“Not eating and not sleeping are a recipe for not feeling like yourself. Everything seems worse than it is when you’re tired, and nothing good was achieved on an empty stomach.” A woman after my own heart. “You sit yourself down and I’ll make us both a cup of coffee—the good stuff—and get you some breakfast. Just let me lock up andget the dishwasher on first or I won’t be home in time forThis Morning,” she says, waddling past me to flip theOPENsign toCLOSED.
“Did you know her? The missing woman?” I ask, taking a seat in the booth nearest to the kitchen, while Cath makes me a plate.
“No, and I’m not one for gossip,” she says, sounding like someone who lives for it. “But from what I’ve heard she was a wealthy woman who moved here from London, fancied herself as an artist.”
“Nobody seems to know very much about her.”
“Nobody knows anyone anymore, do they? Not really. People only care about the people they care about, and these days that’s often themselves.”
Cath sounds like an unexpected kindred spirit. She puts a plate of food down in front of me, and takes off her apron. “You eat what you can, pet. It’s on the house.”
“I’m happy to pay—”
She shakes her head. “Accept kindness when it’s offered, it’s in short supply.”
I think I like being someone’s good deed.
I thank her and eat, moving the bacon away from the eggs on my plate before I start so that they are not touching. I am not used to people being nice to me, and Cath has been kind for reasons I don’t quite understand. As though she sees me. Therealme. I suspect she misses having a busy café filled with people to chat to.
“The missing artist had an exhibition the other night. Did you go?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I get up early every day to open this place for the fishermen, so I never go out late. Never go out at all these days, truth be told. Enjoy life while you can because you’ll catch up with the likes of me sooner than you think. Old age sneaks up on us all like an unwelcome thief.”
It will never catch up with me.
I silence the thought, along with all the others I’m too scared to think out loud.
“But I saw her yesterday morning just before she jumped,” Cath says then.
“Eden Fox?”
“I watched her run up the hill. She had this lost look about her, like she didn’t want to be here anymore. I see it all the time.”
I wonder what this woman sees when she sees me.
“You’re sure it was her?”
“Who else would it have been?”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“Not that I remember, but I would have been busy in the kitchen.”
I thank Cath for breakfast and try to pay again but she refuses. She walks me to the door to unlock it, then points out a man on the cliff path. “Old Stu might have seen more than me. He was walking his dog, just like he always does in the morning.”
After I leave I call Carter but his phone goes to voicemail again. No bother, Carter already sent me a transcript of his interview with “Old Stu” the dog walker yesterday. I didn’t read it before, but I plan to now. When Sunday and I return to The Smuggler’s Inn the doors are unlocked and Maddy is back behind the bar.
“You’re up and out early,” she says. “How was your breakfast at the café?”
Has she been spying on me?
“Lovely. It was the only place open when I woke up, I’ve always been an early bird,” I reply, but she misses the reference to my name. “Not like your brother. Can’t get hold of him at all so far today.”
She frowns, looks a little defensive on his behalf. “That’s not like him.”
It’s nice that she’s so protective of her little brother, they’re obviously very close. I hope they aren’t so close that she knows about me sleeping with him. I feel embarrassed asking his sister the next question, but I just want to be sure I haven’t made an even bigger mistake than the one I knew I was making. I thought Carter was single but I now realize I never checked. I force my face to smile.
“Is there a girlfriend who keeps him up all night and makes him late for work?” I ask.
