But then there was the spectre of Sean lurking, not to mention the fact that moving home would put them a few underground stops away from her parents’ place. Her stomach turned queasy at it all.
Another message notification appeared on the screen. Joy didn’t have to open it to see it was from Patti. This really was unusual. A string of messages over the course of a few days. What did it all mean? Were they suddenly getting back on track, the way they used to be, back when they talked every day? The message said, ‘Love it!’
Squinting in confusion, Joy opened their old message thread to see someone had sent Patti the photograph of all the shelvers at the party. Someone had been mucking about with her phone. Someone small and wily who was stirring on the bed next to her.
‘Morning, Rads. Did you send Auntie Patti this picture?’
Joy turned the phone to show her the screen where Jowan was smiling in front of the shop counter, his chest swelled in pride and his arm around Jude, who wasn’t looking at the camera but scratching at Aldous’s head peeking out of Jowan’s jacket. Izaak and Leonid were at the back hugging, their heads tipped together, and – shoved to the front and looking like a deer in the headlights – stood Joy with Radia protectively pulled against her side. On the edge of the shot was Monty, caught looking right at Joy, a serious wrinkle of what looked like worry over his brow.
‘Did she like it?’ Radia asked sleepily.
Joy only sighed and ran her hand over Radia’s hair, as dark and sleek as her own.
‘She says she did. Listen, Rads, I really have to do the website and security cams today so we’ll need to stay in. How about we go food shopping up at the visitor centre first and then I make us some breakfast?’
Radia liked that idea. ‘How many scones do we have left?’ she asked.
‘Umm, twelve, I think. Why?’
‘We’ll need those for the customers, in the café,’ she told her, scratching absently at her ear.
‘Rads, you think we can run a café while I’m working?’
‘And the bookshop.’
‘Pfft!That’s just not possible, Radia. I’m only one mummy.’
‘We need a helper?’
‘Yes, we’d need a helper. Come on, let’s get dressed. You must be starving.’
Radia didn’t forget her mum’s words on their walk up the slope to the visitor centre, or while they browsed the fudge concession, peeked briefly inside Astral Breeks, the surf-shack clothes shop, dawdled outside the candle-making and silk-printing studio with the pottery wheel in the window, or all the way up to the little convenience store where the locals bought their bread and newspapers, and Clove Lore’s holidaymakers winced at the prices of literally everything else. Radia was on the lookout for a helper.
‘They said they werevolun-teer-ing,’ Radia pronounced her new word carefully as the electronic counter on the sliding doors beep-beeped them into the convenience store. ‘All the shelf-party people? They said they’d come back to help us. Any time.’
‘Hmm?’ Joy was cautious not to encourage this line of thinking, but Radia was right. Jowan had said as much as he zipped Aldous inside his coat for the walk home the other night.Just give me a shout, he’d said. But Jowan was nowhere to be seen now, and hopefully he’d keep away too, and all the rest of them.
While Joy distractedly loaded eggs into the wheelie basket, Radia spotted a helper. He was buying cigarettes at the counter and there was someone with him, a woman.
‘Montague!’ Radia shouted, tugging her mum’s arm. ‘Look! He’ll help us.’
Joy grabbed Radia’s hand, holding her by her side. A shrinking instinct told her not to approach him. He was dressed in yellow fisherman’s gaiters held up by shoulder straps with a black T-shirt underneath, and he had his arm around a woman who was saying something in his ear. The couple laughed, and then he brought his mouth down to hers.
‘Monty?’ Radia called again from Joy’s hiding place behind the egg boxes and baked beans, meaning she had no choice but to drop Radia’s hand and emerge as casually as she could, all the while wanting to slip away entirely so she could pick apart why she’d felt the ground shake beneath her when she’d seen them kiss – and so she could kick herself for believing Monty was single. He’d lied.
Why on earthwouldhe be single? He was handsome in a rugged, seasidey sort of way, and his eyes were so dark and soft. Of course he had a girlfriend. Or a wife? Her hand wanted to travel to her chest where something was constricting painfully.
Radia was already on her way over to start firing questions at him, so Joy had no choice but to join her and try not to act too oddly in case he could somehow tell what she was thinking.
The man was grinning down at Radia and making introductions by the time Joy joined them, and although she didn’t know it, the most curious thing was about to happen: Joy was about to learn that she seriously liked Monty Bickleigh.
‘Oh, I’m not Monty,’ he was telling the little girl, and all the while speaking with Monty’s full lips and smiling with Monty’s sparkling, good-humoured eyes. ‘I’m his twin, Tom. Folk are always getting us confused.’
‘Twin brother!’ Radia said with wonder in her voice. ‘You’retwoof you?’
‘S’right,’ Tom said, kindly, even though he must have had this sort of thing all his life. ‘And this is Lou.’
The woman was saying ‘hi’ and lowering her chin, looking right at Joy, silently prompting her name, but all Joy could do was gape at them in a strange fog of relief and amazement.
