The Cafe by the Sea

by Jenny Colgan

  Mrs. Kennedy wasn’t much better, and she also had a lot to say about Flora’s dancing, or lack thereof. Flora listened to her to be polite and ended up half promising to look for her old dance outfit again, though if it fit her, it would be an absolute miracle.

  Disheartened, she headed to the shop to pick up something for dinner—she found, to her surprise, that she was looking forward to cooking—and practically ran headlong into a large figure who was counting out sausages into his basket.

  “Hello!” he said cheerfully when he saw her. It was Charlie, the genial Outward Adventures host. Flora found herself thinking how few men in London looked like him. Outdoorsy. Healthy. Not as if they spent too long under strip lighting, and inside windowless bars.

  “Where’s your dog?” he said, frowning. “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s doing fine, thanks,” said Flora. “Where are all your little shadows?”

  “Oh, that lot are done,” he said. “They’ve had their time. Back home again. It’s businessmen next week. That’s why I’m buying the posh sausages.” His voice sounded glum.

  “You don’t like them so much?”

  “The team builders? Neh. They moan all the time and are weirdly competitive with each other, then they get drunk and get off with each other and treat it like a party.”

  “Can’t it be a party? Or is wet and miserable the point?”

  “They don’t take it seriously, so they don’t learn anything. They complain about the gnats and never see the beauty of it. If I can get them to lift their heads out of their screens for ten minutes, I consider that a triumph.”

  Flora thought of Joel, buried in his phone or his files.

  “So why do you do it?”

  “Because they’re idiots who pay a fortune for it. And that pays for the lads.”

  “Oh come on, you must teach them something.”

  “I try,” said Charlie, his face softening a little. “Sorry. It’s just we sent the lads home this morning and I’ve been worrying about them. Some of them come from really tough backgrounds. I wish . . . sometimes I wish they didn’t have to go home. One of them said that to me. How bad does your home have to be when you’re twelve years old and you don’t want your mother?”

  They stood in silence for a minute.

  “So. Probably why I’m not so cheered by the prospect of a dozen management accountants from Leicester who are turning up to form better inter-team disciplinary practices.”

  He glanced into her basket.

  “Sorry, ignore me, I’m banging on. What are you getting?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” said Flora, looking down. She’d popped into the butcher’s for some good stewing steak, and had added some flour, and was now reading from her mum’s recipe book for whatever else she needed to make Yorkshire puddings. She wasn’t sure, though, that mere ingredients would be enough to replicate the light, golden, puffy joy of her mother’s Yorkshires.

  “It’s nice you’ve come back to look after your family,” observed Charlie.

  “I haven’t!” said Flora. “Honestly! I’m working. But doing a bit of cooking. They’re big boys. They should be looking after themselves. I just want to show them how.”

  “Well, whatever it is you’re here for . . .,” he began, then reddened a little, as if he’d said too much.

  “Actually, I’m trying to stop the wind farm.”

  Charlie squinted.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s ugly.”

  “Do you think? Have you not seen them all whirring around on a windy day? Harnessing all that lovely free energy? I think they’re beautiful.”

  Flora glanced in his basket. There were oatcakes and Weetabix along with the sausages.

  “There’s a lot of brown in your shopping,” she observed.

  Charlie followed her gaze.

  “Next thing you’ll be telling me that oatcakes and Weetabix don’t go together.”

  Flora smiled.

  “I mean . . . you could make a really good pie out of what you have,” said Charlie.

  She looked up at him.

  “Are you hoping I’ll ask you to dinner?”

  “Maybe I’ll just put the Weetabix between two oatcakes and bite in . . .”

  “Can I change your mind about wind farms?”

  “No.”

  Flora took a bottle of the deep-brewed local ale off the shelf.

  “I could make a steak and ale pie,” she mused.

  “I hate wind farms, and always have,” said Charlie.

