‘I’m going to hug you now,’ Guy says, sliding his arm around me. ‘Don’t use it as an excuse to molest me, okay?’
I splutter out a laugh and let myself settle against him. It feels nice, resting my head against his solid shoulder, his touch calming and gentle. He smells strangely good for a man who has slept in a car, and for just a few moments, I allow myself to let go. To forget.
‘Sorry,’ I say when I pull away. ‘I’ve made you all soggy.’
‘It’s okay. Any time.’
He hasn’t asked why I didn’t come home for the funeral, and I am glad. I’m not quite ready to talk about that, no matter how close I feel to this man in the current moment. I clamber to my feet and hold out my hands to help him up – not that he needs it, being in disgustingly good shape.
‘Not going to ask?’ I say, as we start to stroll back along the beach.
‘No. I’m going to assume you had your reasons, and that they made sense to you at the time.’
‘That’s incredibly zen of you.’
‘Well, I don’t want to get on your wrong side. You promised me coffee and bacon butties.’
‘I did,’ I answer, ‘and I’m very much a woman of my word. I’m sure Dad has everything in the house, but we can call at the shop too.’ I need to do something normal. I need to balance things out a little.
Trevor the Druid, I recall, was always up before dawn so he could watch the sunrise. I vaguely remember a story about him building a replica stone circle in his garden, and wonder if that’s true or if I made it up.
The store is indeed open, and Trevor is standing outside, watching as we walk towards him. He’s staring at me intently, and I hope he’s not about to start talking about my black auraor predicting a plague of crows now the prodigal daughter has returned.
‘Good morning,’ he says simply, nodding at us both. ‘Pastries are fresh in from the bakery, and I have a selection of home-made organic herbal teas. Ginger and lemon?’
Guy looks slightly taken aback at the personal service, but I welcome the suggestion. I’m quite the tea addict these days. The Emporium, just as I remember it, sells pretty much everything from multipacks of Monster Munch through to fishing rods, stopping off along the way to encompass fresh deli goods, Trevor’s self-penned guide to local history, and a whole shelf full of healing crystals. I’m tempted to swoop them all into a bag wholesale, because a girl can’t have too many healing crystals, but concentrate instead on the pastries. I choose two boxes full of croissants, pain au chocolat and raspberry crowns before realising that I don’t even have my purse with me.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Trevor says, proving he’s the worst shopkeeper in the world. ‘It’s nice to have you home, Suzie. Like a missing piece in the jigsaw.’
He smiles, and it makes me feel warm inside. Better even than a healing crystal. He passes me a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, which he’s miraculously and correctly remembered as my childhood favourite.
‘I don’t know about that, Trevor, but thank you – I’ll drop the cash in later, I promise.’
We walk around the edge of the green and see signs of the village waking up. A young woman in a ‘My Chemical Romance’ T-shirt walks past, all dyed black hair and multiple piercings. She waves at us and says: ‘Gorgeous day, isn’t it?’ Her cheerfulness is slightly at odds with her appearance. Even the Goth girls are happy in Starshine Cove.
She chats to a blonde-haired woman who looks like she’s been for a run, and while she’s distracted her scruffy-lookinglittle dog sniffs the air, then takes an experimental run at our baked goods. I hold the boxes aloft, and he tries to jump up and reach them. His owner looks over, laughing as she catches him and lifts him in her arms, kissing his fuzzy head. He’s small, brown and white, with fluffy fur that falls from him like a fringe. He’s adorable, and one of the oddest-looking dogs I’ve ever seen. At least I think it’s a dog.
‘Sorry!’ she says. ‘Larry is a demon for a croissant. Any damage and I’ll happily replace them.’
Her eyes flicker over me, and then onto Guy. He’s a good-looking man but she doesn’t pause, and I guess she takes the wedding ring on her finger seriously.
‘No harm done,’ I assure her. I can practically see the questions burrowing beneath her skin. She’s looking at me as though she’s trying to figure out where she knows me from.
‘Have we met?’ she asks, frowning slightly. ‘You look so familiar…’
‘I just have one of those faces,’ I answer, keen to move on. It’s exactly this kind of encounter that makes me cringe inside – the complete lack of anonymity. I’m fairly sure I have never encountered this person before, but I am still familiar to her. It is impossible to walk from one side of this village to the other without being nabbed by somebody.
‘Okay, best be off!’ I say briskly, not wanting to give her the chance to introduce herself. Because then I’ll feel obliged to do the same, and then her eyes will go all wide as she finally figures it out, and she’ll be all ‘Ooh, I see – you’re George’s long-lost daughter! The bad one!’
Obviously I have no idea if she would do that at all, but I’m not willing to give her the chance. I judge myself quite enough without other people’s input, thank you very much. She murmurs goodbye, and I give Larry a little pet before I walk on, Guy silent at my side. I can feel her eyes on me as I retreat, andfight the urge to do a duck and roll behind the houses and run for the hills.
I do, however, make a little detour via the cottage, and deposit one of the boxes of treats outside the red door. A little good morning surprise for the girls.
‘That’s where I grew up,’ I tell Guy. ‘What a house of horrors, eh?’
I’m mocking myself here, because I now know how he grew up. He gazes at the chocolate-box pretty building with its thatched roof and idyllic garden, and shakes his head. ‘You can’t tell from looking,’ he replies.
We are soon back at my dad’s place, where Bear is now fully awake, and extremely interested in the box I’m carrying. He’s a lot bigger and more insistent than little fluffy Larry was, and I have to be firm with him. He gazes up at me with such woeful disappointment, it almost breaks my heart.
