Summer on Seashell Island: Escape to an island this summer for the perfect heartwarming romance in 2020 (Riley Wolfe 1)

by Sophie Pembroke

  Then the door shut behind them and they fell onto the bed, and Miranda didn’t try to think any more at all.

  LEO

  Finally, the girls were both in bed. Maybe it had been the excitement of the party, or just the sugar in the marshmallows, but they’d wanted to talk and talk tonight – even though he’d have sworn Abby was ready to crash while they were dancing. Questions about everything from llamas to folk music to tide times to bicycles to the Lighthouse Festival, to when Grandma and Grandad were coming back.

  That last one had been from a drowsy Mia, after Abby had finally succumbed to sleep, her new favourite stuffed toy – a llama Juliet had found for her in the local toy shop, which Leo imagined would feature in a wedding soon enough – curled up close at her side.

  ‘Grandma and Grandad are coming back, right, Dad?’ Mia had murmured, her eyes hardly open.

  He’d already answered eighty-four random questions that evening, mostly from Abby, but somehow Leo knew this was the one that mattered the most. The one that showed that Mia trusted him to tell the truth. To answer difficult questions. To stay and talk when she needed him to.

  This, he realised at last, was what Christabel had been talking about. How he was supposed to do it when also running a business instead of throwing parties for llamas was another matter, but one he’d save for later.

  Right now, he was focused on his daughter’s question.

  Sitting back down on the edge of her bed, Leo brushed the hair out of Mia’s closing eyes and smiled softly at how young she looked all of a sudden. Less the almost tween, more the little girl he remembered.

  ‘Of course they’re coming back,’ he told her. ‘This is their home, remember? They wouldn’t leave it. And they wouldn’t leave us.’

  ‘You left,’ Mia whispered, so quiet he wasn’t sure if she was even awake any longer. ‘I hope you’re coming back.’

  He froze, one hand still stroking her head, as her words ricocheted around his head. You left. Then her breathing evened out and he knew she was truly asleep.

  But he’d never felt more awake.

  With one last kiss to each of the girls’ heads – and after tucking Lara the stuffed toy llama more securely into Abby’s embrace – Leo took the stairs back down to the ground floor two at a time.

  He found Christabel in the kitchen, making tea in the proper old teapot his mum never used any more.

  ‘You missed Juliet and Miranda,’ she said. ‘I think Juliet’s gone to bed, and Miranda disappeared again with Owain. I think you’re in for a lecture about throwing parties without them tomorrow.’

  Leo winced. ‘Excellent. Suddenly I’m glad bedtime took so long.’

  ‘The girls wanted to talk tonight?’ she guessed.

  Leo nodded, watching as she poured the dark, steaming tea into mugs. ‘They have so many questions.’

  ‘But they wanted to talk to you about them,’ Christabel pointed out, and he couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘Yeah. They did.’ Then he remembered Mia’s last words before sleep, and the smile fell away.

  Placing two mugs of tea between them on the kitchen table, and retrieving a packet of chocolate digestives from who knew where, Christabel sat down opposite him. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Mia. She said something . . .’ He reached for his mug, then paused. ‘What happened to the beer?’

  Christabel shook her head. ‘It’s time to talk now. Talking requires tea.’

  In his experience, talking – the real, things that matter kind of talk – needed strong liquor, but he didn’t argue with her. Instead, he sipped his tea – scalding his tongue in the process – and told her what Mia had said.

  ‘Hmm.’ Christabel took a biscuit, and dunked it in her tea. ‘Well, on the positive side, she hopes you’re coming back.’

  ‘I suppose.’ It wasn’t much, but it was hope. For both of them. ‘Tonight . . . it worked. The girls loved the party, they forgave me, and they talked to me for ages at bedtime. I felt like we were close again, like we used to be when they were tiny.’

  ‘So that’s good,’ Christabel said. ‘Why aren’t you smiling?’

