‘Isn’t it?’ She’s beaming, still looking at the screen and all the emails from people wanting to take part in the competition, the Pearl Queen night and buy tickets for the event. ‘This is bigger than we ever expected!’
‘Yes,’ I agree, and she’s right. But something is nagging at me. ‘Just one thing, Margaret …’ She turns to me and frowns. ‘Where are they all going to stay?’ I ask.
Her mouth drops open. ‘Oh my God! What are we going to do? I never thought of that. We weren’t expecting this amount of people in the town!’
‘We’d better get some bed and breakfasts organised,’ I say, putting down the tea. ‘We’ll print off flyers and deliver them to every house in the town suggesting they take in B&B guests for the oyster festival weekend, and contact us to make a list of accommodation in the area.’
‘Right,’ Margaret agrees, and we get to work fuelled by tea and brownies.
Before we leave the little row of shops I call in on Maire at the art shop.
‘Wondered if these were any good to you, Maire?’ I call to her in the back room and put down the box.
She’s wearing a cloche hat with shiny buttons all over it. She peers into the box and looks back at me, grinning.
‘Perfect!’ she says. ‘Oyster shells!’
‘Well, there’s plenty more where they came from,’ I say, and swing out of the door with my flyers.
‘That’ll put presents under the tree from Santa this year.’ Rosie holds the flyer tightly in her fat fingers and beams.
‘Hope it does well for you, Rosie,’ I say, and move on to the next house until all the flyers are gone.
I stop off to tell Dan the good news about the evergrowing number of contestants for the shell-shucking contest and discover that Nancy has already beaten me to it on her way back into town.
‘Seriously, it’s great,’ says Dan, who’s wearing joggers and a T-shirt and has obviously been working at his small computer on the coffee table.
‘How’s the book going?’ I ask, making small talk and thinking I wouldn’t have bothered to come if I’d known Nancy had already been.
‘Great.’ He’s dipping a tea bag on a string up and down in a cup and spilling it everywhere.
‘Say, I was thinking, how about we go out and celebrate, have dinner? There’s a little restaurant near Galway in a place called Barna. Does great seafood. O’Grady’s. I could book us a table for this evening?’ He opens the little fridge and takes out a small carton of milk.
‘Well, I don’t know, I’ll see if Margaret’s about.’ I suddenly feel put on the spot and look around for a distraction.
He laughs, twisting open the milk lid. ‘I didn’t mean you, me and Margaret. I meant you and me, a date.’ He puts way too much milk in the tea and hands it to me. ‘I’ve really enjoyed working with you, Fi.’
‘A … date?’ My mouth goes dry. My toes are curling upwards and I’m getting that chest rash again. I down the milky, weak tea. ‘Um, that’s really nice of you, Dan, but I’m afraid I’m not really … dating, just now.’ I think that’s how they say it in America.
‘Not dating?’ he says loudly. ‘There’s someone else, right?’ He sits down by the coffee table with his own cup of coffee.
‘No, there’s no one else,’ I shake my head. ‘I’m single, and I plan to stay that way,’ I say. There, I’ve said it. No tears, no panic attacks. I’m not a long-term girlfriend, fiancée, Mrs Goodchild (although I don’t know if I ever officially was), I’m just single. I take a deep breath and smile.
‘You and Sean, you’re an item?’
‘No. Definitely not.’ I put the cup down firmly on the work top. ‘He and Nancy are very much together.’ I don’t know who I’m trying to convince more, him or me. ‘No, I’m just happy being single,’ I say. Maybe it’s true, maybe I am happier than I’ve been for a long time. Maybe I’m actually enjoying my independent life … as an oyster farmer’s assistant.
‘Well, if you change your mind, I’m here.’
I wonder if Kimberly, back home at The Coffee Shop, would think he was ‘out of my league’, too, just as she’d said about Brian. And as I step into the drizzle, I realise I don’t care what Kimberly would think. It was nice to be asked.
Back at the farm Sean’s packing up folded washing into a battered brown leather holdall.
‘Something I said?’ I joke, as I let myself into the cottage.
He looks up from pushing some T-shirts into the bag, which is on the pine table.
‘No. I just need to go away for a few days, if you’ll be OK?’ he says, straightening up. ‘Going to visit Nancy’s parents in Arcachon. We haven’t been for a while, and Nancy has some business contacts she wants to invite to the festival. It’s just for a couple of days. Do you mind?’
