The Waffle House on the Pier: A gorgeous feel-good romantic comedy

by Tilly Tennant

  ‘It’s only a little bump to the head,’ Sadie said. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ she added, even as she felt gingerly for the bump on her head and realised that she’d probably eaten smaller boiled eggs.

  * * *

  After a few checks the paramedics gave Sadie a leaflet on what to look for post-head injury and when to go to hospital or call another ambulance and left. By the time they’d packed and gone, quite a little crowd had gathered. They stared at Sadie and she just wished they’d stop because it was starting to freak her out more than the actual accident had. Most were people she didn’t recognise, because the beach would have been heaving with tourists and day trippers, and she hadn’t really thought about that until they’d closed in on her. Andy the lifeguard had gone back to his station, and the man who’d been piloting the boat was pacing up and down the sand a few yards away, talking on his phone. But when he saw that the ambulance crew was done with Sadie, he quickly ended the call and jogged over.

  ‘God, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for all this,’ he said earnestly. He bent down to Sadie. ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Apparently I’ll survive,’ she said.

  ‘No thanks to you,’ Ewan cut in. Kat laid a warning hand on his arm but he shook it off.

  ‘I know that,’ the man said. ‘I can only apologise. I didn’t see you, I swear, I couldn’t… didn’t know how to stop the boat and I couldn’t make it turn in time… I feel just terrible.’

  ‘Not as terrible as my sister feels right now.’ Ewan seemed to grow taller and broader and more menacing right in front of Sadie’s eyes as he faced the stranger. ‘You nearly killed her! Do you understand?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Sadie insisted. ‘Kat was there and I was always going to be in good hands. I don’t want a fuss – there’s no real harm done.’

  ‘There’s plenty of harm done,’ Ewan said. ‘People like this’ – he shoved a finger at the man – ‘need to understand that stupid actions have consequences.’

  ‘Please, Ewan,’ Kat said gently. ‘Sadie has said she doesn’t want a fuss and this is hardly helping her.’

  The man looked between Ewan and Sadie. ‘What can I do to make it up to you?’

  ‘Stay away from boats for a start,’ Ewan cut in.

  ‘Ignore him,’ Sadie said. ‘Accidents happen. I should have had my wits about me too. You couldn’t have known I’d pop up there when I did.’

  ‘I have to say, you’re taking it better than I would,’ the man said with a wan smile.

  Sadie tried to offer him one in return but her head hurt too much and the best she could manage was to look vaguely non-threatening. There was the briefest fraction of a second where their eyes met.

  You have nice eyes, Sadie found herself thinking. They sort of crease into little half-moons when you smile. I bet when you smile properly it’s gorgeous…

  She pushed away the thought. One thing she’d always vowed was that she’d never get involved with a tourist – which he clearly was. Chances were they’d have their fun and you’d never see them again; and even if you did, long-distance relationships were so much harder to keep alive. And now she had a new rule: don’t get involved with tourists who try to run you down in their boat, even if they do have lovely eyes the colour of the sea on a cloudy day that crinkle into little half-moons when they smile.

  ‘Like I said,’ she replied, ‘no real harm done.’

  ‘I wish I could believe you mean that,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ Sadie said with a lot more enthusiasm than she felt. What she really wanted right now was to get away from the scrutiny of a curious crowd and head home, have a shower and a long lie-down and forget all this happened.

  The man turned to Ewan. He offered a hand to shake but Ewan simply stared at it, and then up at his face with a look that was so full of aggression that Sadie hardly recognised her usually easy-going and charming brother at all. The man let his hand drop to his side again.

  ‘Look, I really can’t express how sorry I am. I feel absolutely terrible about this. If you wanted to take things further then I’d completely understand—’

  ‘We don’t,’ Sadie said firmly. She looked at Ewan, daring him to argue. He might have looked scary to everyone else right now, but he wasn’t intimidating Sadie. ‘Do we?’

