‘Right, well, it was nice to meet you,’ Joy said, louder this time, holding out her Visa card.
‘Cash only,’ replied Mrs Crocombe, and Joy had to bite her lip.
Was the whole village like this? Still living in the nineties? Cash only and with shonky Wi-Fi, even after the refurbishments?
The ice-cream parlour certainly looked bright and fresh. Everything was brand new, except Mrs Crocombe who looked as sun-bleached as the village’s mossy roof tiles and as wind-blown as the scrubby roadside gorse they’d passed on the way here.
No wonder Jowan from the bookshop charity had brought Joy in to get the place hooked up to the twenty-first century. Now that she’d met some of the bonkers village residents, with their love affairs and prying eyes, she was glad she was staying only long enough to do her job.
‘She gone?’ Bovis’s red face peeked through the ribbons, and Joy hurriedly laid a ten-pound note on the counter, told them to keep the change, and walked straight out, hoping Radia would follow.
‘Who’s getting married?’ Radia asked, her feet still planted firmly in front of the counter.
‘Ah, one of my biggest successes!’ beamed Mrs Crocombe. ‘Elliot – he’s our vet – and Jude, one of the young folk who borrowed the bookshop for a summer holiday a while back. T’was me got them together, in fact.’ Her eyes shone.
Radia grinned back. She definitely liked Mrs Crocombe.
First of all, she made the best ice cream Radia had ever tried, even nicer than the pink stuff she’d had standing by the Grand Canal, waiting for thetraghettoride she’d begged her mum to take her on.
Secondly, she loved it when adults included her in whispered things, and all that talk about broken hearts had been a hundred times more interesting than anything she’d ever heard her mum saying.
Lastly, and the best reason of the lot, she looked like a cuddly, cosy type of granny, just the way Radia remembered her own grandma in London. She hadn’t seen her grandma for so long – outside of a few brief FaceTime calls – her imagination had filled in the blanks until she had become half Mrs Doubtfire, half Mrs Claus.
‘Radia?’ her mum called from out on the slope.
‘You’d better run along now, little one,’ Mrs Crocombe twinkled.
The girl shuffled in her mum’s footsteps as slowly as she could. Glancing back as she left the shop, Radia spied the owner of Crocombe’s Ices pulling a notebook from her apron pocket, her pencil paused above the pad.
She strained her ears just long enough to pick up the words, ‘Might be one for the betting book, Mr Bovis? Our nomadic thingumajig. She’ll be a match for someone, I reckon. Did you happen to catch her surname?’
Chapter Five
Monty wasn’t sure what was required of a best man. There hadn’t been many local folks’ weddings at Clove Lore in recent years. His gut response was that he wasn’t up to the job. What did he know about marriage? Or the wearing of tails and top hats and shiny shoes? Did they still do that these days or was he thinking of his parents’ wedding picture on the cottage mantle?
Yet, with Elliot Desvaux looming over him with a big hopeful grin and sparkling eyes like he might actually cry with pride, Monty had clasped his hand and pulled him into a hug.
‘I’d love to, mate. Love to.’
Elliot’s relieved laugh reverberated around the new chrome kitchen of the Siren’s Tail, where Monty had everything (just about) under control ahead of lunch service. Steam rose from various pots, pastry puffed up into golden crusts in the ovens, and a big bowl of egg whites sat ready for whipping into meringues for the summer fruit Pavlovas.
Monty added, less emphatically, ‘You sure you want me, though? And not a family member or a friend from…?’ Monty realised he had no idea where Elliot was actually from. Somewhere posh in the south-east, that was all he knew.
‘No, nobody from home,’ said Elliot briskly, stepping out of the hug with one last pat on Monty’s shoulder and almost backing into the big fridge.
‘Got a date in mind?’ asked Monty as he turned to lift the lid from a simmering pot of creamy seafood bisque, filling the air with its mouthwateringly delicious aroma.
‘Uh, that’s the thing.’ Elliot looked like he wanted to shrink even more than he usually did when he was feeling awkward. At six-five and broadly muscled like a boxer-come-dancer, and so striking with his long sheets of black hair falling over broad shoulders, he always seemed to fill every room he entered. ‘It’s… soon.’
Monty paused in his stirring. This couldn’t be good. He was run off his feet with shifts at the pub now the B&B guests were flooding back in, keen to get first dibs on the newly refurbished sea-view rooms. ‘How soon?’
‘September second.’
‘Jeez! Why the rush?’
‘Minty,’ said Elliot, ominously.
‘Got it. She’s not an easy woman to say no to.’