  ‘Because it’s not real.’ Leo sighed. Any enthusiasm he’d felt about rebuilding his relationship with his daughters while he’d been dancing in the starlight with them had drained away step by step as he’d walked away from their bedroom. ‘This summer . . . it’s an anomaly. And even tonight was a moment out of time. Anyone can pull it together for a special occasion. But that’s not every day.’

  ‘Why can’t it be?’ Christabel asked. ‘Why can’t every day be special?’

  ‘Christabel . . .’ he groaned. ‘You said it yourself – we can’t be happy all the time.’

  ‘No, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work towards happiness.’ She leaned forward across the table, and he made a point of keeping his focus on her face, not the curves she presented him with as the neckline of her top draped low. Well, after the first few seconds, anyway. Focus, Leo. ‘I truly believe that every single day is a special occasion, deserving of celebration and joy. And that’s how I live my life.’

  ‘Which might be possible if I lived in an ambulance, travelling the country, going wherever I wanted and making my living fixing bikes,’ Leo pointed out. ‘But I don’t. I have a business to run, employees relying on me – well, just one employee right now, but he’s demanding. Not to mention the fact that I don’t even see the girls from one week to the next back in London. Seashell Island isn’t real life, I’ve always known that. Why do you think I left? I wanted the real world. Except it turns out that in real life, most days are just something you have to get through to get to the next one.’

  Christabel’s eyes were sad as she watched him across the table. ‘That’s not the only way to live life, Leo. That’s what I’ve been trying to show you. But you have to be willing to see it.’

  He wanted to believe her, really he did. But what did she know? Her life was so free and easy, with no responsibilities, no obligations. Nothing that even vaguely resembled his own.

  ‘What if it is for me?’ he asked. That deep fear that lived down in his gut.

  She shook her head. ‘I won’t believe that. You got a glimpse of what your relationship with your daughters could be tonight—’

  ‘If I threw them a party every day and gave up work.’

  ‘No. If you listened and focused on what is important.’

  ‘My work is important too,’ he pointed out. ‘Maybe not to you, but it matters to me.’

  ‘I know that.’ She tilted her head and looked at him curiously. ‘What is it, exactly, that makes it so important? I mean, besides the money to live on and stuff. I know that matters – it mattered to me too. But I realised the job I was doing wasn’t who I was, who I wanted to be. But you, you love your job, so it must mean something to you. So, why do you do this job? What made you start this business?’

  Leo blinked. ‘Um . . . because I’m good at it?’ He always had been. He’d had an eye for figuring out how to tell the stories that got people to do what companies wanted them to – buy their product, visit their attraction.

  He knew how to manipulate and make people think something was their idea in the first place.

  But for some reason, it didn’t work on his children. It had stopped working on his wife, too. And he had a feeling it would never work on Christabel.

  Actually, he liked that.

  She was still waiting, apparently not satisfied with his answer. Leo tried to dig deeper, to find the words she wanted to hear. Or maybe even the ones he wanted to say.

  ‘I . . . my business is something that I control. I’m in charge, and things only happen if I say they happen.’ He looked down into his mug, as if the tealeaves might provide some answers. ‘That makes me sound like a control freak, and I’m not. It’s just that . . . so much of what happens in thi
s world happens to people, whether they like it or not. And there are elements of that in business too. But at least I can steer my company, guide it in the direction I think it best, or safest. One that gives us all security and comfort. Like I . . .’ he swallowed, as he realised the truth. ‘Like I always wanted to do for my family, in my marriage. But it turned out I wasn’t any good at that. I am good at this.’

  ‘But you are good at being a dad,’ Christabel said gently. ‘Look at how your daughters responded this evening.’

  ‘Because I threw them a party,’ he grumbled. ‘I can’t just buy their love with parties every time I screw up.’

  ‘Because you knew what was important to them.’ Christabel reached across the table and placed her hand over his, small and smooth and cool. ‘It wasn’t that it was a party. It was that it was a party for Lucy the Llama. A party where you were all together. That’s what won them over.’

