I laugh, flattered by the sudden and affectionate use of my surname.
He throws me a sideways smile. “Sorry. No idea where that came from.”
“No, I like it.”
He lets out a breath. “I’m being literally the most awkward host ever. Must be nervous, or something.”
“I don’t think you get nervous.”
He smiles and meets my eye. “Sometimes I do.”
—
Since it’s a warm evening, we eat outside on the back patio, perched on plastic chairs coated in lichen. The garden is long, narrow, and wildly overgrown, as though it hasn’t been tended to in about a decade—though Caleb has cleared a path to the veg patch through the jungle of brambles and nettles. The burgeoning greenery is daubed with the butter-yellow splash of dandelions, violet clouds of forget-me-nots, the creamy foam of cow parsley. At the far end of the garden, I can just about make out an unruly hawthorn hedge, woven through with honeysuckle and flanked by a line of lime trees, their leaves gently twitching in the breeze. Behind them, the sinking sun is bleeding into a cocktail-colored sky, the clouds becoming watercolor brushstrokes.
Caleb’s been showing me the images from a job he was working on this week—taking photographs for the fish bar and grill on the promenade, which has just received a rave review in one of the broadsheets. The shots are impressive, capturing precisely the grill’s rustic, down-to-earth vibe while showcasing bits of fish as if they’re works of art.
Once we’ve finished the stew, which was pretty good, we portionthe crumble into bowls, drowning it in custard. “I take it back, by the way,” Caleb says, examining his spoon after a couple of mouthfuls. “About the apocalypse. I reckon we’d do all right.”
“My sister should really take the credit for this,” I admit. “She had to talk me through it. She’s a lot more accomplished than me at most things.”
“You’re accomplished.”
“Hardly.”
“Don’t people always feel that way about their older siblings?”
I lick my spoon thoughtfully. “Maybe. Do you, about yours?” I ask, meaning his stepsiblings.
“Yeah. Which is stupid, really, because I’ve never been into money and fast cars and...” He glances over at me before elaborating. “My stepbrothers on my dad’s side are older, and they both work in property, and making everyone else feel like abject failures is kind of their hobby. Or maybe it’s just me. I think they see me as the black sheep of the family. Insofar as Iamfamily.”
I think back to when I’d just returned from Australia and had withdrawn almost completely from my own family. I don’t think even Tash quite knew how to reach me. There was a time when we were only speaking every few weeks. I think, deep down, I felt jealous of how smoothly life seemed to have panned out for her. How easy she appeared to find things. The strength of her relationship with Simon.
But when Dylan was born, everything changed. Suddenly, there was a brand-new little life linking me to my sister. Day by day, Dylan started bringing us closer—and since we’ve been living under the same roof, we’ve more or less re-created the strong bond we had as kids. Improved on it, even.
“So,” Caleb says, meeting my eye with a smile. “I read your pages.”
Reflexively, I put a hand to my face, still a tiny bit crushed by Tashand Simon’s slightly tepid response last night to my writing. “I’m not sure I want to know.”
He spoons up more dessert. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you want to know?”
I smile, then take a long swig of water, trying to wash my vulnerability away. “I let my sister and her husband read the same pages I sent to you.”
“And?”
I shrug lightly. “They were expecting something different, I think. Maybe it just wasn’t to their taste.”
As we talk, I can just about hear the faint murmur of waves on the shoreline dancing through the air. It mingles with the whoops and hoots of revelers winding through the town, and the folksy sound of live music drifting over from The Smugglers’ beer garden. Shoreley is gearing up now for the tourist season, and though I love how people flock to it like migrating birds in the summer months—it arouses my sense of local pride—I think on balance I prefer it out of season, when the cobblestones are quiet and the beach is a blank canvas and you can always hear the sea.
“Lucy.” His gaze hooks onto mine. “Ilovedit.”
A warm breeze lifts the hair from my face. I flatten it back with one hand, then wrinkle my nose self-consciously. “Really?”
He leans forward. “Really. God, when you told me about all that Margate-in-the-twenties stuff and we were talking aboutThe Great Gatsbyand all the hedonism and hope... I mean, it soundedgreat. And you completely and utterly nailed it, one hundred percent. I felt like I was there. I felt... transported, just completely absorbed. And the chemistry with Jack and Hattie is something else.”