  Flora smiled.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m already cooking for a bunch of ingrates. I might as well get some compliments while I’m at it.”

  Flora finished her shopping and Charlie carried it up the track to the farm for her.

  “Do you live in a tent all the time?” wondered Flora as they walked along.

  Charlie shook his head. There was an office on the other side of the island, he said, and he had a croft around there.

  “So when it’s raining, aren’t you tempted to just go home?” she said in surprise. “Seeing as you’re nearly there?”

  “For rain?” said Charlie. “It’s just a bit of rain—why would I?”

  “Because it’s yucky and disgusting?”

  “Not as yucky and disgusting as a hot, sticky tent,” said Charlie. “Neh, give me a bit of wind and fresh air any day.”

  As he strode along, Flora admired his broad shoulders and the way he carried all the shopping as if it weighed nothing at all.

  “I don’t know how anybody can take the heat, I really don’t.”

  Flora thought again of sweltering London days when the air con wasn’t really working and everyone was a bit begrimed and couldn’t sleep and moaned about it, and the stink rose from the pavements.

  “So where do you go on holiday?”

  Charlie smiled.

  “Och, anywhere with a few mountains. There’s not enough to climb around here. Sometimes I’ll go bag a few Munros. I went to the Alps last year. Oh, Flora, it’s beautiful up there.”

  “You climbed the Alps?” said Flora, undeniably impressed.

  “Um, one or two of them.”

  “With Jan?”

  “She’s an excellent climber.”

  She would be, thought Flora, looking at him to elaborate, which he did not do.

  They arrived at the farmhouse.

  “Hi, Innes!” Charlie waved.

  “Ciamar a tha-thu, Teàrlach,” said Innes, who was bent over the books and pushed them away with relief when he saw them.

  “No,” said Flora. “Don’t switch. It’s boring and I can’t remember any of it.”

  “But he’s from the Western Isles!”

  “Exactly! He’s a plum foreigner anyway. So.”

  Charlie shrugged. “I don’t mind,” he said. “Although I do prefer Teàrlach to Charlie. Just sounds more like me.”

  Flora rolled her eyes.

  “Well, you should have said that when we met!”

  “I’m bored of spelling it.”

  “What are you up to anyway?” said Innes. “Where’s your little line of waifs and strays?”

  “Boatload of wankers turning up tomorrow,” said Charlie. “So tonight I’m grabbing at straws.”

  “Oh yeah, thank you so very much,” said Flora.

  Innes leaped up.

  “Beer?”

  They all piled through into the kitchen, which, amazingly enough, the boys had cleared up from lunch. Flora blinked. Maybe it being tidy to begin with was going to make a difference. Or possibly it would last for twenty-four hours, then all fall apart again.

  “I heard your boss is here,” said Innes. “Why? To check up on you?”

  Flora briefly colored as she imagined what that might be like.

  “Of course not,” she said. “He’s here to help Colton. We’re fighting the wind farm.”

  “The wind farm?” said Innes after a pause.

  Flora nodded.
>
  “He’s called up expensive lawyers and gotten everyone scuttling about . . . for a wind farm?” Innes was shaking his head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The problems . . . the things he could be doing. Improving local employment. Putting money back into the island instead of importing everything. Looking after his properties—that pink house has been empty—”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “But instead he wants to bring businessmen up here to shoot pretty animals . . . Fuck’s sake, Flora, he doesn’t even get his milk from us.”

  Flora blinked.

  “Is that true?”

  “Good luck finding anyone willing to go along with what he wants. This island is under siege, for God’s sake. Wind farms . . .”

  Flora was starting to realize the size of the task ahead.

  “Okay then.”

  She propped up the recipe book and put Charlie on onion-chopping duty. Soon the aromatic smell of caramelizing beef and garlic and onions filled the kitchen, steaming up the windows. She popped round to the back of the house and, to her absolute amazement, found, with the spring, a few of her mother’s herbs still growing in their pots. She’d have thought the winter storms would have taken them long ago. She snipped some thyme happily into the pot.

