by Ashley Cain
“I met her in the café a couple of months back remember. She made a fuss about the salad being bland”.
“I used to know her when we were children, we were good friends at one point but I didn’t recognise her at all now, and if she recognised me, she made no mention of the fact. Probably wouldn’t have wanted to be reminded of her past. It is a long time since she left for South Africa and she didn’t look like she does now. So different I think she must have had some work done. She had quite a hippy vibe going back then”.
As if they knew they were being talked about, both Ivan and Imelda’s eyes swivelled to look at them. Martha gave a start as though she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have and moved away with her tray to a small group of drinkers. It left April looking exposed alone in the centre of the room. She turned to go, she had seen enough, but wasn’t quick enough to make her escape before Ivan Fletcher and his sister appeared by her side.
“Hello April, how nice to see you” The warmth of Ivan’s greeting didn’t quite reach his eyes which remained icy cold as he looked at her. “This is my sister Imelda; she has designed the interior of this restaurant and I am sure you will agree she has done a very good job”.
“Yes”, April answered looking around her. “It looks quite similar to the Bluewater café with the striped décor and the old photos on the walls. It is very nice”.
Imelda looked put out, an expression which April assumed was quite familiar to her. “Blue and white stripes is a natural look for a restaurant by the sea and an obvious choice to make, but I don’t remember seeing chandeliers when I came in to yours for lunch. There again I was concentrating so hard on cutting the dry piece of chicken that I was served that I may have failed to look around at my surroundings sufficiently to notice them”.
April felt a burning sensation in her cheeks. What was it about this woman that made her feel the need to be so rude? April was pretty sure that the chicken hadn’t been dry, and that she had personally done nothing to the woman to incur such rudeness. She wondered if she was the same with everyone. Her hackles rose, she was not going to put up with this. She had taken quite enough trouble from life over the previous few weeks to accept it from this woman.
“No there weren’t any chandeliers. You don’t need oversized lights when you have lots of natural light flooding the room. When I designed my café, I wanted it to have a natural beauty, not be overly artificial. It is difficult to fake natural isn’t it, you end up looking like you have tried too much?” She stared directly in to Imelda’s eyes, ringed with heavy black mascara and momentarily saw that the barb had hit home. Two can play at that game she thought spitefully, mentally making the score in her head one all.
Imelda could play it better though. “I hear you have plenty of natural light in the place now that you are missing a wall or two” she said with a smile that, like her brother’s, didn’t reach her eyes. “I guess though it was a blessing given that the fact you now have some serious competition in the bay. You can close the café gracefully rather than die a slow death. Who would have wanted plain café food when they can eat here?” She looked around her with a satisfied smile.
“Now, now Imelda” Ivan said with a smile. “I used to like popping in to the Bluewater Café for a drink and a snack. I think this place will be great for lunch and dinner, but if you just wanted coffee and a sandwich then the Bluewater café was perfect. I’ll miss it”.
“You won’t need to miss it Mr Fletcher”, April said quickly. “I’m opening again after Christmas but on a smaller scale. Concentrating on the bakery part as opposed to the food, but you will still be able to get a coffee and a pastry or sandwich whenever you want”.
Ivan looked momentarily disconcerted and was about to say something when Connor arrived with a beaming smile and carrying two glasses of champagne. “Couldn’t keep away?” he said handing one of them to her. Ivan and Imelda drifted away to the corner of the room.
There was no way she was going to take a sip of anything Connor had given her. For all she knew he had put something in the glass to poison her. “You invited me. I thought I would pop in and see what you had done to the place” She put the glass down on the nearest table and turned to go.
“Looks good doesn’t it?” he said enthusiastically taking a sip from his glass. “The food will be amazing. Steaks and seafood served throughout the day. Champagne and cocktails served in the courtyard with classical music playing. This will be the number one venue in Gull Bay within a week”
“Hopefully you have learned to cook then” April said tartly.
“I’m not doing the cooking” Connor said with a smirk. “I own the place, why would I get my hands dirty? I have recruited one of the chefs from the Belvedere Spa”.
“I’m sure Mr Fletcher won’t be happy that you have been poaching his staff. Does he know?” Did she imagine it or did a flicker of something knock the smirk off Connors face when she said that? Alarm maybe, or a fear that he had said something he shouldn’t. If it had he recovered well.
“Of course, he knows. He’s been a big supporter of this place since he knew I had asked his sister to do the interior design. He likes to support talent, that’s why he offered to take Miguel away from cooking café food and gave him the opportunity to work in a proper restaurant. And why he didn’t mind when he knew I wanted to open my own restaurant and employ one of the guys I used to work with”.
April was tired of the verbal sparring and the conflict. Although she couldn’t understand who would have wanted to burn down the café or trash it, deep down she could not quite bring herself to believe that Connor would do it. He was arrogant and cocky, but talking to him now he didn’t seem evil. And it must surely have been someone truly evil who had tried to burn the place down. Maybe as Sergeant Tozier had suggested, they were just random acts that coming so close together looked like more than a coincidence.
