‘What would you suggest?’
She smiled. She knew exactly what he’d like. She held a cone beneath a spout and pulled the lever to make the soft-serve ice-cream come out and as she moved the cone around the perfect ice-cream formed. She took a long chocolate flake, pushed it in the side and passed it to him. ‘Try that.’
He fumbled in his pocket.
‘No, it’s fine.’ She swished her hands, wanting to give him this ice-cream on the house.
She turned around at the sound of the van’s door opening. Her uncle was back already. He pulled on the white coat he always wore when he was working.
The sound of coins being dropped onto the counter made her turn again.
‘Keep the change,’ said Howard in a sing-song voice as he headed away from trouble.
She could’ve kissed him right there and then, if she could reach down to his level the other side of the van that was, and if her uncle wasn’t watching.
Once her shift was over, she skipped over to the bench where Howard had sat for the last couple of hours. She sat at the opposite end.
‘Keep your book on your lap in case my uncle looks over,’ she said.
‘You’re not allowed to date?’
The sea breeze caught her hair when she turned to ask, ‘Is that what this is?’
‘Maybe.’ He looked suddenly shy.
Bonnie liked that Howard wasn’t at all cocky, wasn’t too big for his boots, not like her husband had been. She’d met Sean at a local pub near where she lived in Derby. He’d been wild from the start: he rode a motorbike, had tattoos all up both arms, and he was a couple of years older. He had jet-black hair, smoked, hung around with other lads equally up their own arses, but he’d had an air about him that she’d been drawn to. She’d been so young, so vulnerable when they met. Maybe everyone had to date a bad boy somewhere along the line. And he’d been hers.
She fixed her gaze on the sea stretching out before them from their vantage point. ‘Before we decide what this is, I think I should tell you something.’ She was worried he would walk away when he heard what she had to say so she blurted it out to get it over with. ‘I was married.’
‘Married?’ He paused. ‘But you’re only nineteen.’
‘It was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened. We were both young,’ she rambled on.
‘You were in love?’
She paused, trying to think of how to explain it when sometimes she didn’t really understand it all herself. ‘Looking back, I think we thought we were. We wanted to grow up too fast I suppose, move out of home and do the next exciting thing. It was soon clear that neither of us were ready and we went our separate ways, but not before my ex-husband burned through his savings and mine. Not that I had much, but I had some put by. My parents ended up getting me out of the dodgy bedsit we’d rented by paying the sum we owed to the landlord and they never let my ex near me again.’
‘I’m sorry you went through that.’ He closed his book as if he didn’t care who was watching them both now. ‘But I’m glad, in a way.’
‘Glad?’
‘You’ve had a relationship go bad; you’ve been with someone you can’t trust. Maybe now it’s time to take a chance on someone who’s the complete opposite.’ He cleared his throat. He’d sounded confident but only for a second before he was back to being unsure of himself. She loved that he wasn’t at all arrogant when he said, ‘I’m talking about me… you know, in case that isn’t clear.’
‘It’s clear.’ She shuffled a bit closer to him on the bench, eager to talk about something other than her failures. ‘Tell me, what do you boys actually do when you’re on holiday? When you’re not running off with a book that is.’
‘The usual – swimming in the sea?—’
‘It’s cold!’
‘Freezing,’ he said. ‘But we had to do it. You can’t come to the beach and not get in the water. We’ve had fish and chips, been to the amusements many times. We’ve enjoyed a few beers, even me.’
‘Beer instead of tea? So you are semi normal then.’
They stayed where they were, talking and laughing until it was time for her to head back to her uncle’s for dinner.
Howard had come back to see her every day of his holiday after that. He’d spent the mornings with the boys, swimming in the sea, lazing on the beach, trawling the amusement arcades. Then after Bonnie’s shift at the ice-cream van was over, he’d take her to the Pleasure Beach where they rode the Big Dipper, their hands tightly gripped together the whole time they were on it, a secret thrill zipping through her body at the closeness. They’d laughed their way through the fun house once they were past the slightly creepy grinning clowns outside and enjoyed the near-vertical slides, the wonky staircase, the moving floorboards and the rotating barrel that was next to impossible to stay on. They drank fizzy orange, then strolled hand in hand along the pier with the smell of fresh doughnuts, hot dogs and candy floss lacing the air. And as the sun went down the first evening they were together, they stopped on the pier, the lights illuminating the water and the boardwalk, and shared their first kiss.
On the last day of his holiday, Howard cut his time with the boys short. He’d finally told them that he’d met someone and before they could ask who, or worse, follow him, he’d jumped on the bus near the campsite and come to meet her. That day Howard brought his camera with him and got a passer-by to take a photograph of them both in front of the ice-cream van, his arm hooked around her and across her chest from behind, holding her against him. By that time her uncle had been introduced to Howard, her auntie had come down to say hello to him, and she needn’t have worried about her family thinking the worst of this man. From the very start they’d loved Howard, and her auntie had reported back to Bonnie’s mother – she knew this because she’d overheard the brief phone call – that this man was ‘nothing like the last’.