  ‘Oh.’ He might have screwed up when they told him about Lucy, but he’d remembered that she mattered to the girls. He’d remembered that Mia loved marshmallows, and Abby adored fairy lights. He’d noticed how they’d both loved the music when Birchwood played on the terrace.

  He knew his daughters. He loved his daughters. He just needed to show them that more.

  ‘I still don’t know how I’m going to keep that up and work, though.’

  Christabel shrugged. ‘So that’s phase two. And I don’t have the answers for you. But I’d suspect it has something to do with not trying to do two things at once.’

  ‘But two things – or more – always need doing.’ Usually about fifteen by the time he’d phoned to check in with Tom in the mornings.

  ‘But not at the same time. Your girls are intelligent enough. Set expectations. That’s what I do with myself when I’m working but I’d rather be cycling.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ It was hard to imagine Christabel ever doing anything except exactly what she wanted at that moment.

  ‘Well, I tell myself that if I do one hour of mending bikes, I can go out for an hour on my bike afterwards.’

  ‘Like personal bribery.’

  ‘Like setting my expectations,’ she corrected with a scowl. ‘Nobody can spend all their time doing exactly what they want, Leo. But when you spend enough of it on the things that really matter to you, I find you don’t mind the other bits so much. So, if what matters to you is the important work of your business that only you can do, and your daughters, set aside time for both those things and forget about the rest. They’ll usually take care of themselves.’

  She made it sound so easy. As if a person could just choose how they spent every moment of their day. In his experience, it seldom worked out that way. There were too many unpredictable factors, too many opportunities not to be missed. Too many daughters asking for snacks while he was trying to send emails.

  ‘Maybe.’ Leo wasn’t sure it would work, but it wasn’t as if he had any better ideas. ‘I’ll talk to Tom in the morning.’

  ‘Good.’ Christabel smiled, slow and warm. ‘Now, next question . . . the girls are asleep, everyone else is occupied, it’s too late to do any work . . . so what do you want to do now?’

  Warmth flooded through him as he realised exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to stop worrying about everything else and cut loose, relax.

  And he wanted to do that with Christabel. ‘I have some ideas,’ he admitted.

  ‘Good. Because so do I.’

  She leaned across the table to kiss him for the first time, and Leo hauled her closer, into his lap, losing himself in the embrace.

  Now, this was the sort of dream following and happiness seeking he could definitely get behind.

  MESSAGES

  Josie (to the Waters Wanderers group): Your dad decided to go swimming with sharks! I watched from dry land and took photos.

  Miranda: Sharks?! What was he thinking!

  Iestyn: It was perfectly safe. You all fuss too much.

  Juliet: Dad, you’re scared of the jellyfish on the Long Beach. Sharks are a bit of a stretch!

  Iestyn: You only live once, Juliet!

  JULIET

  On Friday, Juliet served breakfast, made the beds, cleared up the kitchen, and took a nap.

  It was her new routine, one that had been serving her well since Lucy’s llama party. Annoyingly, it hadn’t even been her idea – it had been Rory’s.

  When he’d left her after their evening in the pub, she’d still been unsure how he felt about her revelations. There was so much history between them, it was hard to tell how much of his reticence was due to her past behaviour or their break-up, and how much was caused by the baby. Likewise, their long-standing friendship meant that she couldn’t be sure, when he was kind to her, how much was misplaced affection from their romance, and what was just automatic defence of someone he’d known as an accident-prone toddler.

  The island looked after their own. But after the first couple of days – days when she assumed he was processing all she’d told him – Rory seemed determined to look after her.

  ‘You need to rest more,’ he’d told her, when he arrived on the doorstep with a bag full of what he told her were essentials. She was grateful that everyone else had gone out – to work, to practise, or on another bike ride. ‘Your body is doing something miraculous. You need to give it time and space to do that.’

  She’d pulled a face at him as he stood on the step. ‘You read that in a book, didn’t you?’

  He’d blushed, and later, she’d found that exact same quote in one of the three books he’d included in the bag.

