‘I’m nineteen.’ She hoped that didn’t make this a bad thing. She wasn’t sure her uncle would approve or her parents, as it was quite the age gap.
‘Good to know.’ He smiled.
‘I wasn’t a nerd at school like you were,’ she teased, ‘but I’m working a bit harder now I’m training to be a nurse.’
‘So the ice-cream van will lose you soon.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m just helping out family with that. There isn’t much to do here on a visit. What do you do? For work, I mean?’
‘I’m in the civil service.’
‘And what do you do in the civil service?’
‘I’m in administration. Which sounds dull, but I don’t mind it. I’m learning all the time. Who knows what I’ll get into next.’
She liked his response. It sounded mysterious, like there was more to this man than she realised. She could imagine him in an administration role – he’d be organised, patient, do things right. She wasn’t sure why she knew this; she just did.
She looked at his book. ‘That looks heavy.’ She took it when he passed it her way. She was right.
‘Do you read, Bonnie?’ he asked, relieving her of the weight of it.
‘I had to for my studies, but not for pleasure, no.’
‘You’re missing out.’
‘Am I?’ She shrugged. ‘I like real life, me.’
Except right now in her kitchen on her own in their cottage in Driftwick Bay she’d rather have anything but her real life.
She took her tea into the back room and set it on the desk. Howard’s books hogged the shelves behind and his laptop was exactly where he’d left it. He’d had a habit of always leaving it open and she’d come along and close it so that dust didn’t gather between the keys.
She picked up her mug of tea and turned to look at the painting of the ice-cream van she’d done in the summer of 1977.
On the day she’d gone to meet Howard at the campsite, she’d had a later shift at the ice-cream van. She’d told Howard to stop by just after 4p.m. as that was usually when her uncle took his break. She might only be nineteen, but had already been married once – something she knew she ought to explain to Howard sooner rather than later, because after the terrible time with her first husband, her family, immediate and extended, kept a watchful eye on her.
Howard had turned up promptly at 4p.m. and standing behind three others in the queue he’d not taken his eyes off her. She knew he was watching her every move and she’d tried to act nonchalant, like she wasn’t nervous at all. But her hand shook as she took the change from the elderly gentleman buying a cider lolly and a 99 before she looked up as if she’d only just realised Howard was there.
‘Fourp.m. already,’ she said.
‘Looks like it.’
She leaned onto the counter. She was way more nervous than she’d been seeing him that morning and she knew it was because she liked him so much. They hadn’t spent much time together but already he made her feel safe, which was odd – she didn’t know him that well, so how was that even possible?
She spotted the rucksack on his back again. ‘You got a book in that bag?’
‘Never leave home, or the tent, without one. And besides, if the boys find my book back at the campsite, it’ll be destroyed and that would be a crime.’
‘Where do they think you are now?’
‘I told them I was going to walk all the way to the pier. That put them off.’
‘You’re on holiday with them. Don’t you want to do things together, like go out and meet girls?’ She expected that was what they were all here for like many of the big single-sex groups.
‘I’ve already met my girl.’
Flustered, she served another lady three mini milks. A young boy wanted a tongue twister and a girl with dreadlocks rushed up with a request for a strawberry split.
When it was all quiet again, she asked Howard what he would like.