  ‘If it was left up to me—’

  ‘But it’s not,’ Sadie cut in. ‘It’s up to me and I’d rather let it drop. It was an accident and I’m fine; there’s no point in ruining’ – she glanced at the man – ‘this man’s holiday over it.’

  Sadie glared at her brother but he didn’t even flinch. Deciding that she was going to have serious words with him later, she abandoned the argument for now. When Ewan was in this kind of mood – it wasn’t often but he did have his moments – there was no point and, at the end of the day, she at least recognised that he was just looking out for his little sister.

  Instead, she turned back to the man, about to say something else when she heard her name frantically being called. She glanced around to see her mum and dad racing up the beach towards them and then gave a weary look at Ewan and Kat.

  ‘Who told them?’

  ‘I did,’ Kat said. ‘Sorry.’

  Sadie held in a groan. ‘Now they’re going to make it all twenty times worse. And I bet they’ve cancelled a boatload of customers to come.’

  ‘It’s not Kat’s fault,’ Ewan snapped. ‘What else was she meant to do? I don’t think you’re fully appreciating how bad things looked to us. We didn’t call the ambulance and Mum and Dad for fun – we actually thought you were seriously injured. Stop complaining and be glad that we care!’

  Any further complaint withered on Sadie’s lips. She understood all the reasons why they’d done what they’d done and, of course, was grateful that they cared so deeply for her but she hated all the fuss and attention.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I can’t help but feel I’m still continuing to cause you all a lot of problems,’ the man said. ‘I can only say sorry again. I’ll go and meet with your parents – explain and apologise to them.’

  Sadie was twenty-six years old, and she hardly needed anyone explaining anything to her parents when she could manage the job perfectly well herself. She was just about to say something along those lines to him, only with more tact and politeness, when Ewan cut across her.

  ‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough for one day?’ He folded his arms tight across his chest and Sadie noticed Kat stiffen again. Sadie had never seen her brother throw a punch in anger but she wondered whether she was about to because he looked like he really wanted to have a go at this poor guy, who might have messed up in a huge way but was doing his best to make it right.

  ‘Right…’ The man took a business card from his wallet and offered it to Ewan. Sadie was pleased to see that although he looked deeply sorry for the accident, he didn’t look intimidated by an obviously fuming Ewan. His expression was open and frank as Ewan took the card. ‘I can see that my presence is a bit, well… I’m probably not the most popular man in town right now. My number is on there if you need me for anything.’ He looked at Sadie again. ‘Anything at all; just call me and I’ll be glad to do what I can.’

  Ewan gave a grim nod, gripping the card so tightly Sadie felt the urge to jump up and take it from him before he creased the information on there out of recognition. She realised she would do well to resist the urge though, because Ewan had gone into overprotective big brother mode and when he was like this it was better to let him get it out of his system in his own time. In a few hours he’d be back to his old amenable, affable self, full of banter and teasing at every opportunity. Although, sometimes Sadie wondered whether that wasn’t just as bad…

  She found her gaze drawn to the card in her brother’s hand again. Everything that she wanted to know about the man she should have hated but instead found herself intrigued by was tantalisingly close. Nothing or nobody was prising it from Ewan’s grip right now, but maybe later, when thi
ngs had calmed down, she might be able to get it from him.

  ‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ the man said, looking at Sadie again. ‘I really am so sorry for everything.’

  Sadie didn’t get to reply, didn’t get to hear any more exchanges between the stranger and her family, and she didn’t even get to see him leave, because in the next moment she was smothered by a distraught Henny. Then Graham joined in, and by the time they’d finished fussing and checking her over with more than a little disbelief at her insistence that she was alright the man had gone, and the little boat that had caused so much trouble had gone with him.