  Also included were: pre-natal vitamins, a water bottle, ginger sweets, pregnancy magazines, a baby name book, bubble bath, and a multi-pack of ready salted crisps.

  ‘You shouldn’t really have too much salt or fat,’ Rory had told her, frowning, as she unpacked the last item. ‘But Mrs Hibbert the pharmacist said they were the only thing that helped her daughter control the nausea, so I thought they might help.’

  ‘You told Mrs Hibbert I’m pregnant?’ Juliet had shrieked.

  ‘Of course not!’ Rory said, looking offended. ‘I just said it was a friend.’

  ‘Right.’ Except, of course, everyone in town knew that she was the friend he was spending time with most these days. She didn’t know how the Flying Fish was coping without him, but Juliet was pretty sure he hadn’t worked a full shift all week. Not since he got over finding out about the baby and decided that she was his latest project.

  The point was, if Rory had a friend who was unexpectedly pregnant, there were limited candidates for the role. All it would take would be Mrs Hibbert innocently mentioning it to the wrong person, and the news would be around the island like wildfire. In Juliet’s experience, locals just couldn’t wait to spread gossip about her misdeeds.

  And this was definitely the best gossip she’d ever offered them.

  Why had she come back here again?

  Because staying in London was even worse. And that’s saying something.

  ‘Mrs Hibbert is a pharmacist,’ Rory had said, sounding suddenly uneasy. ‘She’s bound by some sort of confidence rule of secrecy or something, right?’

  ‘You’d better hope so,’ Juliet had muttered darkly. And when he’d pushed her to make that midwife appointment she’d been putting off, she’d called a clinic on the mainland, instead of Dr Parson’s surgery, on the island.

  But now it was nearly a week later and, so far, she hadn’t heard any outlandish rumours about herself, so maybe Mrs Hibbert really could keep a secret. She’d be the first person on this island who could, but all the more credit to her for that.

  Then there were the text messages. Even when Rory wasn’t able to check on her in person, he still managed to nag her into looking after herself over the phone.

  Like today, when she woke up from her late morning nap to a message
that read: Have you taken your pre-natal vitamins today?

  Rolling her eyes, Juliet had swallowed the damn things just so she could reply, Yes. And I ate my vegetables like a good girl.

  Rory’s response was almost immediate. Good. Also, I was reading that you need to stop wearing underwired bras.

  Juliet blinked at the screen. She wasn’t awake enough yet for this. On the other hand, she couldn’t resist the urge to tease him, just a little. Um . . . how much attention have you been paying to my bras over the last week, exactly?

  Even the dots on the screen that told her he was typing somehow looked flustered. I haven’t! Well. Not much. Anyway, you know what I mean. You need to do what’s best for the baby, right? So buy some new bras.

  Juliet slumped back down into the bed as she tapped out her response. Trust me, doing what’s best for the baby is basically why I’m here at this point.

  As long as it didn’t involve, well, actually telling her family about the baby.

  The fact was, summer was almost over, and she still hadn’t figured out answers to the two most important questions on her mind.

  One, how to tell Miranda and Leo she was pregnant.

  Two, what to do about Rory.

  OK, fine, three questions.

  Three, what the hell to do with her life now.

  But for now, she was focusing on the first two.

  She knew she had to tell her siblings sooner or later, she just couldn’t figure out how. How was she supposed to start a casual conversation that led to ‘Also, I had an affair with my boss and now I’m pregnant and unemployed and I don’t know what to do with my life.’ As if everyone in her life wasn’t disappointed enough in her already.

  But she had to do it. Before long they were really going to start raising questions about why she was still on the island, not in London. September was only a week or so away; even Leo and the girls would be leaving as soon as the festival was over. Mum and Dad would come home, and there’d be no reason for her to stay any more.

  Of course, if Mum and Dad came home she could tell them, and then maybe they could tell Miranda. And Leo. And everyone else, while Juliet hid out in her attic bedroom, grew fat and ignored everybody. Rory would send her care packages, she’d be fine.