A second later Fudge is on the ground again. Jackie stoops to get a last goodbye lick on her nose, then she links arms with Harry and they wander off.
Miles takes his cone back from me. ‘Shall we find somewhere to sit and eat these before they melt to nothing?’
We head to the first bench we find on the edge of the gardens, sit with a decent distance between us with Fudge at our feet, and deal with our collapsing ice creams.
When I get over how delicious it is to taste the tang of rhubarb against the sweet vanilla of ice-cold custard, I go in for the biggie.
‘Lovely to meet your mum at last. Her boyfriend with allergies is why Fudge is with us?’
‘Correct.’ Miles studies his apple pie sorbet. ‘It’s quite a new relationship and I wanted to give it the best chance to work, which is why I’ve given them space. When I came here two years ago it was because she’d just lost my stepdad.’
I mull this over for a few licks before I reply. ‘Considering how kind of you that was, it’s a bit harsh banning her from the shop.’
Miles takes a bite of his sugar cone and crunches it. ‘Don’t think it’s because I don’t love her. It’sbecausewe’re such good friends that I’m able to do it.’ He turns to me. ‘If we let Mum in once, she won’t ever leave. Same with the cottage. I didn’t want to lay that on you before you’d got established.’
I’m hiding my surprise. ‘How bad can it be?’
He gives a half shake of his head. ‘She and her friends are all the same. They haven’t slowed down to retirement speed yet. They’re traipsing round Cornwall, bored out of their skulls because they’ve got too much time on their hands. If she came to the shop to help, she’d probably bring half of the over-sixties with her and stay until Christmas. But she’s got to sort that out for herself– I came to support her. I’m not here to babysit her. She’s too young to live vicariously through me. She has to make her own life.’
‘I imagined you only worked or watched box sets?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘You know what I mean.’
I’m pushing the gooseberry ice further down into the cone with every lick. ‘It’s nice that you’re close enough to take a realistic view of each other.’ I think of what he’s sacrificed. ‘It’s also very good of you to have put your own life on hold to come to be with your mum.’
He sighs. ‘It was less of a sacrifice than you’d think. A bungalow on a cul-de-sac miles away from anywhere gave me the level of invisibility I needed at the time.’
‘Those bumps in the road you’re always banging on about?’
‘That’s the one.’ He blows out his cheeks. ‘My mum and I have always been close because my dad walked out when I was nine, and we had a few tough years on our own.’
I blow out a breath. ‘My dad left us, too, but from what my mum said things got easier once he had.’
He shrugs. ‘My mum was better off too. But she had cancer, and I had to look after her because there wasn’t anyone else.’
My heart goes out to him when I think of how young he was. ‘That was when you missed school?’
He sighs again. ‘I was never a big fan. It was fine in the end, because my mum pulled through, and after that nothing else really mattered, but I didn’t ever properly go back.’ He pulls a face. ‘I’d do a few days here and there, to keep them off my back. Not enough to pass any exams, but I learned different things– skills for life, the importance of money, how to seize an opportunity.’
I smile. ‘How to tie a ponytail?’
He nods. ‘At sixteen I went to sweep up in my mum’s friend’s hair salon, and I didn’t look back. You’d be amazed at the contacts I built up shampooing hair. By that time my mum had met someone else. Eventually they moved down here together, then I came down to be with her when he died.’
‘She’s had a rough time. But at least you still have each other.’
Miles looks at the end of his cornet. ‘I know I’m lucky. That’s why I always try to put her first. But she’s very resilient. She almost lost her life all those years ago. Since then she sees it as her duty to make the most of every day. She and Harry met at the Over-sixties. Those half price lunches at the Yellow Canary are like Tinder on rocket fuel. They fell for each other pretty quickly.’
I push the last of the cone into my mouth and lick my finger ends. ‘I admire anyone who makes a go of a relationship, regardless of how it happens.’
It’s not lost on me how strange life is. If we hadn’t bumped into Jackie and Harry none of this would have come up. But now it has I’m leaving this bench with a very different impression of Miles than the one I had when I sat down. Remembering the old saying that men are who their mothers made them, meeting the parent, even for a few minutes, gives a great insight. But I also need to remember that this meeting was accidental.
Miles has taken every precaution to keep his mum away from me, and the other way around, too. I take it he’d rather I was still that auburn girl glimpsed in the distance. And he’d certainly rather have kept his past under wraps.
‘You’re wondering why I’ve kept all this to myself?’
I laugh. ‘You read mindsandmake croissants?’ I sigh. ‘It feels a teensy bit secretive. I mean, within days of me arriving everyone knew where I lived and what I had for breakfast, but even now no one seems to know you.’
‘Pumpkin’s orange, you stand out.’ He blows out a breath. ‘No, you’re right. Trying not to sound even more weird, but I made a permanent move here from Manchester because I had a stalker.’