  Chapter Seven

  Monday morning found Sadie back at Featherbrook School. Mondays seemed to come around so quickly – too quickly these days, especially when she was due to be in school. She’d always imagined that the work experience bits of her teacher training would be the best bits, but she was quickly beginning to view each approaching day in the classroom with dread. She’d discovered that she wasn’t good at discipline, easily fooled by the kids, not tough enough and that, really, she wanted nothing more than to be a friend to them all. But teachers couldn’t be friends as well – that’s what her university mentor kept telling her – but Sadie, despite this advice, had been determined to try it her way regardless. It turned out that her mentor had given her sound advice after all, and the lax start Sadie had got off to with the class had done her no favours. What was worse, the kids she’d tried so hard to befriend didn’t see her as a friend at all – they saw her as a pushover and once they’d spied the chink in her armour they’d continued to prise it apart, determined to make it crack wide open. Sadie had despaired, tried to backtrack and reintroduce the discipline she should have begun with, but it was too late – the damage had been done.

  It wasn’t all of the class, of course, but the few more than made up for the diligence of the many. Sadie had known this Monday was going to be the worst one yet when she’d arrived at school to hear that the qualified teacher who was usually in class with her had been involved in a minor car crash and was currently sitting in accident and emergency at the hospital with severe whiplash. So, at the behest of an overworked and desperate head teacher, Sadie found herself, not for the first time, managing the class alone.

  The head had promised to try to find someone who could spare time to come and support her, but Sadie had realised that not a lot of effort was being made in this quest. She’d seen three teaching assistants in the staffroom where she’d stored her belongings before school began who’d informed her as they sat and sipped coffee that they were all busy doing other very important things and couldn’t come and help her unless the head gave them explicit instructions to drop those other things. When Sadie enquired what other things they were, the list included updating the noticeboard and weighing out cake ingredients for a cookery lesson later in the day. Hardly pressing, Sadie thought, though she knew better than to say so. The last thing she wanted was to turn the teaching assistants against her as well as the kids. As for explicit instructions from the head to help Sadie instead, nobody had been given any yet, and, as the clock counted the minutes towards the start of the first lesson, it looked unlikely that it was ever going to happen.

  The noise level was deafening as Sadie walked into the classroom and barely a child was sitting at their own desk ready to start work. As she waited expectantly for them to notice she was there and for the pandemonium to die down, not one person so much as looked her way. She cleared her throat.

  Still nothing.

  ‘Good morning!’ she called.

  The noise levels seemed only to increase, and none of it included a ‘Good morning’ in return.

  ‘Class!’ Sadie yelled.

  A few pupils now looked her way. One or two even returned to their own seats voluntarily. But most of them simply went back to what they’d been doing before she’d walked in.

  ‘Seats! Now!’ Sadie roared.

  She looked around the class, almost surprised herself at the assertiveness that had come from nowhere. Maybe she could do this after all. Maybe it had only taken a crisis to show that she did have the mettle to teach. There were many other expressions of genuine surprise in the room too, and perhaps they’d all suddenly realised that they’d got Sadie wrong. The noise stopped dead and everyone took their places to start the lesson.

  So, all she’d needed was some backbone and a loud voice. It was just a shame, Sadie reflected ruefully, that it had taken a minor car crash and whiplash to make it happen.

  ‘I think we were looking at Hitler’s rise to power last week, weren’t we?’ she asked the class.

  ‘No!’ someone shouted from the back.

  ‘That was a rhetorical question,’ Sadie said. ‘I know we were looking at Hitler’s rise to power last week because I was here teaching it.’

  ‘Why did you ask then?’

  Sadie ignored the jibe. They were still trying, but they weren’t going to get the better of her, not this time. ‘Turn to page eighty-five in your textbooks.’

  ‘We don’t have textbooks, Miss,’ a girl said. Sadie looked at her.

  ‘Why not? The school provides them. Where are they?’

  ‘In the cupboard, Miss.’

  ‘And you can’t go and get them because…?

  Sadie instantly realised her mistake, but it was too late to do anything about it. The room was filled with the sounds of chairs scraping the floor and a stampede to the cupboard, accompanied by jostling, banter, threats and bickering – all interspersed with a healthy serving of swearwords. She should have instructed the girl who’d pointed out their lack of books to go and get them all from the cupboard to hand out but she hadn’t been quick enough. Now, she was faced with yet more chaos.

