She nodded. This did not feel good. Her eyes briefly lifted to where his curls shifted in the breeze. It was easier if she didn’t look directly at him.
‘I hope things will be OK with your mum and dad, and that my answering the phone the other day doesn’t make things hard for you.’ He spoke decidedly, and his feet moved, advancing, she thought, towards her, but then he passed straight by her instead. ‘You deserve a happy family life,’ he said as he left.
Her brain screamed at her to grab his wrist as he passed by, telling her to stop him by any means necessary, rugby tackle him if she had to, just hold him there until she could make sense of the feelings crowding in on her.
Yet the old familiar fearfulness had already won out and frozen her up like a statue, and she let him walk away.
She was dimly aware that he’d be up on the sea wall already, grains of sand crunching under his boots. Maybe he was looking over at her? More likely he was looking down at the ground as he went. Any second now he’d be shoving through the pub doors, almost out of view for good. She pictured the kitchen doors swinging, him grabbing his chef’s jacket, buttoning himself in, disappearing, disappearing, gone.
She’d have stood there, just another rock on the beach, for who knows how long, had it not been for the footsteps behind her, slow at first, cautious, and then faster, and she heard her name called out. She whipped around to see a woman dashing towards her, smiling and waving, getting faster.
‘Joy?’
To Joy’s overstimulated brain the woman, a slightly younger mirror-image of herself – though her dark hair was shorn short and her clothes were a thousand times cooler – appeared like a mirage.
‘Joy, babe? What’s wrong?’ she called out, as she pounded down onto the sand, her smile fading, turning to deep concern. ‘Where’s Rads? What’s happened?’ the woman asked.
All Joy could do was fall into her little sister’s arms and grip her tight. ‘Patti?’ She didn’t ask why she was here. She didn’t need to. There was an intervention going on, that much was obvious.
Their tears fell, and Patti held on to her big sister as they folded down onto the sand.
‘Oh, Patti, I’ve made a mess of everything,’ Joy sniffed. ‘Things can’t get any worse than this.’
‘No, don’t say that,’ Pattie cajoled, rubbing her sister’s back in big comforting circles. ‘Mum’s not evengothere yet.’
This took a second to register before Joy fixed Patti with a blinkless stare.
‘Mum’s notwhat?’
Chapter Twenty-six
‘OK, pick one. I’ve got veggie sushi, cheese ploughman sarnies, or this sort of noodle slaw thingy with edamame beans?’
Patti had dragged Joy up off the sand and they’d flopped down against the locked shutters of the old lifeboat launch above the beach. She was unpacking her canvas tote bag onto the concrete.
‘You stopped at a motorway M&S?’ asked Joy, still dazed at her sister’s appearance.
‘’Course I did, it was a five-hour drive, and I also hit every Starbucks I passed on the way here. I’m ninety per cent matcha green tea latte now.’
‘Got any Percy Pigs?’
‘Obviously.’ Patti reached into the bottom of the bag and revealed two pink packs, passing one to Joy. ‘So, do you want to tell me why you were staring out to sea all alone on a sunny day, no sign of Rads…’
Joy tore the bag open and bit into a pink gummy pig. ‘Rads has a sitter for half an hour. I need to get back there in about…’ she paused to calculate, ‘about twelve seconds. How aboutyoutell me what you’re doing here? And what’s this about Mum coming?’
‘Couldn’t talk her out of it, once she knew where you were. You know what she’s like. Once she gets a bee under her blanket she’s unstoppable.’ Patti shoved anuramakiroll into her mouth with her fingers.
‘But we’re leaving today,’ Joy contemplated. ‘Where even is she?’
‘Last seen circling Southampton shouting at her satnav,’ Patti laughed through the mouthful of sushi.
‘Mum’s driving? Alone?’
‘No.’ Patti swallowed her food down, shaking her head. ‘Dad’s with her, only he’s just had the laser-eye thingy, and…’
‘He’s had eye surgery? When?’
‘Last week, just after they got back from Portugal.’
