‘I’ll take that,’ she cut in, lifting the towel from his hands, drying the plates and stacking them neatly in the cupboard above the sink.
Jowan watched her as she worked. ‘Regret can eat a man from the inside out,’ he said softly. ‘So can longing.’
She wiped the crumbs from the countertop and rinsed out the sink, the water gurgling down the plughole.
‘There, spotless,’ she said, and they both looked around the kitchen. ‘Ready for the new booksellers.’ The words weren’t easy to hear once they were out. She knew she was at risk of crying again.
‘Jus’ say goodbye. Let him know it’s all right. Please?’
She couldn’t help dropping her head as the tears came.
‘Ah, come here, little one.’
Jowan held open his arms to her and she stepped inside so he could rock her like a dad would, shushing her like a child.
‘All will be well,’ he soothed. ‘Jus’ don’t leave here with regrets, is all. Leave here happy, knowing nothing was missed, no opportunity to do as your heart wants. You deserve that, at least.’
Joy let herself be held, gripping his jumper and feeling small. She didn’t deserve a thing, she told herself.
Selfishness and fearfulness had spoiled her for everyone she encountered. The idea of Monty suffering now, and not understanding what was going on becausehewasn’t damaged in the ways she was, caused her chest to burn with shame and sadness.
‘I’ll tell him we’re leaving,’ she told Jowan, wiping her hand across her nose but not letting him go.
She’d tell him too that none of this was his fault and that there wasn’t a thing to feel seasick about, and then she’d drag her cowardly heart and her little girl out of here, leaving Monty in peace.
Chapter Twenty-five
If she was going to do it, it had to be now. Leaving Radia with Jowan, promising she’d be half an hour at the absolute most, Joy made her way Down-along.
The morning’s drizzle had left the cobbles slippery and she had to grip gateposts and fences as she went down the slope. It struck her as she struggled downhill that this was the first time she’d been out all by herself in the fresh air on a damp, sunny day in years. Since before Radia was born, probably.
Time alone when not working wasn’t a luxury she could afford guilt-free these days. On her corporate gigs, when Radia was left with a childminder, Joy would work flat-out all day, cutting short lunch breaks and drinking coffee on the go so she could get back to her daughter all the faster. There was never time to take in what passed for ‘scenery’ in whatever anonymous grey office block or corporate shiny glass box she was working in that day.
But today, in Clove Lore, exhausted from crying and self-recrimination, and knowing this was her last chance, she slowed her pace and allowed herself to look around.
Watery grey clouds still clung to the far horizon but the rain was gone for the day, replaced by a wonderfully heavy blue sky. There was warmth in the sun. The kind that reminds you that summer is clinging on tenaciously until the first of the leaves fall.
Gulls sailed overhead and a few of them swooped down to settle on the cottage chimneypots, fixing their beady eyes on her in case she had a picnic, which she kind of wished she had.
Or at least a coffee to sip, some warmth and comfort would definitely help, but the idea of encountering Mrs Crocombe chattering in front of the espresso machine in her Ice Cream Cottage put her right off that idea.
Each little garden she passed had the look of newly established planting. She supposed the floodwater had ripped out most of the old stuff as it charged down the slope.
One or two straggly palm trees that had survived the deluge leaned out over freshly painted fences, lending the quaint Devonshire scene a touch of the tropics. She stopped for a second in front of a cottage near the bottom of the slope where the path widened out onto the harbour wall and lifeboat launch.
There was a homemade ‘For Sale’ sign outside it that she hadn’t noticed before, and below the rather eye-watering asking price was a mobile number and the name ‘Jowan de Marisco Clove-Congreve’.
This must be Jowan’s old place. He did say he was selling it now that he’d moved in with Minty at the Big House.
On either side of the stepping-stone path leading to the cottage’s white front door were frothy clouds of late-summer bedding in full bloom: a sea of feathery pink achillea like the ones in her mum and dad’s garden; low clusters of tiny purple flowers she couldn’t name; silvery spikes of thistle-like sea hollies and, bobbing over the beds, great tall spheres of brilliant blue agapanthus like exploding fireworks.
The low buzz of the garden’s hoverflies and bees hummed in harmony with the rhythmic shushing sound of the tide going out.
The lacy-curtained cottage windows stared back and Joy shook herself, packing away the daydream threatening to form in her brain of dragging a suitcase behind them for the last ever time and leading Radia up the path of a cosy cottage just like that, letting themselves in. Lucky Jowan, having lived in such a lovely place.
She moved on, but slower now because she wanted to delay seeing Monty and because she wanted to savour it too, the curious feeling of knowing she was making her way towards him. He was down there somewhere in the Siren. It was perversely exciting, knowing that he was nearby and she could look at him once again. Not a prospect that would be open to her ever again, so she took it easy, passing down the curving slope and onto the seawall where the warm breeze lifted her hair. Boats clanked at their moorings in the harbour as the outgoing tide dropped them down onto sandy beds.
Tourists bustled around, carrying drinks from the bar down onto the dry greyish sand at the top of the beach where laid-out towels and windbreaks made a patchwork of rainbow colours. Kids in wetsuits paddled in the shallows and scrambled around the rock pools further along the curving bay.
