The Cafe by the Sea

by Jenny Colgan

  Sing herring, sing eyes, sing fish, sing pies

  Sing aber o vane, sing aber o linn

  And indeed I have more of my herring to sing

  Sing aber o vane, sing aber o linn.

  Chapter Three

  Joel walked into his office with a look of concentration on his face. He knew what had been nagging at him: he had an early-morning meeting with Colton Rogers, another American. Famously wealthy, he’d made his money through tech start-ups. Joel had heard of him but had never met him before. If he was coming to London and bringing his money, then Joel was very pleased indeed to hear this. All thoughts of the unpleasant incident that morning had completely gone from his head.

  He nodded at his assistant, Margo, to go and fetch Rogers’s people, and looked cheerfully out of his office window. They were just over Broadgate, in the heart of the City, overlooking the Circle and on to the towers beyond; he could see all the way down to the river. The streets were full of bustling people, black cabs in a line, even this early in the day. He loved the City, felt animated by it, enjoyed being a part of the big money-making machine. From up here it felt like his domain, and he wanted to own it. He was half smiling to himself when Margo turned up, ushering Colton Rogers and his team in and indicating a tray of bagels and Danishes, even though they both knew that nobody ever took one.

  “Hey,” said Rogers. He was tall and rangy and wore the classic West Coast tech-guy outfit—jeans, a turtleneck, and white sneakers. He also had a slightly graying, exceedingly tidy beard along his jaw. Joel wondered if his own suit looked as strange to Rogers as Rogers’s outfit looked to him.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Rogers.”

  “Colton, please.”

  He came over and looked at the view.

  “God, this city is crazy. How can you stand it? So many goddamn people everywhere. It’s like an ants’ nest.”

  They both peered down.

  “You get used to it,” said Joel, indicating a seat. “What can I do for you, Colton?”

  There was a pause. Joel tried not to think of how much this man was worth. Bringing a client this size into the firm . . . well. It would go down very well.

  “I’ve got a place,” said Colton. “A really beautiful place. And they’re trying to build wind farms on it. Or near it. Or next to it or something. Anyway. I don’t want them there.”

  Joel blinked.

  “Right,” he said. “Whereabouts?”

  “Scotland,” he said.

  “Ah,” said Joel. “You’ll probably need our Scottish office.”

  “No, it’s got to be you guys.”

  Joel smiled even more broadly.

  “Well, it’s nice that we’ve been recommended—”

  “Oh Christ, no, it’s nothing like that. I think you vicious bloodsuckers are all the same, and trust me, I’ve met a lot of you. No. I gather that you’ve got a local lawyer up there. Someone who can come and fight for me who’s actually visited the damn place.”

  Joel squinted and racked his brains. He’d never even been to Scotland, didn’t actually know what Colton was talking about. He didn’t think they had anyone like that. Someone from Scotland. He didn’t want to admit it, though.

  “It’s a big firm . . .,” he began. “Did they give you a name?”

  “Yeah,” said Colton. “But I can’t remember it. Something Scottishy sounding.”

  Joel blinked. He normally saved displays of impatience for his staff.

  Margo started in the corner of the room and Joel turned to her.

  “Yes?”

  “Might be that Flora MacKenzie? The paralegal? That’s a Scottish name, isn’t it?”

  This rang absolutely no bells with Joel.

  “She’s from up there . . . somewhere really weird.”

  “Weird?” said Colton, a smile playing on his lips. He gestured once more to the throbbing landscape on the other side of the glass. “Living all jam-packed on top of each other in a place where you can’t breathe or drive or get across town is probably what I’d call weird.”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Margo, going bright red.

  “She’s just a junior, though, right?” said Joel.

  Colton lifted his eyebrows.

  “It’s all right, I haven’t actually murdered anybody. I just want somebody local who actually has a clue as to what’s going on before they start charging me eight hundred dollars an hour. It’s called Mure.”

