The Beach Café

by Lucy Diamond

  I clapped a hand to my mouth in disbelief. ‘Oh, my goodness,’ I murmured. ‘Are they really all here for me?’ I let out a shocked giggle. ‘No way. No way!’

  Rachel squeezed my hand. ‘You’d better believe it, darl’,’ she laughed, and then ran out onto the deck. ‘Hey, guys. Up here!’

  She was right. It really was the Carrawen Bay cavalry – or, to be more precise, Rachel’s bloke Craig (who was gorgeous), Jono from Auckland, Betty’s husband Alec, who was a retired handyman, Tim the chippy and Wes the builder. ‘This is just the start of it,’ Annie said, beaming, as they all came up the steps to the café door. ‘As soon as I told Betty the girls’ night in was in jeopardy, she got straight on the phone. Calling in any number of Alec’s mates, she is. Word’s gone round – everyone’s going to pitch in and get this sorted for you.’

  My mouth hung open and I could hardly speak for a moment, I felt so stunned, so overwhelmed at people’s generosity and willingness to help. Then my dad’s words came back to me, about the insurers not covering the costs if I didn’t go with their approved tradesmen. ‘Wait,’ I said, almost embarrassed to start quibbling about money when they’d all come to my rescue so quickly. ‘Um . . . How much is this going to cost? I mean, this is brilliant, don’t get me wrong. But I’m not the richest businesswoman in the world, so – ’

  Betty’s husband laughed. ‘Bless ya, darlin’,’ he said with a Cornish twang as thick as clotted cream. ‘After what you did for our Jamie, my missus would knock my block off if I tried to charge you anything. Besides,’ he elbowed me and winked at his mates, ‘I’ve got some of the lads coming round tonight to watch the boxing. We’ve been looking forward to having Betty out the house for the evening. Although, ssshhh, you didn’t hear me say that, right?’

  I laughed. ‘Didn’t hear a thing,’ I assured him.

  ‘We’ll get it done for you, pet, don’t worry,’ Tim the chippy said. He was in his fifties, at a guess, a short, wiry bloke with a shock of silvery hair and eyes that shone blue against his nut-brown tan. ‘We’ve got Bob, our roofing guy, on his way too, and one of the lads will do the plastering for you later.’

  ‘This is amazing,’ I heard Francis say in a low voice to his team. ‘This is perfect for the programme. We’re on.’

  And so it began: the amazing clear-up by the Carrawen cavalry. It wasn’t just builders who turned up to help, either. Word had obviously gone from house to house and all sorts of people appeared to muck in. Jamie and his mates arrived, the book-group ladies brought mops, buckets and disinfectant, and Lindsay from the pub even sent her cleaner along with instructions to help, as well as a bottle of wine for me. (‘In case of emergency, break open and drink,’ she had written on the label.) Meanwhile, Francis and his crew got the cameras going and filmed the whole thing.

  I was kept busy in the kitchen, serving everyone free drinks, cakes and sandwiches, as the very least I could do. Wendy, when she arrived, went round taking orders for pasties (hamming up shamelessly in front of the cameras), then cooked everyone’s special requests. ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ she beamed. ‘Like it must have been in the Blitz.’

  I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I couldn’t quite believe that this was all happening – that so many people had come out to help me. Here I was, the damsel in distress again, but this time I hadn’t needed a bloke to rescue me. This time the whole village had hurried to my aid. Talk about heart-warming. Talk about awe-inspiring. There I’d been, just an hour or so ago, cursing my rotten bad luck, when in fact, it turned out that I was the luckiest woman alive, having these amazing people around me, who’d heard what had happened and come to help.

  I had such a lump in my throat as I passed coffees around to the builders, the cleaners, and all the other mucker-inners that I could hardly speak. Not so long ago, I’d been wondering if this was a bad dream. Now I was convinced it had to be a good dream. A really lovely, feelgood, couldn’t-possibly-be-true dream.

  Then I heard a familiar voice from behind me. ‘Evie. Oh my God! What’s going on in here?’

  And I knew I absolutely had to be dreaming then, because the voice sounded very much like Ed’s, which was obviously impossible. I was probably feverish, I decided, ignoring the voice. Addled with the shock. Because Ed had done a bunk, hadn’t he, so there was no way . . .