  ‘Quickly now!’ she called, feeling the control she’d had only moments ago slipping away again. ‘No messing; get your books back to your desk and open to page eighty-five or we won’t have time to do anything!’

  There was a barely perceptible pause as that statement seemed to collectively sink in, and in that nanosecond Sadie realised she’d made another fatal error. If there was one win-win result for the kids in that room, it was to run out of time to read about Hitler’s rise to power. And as she’d feared, her words only meant it now took twice as long for everyone to return to their seats and look remotely ready to learn. If having your head on your desk, or gazing out of the window, or sniggering behind your hands with the occupant of the neighbouring desk counted as being ready to learn, that is.

  There was the briefest silence, a lull into false security during which Sadie readied herself to begin the lesson proper, and then a hand shot up.

  ‘Yes?’ Sadie looked at the boy.

  ‘Can I go to the toilet, Miss?’

  His request was followed by stifled giggles on the row of desks behind him. It was a red flag to Sadie.

  ‘Couldn’t you have gone before class began?’

  ‘I did, Miss. I’ve got a condition.’

  More muffled laughter from the desks behind followed, this time a little louder and more brazen.

  Sadie shook her head slightly. ‘What?’

  ‘A condition, Miss. I can’t control it. When I’ve got to go I’ve got to go, you know? Otherwise…’ He began an elaborate mime that Sadie really didn’t want or need to see.

  ‘Yes, yes…’ she snapped. She just wanted to get the lesson started. In all honesty, it would have been far easier and more painless to let them all mess around for the next hour, but she would have to evaluate this session later with her mentor and she could hardly do that if she hadn’t actually taught anything. Besides, she wouldn’t have put it past one of them to tell the proper teacher about it on her return, which wouldn’t go down well. Then there was the added disadvantage that if Sadie ever had to take this class alone again they really wouldn’t take her seriously. Not that they were doing anything of the sort now.

  ‘If it’s really that urgent,’ she continued, biting back a reply that also
expressed extreme doubt about any ‘condition’ because then she’d be leaving herself wide open to accusations of bullying and discrimination, ‘then you’d better go, but be quick about it.’

  The boy slid from his seat and slouched out with a look that Sadie just knew meant she’d been played. But what could she do about it? If she’d lost this one little battle maybe it was better to let it go and focus her energy on winning the war. Or, at least, a few minor skirmishes, which was probably the best she could hope for with class 3G.

  Once the door had slammed behind him, she turned to the rest of the class. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘page eighty-five.’

  ‘Aren’t we going to wait for him, Miss?’ the same girl who’d began the book-cupboard debacle asked. Sadie was beginning to think little-Miss-goody-two-shoes ought to shut her mouth for once.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll catch up quickly enough once he’s back.’

  Another voice piped up. ‘Bobby’s gone home, Miss.’

  Sadie looked sharply at her. ‘What?’

  ‘He hasn’t gone to the toilet. He’s gone home – he said he was going to because he didn’t want to read about Hitler.’

  ‘He didn’t take his bag.’

  ‘Didn’t bring a bag either,’ the girl said.

  Sadie hesitated. ‘He won’t be able to get off the grounds without being seen,’ she said in a tone full of confidence that she didn’t feel. ‘Someone will spot him and he’ll be marched straight back here with a detention for his trouble.’

  At least I hope so, she thought, but either way she was now in the shit too for letting it happen on her watch. The only saving grace in this situation was that things would be a lot worse if Bobby did manage to escape the school grounds, so she had to hope that she was right about his chances.

  ‘He’s done it before,’ the girl said. ‘Nobody sees him go. He does it all the time.’

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  ‘What?’ Sadie stared at the class. ‘Just asks for the toilet and goes off expecting nobody to go looking for him?’