  “What is?” said Joel.

  Colton looked frustrated.

  “The place I’m talking about.”

  “Yes,” muttered Margo. “That’s her.”

  “Well, get her then,” said Joel irritably.

  “Yes, but anywhere we go, if it’s nice we won’t be able to sit outside and it’ll be overbooked and—”

  “That’s al fresco living in London,” said Kai, who sat at the next desk. “You just have to squeeze in.”

  Flora frowned. It always seemed to be such an effort to plan a get-together—everyone would bid out or in at the last minute or hang around for a better offer—but it was so hot. It seemed to her that being outside, rather than trapped in her stifling little bedroom at the end of the DLR, was the right way to go tonight. Plus, it was so hard to sleep when it was hot like this. She might as well go out . . . She glanced at the large pile of files in front of her and sighed. They’d figure it out at lunchtime.

  The internal line rang and she picked it up, unsuspecting.

  “Flora MacKenzie.”

  “Yes, it is you, isn’t it?” came Margo’s clipped, very formal voice. Flora had studied her carefully, given that she got to spend so much time at close proximity to Joel, and was utterly terrified of her: her immaculate clothes and the way she would look at you as if you were an idiot if you ever asked her for anything. “You’re the Scot.”

  She somehow said this like somebody might say, “You’re the Martian with the four heads.”

  Flora swallowed nervously. “Yes?”

  “Could you come upstairs, please?”

  “Why?” said Flora before she could help herself. She didn’t work for Joel, she worked for various other partners, far further down the ladder.

  Margo paused. She obviously didn’t appreciate being interrogated by some nothing hick junior from the fourth floor.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” she said icily.

  It quickly ran through Flora’s head to say that she actually required a blow-dry, a wax, a fake tan, and a full makeover to make her ready, but she thought better than to risk it just then.

  “I’ll be straight up,” she said, replacing the phone and trying not to panic.

  Flora’s career so far had involved her keeping her head down at H&I, the University of the Highlands and Islands, doing a law undergraduate course, and making up for what she lacked in natural ability by working her socks off, then going for job interview after job interview, polishing her shoes and her CV and clattering around a huge, unfriendly and unfamiliar London, asking for advice, trying to make connections, competing against a million other young people trying to do the same thing. And when she scored a job at a big firm, with the opportunity to move up, maybe even one day convert her degree, she’d soaked in everything, tried to hold on to everything, learn as much as she could, asking everyone for advice.

  Never once in all that time did anyone say to her: don’t fall for your boss, you idiot. And never once did she think it would happen.

  Until it did.

  It had been such a brief interview. At various stages of the process, she’d been quizzed by cadres of terrifying women who barked questions at her and old men who sighed as if thinking it wasn’t fair that they couldn’t ask her whether she was planning to get pregnant. She’d met HR, bumped into other grads, many of whom she recognized trailing round the same, slightly dispiriting trail—there were, as ever, far more people qualified for the jobs than places for them to go.

  But she had done her research, knew her area down to the ground, was ut
terly prepared by the years at the kitchen table with her mother constantly asking her if she’d done her homework—could she do more? Was she ready? Was the exam passed? There were smarter people than Flora, but not many who worked harder. Then right at the end she’d been asked to step into the partner’s office. And there he was.

  He was yelling at someone at the other end of the phone. His accent was noisy, unapologetically American, and he was gesticulating with his free arm, hollering something about district impartiality and how they had another think coming, and Margo—although Flora didn’t know who this glamorous woman was then—had indicated briefly that this was the new junior, and he’d waved his assistant away crossly, then paused, jammed the phone down, and stuck out his hand, a faint smile breaking across his face as he almost paid attention.

  “Hi,” he said. “Joel Binder.”

  “Flora MacKenzie.”

  “Great,” he’d said. “Welcome to the firm.” And that was it. That was all it was. She’d stayed gazing at him—his chestnut-colored hair, strong profile, and oddly full lips—until Margo had ushered her out. Flora hadn’t noticed the look the woman had given her as they’d left the room.