  ‘Evie,’ the voice said again, and then he was standing in front of me, and my eyes snapped as wide as they’d go, as if they couldn’t quite take in what they were seeing, as if they hadn’t expected ever to be looking at him again.

  ‘Oh,’ I said stupidly, and then, ‘You’re back’, even more stupidly.

  ‘What the hell happened here?’ he asked, staring around at the mob of people and at the damaged ceiling.

  My shock at seeing him gave way to a sudden flare of anger. Did he really think he could waltz in again just like that? ‘What the hell happened to you?’ I countered, quite rudely, to be honest.

  He hung his head at the sharpness in my voice. He looked tired, I realized, with a day or two of stubble on his chin, and bags under his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry I walked out, and sorry I wasn’t straight with you from the start. I should have told you everything earlier, but—’

  ‘Mind your backs!’ called Tim the chippy, coming in with some lengths of wood, and we moved out of the way to let him through.

  ‘Look, I can’t really chat right now,’ I said to Ed, ‘but don’t run off on me again, will you? I do want to talk to you about all of this.’

  He nodded. ‘I want to talk too,’ he said seriously. ‘And I’m not running anywhere. What can I do to help?’

  ‘Go and introduce yourself to Wendy in the kitchen,’ I told him. ‘You’re going to love her.’

  In just a few hours the café was as good as new. The hole in the roof had been patched up and waterproofed, with new shingles hammered onto it. The ceiling inside had been repaired and replastered. ‘You’ll have to leave that to dry out,’ said the plasterer – Mark, I think his name was, one of the book-group ladies’ husbands anyway. ‘Couple of days should do it, and then you’ll be able to paint over it.’

  Slightly overcome by now, I hugged everybody and tried to pay them for the time they’d spent helping out, but not a single person would take my money. ‘You’re all right, love,’ one of the builders said. ‘But you know, my daughter’s got her twenty-first coming up. Would it be all right if we had a do for her here in the café?’

  ‘Of course, absolutely!’ I replied, delighted. ‘It would be my pleasure. Let me know the date you want and we can talk about the details, yeah?’

  Tim the chippy wanted to know if I was going to open the café for evening sessions again, and I couldn’t bring myself to look across at Ed, who was hanging around rather self-consciously in the background, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. ‘I’m not sure,’ I admitted honestly. ‘But if we do, Tim, bring your wife along and you can both have dinner on the house, okay? Same goes for all of you. I owe every single one of you. Thank you. You’re all superstars!’

  I felt so worn out with such an extraordinary sequence of events – and was so desperate to talk to Ed, moreover – that once the building work was finished, I decided to close the café for the rest of the day. I couldn’t cope with the thought of serving up pasties and ice creams as if nothing had ever happened. By the way Rachel snuggled up to Craig, I didn’t think she minded all that much about having the afternoon off. ‘See you later for our girls’ night,’ I told her, Leah and Wendy as they left.

  Francis and his crew packed up, all looking pleased as punch. ‘Wow!’ said Trev the sound man, grinning. ‘That was so cool. Are you sure you didn’t arrange all of that to make for good telly?’

  I laughed. ‘As if,’ I said. Then I groaned, realizing belatedly that I hadn’t a scrap of make-up on, and that I hadn’t blow-dried my hair into any kind of sane style earlier that morning. Mmm. Looking foxy for your TV debut there, Evie. ‘In fact,’ I said, gazing down a
t myself and clocking, too late, the tatty denim shorts and purple T-shirt I was wearing, which were now spattered with plaster dust and bleach, ‘I don’t know if you’ll be able to call it “good telly” when I’m looking such a total minger. Damn! Where’s Hair and Make-up when you need them?’

  They all laughed. ‘I’ll scrub up for this evening,’ I vowed and then, suddenly worried that they might feel they’d spent enough time in my café for one day, added, ‘You will be back later, won’t you? For the girls’ night in?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Francis said. ‘We’re all looking forward to it. See you later, Evie.’

