The Cafe by the Sea

by Jenny Colgan

  Joel looked down, obviously feeling the same.

  “I . . . This is a stick,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “A stick shift. I can’t drive a stick shift.”

  Flora suddenly wanted to giggle, but had a hideous feeling this wouldn’t go down well at all. Some men were not very good at being laughed at, and Joel was definitely one of them. Instead she simply hopped out of the car, and they crossed round the truck without catching each other’s eyes.

  “So, you’re going to the Harbor’s Rest?” she said, once they were both ensconced and she’d jolted the car into reverse out of nerves.

  “What?”

  “Where you’re staying.”

  “Right. Yes. What’s it like?”

  Flora didn’t answer straightaway.

  “That good. Great! Perfect.”

  They turned in to the harbor. Joel made no comment on the pretty little houses, or the way the narrow street gave way to the huge wide sweep of white sand. Most people did. He was stabbing at his phone crossly, searching fruitlessly for a signal.

  “Christ, how do you stand it?” he said.

  Suddenly Flora felt incensed. It was an utterly glorious day. If you couldn’t see that this place was amazing, then you were an idiot. It felt odd to be so defensive when, as everyone kept on pointing out, she hadn’t been able to get away from it fast enough.

  She couldn’t help it; she glanced over toward him. His long legs were stretched out in the footwell, the expensive suit covering rock-hard thighs. This was ridiculous; she felt like a dirty old man.

  She parked in front of the pale pink building next to the peeling black and white paint of the Harbor’s Rest. It had once been a drugstore, but the owner, who’d been an English incomer, had moved back down south to help her daughter with her new baby. Nobody had taken it over, and it sat there like a missing tooth in the harbor parade. It made Flora sad to see it.

  Outside the Harbor’s Rest, two old fishermen with big beards were pulling on pipes. They looked like east London hipsters. Flora hoped this was what Joel would think they were. Whether he’d think the sticky, curly-patterned carpet was ironic was a different matter, though.

  Inge-Britt, the lazy Icelandic manager, came to the door. She was wearing some kind of slip—it couldn’t be her dressing gown, could it? Flora wouldn’t put it past her. She got out of the car and Joel emerged with his expensive luggage. Inge-Britt smiled, showing her perfect teeth, when she saw him.

  “Well, hello,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

  “This is my boss checking in,” said Flora meaningfully. “Joel Binder? Have you got his booking?”

  Inge-Britt shrugged and looked at him with unveiled interest.

  “I’m sure I’ll squeeze him in somewhere.”

  Joel, who wasn’t paying attention, went to follow her in, before glancing round at Flora.

  “Pick me up at two,” he said.

  Flora shrugged and turned round to see Lorna on the other side of the road.

  “I was just passing,” lied Lorna hopelessly. Flora rolled her eyes. Lorna watched Joel striding into the breakfast-scented interior of the Harbor’s Rest.

  “Well?”

  “He’s a very handsome man,” said Lorna. “You’ll have to keep him out of Inge-Britt’s clutches.”

  “She smells of bacon,” said Flora petulantly.

  “Oh yeah, men hate that,” said Lorna.

  Lorna came back to the farm for lunch. Flora sat her down, made tea, and, to cheer herself up, decided to whip up a quick batch of oatcakes, heavy on the salt, with a perfect nutty crunch to them. They didn’t take long to bake, and before they’d cooled, she topped them off with wedges of Fintan’s cheese.

  “Jesus,” said Lorna, as she took her first mouthful.

  “I know,” said Flora.

  “These oatcakes are sensational.”

  “Thank you! And that’s Fintan’s cheese.”

  But it was the combination with the perfect crunch of the immaculate little biscuits that made it something else.

  “This almost makes up for not having had sex in . . . humphy humph, a while,” said Lorna.

  “Don’t say that,” said Flora. “You’ll jinx us ever having it again.”

  “I won’t care if I can just eat this stuff all day,” said Lorna. “Seriously. More. More. Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  “Let’s be clear, this isn’t actually sex,” said Flora.

