‘She most certainly is,’ said Molly. ‘She keeps us young as great-grandparents.’
Maeve suspected it wasn’t only Ava’s arrival that did that. According to Jo, ever since Molly and Arthur had retired from the café full time it was as though they’d shed ten years. They might both have deep silver hair and lines on their faces that showed lives well-lived, but neither of them lacked joie de vivre, in fact Maeve felt sure they had more energy than she did if they weren’t concerned that Ava would soon be awake again.
Molly sipped her apple juice and delivered compliments on its freshness to Maeve. ‘You seem to be settling back in just fine around here.’
‘I am, thank you.’ Because this wasn’t a new town for Maeve, it was a long-awaited return to the place she’d once called home. ‘Although it’s a big change from Toronto, that’s for sure.’ Maeve set the tray on the edge of the table next to them and tightened up her ponytail which kept her dark wavy hair well out of the way of her customers and their food and beverages. It was warm today although the breeze she felt while standing here on the pier was welcome.
‘I’ll bet it’s beautiful over there,’ said Arthur. ‘Although you haven’t lost your British accent. Maybe the odd twang here and there,’ he chuckled.
‘I seemed to fall in with a lot of expats over there,’ she smiled. ‘That helped keep my accent from changing too much, and it’s funny how I’ve only been back in the UK for a month or so but it feels like I never left in some ways.’ And in others it felt a lifetime ago.
Maeve had emigrated with her parents more than eleven years ago, but when Maeve’s aunt fell ill and Maeve’s mum had toyed with the idea of moving back to help her, both of Maeve’s parents had realised that deep down they had a real yearning for Salthaven that they didn’t seem to be able to move past. It was the right time. And Maeve knew it was time she came back too, she’d left it long enough already.
‘The question is, are you here to stay?’ Molly continued to probe.
Maeve beamed a smile their way. As difficult as it was in many ways to be back here, she desperately wanted this move to work out for the best. ‘You know I think I might be. Mum and Dad certainly are, they’re even back in their old house.’
‘Funny how things work out,’ Arthur mused.
Maeve’s parents had sold up before they emigrated to Toronto and had only been thinking of returning for six months when they saw their old house came up for sale. ‘It’s a sign,’ Maeve’s mum had declared and that was it. They started the wheels in motion and Maeve jumped on board.
Maeve plucked her tray from the next table as another couple took the seats, nodded to Molly and Arthur who knew she had to get back to work and pulled her notepad from her front apron pocket to take her customers’ orders as they’d just come up from the beach and declared they were famished.
‘Mind if I sit with my grandparents and Ava?’ Jo asked when Maeve went back inside the café. Jo was positively glowing, her cheeks rosy as she put a hand to her hair to check the dark waves were indeed still in the bun she’d styled. Big flowers graced her maternity top that covered an undoubtably pregnant belly. In her second trimester after falling pregnant only nine months after Ava was born, Jo was refusing to admit she might be getting a little tired, especially when Matt liked to pop in and make sure she wasn’t overdoing it. Jo had told him off last time for checking up on her but Maeve knew she’d meant it in jest, that she was enjoying his attentions. Maeve wondered what it was like to be so in love, to have someone who cared so deeply they almost made a nuisance of themselves by making sure you were all right.
‘Of course,’ Maeve replied to Jo who already felt more of a friend than a boss. ‘I can handle things here. You go spend time with your family.’ Maeve had only been working at the café for a few weeks but Jo was so welcoming that she’d slotted right in and wasn’t tense about having a new job, being judged on her performance. She’d even go so far as to say she was enjoying herself. Maeve had never forgotten the café of course, despite being thousands of miles away. The café was known far and wide for its prowess for changing a menu along with the seasons and they had continuous steady local as well as not-so-local custom. It was iconic to Salthaven, which also drew visitors, with its impressive beach, and Stepping Stone Bay beyond. And at least it wasn’t quite as busy now as it had been over the summer holidays that had just passed. Maeve had been thrown right in at the deep end when she secured a job here and wondered how Jo ever managed,even with Molly and Arthur’s help when they emerged from their retirement and came back from Spain to spend time with family and do the odd shift at the café to help out if they were around.
The couple outside each wanted a latte and a raspberry-swirl roll and so Maeve got to her task, made the coffees and used the tongs to pull out the sweets from the covered unit beside the till. There weren’t too many customers now, given they were approaching five o’clock when most people finished up for the day at the beach and wanted to be home in time for dinner.
As she took the loaded tray outside Maeve glanced at the clock once again, bang on five o’clock now. Jonah had been back at school for three weeks and had texted her as per the agreement they’d struck at the start of term, an arrangement that granted her eleven-year-old a little independence to cushion the disruption of a move. She’d originally wanted him to come to the café at home time and wait with her before heading back to their rented flat, but no sooner had she told him the idea he’d asked her to let him go home alone and have an hour to play on his Wii before he had to come to the café. She’d relented, given in to his demands that he wasn’t a baby, because she’d already ripped him away from the only country he knew, and his friends and his school to settle back here. Everyone told her kids his age were resilient, that it would be a smooth transition, and she hoped they were right, because they weren’t only returning to England’s south coast, they were coming back to the truth she’d always known she’d have to share with him eventually.
With no sign of Jonah yet, Maeve saw to her other customer at the corner table near the specials board. She’dcall her son if he wasn’t here in the next couple of minutes; he knew he had to be on time and usually was.
