I’ll give you one that shuts you up...
I wish he’d stop talking. I wriggle on my bench seat, uncomfortably. ‘Some people don’t have anything better to do,’ I say with a forced air of nonchalance, looking out to sea at the passing sailboats.
The pitiful comments are the worst.
I feel sorry for you...
You’re clearly a very troubled individual...
You should get help...
I return my gaze to Adam and try to inject more confidence into my voice. ‘At least the blog’s getting attention. Peoplearetalking about it. That’s a whole lot better than peoplenottalking about it...’
‘Eesh, I don’t know,’ Adam replies, shaking his head.
Charlie is still looking at Adam.
‘What?’ Adam asks him. ‘She doesn’t want me to repeat it.’ He nods at me.
‘I don’t want you to repeat it, either,’ Charlie says in a low voice. ‘I think you should probably stop talking about it.’
‘She says it’s water off a duck’s back!’ Adam exclaims defensively as my face heats up. ‘And there are loads of nice comments, too,’ he adds.‘Loadsof nice comments.’
That, at least, is something. I may have a lot of ‘haters’ – another word I despise – but plenty of people rave about my blog, too.
It’s so empowering...
Funny how it’s easier to remember the malicious comments.
Charlie returns his attention to his daughter. She’s making her way through some sandwich fingers he brought with him.
‘Anyway,’ Adam says, still looking at me. ‘I was checking out your website because I wanted to know more about Beau before I saw Michelle, but you haven’t written about him yet, have you?’
‘I haven’t posted anything, no.’ Although I started writing about him a couple of weeks ago. ‘Have you caught up with her?’
‘Yeah, I saw her a couple of days ago. She definitely dumped me for the same guy. Beau Riley.’
‘Are you serious?’ I perk right up. ‘Does she still know him?’
‘No, they lost touch. But she has a friend of a friend who used to hang out with him, so she thinks she should be able to find out where he is. She reckons she’d know if he still lived in Bude, though, so he must’ve moved on.’
I deflate. ‘Damn. I was hoping to catch up with him while I’m here.’
‘How long were you together?’ Adam asks.
‘About six months,’ I reply.
‘After Seth?’ Charlie chips in.
‘Yes.’ I’m surprised he remembers. I thought he was too distracted with April to take in much of what we’ve been talking about.
‘?“The perfect antidote”,’ he adds, repeating what I said last Friday night.
‘Beau was lovely,’ I say nostalgically.
I’d returned to freelance travel writing after abandoning Mum’s Japan cruise. I’d been commissioned to go down to Cornwall and write a piece about the area’s best surf beaches and Beau was one of the surfers I spoke to. I was supposed to be in Cornwall for only a week, but Beau and I hit it off instantly. He had crazy red hair and a face full of freckles, with light-brown eyes. He was a real flirt – as was I – so, when he invited me to a party, it was a no-brainer. We ended up going back to his flatshare afterwards and falling drunkenly into his bed. I’d already prepared myself for it being a one-night-stand, but the next morning he woke me up with kisses and asked me to spend the day with him. We only made it out of the house because we were hungry and all he and his flatmates had to eat was mouldy bread.
He was three years younger than I was – twenty-five to my twenty-eight – but he could’ve been twenty for how sorted he was. He lived with two other uber-relaxed surfers who were also content to do nothing more than surf and party.
