After a long while spent bobbing gently with the evening tide and sipping her milk until it was all gone, Radia cuddled into her blanket on the padded bench inside the cabin and, clutching Charley fox, fell asleep.
Joy and Monty stood over the sleeping girl and observed one another in the sea-silence. They were only a few hundred yards from shore but there were no sounds other than the slap of waves on wood and the creak and clank of the net machinery.
‘We should head back?’ Monty whispered.
‘Umm…’ Joy thought this over, looking around at their pretty backdrop.
He took this as a good sign, adding, ‘I mean, it’d be a shame when we haven’t caught a fish?’
‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘How would I explain to Rads that we just gave up?’
‘Don’t want to disappoint her,’ he said, brightening. ‘And I do happen to have quite a nice bit of supper here.’
He made his way to the stern where the rod was still dangling into the surf and pulled open the picnic box. Joy followed him to peer inside.
‘Bubbly?’ Her brows crumpled.
‘Yeah, is that OK? It was a present from Finan and Bella, my bosses.’
She glanced back to where Radia was sleeping, saying nothing.
‘You had a glass of wine last night,’ Monty pitched in. ‘So I just assumed?’
‘I barely drink,’ she told him. ‘It’s one of the many things you can’t really do when you’re parenting on your own. What if you have an emergency? What if you had to drive somewhere unexpectedly?’What if tonight’s the night Sean finally shows up at the door, she didn’t say. ‘Besides, I usually work when Radia’s playing or sleeping. Every spare second is work time. Last night I… I made an exception, I guess?’
‘That must be tough.’
‘It’s our life.’ The matter-of-factness broke down into weariness before her expression softened with the temptation. ‘Maybe just a tiny bit?’
Soon they were sharing theBounty’s back bench and were deep into their first glass of Cava and the picnic of cool-box bites.
‘Mmm, what’s this?’ Joy asked, her mouth watering at the first taste of the tiny savoury triangles topped with toasted sesame seeds from one of the little tubs.
‘That’s my scampi toast. Here, try the lemongrass and spicy orange dip with it.’
Joy did as he said.
‘So nice! You can really taste the lemongrass.’ Her eyes widened and she reached for another bite. ‘You are a seriously good cook. You know, it took me a while to work out you were a chef and not a fisherman?’
‘Hah, I guess I’m both, though my brother does the bulk of the fishing now I’m at the Siren’s Tail all the time.’
‘Where you get to make yummy stuff like this,’ she said, sensing he wasn’t all that happy about his situation.
‘I guess,’ Monty lifted a hand to the back of his neck. ‘I shouldn’t complain. I mean, I could live without cooking twenty fried breakfasts at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, or turning out another batch of steak and ale pies or yet another Sunday roast.’
‘The menu doesn’t do it for you?’
‘Not really. Bella and Finan know that pub-grub favourites sell, but I think I’m developing an aversion to the smell of bacon, honestly.’
Joy gasped in exaggerated shock. ‘Bacon is life,’ she told him seriously.
Those first few sips of the drink fizzing in her hand had turned her a little giddy, and that in turn re-awakened her guardedness. She turned her face away towards the bay. After a quiet moment she said, ‘Clove Lore really is beautiful.’
Monty’s gaze followed hers to the long sweep of harbour, with the ancient stonework of the Siren’s Tail perching half upon the sea wall and half upon the craggy rocks jutting out into the Atlantic.
From out here, the white cottages with their frothy red and pink window boxes and balcony planters looked indistinct and soft, like an Impressionist painting.
As they stared, the Victorian lamps – that had once been the talk of the coast when they were installed at the end of the nineteenth century – flickered into luminescence one at a time from the top of the slope all the way down to the bottom, some of them obscured by the twist in the cobbled path.