Her customer seemed to be in for a lengthy chat and Maeve didn’t have it in her not to reply to conversations about the tide, the weather, the specials board that drew such attention here in the café. But as she did her mind drifted to Toronto and the early days in another country. She’d emigrated without a whole lot of warning but it felt like the best solution following a traumatic summer, the tragic drowning of a girl her age – Rhianne, a friend of sorts. Maeve had settled with her parents in a suburb far enough from Toronto that they had a bit of space but not so far that Maeve couldn’t get to and from the city easily enough. And she’d relished the change of pace, leaving her hometown behind for a fresh start.
The fresh start hadn’t been quite what Maeve thought however when only a few months after arriving, just when she thought she was going full-steam ahead with a new job as a catering assistant to start her career path after obtaining a hospitality management qualification, she discovered she was pregnant. She fell apart. She’d just begun to build a social life, she was making friends and was loving life away from everything she knew. She’d been seeing someone she met on her first day at work, a guy who was kind and made her laugh, but she’d never thought of him as in it for the long haul and he left before she even found out about the baby. He’d moved to Vancouver, the other side of the country, for a job opportunity.
Maeve suddenly felt as though she’d made a mess of everything. None of it had been a part of her starting-over plan. She’d had a clean slate, she knew people, she had friends, but nobody was close enough to help her copewith this big change in her life and to navigate her next step. And she was hesitant to tell anyone back in Salthaven what was going on because she’d drawn a line under that part of her life. She’d left that town and what had happened with Rhianne behind. It was too painful to think about, let alone discuss, and with the onset of morning sickness that left her exhausted, she couldn’t cope with anything else.
And so once Maeve knew she was expecting, she did what every good mother did. She put her baby first. She made sure she ate properly despite the nausea and vomiting, she went to all her prenatal checkups, and she told her parents.
Maeve had thought when her parents first discovered she was pregnant that they’d be angry or upset, but they were neither. They were practical. They asked her once who the father was and apart from her dad trying to persuade her to contact him when the baby was born they left the subject alone. She’d suspected they would, it was part of what had made it almost easy to confide in them. Maeve’s mum Jocelyn had been pregnant once before, twelve years prior to when Maeve was born, and her own mother had badgered her about the father and refused to help her if she wasn’t going to marry the man. Maeve’s mum ended up giving her baby up for adoption and that was something Maeve knew had haunted her mum ever since. And so Jocelyn had never wanted to do anything to drive a wedge between her and her own daughter. Jocelyn had never fully repaired her relationship with her own mother who’d died only a few years after Jocelyn gave her baby away. Maeve had never met her.
When Jonah was six months Maeve’s parents urged her to pick up her career, and she knew for sure that she couldn’t have done so without their support. They looked after Jonah, they loved every minute of it, and Maeve studied hard. She found a hospitality and catering apprenticeship and worked her way through that before becoming a catering manager at a hotel. And for a while life ran smoothly for all of them. It was a new life and a good one.
Maeve hadn’t completely forgotten about the father, how could she? She’d tried to pick up the phone and call him more than once but she never seemed to get that final push. And then she’d heard talk that the man wasn’t in a good head space at all. ‘He’s a mess,’ was how those who were close to him had described him and Maeve couldn’t bear to throw anything else into the mix for him. And so she’d put it off again and again until it got even harder. That was the thing about secrets, the longer they were kept, the more complicated it became to admit the truth.
When her parents announced they were returning to Salthaven it didn’t matter that Maeve and Jonah were living their lives and settled in their own place in Canada, Maeve had suddenly felt the same urge. And along the way she’d learnt to take life’s cues. She couldn’t explain it, but she knew it wasn’t just that she’d lose her parents support, it was more than that; it was time.
Toronto had been a total change from life here in Salthaven. There’d been the buzz of the city, the vibe and liveliness and sense of adventure a contrast to the sedate town and bay on the south coast. But when Maeve’s parents began to make plans for their return to the UK,Maeve fizzed with the possibilities of giving Jonah the same upbringing she’d had, by the sea without the brutal winters Toronto gave them. He could wander from school to the pier or one of the parks in close proximity, even sail a toy boat on the boating lake before the entrance to the boards along the pier. Her little boy complete with Canadian accent became as excited as they all were and Maeve hoped she was doing the move at just the right time, not just because of his age, but because he deserved to know everything. She wasn’t sure how she was going to tell him; all she knew was that she had to. She owed him the truth.
Just like the house being a sign, Maeve’s dad had been investigating catering establishments in Salthaven online and Maeve applied for a handful of jobs, knowing that now she and Jonah had had their own place she didn’t want to regress and move back in with her parents unless she really had to. Most of the applications came to nothing and it was only the day after they all arrived back in Salthaven when Jocelyn bumped into Arthur, Jo’s grandad, that they pointed Maeve in the direction of the café at the end of the pier. Maeve had called Jo immediately and she’d been honest that this was a stop-gap for her until she was settled enough to pursue catering manager opportunities. Jo hadn’t minded one bit and had readily taken her on, telling her the arrangement suited her perfectly because she wasn’t sure what hours she’d be able to offer long term when she came back to work after her babies were born. Maeve had wondered whether she might want to stay at home with them more but Jo had an incredible love for the café that had been the hub of the community for years and still was since she’d taken it on.
The job at the café wasn’t the catering manager position Maeve knew she wanted eventually but it was a start. Along with her savings her wages gave her enough money to rent the small flat she’d found, with her parents acting as guarantors, and eventually she’d look for something else. And for now, Maeve couldn’t be happier at how she was settling in.
But Jonah, he was another matter. Not only was he asking questions more and more lately, but now as she glanced at the clock again, he was pushing the boundaries. He was late.
Maeve pulled out her phone from her apron pocket about to call Jonah when he came flying through the door out of breath. And he leapt in with his apology so quickly that she didn’t have the heart to moan at him when already he was getting out his school books to do his homework at one of the tables.