  “He seems nice,” she said, feeling herself blush hot. He didn’t look like most of the lawyers she knew—stressed, over-worked; dandruff on their shoulders; skin that didn’t see the outdoors anything like enough; yeasty paunches.

  Margo simply hummed and didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t speak to her again for about six months. Occasionally she watched him in meetings as she sat there shyly trying to take notes and miss nothing; he was commanding, rude, aggressive, and an overwhelmingly successful lawyer, and Flora, to her utter shame and embarrassment, had a crush on him beyond belief.

  “So, tell me about Joel,” she’d said faux casually, out for a getting-to-know-you drink with some of the other slaves—junior paras who were expected to work twenty-hour days for practically no money and basically have no other life at all. “You know, the partner?”

  Kai turned to her and burst out laughing.

  “Seriously?” he said.

  “What?” said Flora, feeling herself go pink and staring at her large glass of white wine, so pale it was almost green. She hadn’t known what to order and had let the others go for it, and was now slightly worried about how to pay for it. Living in London was horrifyingly expensive, even with a salary.

  Kai had been there all summer as an intern, and was on the fast track to becoming an actual lawyer, so he was well up on office gossip. He rolled his eyes.

  “Christ. Another one.”

  “What? What do you mean? I didn’t say anything.”

  Where did they get this self-confidence? Flora wondered all the time, particularly about people who’d been raised in London. Did it just arrive? She knew she ought to be doing extra classes—maybe, who knows, even training to be a full lawyer. But after what had happened . . . She couldn’t. Not just yet.

  And work seemed so . . . well. It was what she had always wanted. A proper professional, smart job. But after she’d gotten over the novelty factor of having a season ticket and a salary and stylish shoes and lunch breaks, it had started to seem a little . . . Hmm. Repetitive. The paperwork cascaded and never ended, and just as she felt she was getting on top of things, a case would be settled or called off and then it would all start again. She knew she should be studying on top of everything else. But she rather felt she was failing with the “everything else.”

  “You’ll get over it, babes,” Kai had reassured her when she’d complained (repeatedly) about her workload. It didn’t matter how late she stayed or how efficient she was with filing. It was a shame, she reflected, that being shit-hot at filing wasn’t actually all that sexy. Probably just as well she’d kept it off her Tinder profile.

  “Seriously, didn’t you notice that he’s horrible?”

  Oh yeah. He was horrible, Flora reminded herself. Tall, sharp-suited, brusque, American. He strode through the building as if he owned it. He treated the juniors with disdain, could never remember anyone’s name, and never complimented anyone.

  “He’s a negger,” said Kai.

  “A what?” said Flora, horrified.

  “A negger.”

  Flora blinked.

  “It means he’s mean to people so they notice him and want him to say something nice. It’s like dog training or something.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Kai saw it as his mission in life to educate the shy, odd-looking girl from the Islands and leaped on every opportunity to expound on his accumulated twenty-six years of sophisticated knowledge.

  “Like you’ll just hang on for a tiny word of kindness, a crumb of recognition, and that makes people fall for him. Well, people with low self-esteem.”

  Flora frowned.

  “Maybe I just think he’s hot.”

  “Yeah. Cruel hot. Never go there. Also, he’s your super-boss. Try not to shit on your own doorstep. Also—”

  “There’s another also? I don’t think I need another also.”

  “No, listen, Flors, I’m not sure you’re his type . . . OMG, speak of the devil. And I think he might literally be the devil. Uh, I’ll let you make your mind up about the type.”

  Flora had glanced up then, and sure enough, crossing Broadgate Circle, at the very heart of the City law firms, there he was, confident and commanding looking, his nut-brown hair shining in the sun, smoothly escorting a giraffe of a blond girl who clopped across the slate wearing bright pink, a color that would look bizarre on anybody else but simply made her look like the most ravishing thing ever. Nothing like Flora could ever be in a million years. She was a bird of paradise, a completely different species.