“Good luck Connor” she said, extending an olive branch. “I’m sure our businesses can cohabit in the bay quite comfortably. There is more than enough business for both of us here and we are not in direct competition. I am more than happy with any distinction that you or anyone else may want to make”
“You’re not closing?” Connor took a step back and looked at her in surprise. “You are going to reopen?” He looked genuinely shocked a look that unnerved her. Ivan had looked the same when she had told him she was reopening just a few minutes before. Why was the news such a revelation to them?
“Of course, I’m going to reopen. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I just thought”, he tailed off and his eyes shifted to look at something over her shoulder. “Excuse me”, he said suddenly and walked past her quickly. April turned, it was the first time that she had seen Connor look anything other than assured and self-confident.
Connor had disappeared to the back of the restaurant past the bar. She wondered what he had seen that had made him suddenly go. She couldn’t see anyone there. Shaking her head, she looked for Martha to say goodbye but she wasn’t there either, and it looked like Ivan and Imelda had gone as well. She’d seen enough, she was going to go home for a glass of her own wine and sample one of the pies that Rachel had made. They had more than enough for the winter fair and the verbal sparring had given her an appetite. With a last look around at the décor that looked oddly like the Bluewater café she pushed open the door and set off up the road to her own home.
Chapter 24
April woke to the smell of smoke. It was like déjà vu she thought with terror as she jumped out of bed. The illuminated numbers on the clock on the chest of drawers told her it was 3:09. She had been dreaming that she was a little girl and the boat that she was on, her grandfather’s boat, was on fire. She certainly wasn’t on a boat, she was on her own bed, but had her subconsciousness been giving her a message?
She stood uncertainly looking around her. Was her mind playing tricks on her, had the stresses of the last few weeks sent her imagination in to overdrive? She sniffed
the air, no she didn’t think it was, the smell of smoke was real and it seemed to be getting stronger.
It was a clear night and the moon shone through the crack in her bedroom curtains bathing the room in a pale silvery light. She looked around and gave a start. Black wisps of smoke were seeping through the door like shadows and curling through the air towards her. Gasping she ran to the bedroom door, clasped the handle which seemed warm to the touch and flung it open.
She was confronted by a wall of flames. Not even bothering to stifle the scream that erupted from the very depths of her stomach, she gave a piercing yell which she was sure would be heard over the water on the island of Sark, one of the neighbouring islands, and ran through the living room to the patio doors. Fortunately, she had left the key in the lock, a habit that Rachel was always suggesting she should stop because it was a security risk, and fumbled with the key. Unlocking them and throwing the doors open she ran barefoot on to the wooden terrace and screamed in to the night.
The wooden framed terrace was warm beneath her feet and she immediately realised her mistake. The fire had taken hold at the front of the cabin where the door was, and had spread already over the first third of the structure. There was no way she could get to the gate and on to the ramp down on to the road, both the gate and the fence were being consumed by the hungry flames.
Screaming in fear she ran to the back of the terrace. The ground at the back of the cabin was steep and rocky, and it was about a thirty foot drop to the path at the rear end of the café. It would be tricky enough to navigate with shoes on, barefooted the underside of her feet would be cut to shreds. She looked again at the cabin, could she risk going back and getting her shoes?
One look told her she didn’t have time. The cabin was a wooden structure. When she had turned it in to a home, she had strengthened the inside with a secondary wall of wood and stuffed it full of insulation to make it cosy and warm. There was nothing that would slow the fire down. Once it had got hold it was going to consume the cabin and everything in it very quickly. Thinking momentarily of the photo albums she had, her stuffed animals from when she was a child, and the wooden casket that contained the ashes of Minky, her childhood cat, she gave a half sob but there was no time to save them, there was only time to try and save herself.
Screaming again in the faint hope that there was some sleepless soul out in the harbour having a walk at this time on a cold clear morning, she looked back at her home and then made the only decision she could. She was going to have to scramble down the rocky cliff. No matter how painful it was going to be, it was better than the alternative, stand there and wait to be burned alive.
It took ten minutes, which seemed like ten years, to reach the bottom by which time her feet were black and bleeding, the palms of her hands were cut, she had ripped a fingernail half off and had nearly poked her eye out with a stick that had been growing out of the rocks and had slashed her face just an inch under her eye. She could feel the trickle of blood running down her face. The pain she was in though was nothing to the pain in her heart when she looked up and saw the cabin, her grandfather’s workshop now her home, in flames. The fire had really taken hold and it was an inferno. If she hadn’t woken when she did, if she had hesitated getting out of bed by just five minutes. She shook her head clear of the thoughts, she couldn’t think like that. She needed to focus. If she didn’t get help quickly the fire would start making its way down the cliff to what was left of the café. She would lose everything.