  Then they went, and it was just Ed and me left standing there awkwardly. The café felt very quiet and empty, having been full of so much activity previously. I swallowed. ‘So . . .’ I began, just as he said, ‘Well . . .’ in a similarly self-conscious fashion.

  We both laughed, rather nervously, and looked at each other properly for the first time. He was still as gorgeous as ever, I thought, my heart quickening, and I still fancied him every bit as much as I had on that fateful night when we’d slept together. I felt the spark between us, that pulse of desire, as strong as ever and yet – And yet.

  I still didn’t know where he’d been, what he’d been doing, I reminded myself. This was the man who’d thrown me into turmoil, who’d made me cry into my pillow the last few nights. Once bitten, twice shy, I thought, dropping my gaze. I wouldn’t let myself be fooled again.

  ‘Is it very cheeky for me to make us both a coffee?’ he asked, breaking the silence.

  ‘No,’ I replied, trying to sound breezy and in control of the situation. ‘Although personally I reckon my roof caving in, and being filmed for Channel 4 looking like a dog’s breakfast, calls for something stronger. Want a beer?’

  ‘You don’t look like a dog’s breakfast, Evie,’ he said. ‘But, yes, I’d love one. Please.’

  I took a couple of bottles of San Miguel out of the fridge – yes, all right, it was for reasons of Dutch courage as well – and cracked them both open. Then we sat down at one of the booths opposite each other, bottles on the table. Okay. I was half-expecting some kind of ritual fanfare. Let the explanations begin!

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been in London for the last few days,’ he said without preamble. ‘Had some stuff to do – meetings with my solicitor and accountant. And yesterday I was in court, too.’ He looked pained suddenly, raised his eyes to the ceiling and then back to me. His hands were trembling. ‘I don’t blame you for reading that stuff about me online,’ he said shakily. ‘I would have done the same thing. I should just have told you from the start. In fact, I fully intended to tell you everything that night I came round and we ended up getting drunk and kissing each other. But I just . . .’ His head went down. ‘I lost my bottle at the last minute.’

  I felt sorry for him, I couldn’t help it. ‘Tell me now,’ I urged. ‘What happened?’

  He heaved a huge sigh. ‘It’s a mess,’ he said. ‘But the gist is, I was running Silvers, the restaurant, with my then-wife, Melissa. To start with, we were doing great. Good reviews, busy every weekend, all ticking along perfectly.’ He grimaced. ‘Well, that’s what I thought anyway. Unfortunately, it turned out that Melissa was having an affair with one of our suppliers, and the two of them had hatched a plot to stitch me up.’

  I sipped my beer as I listened, keeping my gaze steady on him.

  ‘She’d always done the books, but what I didn’t know was that she’d begun channelling money to him, overpaying him massively, basically,’ he went on. ‘The thing was, the business was all in my name and I signed all these accounts off. I didn’t bother checking every detail of them because . . . well, I trusted her.’

  I nodded. That was fair enough.

  ‘Then the tax office called the accounts in for an inquiry. They obviously suspected something dodgy was going on,’ he said. ‘Even though she was the one who’d been fraudulent, in the eyes of the law, I was the one who was culpable, because the accounts were in my name.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘But couldn’t you just tell them it wasn’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that, unfortunately,’ he said. He looked so miserable I wanted to hug him. No, I didn’t, I reminded myself quickly. No hugging. Facts first, before anything else. ‘It all came out, then – that she was having this affair and had been planning to leave me for months.’

  I couldn’t help wincing. Major betrayal. Major stab in the back. ‘Ouch,’ I said quietly. Matthew might have been a pillock, but at least he hadn’t done me over quite so spectacularly. ‘What, and you had to take the rap?’

  He pulled a face. ‘I didn’t want to,’ he said. ‘In fact, my solicitor was urging me to bring her into the picture, to grass her up and twist things so that the focus was on her.’

  ‘Well, yeah, quite right too,’ I said. ‘So why didn’t you?’

  ‘The thing was,’ he said, looking away, ‘the thing was . . . she told me she was pregnant.’

  ‘Ahh.’

  ‘And I couldn’t bear the thought of any child of ours growing up and discovering that we’d had this huge public court case tearing each other to shreds – which is what would have happened.’