  Flora watched them and groaned.

  “No,” she said. “You’re right.”

  “You are very good at filing, though,” Kai had said encouragingly. “I mean, that’s got to count for something.”

  She’d grinned, and they’d ordered another bottle.

  That had been a couple of years ago, and Kai’s career had come on in leaps and bounds. While hers . . . hadn’t. Of course she’d gotten more used to London, more cynical about her office, and she’d had dates and dalliances and various misadventures with guys here and there, not all of which she could recall without getting embarrassed, and one nice boyfriend, Hugh, who had lasted a year and who had wanted to take it further but she hadn’t felt . . . well. It. Whatever it was meant to be. She’d never been there. She’d known, even as they parted (with wonderful manners; Hugh was a darling), that in about ten years, when everyone else was settled and happy and she was still bouncing about being single, she might entirely regret doing this. But she’d done it anyway. She had had long dry spells too. And she was fine. Mostly. It was just a crush, a silly thing that had faded into the background as she’d gotten on with building a life in this huge machine of a town, getting away from everything that had happened before.

  Except that now, at 10:45 A.M. on a broiling Thursday in early May, her crush, for the first time in history, suddenly wanted to see her in his office.

  Chapter Four

  Flora had to rush, but she had to nip into the bathroom too and redo her makeup. Flustered, she realized she was bright pink. That was the problem with being so pale. Well, that and not being able to go out in bright sunlight without turning the color of a lobster and starting to smoke slightly.

  She stared at herself and sighed. She hated looking so washed out; she felt completely colorless, even as her friends talked about how unusual she was. She wasn’t at all unusual in the island she’d come from: tall and pale, like the Viking ancestors who went back hundreds of generations. Her mother’s hair was almost pure white. It was only down here, where people would let her talk and then at the end say, as if it was a compliment, that they hadn’t been listening to a word, they just liked the way she spoke. She was learning, slowly, to say “now” instead of “noo” and “you” instead of “dhu,”
but sometimes she forgot even that.

  She tried to quell her racing heart. Margo had sounded frosty, but she always bloody did. Flora hadn’t done anything wrong, had she? Even if she had, Joel’s office wouldn’t be in charge of dealing with that. Her time with Joel was limited to when she was minuting for Kai, who was studying for his legal exams and was being encouraged by the firm as a prospect for the future. Kai was pretty great to work for, and Flora would often take notes for him and do all the follow-up.

  But Kai hadn’t mentioned anything this morning; he was due in court, in any case, leaving Flora with the usual mound of paperwork to sort out.

  No, this morning it was just her.

  She took a deep breath and headed for the lift.

  Joel’s vast corner office was incredibly impressive, filled with flashy-looking artwork that didn’t seem to mean anything apart from proving that he was successful enough to be surrounded by flashy-looking artwork. He nodded as she walked in. He was wearing a dark gray suit, a fresh white shirt, and a navy tie that contrasted with his hair. Flora felt a blush starting even before she was through the door, and cursed herself for it.

  There was also a tall man with an oddly light beard—by the casual way he dressed, he was obviously very important—and a couple of other people milling around in the background, taking calls and more or less pretending to be busy. Flora wasn’t sure if she should sit or stand.

  “Hello,” she said, trying to sound brave.

  “I can tell where you’re from before you say a word!” said the bearded man, coming forward to shake her hand. “Look at that hair! You’re Mure stock, that’s for sure.”

  Flora wasn’t at all sure she liked being referred to in the same way her brothers referred to the cattle, and simply stood there.

  “Where are you from, um . . .” Joel glanced down at his notes. “Flora?”

  Flora’s heart started to beat faster. Why did this matter? Why was it important? Why were they talking about her home? That was the last thing she’d expected. Or wanted.