THREE
Though they’d sat in the front of the pickup truck with the mechanic all the way to Magpie Cove – his name was Mark, he said, confirmed on the side of his truck as Mark Gardner Repairs – Ellie and Fee didn’t learn much about him other than the fact that he’d lived in the tiny coastal village of Magpie Cove all his life.
It wasn’t for lack of trying, mostly on Fee’s part: even just five miles’ drive along the twisty road, carefully towing Marilyn’s sashaying curves behind them, seemed to take forever with someone who either gave one-word answers or grunted in response to questions. Eventually, Fee gave up and exchanged a glance with Ellie, who had to hide her smile by staring out of the window. Mark Gardner was definitely the strong and silent type.
He was also pretty easy on the eye, although Ellie would never have mentioned it to Fee. She had always been shy about that kind of thing, and she’d rarely allowed herself the time for romantic relationships. There had been some over the years, but nothing that had lasted very long. Either her work got in the way, or, if she started seeing someone within her social group, there was always too much peer pressure.
The two times she’d gone out with someone from the ‘fortunate ones’, as Fee called them, the other women in the group seemed to want to marry them off to each other so that they had another lavish wedding to look forward to. Or, there was jealousy from somewhere else in the group. It was all too much of a pressure cooker for Ellie, who disliked all the in-fighting and gossip that came from being part of a group that spent almost all of its time socialising and working together.
Still, there was no denying that this guy was good-looking. Ellie assumed he was likely very popular with the local women – or men, perhaps. He wore dark blue overalls with his name stitched over the pocket and a company logo on the back, and some heavy work boots. However, he obviously either worked out or maybe car repairs were more strenuous than she thought, because his rolled-up sleeves revealed tanned, muscular forearms, and – if you were looking, which Ellie most definitely wasn’t – his shoulders and biceps strained at the rough blue material.
He didn’t have a perfect face – who did, in real life? Ellie knew from experience that most people who did had paid a lot of money to achieve that kind of bland perfection. But though the lines on his forehead and around his eyes meant he wasn’t twenty anymore, he had handsome features, with blue eyes that regarded you with an earnest, slightly guarded expression, and blond hair that curled onto his collar.
Mark drove the truck down a winding lane, and Ellie glimpsed a sudden flash of blue between a row of cottages.
‘Oh! We’re by the sea?’ she cried out, surprised.
Mark caught her eye and a sudden, warm smile broke out on his serious face. ‘Magpie Cove. Used to be a fishing village – well, still is, a bit, but not ’ow it was. We gets surfers down ’ere in the summer. Still quiet most days, though, ’specially at dawn. T’other mornin’, I had a whole purple-red sunrise to myself, out on the cove.’
‘Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sun rise over the sea.’ Ellie looked back at Mark, whose cheeks had blushed as red as the sun he described. She wasn’t sure why – was he that shy? ‘I used to run along the Thames most mornings, from my flat to the office. Quite often I’d catch the sunrise then. It’s a really great feeling, isn’t it?’
‘Can’t beat it,’ he mumbled, looking back at the road.
They pulled into a wide courtyard bordered with a varnished wooden fence and a sign outside that said: ‘Mark Gardner Repairs: Autos, Haulage and Vintage’.
Fee hopped out of her side of the cab and helped Ellie out of hers. Mark watched Ellie take her time getting down the wide steps, but said nothing.
He walked into a Portacabin labelled ‘Office’ and came back with some forms on a clipboard, thrusting them awkwardly at Fee.
‘So. I’ll have a poke round in the motorhome. Not likely to get ’er started again today, though, so you’ll need to stay somewhere local, or I can let you stay ’ere overnight if you want. There’s a café in the village you can get your dinner at.’
‘Are there many places to stay in Magpie Cove? B&Bs, that kind of thing?’ Fee gave Ellie a concerned glance. ‘I mean, we’re supposed to be on a road trip. We don’t mind staying a night or two, but…’
‘Esther Christie takes in guests sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘Dunno otherwise. I can give Esther a call if you want? She’s got a cottage down the harbour. She’ll see you right.’
‘Well, why don’t we stay in Marilyn tonight and see where we are tomorrow?’ Ellie suggested. She felt very tired, all of a sudden, and the thought of trudging off into the village to a B&B felt like being asked to climb Everest. ‘Is that okay, Mark? You can trust us. We’ll just stay inside. She’s got everything we need.’
‘Fine with me,’ he said, handing Fee a pen. ‘I just need your details on the form, and I’ll get right on it. Fair warnin’, your motorhome’s a foreign vintage model, so if she needs parts, that might get expensive, and none too quick, either. I got a couple of vintage parts dealers I use, but it’s not like gettin’ a new gearbox for a Ford. All right?’
‘Actually, it’s Ellie’s motorhome, not mine.’ Fee handed the paperwork to Ellie. ‘But, okay, we understand.’
‘Do you think it’s something big? Or an easy repair?’ Ellie took the clipboard and scanned it. Most of the information it was asking for she had no idea about. There was some ownership paperwork stashed in the glove box; she’d hardly looked at it when Betsy and Colin, the sellers, a couple in their late sixties, had dropped Marilyn off in the gated parking area of her exclusive apartment complex. As much as anything, Ellie had agreed to Fee’s road-trip idea so that she could get Marilyn out from under the baleful gaze of the building manager, who seemed to want to tell her every day that her apartment came with one allocated parking space only, and Marilyn was taking up four.
‘Hard to say. Could be anythin’.’ Mark looked at Ellie with some curiosity. ‘You ’ad ’er long?’
‘What, me? No. A week and a half.’
‘You into vintage cars ‘n’ that?’ He frowned at Ellie and then at Marilyn.
Ellie thought that he was probably wondering why on earth she’d bought a 1980s American motorhome, but she wasn’t about to explain the whole cancer-and-eBay fiasco now. ‘No. It was… an impulse purchase,’ she explained lamely. Mark raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. ‘Fee, I need to lie down, okay?’
She turned away from where the three of them were standing and walked as composedly as she could over to Marilyn, which had now been taken off the haulage truck and was sitting normally on all four wheels. She got herself up the three wide steps into Marilyn’s warm, comfy interior and headed for the bedroom at the back. Fee had been sleeping on the pull-out sofa.
‘Ellie? Are you okay? Ellie?’ Fee had followed her, but Ellie was suddenly too exhausted to reply.
‘I just need to sleep,’ she muttered, as she sank onto the covers and half pulled one of them over her legs. Her chest wound hurt, though it had been healing nicely, and she felt like she could sleep for weeks.