  “Well, I’m putting nice things in my mouth, so it’s definitely close,” said Lorna defensively, grabbing another two oatcakes with a combative look.

  She stared down at the cheese.

  “Fintan? Really?”

  “He’s been making cheese in his spare time. And other stuff, I think.”

  “That boy just hates working on the farm.”

  Flora blinked.

  “Does he really? I thought he was just a bit of a lazy arse.”

  “Totally.” Lorna looked at her. “You can’t say you hadn’t noticed?”

  Flora fell silent.

  “Seriously?”

  Flora shrugged.

  “I thought he was fine.”

  Lorna looked at her strangely.

  “Flors, he’s never had a girlfriend, he’s patently depressed, he drinks too much . . .”

  “That sounds like half the island,” said Flora nervously.

  “Well, it’s amazing he’s managed to make something like this,” said Lorna tactfully. “So anyway, what are you all dolled up for?”

  “I am actually at work,” said Flora. “I do actually have a job.”

  Lorna raised her eyebrows.

  “Making oatcakes. Because I will say, you’re good at it.”

  Flora shook her head.

  “We’re . . . we’re heading out to meet Mr. Rogers after lunch.”

  Lorna sniffed.

  “Oh, we are, are we? By the way, Charlie was asking after you.”

  “The gigantic Outward Adventures guy?”

  “He’s nice,” said Lorna. “Have sex with him.”

  “Is Jan his wife or what?” said Flora.

  “What do you care? You’re so in lurve with Joel . . .”

  “Shut up!” said Flora. “You are so not meeting him.”

  Lorna blinked, and put her hand over Flora’s suddenly.

  “You do have it bad, don’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Does it help?” she said in a softer voice. “Thinking about him all the time rather than your mum?”

  There was a pause.

  “Can’t I think about both?” said Flora. Then: “Yes. It does.”

  Lorna nodded.

  “Good. But don’t take it too far, okay?”

  “You haven’t even met him!”

  “A sharky lawyer who only dates supermodels and hasn’t noticed you for years and is up to defend some dodgy golf course owner?”

  “Well, when you put it like that . . .”

  “What do your friends say—the ones who actually have met him?”

  “Yeah. More or less the same.”

  “He sounds like a prince.” Lorna grinned. “I’ll see you later. Give me some of the oatcakes and cheese to take away. And while you’re at it, some butter. Actually, can I just take all of it?”

  Flora looked at her as she decanted the remains of lunch into her bag.

  “How do I look?”

  “More mascara. You have the selkie’s curse.”

  “There is a world out there where white eyelashes are considered to be the loveliest thing on God’s earth,” sighed Flora. “And people will sign up for really expensive white mascara.”

  “Why would they have to?” said Lorna. “They still make Wite-Out, don’t they?”

  Flora flicked the wand at her.

  “Stop it! Stop it, you weird albino freak!”

  “Ginga!”

  Giggling slightly, Flora left the house and got back in the Land Rover. Bramble, now fully restored to walking du
ties, was lying in the front seat, basking in a patch of sunshine.

  “Out,” said Flora, wondering if Joel liked dogs. Maybe she should take Bramble along. On the other hand, the prospect of him not liking dogs was just too dreadful to think about. She could fancy a tough guy, a bad guy even, someone who wasn’t necessarily very nice.

  But nobody could conceivably fancy someone who didn’t like dogs. Best not to risk it. Plus: unprofessional, even though nobody from Mure ever went anywhere without their dog. She shooed Bramble out of the car.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ollie the vet passed her with a brief nod of the head as she parked up at the little harbor. Honestly. Why did everyone still treat her like a snooty southern mainlander who’d abandoned her homeland?

  Joel was waiting for her outside the hotel. Flora had wondered if there was any chance he might have changed out of his suit—you could sometimes get a real shock when you saw someone in their civvies, she knew. A guy could look fantastic in his work clothes, then you’d see him at something casual and he’d be wearing some gruesome three-quarter-length trousers that were meant for overgrown toddlers, and something nuts like a hoodie or an earring or sandals over hairy toes, and suddenly everything that had previously been appealing about him would vanish completely. She’d hoped this would happen with Joel.

