She was, he thought, quite beautiful. The thought surprised him and he shook his head, as if dismissing it.
He threw himself into work, going backwards and forwards to the kitchen, taking orders to Kenny and carrying plates to the table to help Callum, who was on his own now that Ollie was busy prepping for Kenny as well as dealing with the dishwasher. He carefully avoided eye contact with his chef, but luckily Kenny was so busy that he wouldn’t have had time to ask awkward questions anyway. They would come later, no doubt.
As he delivered two plates of crab salad to table five, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the woman had just drained her drink in one go. It was as if she’d finally decided that sitting there nursing it wasn’t going to do her much good and she might as well get what she’d paid for.
As he passed by on his way back to the bar, he gave her a shy smile, wondering why he felt so nervous.
‘Would you like another?’
She looked shocked, as if she hadn’t expected anyone to speak to her and wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Then she shook her head. ‘No thanks. I should be getting home. Well…’
He waited for her to finish the sentence, but she didn’t. After a moment she said, ‘May I have that lemonade now please?’
He grinned. ‘Sure.’ He took her empty glass and carried it back to the bar, surprised to realise that she’d followed him.
‘I can put it on a tab, if you like,’ he offered.
‘Oh no, it’s fine. This will be the last one anyway. I need to get back. My children…’
Her children? His eyes strayed to her left hand, and his heart sank as he noticed the gold band on her third finger. Married then. Marriedanda mother. It was crazy how deflated he felt by that.
She sat on one of the bar stools and propped her chin in her hands. Sam poured her a lemonade, trying not to notice how adorably elfin she looked. She had a sadness in her eyes that stirred his compassion. There was definitely something that was making her unhappy, and since she hadn’t said she should be getting back for her husband, and the husband wasn’t with her, he’d hazard a guess that her sadness was caused by said man. Probably they’d had a row.
He saw it a lot. Couples fell out and one of them came to The North Star to sulk or drown their sorrows. Usually, though, it was the man.
Of course, that was making huge assumptions. For one thing, she could be married to another woman. Either way, there was no point in him wondering what her story was. Married to a man or a woman, shewasmarried. End of story.
‘Excuse me,’ said a cross-sounding woman with bright pink lipstick and clumpy mascara, ‘we’ve been waiting hours for our steak and chips.’
It had hardly been hours, Sam thought irritably. Although, he had to admit, it had been a while since he’d taken the couple’s order through to Kenny.
‘I’m terribly sorry. We’re very busy tonight, as you can see, and we’re short-staffed.’
The woman shrugged. ‘Why is that my problem?’
‘Well… It’s not, obviously. I was just explaining why your steak and chips is taking a bit longer than it normally would.’
‘Abitlonger? What’s the chef doing? Has he gone out to rustle the cow or what?’
‘I’ll go and check for you,’ Sam said, forcing a polite smile.
Pink Lipstick shook her head and glanced at the fragile woman sitting beside her. ‘I don’t even know why we came here,’ she confided. ‘I wanted to go to The Shoulder of Lamb in Heronsea, but we thought we’d give it a try. Somewhere new. Different. Well, it’s bloody different all right. You have to order your grub hours in advance. I could have gone to the supermarket, bought the ingredients and cooked it all myself quicker.’
Sam and the woman exchanged glances. He caught a look of sympathy in her grey eyes and felt a bit better.
As he rushed into the kitchen he almost collided with Callum, who was on his way out with two plates of food in his hands.
‘Please tell me that’s two lots of steak and chips,’ Sam said.
‘It is. Don’t tell me they’re complaining? She was rude as anything when she gave me the order, for absolutely no reason.’
‘Well, hurry up and deliver it before she finds something else to complain about,’ Sam urged.
He returned to the bar and informed the sulky-looking woman that her food was en route to her table right there and then.
‘Some bar managers would offer free drinks as compensation,’ she informed him, and gave him a hopeful look.
Sam didn’t respond, and she tutted angrily and strode back to her table, no doubt to give poor Callum another earful.
