‘Nina, I want to. Let me do this. Let me at least try.’
‘OK.’
‘You off somewhere nice?’
‘I’m meeting Maeve.’
‘Send her my best,’ he smiled.
When Nina reached the top of the track she turned left to set off in the direction of the pier and the café. She did her best not to get her hopes up about the bank, but a second appointment was surely a good sign.
Maeve was working until late morning and then not again until mid-afternoon and so the girls were meeting for lunch and possibly a trip to the cinema while Jonah was at school. Nina had missed this – simple friendships, someone who knew her back then and who knew her now. She had friends at work, she had a good social life, but there was something about a person having known you for years that made the friendship that much fuller and stronger; they knew the good and the bad, there was an understanding that didn’t need to be explored.
Nina had on jeans and a t-shirt, but it was cooling down fast in the days now as well as the evenings as the end of September approached and so she checked she’d put her cardigan in her bag in case she needed it. And as she carried on walking she decided no matter the outcome of Leo’s meeting at the bank, she should be proud. She’d come back to the bay, she’d faced her fear of the feelings it would stir up, she’d confronted her trepidation at facing Leo after all this time and they’d settled into a friendship of sorts. She wondered whether it would ever be more again, but right now she had too much on her mind, and she knew he did too. Once the cabin was sold perhaps it would make everything clearer.
Then again it might make everything that bit more messy and who knew where that would leave them.
Nina found Maeve chatting to Jo at the café, but bag in hand she looked almost ready and so Nina perched on the window seat while she waited, looking out and down along the pier, watching passers-by, a few little kids who weren’t yet ready for school tearing up and down the planks, an elderly couple hand in hand for a stroll, a surferwho’d come up from the beach and was leaning his board up against the railings of the pier.
‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting,’ Maeve apologised, ‘And would you mind if we stayed here? Molly and Arthur are out with friends and Jo hates to ask them for more help than they already give her. We thought the café would be quieter today but I can tell Jo is worried about not being able to handle a rush if she’s on her own, so I’ll hang around and jump in if I need to.’
‘Totally fine with me.’ Nina dismissed the worry. ‘You go tell her and I’ll grab a table.’ As Nina sat down at a table for two she watched Maeve with her new boss, glad to see how well she was settling in, as though she’d been doing this a long while, not a matter of weeks.
Maeve came back over to Nina all smiles and Jo shook her head when Maeve looked up at a bit of an influx of customers who sought comfort from the autumnal weather the second the boss was on her own.
‘I just don’t want to let her down.’ Maeve’s dark hair was swept up into a swishy ponytail and her brown eyes were alight with a happiness Nina knew had probably taken her a long time to find. Nina wondered, not for the first time, how Jonah’s father could have ever let this girl go.
‘She’ll holler if she needs you,’ said Nina.
‘She will. So, what’s news?’
Nina recounted her talk with Leo, his appointment at the bank. ‘He’s trying again today but …’ She shook her head, filled with doubts. ‘It’s good of him to try, Walt would love nothing more than to sell to him.’
‘What do you think he’d do with the cabin?’
‘I’ve actually got no idea.’
‘Perhaps Adrian might move in to it. I know he rentssomewhere, he told me his flat has a great view, but it’s not the same as being down there. It’s not been easy for him to come back, particularly down to the bay, but you can tell how much it’s a part of him.’
Nina began to smile. ‘Do I detect a bit of an interest in Adrian?’
Maeve seemed taken aback. ‘An interest?’
‘I saw you looking at him at the party, you guys seem to have talked a bit. And don’t think for one minute that I missed you guys arriving together.’
‘We did not arrive together, we bumped into one another outside which is different. And everyone talked at the party, I was being friendly.’ Her eyes moved over to the specials board. She was probably hungry – this job had to help you work up an appetite, being surrounded by good food and on your feet all day.
‘He seems to be slowly getting there, back to who he once was I mean. Just like you are.’
But Maeve was still looking at the specials board. Perhaps she needed to be fed before Nina would get much of a conversation out of her. Nina was sometimes that way herself when she was at work – with shifts, she sometimes forgot to eat regularly until it hit her and she’d feel light-headed and unable to string a sentence together properly.
When Jo had settled some new arrivals at the round table towards the centre of the room, she came to take Maeve and Nina’s orders although Maeve insisted she do the drinks herself.
‘Jo should take it easy in her condition,’ she said to Nina when she brought back a latte and a black coffee and sat down again. ‘I know how hard it is to be pregnant and on the go all day.’
‘I can’t imagine it, it must be tough.’ Although if Nina wasn’t mistaken, Maeve’s readiness to go off and make the drinks probably had a lot to do with avoiding talk about Adrian. She had to like him, didn’t she? And they’d be good together.
Nina had a sudden memory of her grandad telling her that Jo had introduced date nights here at the café at the end of the pier and had been responsible for a bit of matchmaking along the way. It was an idea, but for now she’d avoid the subject if it made her friend uncomfortable. She knew that if it was her she wouldn’t appreciate being set up despite the best of intentions.
