His most recent relationship, which ended almost six months ago, had been going well, or so he’d thought, until he found himself caught by the scruff of the neck outside the pub one night and a fist ready to punch his lights out. Sheena had been married and although she and Nate had been seeing one another for a year and had even had a week in Spain together, she’d never once let on. And her husband clearly hadn’t seen her being at fault, only Nate. Nate had steered clear as soon as he knew and on the grapevine in the form of local gossip at the pub, he’d heard Sheena and her husband were still very much together.
Sheena was one of many women who’d come into Nate’s life and somehow he’d never managed to get it right. And he was more than a little embarrassed. He’d had the best marriage to aspire to. His parents had been together for fifty years and he couldn’t even manage a respectable percentage of that time.
Nate looked at the coaster he’d set his mug of tea on. ‘New?’
‘Thought it was about time. We had those free cardboard ones that were handed out at Christmas, but they were a bit worse for wear.’
‘These are nice.’ He lifted up the sea-green, china coaster for closer inspection. ‘Mum’s favourite colour.’
‘That’s why I bought them. I found them on Elaina’s market stall.’
He immediately thought of Morgan again: the sadness behind her eyes, the loss he unfortunately understood all too well. ‘Was it a nice funeral service?’
‘There was a good turn-out and it was very pleasant, given the circumstances. Most of the village came and then went to the wake at her little cottage behind the village green to say their final goodbyes. The daughters both moved away a long time ago, not sure why they never came back. Morgan, the youngest, is here now, though. She’s a nice lass.’ As he chatted away, Nate noticed the shoulders his dad had once carried him on as a little boy were so much smaller beneath the grey, lambswool jumper these days. It was just another reminder that nothing lasted forever.
‘Was it sudden, Elaina dying?’ A question he wouldn’t ask Morgan when he barely knew her but felt he should ask now in case he bumped into her again.
‘It was, in the end. Heart attack.’ He sipped his tea. ‘I’m only glad her daughter was with her for a time and that she was in the home she loved.’
Was that a hint? Nate suspected it was. A while back, they’d talked about getting his dad into a residential care home. He had a good friend who loved it where she was. ‘Who’s the lady who comes here every Christmas and you have mince pies?’
‘Gillian?’
‘That’s the one. She’s in a residential care home now, isn’t she?’
‘She is, although she comes back to Little Woodville when she can. She was at the dinner last night.’ He chuckled. ‘You know she still likes to think she made it happen between Sebastian and Belle.’
Some things about the village he knew from his own time growing up here; other parts came from his chats on the phone with his dad or during visits to Little Woodville. ‘The Bookshop Café looks impressive.’
‘Oh, it is, you should get in there if you can. Sebastian and Belle are a good match in life and in business.’
‘It’s good she still gets back to the village. Gillian, I mean.’
‘I don’t think she’d have it any other way.’
‘Does she like it where she is?’ He got his focus back to part of the reason he was here, thinking about how he could best help his dad long-term.
‘She does. But everyone is different, son.’
Nate might have talked about the idea with his dad, but he’d always met with resistance and it was difficult to know how hard to push.
‘Let’s go back to talking about the markets,’ said Trevor.
‘We weren’t talking about the markets.’
Trevor indicated the coaster. ‘We were, kind of.’ He set his mug down. ‘You never put your trading licence to good use. The workshop is still full of your things.’
Last year, his dad had been talking about Nate sorting through his things in the workshop which had originally been a garage before it was converted for Nate to make items out of wood to his heart’s content. Nate had ignored his dad at first, given he didn’t want to set foot in there, but had then altered his thinking, decided perhaps it was a good idea to finally get rid of everything. And so, with his dad’s encouragement, he’d applied for a trading licence for the local markets with the intention of selling the entire contents of that workshop if he could. And then he’d gone back to Wales, the licence had eventually come through with six months’ validity and he’d done nothing with it since. Nothing except avoid the issue, that was.
‘Your wooden pieces would go down a treat at the Snowdrop Lane markets,’ Trevor went on, ‘you mark my words.’
‘Maybe.’ He’d been making things out of wood ever since he could remember. But he hadn’t set foot in his workshop since his mum died and even though he’d applied for the licence, that was a whole lot different to actually sorting through things and bringing them to the public’s attention.
Trevor brought the biscuit tin over.
‘I thought you weren’t hungry.’
‘I wasn’t. I am now,’ he said matter-of-factly.