  He was, however, still wearing his beautifully cut suit, although Flora noticed—she couldn’t not, she felt like she was exquisitely attuned to everything he did—that he’d changed his shirt. He nodded to her brusquely then went back to his phone. He was very careful to get in on the right side of the Land Rover. Flora wondered if she should have been more careful to brush the dog hairs off the seat.

  “Sorry about the dog hairs,” she said, thinking she might be able to get to the bottom of the dog thing sooner rather than later, but he simply shrugged.

  “Okay,” he said, leafing through the paperwork she’d prepared. “Now to find out what the hell I’ve come four thousand miles for.”

  Flora turned along the narrow track that led up to the north side of the island. At the top was the vast estate that belonged to Colton Rogers. People did wonder, as the winds swept down from the Arctic, why on earth, if you were an American multibillionaire, you would choose to come to this tiny outpost at the end of the world for your vacations rather than the Bahamas, the Canaries, Barbados, Miami, or literally, some days, absolutely anywhere else. Of course, they said this to one another; if anyone not from Mure had said it, they’d have been shouted down in a chorus of nationalistic pride in five seconds flat.

  “I mean,” Joel said. “Nobody here really cares what people do on the islands, right? It’s not like you don’t have enough sea to look at.”

  Flora shrugged.

  “Are you kidding? And they don’t like change. And they’re a bit suspicious of outsiders.”

  Joel gave her a look.

  “You make it sound like The Wicker Man.”

  “Wouldn’t say things like that around here.”

  He sniffed and lapsed into silence.

  “It’s a nice place to grow up, though.” Flora realized she was babbling to fill the silence. “Where did you grow up?”

  He looked at her crossly, as if she’d stepped over a line.

  “Here and there,” he said shortly, going back to his papers.

  A lone strand of sunlight pierced a cloud at the top of the glen, and Flora looked up at Macbeth’s sheep, shorn for the summer, who were starting to wander down the hill, toward the shed. She could see young Macbeth now: Paul, who’d been in her class at school, a funny, lazy boy who was going to become a shepherd simply because he couldn’t think of anything better in life than looking after sheep, going to the pub in the evening with his da and all their mates, and marrying the prettiest girl he could meet at the monthly ceilidh, all of which he’d done in short order. Flora watched him striding from rock to rock, on the same earth his family had farmed for generations, his stride long and relaxed, doing something he was born to do, that he understood instinctively.

  Her eyes were still on the hillside as she pulled the car to a halt at the large metal gates, then got out and pressed the intercom. A camera buzzed and whirred and looked down on her, and Flora realized, having never really thought about it, that she was quite excited to see inside Colton’s place. Nobody was ever invited there; there was a ghillie who looked after the land, but he was a taciturn type who didn’t mix, so there was no gossip to be had there either. There were rumors of celebrities and sports stars, but again, nothing had ever been confirmed.

  The huge iron gates gradually began to pull apart. There was a long gravel driveway ahead that wound up through perfectly manicured trees. It didn’t really look like Mure at all; immaculate flower beds lined the road, and the grass looked like it was trimmed with nail scissors.

  The house had once been a great gray manse, a huge, forbidding place that had been built originally for the local vicar, who came from money. But the vicar hadn’t been able to hack the long, dark winters, and his successor had been a bachelor who had much preferred the original lodgings next to the church, dark and chilly as they were; and now the vicar lived on the mainland and commuted, and the local doctor had the church quarters. And Colton Rogers had bought the Manse, and was restoring the Rock on its land.

  The house looked nothing like Flora remembered it from her childhood, when they’d peered at it through the gates and some of the braver boys had scampered up to explore it, or at least implied that they had. Then, it had been dark and forbidding. Now it looked like it had been peeled back to the bones. The windows, while still traditional, were brand-new, no longer rotting in their sills, but gleaming. The stone had been sand-blasted and was a light, soft gray that fit in beautifully with the soft environs of the garden. The gravel was pink and immaculately tidy, the huge front door a glossy black, while miniature topiary hedges lined the windowsills. It was one of the most beautiful houses Flora had ever seen.