With a half sob she set off at a run around the back of the café and on to the road. Oblivious to the pain from her feet she pounded down the road to the harbour and reaching the row of cottages and shops ran past the first few doors until she came to the black door of Hope’s cottage. Banging on the door as loud as she could, she kept banging and shouting until she heard the rattle of the door being unlocked and the old woman, looking frail but fierce in a bright blue night coat and patterned night cap, pulled open the door.
“What on earth?” she said in amazement, taking one look at April and putting down the marble rolling pin that she had obviously been going to use as a weapon against anyone who was going to try and force entry. “What’s happened to you?”
April tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth all that came out was a strangled gasp. Grabbing Hope by her bony arm, she pulled her half out of the door and pointed up the road. The burning cabin looked like an inferno lighting up Gull Bay.
“My God, you poor child”. Hope’s face was as white as chalk as she looked at April. Leading her gently through the door she deposited her in a chair and reached for the phone. I’ve asked for the fire brigade and the police she said after a few minutes of urgent conversation, putting down the phone and sitting down next to her. “I think we now have to accept April”, she said looking directly at her, “that after everything that has been happening this fire is no accident. Somebody is trying to kill you”.
April just nodded mutely. She had come to that conclusion herself whilst she had had been sitting there waiting for Hope to finish her calls. Accepting the large glass of ancient brandy that Hope had handed her she stared in to the dark liquid. She had to face up to what had been going through her mind. First her café had been burgled and wrecked, then it had been burnt. And now her own home had been set on fire with her inside. Whoever was doing this had upped the stakes, because they would have known that she would have been asleep inside. It wasn’t just her business that had been attacked but herself. If she hadn’t woken up when she had, if she had stayed sleeping just another five minutes, she would have died. Somebody was no longer trying to scare her but to kill her. And although she didn’t know why, she would need to find out quickly before they succeeded. She had been lucky tonight, if you could call being made homeless lucky, but she may not be lucky again.
She sat drinking the brandy deep in thought, Hope beside her uncharacteristically quiet such was the shock the night had brought them. Why somebody was trying to kill her was replaced by another question that made her shiver in fear for it was an unknown enemy, Who?
Chapter 25
If the residents of Gull Bay hadn’t been woken by April’s re-enactment of the screaming banshee as she ran down the road, then they certainly were in the next fifteen minutes as two fire engines, an ambulance and not one, but two, police cars raced down the sharp hill that led down to the beach and the harbour beyond. Whilst the fire engines stopped opposite the Bluewater café and trained their hosepipes on the bonfire that just an hour earlier had been April’s home, the ambulance and police cars made their way to the harbour and filled every available space in the tiny road. As April, shaking like a leaf now the realisation of what had happened started to sink in, opened the door to the emergency services she was aware that all around her lights were being turned on, doors and windows were being thrown open and the air, already thick with smoke, was filled with gasps of shock, amazement and fear.
Sergeant Tozier and his colleague PC Mallet came in to the small cluttered space that was Hope’s living room and tried valiantly to find somewhere to sit amongst the cushions, rugs, books and magazines that were piled on the sofa and chairs. They were followed by a paramedic and a nurse who had obviously been called by the police when the fire had been reported. As the paramedic checked her heart rate which unsurprisingly was high, given she had clambered down a cliff face like a mountain lion and sprinted along the harbour road like Usain Bolt, the nurse started to clean her feet with antiseptic and water. Sergeant Tozier took out his notebook.
Hope hovered in the background.
“Do you feel able to answer some questions?” Sergeant Tozier asked. His colleague PC Mallet glowered in the corner and April again wondered why people she barely knew seemed to take an instant dislike to her. As far as she was aware, she had only met PC Mallet the once and yet she clearly was unhappy with her for some unfathomable reason.
“Yes, although I don’t think I can tell you a lot”. She winced as the nu
rse wiped antiseptic on a cut on her foot and the paramedic clasped her shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry” she said, “it may sting a bit but we will have you sorted in no time”.
“Just tell us what you do know, however little and however unimportant it may seem”.
“I woke up and could immediately smell smoke. I thought I was dreaming at first because I had been dreaming that I was on a boat that was on fire” She felt rather than saw PC Mallet roll her eyes. “It was nine minutes past three”.
“That’s very precise” PC Mallet interrupted. “How do you know it was 3.09 exactly?”
“I looked at the digital alarm clock by the side of the bed. It is what you tend to do when you wake up suddenly in the middle of the night”. She was aware that she had snapped but didn’t care. The police were supposed to help you when you were in trouble, not take an attitude. It was PC Mallet’s turn to flush and she turned away and looked at Hope, but whatever look was on the old lady’s face soon made her turn back. She looked down at her feet.
“Anyway, the smell of smoke was strong and so I went to the bedroom door and opened it. I saw the whole front of the living room was on fire and so I rushed to the patio doors on to the terrace and opened them. My plan was to go to the gate and run on to the street to get help, but I could see that the fire had already reached the gate and so I climbed over the fence and made my way down the cliff to the street instead. That’s how I cut my feet”. She wiggled her foot in the direction of the police officer to show him the cuts and lacerations that covered her soles.