‘Is Isaac here today, with your husband?’
‘No, he’s staying with his grandparents for a while. And there’s no husband, I’m not married.’ It all tumbled out when perhaps it sounded a bit desperate.
‘Me neither, not any more. Wife, I mean, not husband.’ He grimaced at the muddling of his words.
‘It’s okay, I knew what you meant.’ It was endearing and suggested Susanna might be right. Perhaps hewasinterested.
Samuel pulled a face, his attention flitting from Addie to across the room. ‘I’m going to have to follow Billy around before he knocks something or someone flying.’
‘I should go and help out a bit in the kitchen.’
‘We’ll talk later?’
She’d smiled. ‘That sounds good.’
She hadn’t got the chance to catch up with him again after that, but she sincerely hoped she did before she left the island in a couple of days’ time.
Susanna was mopping the floor. Addie finished picking up the remaining debris from various surfaces, and as she picked up her cloth to wipe down a couple of sticky tables, she said to her sister, ‘Mateo seemed chatty today.’ She could bring up his name when it was just the two of them, with Gayle and Louisa in the kitchen dealing with the clean-up in there. ‘Susanna,’ she repeated when it appeared that her sister was in her own little world.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘I was just saying that Mateo seemed chatty today.’
‘Yes, it was good to catch up.’ She dunked the mop back into the bucket, squeezed out the excess water, and then carried on mopping.
‘Is he married?’ Addie asked.
Susanna didn’t stop. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘Just a question. I wondered if he’d settled down, that was all.’
Maybe she wouldn’t ask anything else. She just hoped her sister knew what she was doing if she was getting close to him again when she had problems with Alex.
She wiped the back of one of the chairs that had a smear of something or other on it. The breeze from the open window – which would help to dry the floor quicker – sent goose-pimples all the way up her bare legs. The weather had cooled but given the request for colour on the invite her navy linen knee-length spaghetti-strapped dress, coupled with a lightweight lime-green cardigan with dainty white flowers on the top had been the best choice for the occasion. When she’d packed, she hadn’t really thought it through and brought many options, and she felt good in the dress too.
She turned to see a couple more stray bowls on the lowest windowsill near the door. ‘I’ll just take these to the kitchen.’ There was, it seemed, a never-ending supply of crockery in this place.
She made her way behind the counter where she noticed one more bowl on the very edge that she skilfully picked up as she passed through the short corridor to the kitchen. She was almost at the open doorway but stopped when she heard the nameHarry.She hadn’t talked much to Aunt Gayle about her dad since they’d come back to the island – she was usually wary of going on about him in front of Susanna – so now she wanted to pause and hear what her aunt had to say, especially because she’d also mentioned the Cuppas and Treats Café. Addie loved hearing the Oxford memories, a lot of which she couldn’t recall given how young she had been.
‘Harry always wanted the café to stay in the family,’ Addie heard Gayle say to Louisa. ‘I hate that I couldn’t help him with that.’
Addie never realised their aunt had felt guilty about not being able to help Harry. The story she had pieced together, mostly from what she remembered her dad saying and what Susanna had told her, was that their aunt had left and never looked back. Her focus had become the Sweet Life Café.
‘You had a dream, and you followed it,’ came Louisa’s voice. ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty.’
‘He’d like seeing this.’ Addie could hear a smile in her aunt’s voice and expected Gayle to expand about the event or the fact that Addie and Susanna were here, but she went on to say, ‘You and I working alongside each other.’
Addie was confused. Why on earth would he like the fact that Louisa was here when she was a random stranger?
She didn’t have to wonder for long. The next words almost caused her to drop everything she was carrying when she heard Louisa say, ‘I’ve enjoyed getting to know my father through you.’
‘He would’ve been proud that you came here to find family,’ said Gayle.
Addie took a step backwards, then another and another until she was back behind the counter. She turned and dumped everything she was holding with a clatter.
Her gaze went to the outside where Susanna was emptying dirty water from the mop bucket.
She couldn’t move.
