The Captain roared a delighted laugh to see her smiling and indulgently shaking her head at him.
As they walked down onto the sand he sang the rest of the tune.
The beach, washed clean like some strange new place by the flood waters, seemed prettier than it had ever been, though Mrs Crocombe didn’t say that out loud now. Instead she held James’s arm that little bit tighter and strolled bravely on letting him sing as the sun thought lazily about setting.
Chapter Twelve
After a while, Radia had enough of moving books about and went off to read to Aldous in her bedroom. The shelving party had fallen quiet and Joy was fighting the compulsive need she had to fill the silence. Maybe it was something to do with Monty working away diligently by her side, silent and absorbed.
‘What do you think of the refit, Jude?’ she called out, pleased she’d struck upon something innocuous and easy.
‘Much better, isn’t it?’ Jude replied from her spot by the till, where she was sorting a display of mega bestsellers. ‘It’s got the same feel it had when me and Elliot came on holiday here, only it’s fresher.’
Joy was drawn in. ‘You worked in the bookshop? As in, you were holiday renters?’
‘Yep,’ Jude told her. ‘We didn’t know each other when we arrived.’
‘And they were in love by the time they were supposed to leave,’ Izaak put in.
‘You made twenty quid out of that one, didn’t you Izaak?’ Jude said with a wink.
‘You were involved in the…the book?’ Joy said, checking Radia wasn’t peering round her door listening to the grown-ups.
‘Oh, we wereallin Mrs C.’s betting book,’ Jude told her.
‘A lot’s changed since then,’ Jowan said, steering the conversation back to safer territory, his eyes fixed on his poetry shelves.
He seemed to be faster than anyone else at getting stock filed away. At this rate he’d be on Yeats and the few Zs in no time. Joy supposed he’d had more practice than the rest of the helpers.
‘I think Radia’s room’s much nicer as a bedroom,’ Jude was saying, positioning some hardbacks on racks behind the till area so their covers faced outwards.
Jowan wasn’t finished yet. ‘It was our little private breakfast room when I ran the place alone with my… late wife.’ He said this like a man experimenting with a new way of thinking, now that he was married for a second time.
‘Luckily, there was the insurance money for fixing the place back up,’ Jude said. ‘So much of Clove Lore was resurrected with it.’
‘But the last little touches, they cost more,’ Jowan added.
‘Like my beehives,’ Leonid called from somewhere hidden in the stacks at the deepest point of the shop.
‘Andthe Siren’s suite refurbs,’ Monty added. ‘And the new paint job on theBounty; terrible scratched it was.’
‘Those little extras were all paid for by the residents’ emergency payments,’ Jowan informed Joy, and Jude hummed her agreement from behind the counter.
‘Emergency payments?’ Joy echoed. ‘Didn’t you say that’s what’s paying for my contract?’ Joy directed this over her shoulder at Jude, the person she’d corresponded with during the application process.
‘That’s the one,’ Jowan answered for her. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of envelopes that arrived after the flood, full of money and cheques. T’was the telly that did it, all them news reports.’
‘Minty went viral,’ Leonid called out, still unseen amongst the stacks, a smile in his voice, and this was met with a sharp laughing ‘Hah!’ from Izaak, now in the café and loudly tearing the plastic coverings off the units and machinery.
‘She did,’ Monty told Joy. ‘But it was Moira being airlifted by that helicopter that really brought the money in.’
‘Moira?’ came a little voice from the bedroom. Radia’s. She’d been listening this whole time.
Monty filled her and Joy in. ‘She’s one of the donkeys from the sanctuary. She got stuck in the mud and had to be rescued by the coastguard.’
‘And she weren’t the only one,’ said Jowan pensively. ‘So many lives would have been lost without the airlifts.’
‘God!’ was all Joy could manage. ‘That’s horrible.’