  “Wow,” she said. Joel looked unimpressed. Maybe it wasn’t all that great to him.

  Behind the house were outbuildings, including a huge, incredibly tempting swimming pool complex with a roof that could be pulled back on sunny days (Flora wondered if it was ever pulled back), and a vast number of fancy cars, including several Range Rovers, all polished to a shine. There didn’t appear to be any dogs; probably dogs would make the perfect gardens untidy.

  It was the strangest thing: everything looked like a large traditional house, but so much tidier and nicer. There were artfully displayed baskets of lavender, and an old stone well with a gleaming bucket. It felt like a Disney version of Mure—but here they were, on the island, all right, with faintly ominous clouds swirling above them to back this up.

  A little maid, who sounded foreign, and was actually wearing a black-and-white costume, answered the door. Flora was astounded—she’d never seen a maid on the island—but once again Joel didn’t react. This must be, she figured, how rich people lived in America, never noticing this kind of thing happening, and completely okay with it. Well, perhaps it was okay, she thought, breathing in the warm, expensive, candle-scented air as they stepped into the spotless boot room, which had rows of green Hunter wellies in every conceivable size, right down to a baby’s. Flora squinted at them, fascinated.

  “Hi, hi!”

  Out of the confines of the London office, Colton Rogers was still tall and rangy; he looked a little intimidating. He still had the air of the professional sportsman he’d once been, before taking his sports earnings and investing them in a bunch of start-ups in Silicon Valley, at least two of which had become wildly successful.

  “Hey, Binder, good to see you again. I’d say thanks for coming all this way, but I don’t think visiting Mure is ever a hardship, is it?”

  Joel made a noncommittal noise. Flora wondered what his room at the Harbor’s Rest was like. The nicest one was directly above the bar, which got increasingly noisy as the night drew on. She hoped he liked
fiddle music. And very, very long songs about people who came from the sea.

  “Flora, isn’t it?”

  “Hello, Mr. Rogers.”

  “Wanna take a look around?”

  Flora almost said, “Sure,” then remembered just in time that it wasn’t up to her.

  “We’ve got business to get to,” said Joel.

  “Yeah, yeah, but I’m paying for this, right? I’m always paying for you fancy-schmancy lawyers. So I might as well enjoy myself while you bill me up the yazoo, right? Come on, I’ll give you the tour,” said Colton.

  He strode out past them into his yard full of shining vehicles, then chose, of all things, a quad bike.

  “This is the way to get around,” he said. “Right? Beats that awful London traffic.”

  Flora perched on the back, holding her skirt down against the wind, and they set off around the property. Again, everywhere she found herself amazed by the amount of energy and work that had gone into—that was going into—taming the beautiful nature of Mure, and turning it into a neater, more precise version of itself. There was a hand-built trout stream, where they had widened the original burn, made it wend round the prettiest trees, added artificial waterfalls to help the salmon spawn, and stocked it with trout and salmon for fly fishermen to come and pick out of the glittering waters. It was beautiful, but it felt a little to Flora like cheating.

  “I get more business done over a bit of fishing than I do in three days of stuffy meetings in air-conditioned offices,” said Colton. “I hate New York, don’t you?”

  This question was asked of both of them. Joel shrugged noncommittally. Flora didn’t know what to say; she’d never been there.

  “Those scorching summers! Unbelievable. You can’t breathe out there. Nobody can. I don’t know why on earth you’d stay. And those winters! Freeze the breath out of you. Face it: the weather in New York is always terrible. Always.”

  “And here’s better?” said Joel mildly.

  “Here! It’s perfect! Never too hot! Breathe that air. Just breathe it.”

  Obediently they breathed, Joel thinking crossly about money, Flora enjoying the fresh air but wondering why Colton appeared to think it all belonged to him.