  ‘So you took the rap,’ I said, understanding. It was pretty noble of him, I thought.

  He nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Well, I did until I discovered that it wasn’t actually my child she was carrying. That was her first mistake in the whole bloody saga – telling me that the baby was Aidan’s child. Is Aidan’s child, rather. She was born two weeks ago. And when I found this out, a couple of months ago, it changed everything. Which is why I went on a bender and punched Aidan in the face.’

  It was all falling into place. ‘The assault charge,’ I said, putting the pieces together in my head.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m not proud of it, but . . .’ He took a large swig of beer. ‘Well, all right, I did kind of enjoy smashing him in the face actually. I should have done it a long time ago.’

  ‘So what happened yesterday in court?’ I asked.

  He smiled, but it was a hard smile, and there was bitterness in his eyes. ‘The assault charge was dropped,’ he said, ‘and the fraud conviction overturned. The police have taken Aidan and Melissa in for questioning, and I’m in the clear.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I said, staring at him. ‘What a nightmare.’ No wonder he’d sought refuge down in Cornwall. And no wonder he hadn’t volunteered any of this information to me, either.

  ‘So I’m sorry I wasn’t exactly forthcoming about myself, but now you know.’ His expression had turned anxious as if he was afraid of my judgement.

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ I said, my voice sounding formal, even to my ears. ‘And what happens now? How much longer have you got dog-sitting and . . . what will you do when your time’s up here?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He reached over and took my hand. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  I felt fluttery and fizzy inside as his long, strong fingers wrapped themselves around mine. ‘Yes?’ I prompted, my heart going crazy all of a sudden.

  ‘I’ve come to really love it down here,’ he said, gazing into my eyes. I felt as if the walls of the café had suddenly vanished, that there were only the two of us in the world, looking at each other in that moment. ‘I love working in the café, I really like the people here – I mean, what happened today, it was just amazing. You’d never get that in London.’

  I tried to make a joke of it, suddenly overwhelmed by the intensity of his gaze. ‘Ah, it was only because they wanted to get on telly,’ I said with a little laugh.

  He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, yeah, partly, but it was also because of you. Because you’re so special and . . . lovely.’

  I blushed, feeling my cheeks flame at his compliment, and at the tenderness of his voice.

  ‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘I went away to London, and all I could think about was how much I missed this p
lace. How much I missed you. I’ve not been able to think straight or make decisions about the future, with this court case hanging over me. I was scared it might all go wrong, that I might end up charged, even in prison. But now that it’s over, it’s like a fog has cleared. I want to make plans, I want to look ahead again, I want to – ’ He squeezed my hand and it was as if a surge of electricity went through me. ‘I want to be with you.’

  I couldn’t help it, I let out a noise that was half a laugh and half a cry, I felt so happy, so emotional about what he was saying to me. ‘I want that too,’ I said. ‘I missed you so much. When you walked out I felt awful, like I’d wrecked everything, like I never really knew you at all. And now you’re back, and I’m so glad you’re back, and . . .’

  And then we were kissing and kissing, and I knew that this was it, this was my happy-ever-after. And I felt like that bride on her wedding day once more – as if this was the very best and most perfect day of my life, after all.

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  ‘Ssshhh, it’s about to start.’

  ‘Oh my God! Quick, anyone want another drink?’

  ‘No, just sit down, and hurry up. Where’s Mum gone? Mum! It’s starting! Get over here now.’

  It was a Thursday night at the end of September, and the Golden Fleece was packed out, not a spare seat to be had. Lindsay had set up the big screen, which she usually saved just for England matches, and a huge cheer went up as the Channel 4 ident appeared on it.

  ‘Here we go!’

  ‘Now on Channel 4, it’s time for Dispatches,’ the continuity woman said smoothly. Somebody whooped. ‘And tonight’s programme is called Britain: United We Stand? ’

  Everyone cheered again, and Ed grinned at me. We were in the pub to watch the documentary that Francis and his team had made, and afterwards, because it was the end of the season, we were throwing a party on the beach to celebrate what an amazing summer we’d had. I’d put the money from Phoebe’s parents towards a buffet, booze and fireworks, and I couldn’t wait.