcreem.
In a side column on page two I noticed a report on the mystery of a stolen mini bus belonging to New Start Village which had been safely returned to its parking space only three hours after it was reported missing shortly after midnight on the twentieth of November. Gran’s been characteristically tight-lipped about the whole topic, only chuckling secretively when I asked her if she knows anything about it. New Start Developers better beware; they have no idea they’ve a secret anarchist living in their midst.
Gran’s not the only one who’s been keeping busy.
It was a bit of a scramble to get the forms filled in back in August, and then there was the interview over in Exeter, but now that my Master’s course in book conservation has started, I’m loving it. I spent my thirtieth birthday on a class trip to the British Library to see theBeowulfmanuscript (which was mind-blowing, by the way) and in January we’re all off to the Gutenberg Museum too. It’s in Germany, so you see, my new passportisgoing to get put to good use after all and I’ll be taking to the skies for the first time in my life.
There’s six of us on the course, a happy band of book nerds pursuing our love of print into postgraduate life, learning all about papermaking, printing, bookbinding and repair. Turns out I’m a dab hand at a saddle stitch through paper and Japanese bookbinding is my forte. Two of the group, Vita and Leo, are already firm friends to me and Elliot and they come round for drinks some weekends when Elliot isn’t working, and there’s always someone from the group ready at a moment’s notice for a study session via FaceTime that invariably starts with good intentions and cursory glances over our textbooks before we end up enthusing about the latest paperbacks we’re reading.
Anjali calls around too and she and Elliot talk shop while the three of us cook and drink wine in our cosy kitchen. Our oven’s big enough to bake multiple batches of gingerbread cookies and scones three times a week, enough to keep Minty’s estate tea room in yummy bakes and to keep me in pocket. That’s my new job, you see? So, yeah, I am living a life of my own, with zero distractions to throw me off course. It’s moreJude the AwesomethanJude the Obscurethese days.
‘Friends and guests, welcome to the Clove Lore Christmas Lights switch on,’ Jowan’s voice booms out over the harbour. He’s standing on a scaffold wearing a Santa hat and Aldous’s fuzzy head is peeking out the collar of his buttoned-up coat. They’re both enjoying a new lease of life now Aldous has moved into the B&B with his master. His brush with doggy death in August forced him to act more like a pet than a wild cheddar-munching monster and has turned things round for him. Jowan, Elliot and I walk him on his lead on Sunday afternoons all the way to the Siren for lunch with the Bickleigh brothers and whoever else happens to be in the bar that day, and not one of us will order the cheese ploughman’s or chicken soup out of respect for the little mutt’s feelings.