  Charlie made up a spinach salad to go with it. Oddly, she liked having someone else in the kitchen with her. They didn’t get in each other’s way, but instead moved around each other neatly as she passed him a knife or the grater, and by the time Fintan, Hamish, and Eck came in from the fields, groaning and removing their boots, everything was ready, the top of the pie had puffed up into a great delicious golden bowl in the oven, and there was plenty of gravy. Hamish wore a broad grin as they all tucked in. Even her father ate, Flora noticed, rather than sitting staring into the fire as he usually did.

  “That was great,” said Charlie eventually, as everyone scraped the very last bits of gravy off their plates.

  “What’s for dessert, Flora?” said Hamish, who’d had three helpings. Flora looked at Fintan. Then she grinned.

  “Oh, okay,” she said.

  She went into the larder and, with a flourish, brought out what she had put together that morning when she should have been working on her files but was too restless waiting for Joel.

  Sitting there on the ancient cake plate was a beautiful, shining fruitcake.

  “It hasn’t steeped,” she warned. But the effect on the room was instantaneous. Everyone brightened up. Hamish grinned broadly. Flora caught Charlie’s eye and realized he was staring straight at her, and she couldn’t stop blushing.

  “Are you sure you didn’t know I was coming?” he said, grinning at her. Then, as she searched unsuccessfully for a knife, he took out a large Swiss Army knife from his pocket and flicked open the biggest blade, handing it over with a flourishing bow. She smiled and started to cut huge slices.

  “I like having Flora home,” said Hamish quietly as Innes went over to make the tea.

  “You know what we need?” said Flora, looking straight at Fintan.

  He shook his head.

  “Naw.”

  “You can’t have fruitcake without a slice of—”

  “Leave me out of it, Flora.”

  “Leave you out of what?” said Innes.

  Fintan glanced nervously at their father. Flora folded her arms and looked as if she was about to withhold cake. Fintan got up and went outside.

  When he slipped back in, they cut slices of the cheese and served them with the cake. The idea was that you took a bite of cake quickly followed by a bite of cheese and washed it all down with red wine. They didn’t have any red wine, but tea was working equally well.

  Charlie looked up appreciatively.

  “Well,” he said, shaking his head. “That is something else.”

  Fintan smiled.

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you make it?”

  Eck turned his head.

  “Did you?”

  Fintan shrugged.

  “Ah, just something I’ve been looking at.”

  “But it’s . . . it’s . . .”

  “I just matured it next to some old whisky vats.”

  Eck shook his head in consternation.

  “Is that what you’ve been doing all this time? Instead of helping out in the fields?”

  “Well, I wasn’t at the cinema, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  There was silence, and Eck put the rest of his cheese down without tasting it.

  Picking up on the tension, Charlie told a funny story about one of his awful Outward Adventures teams getting into a fight with a sheep, and Bramble came up and put his head on Flora’s lap, and everyone had a glass of Eck’s homemade wine, which was perilous stuff at the best of times, and Flora sat back near the Aga, listening to the happy voices, and felt, for the first time, almost content, even more so because Charlie was clearly enjoying himself too (she figured it had something to do with being indoors and not under canvas in a storm, whatever he said).

  At eight o’clock he took his leave, even as the big old kettle was being boiled up once again.

  “That was amazing,” he said. “Are you that good at being a lawyer too?”

  “What, rather than just chef and chief bottle washer to an overgrown bunch of lads?” she said as she walked out with him to take Bramble down the hill. “I hope so.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Charlie, rubbing Bramble on top of his head. “There you go, lad. It’s important what you’re doing. Food. Bringing your family together. I almost saw your dad smile.”

  Flora rolled her eyes.

  “Not at me.”

  “It’s a skill. A gift. You should be proud of yourself. Anyone would want to do something as well as you can.”

  “It’s all from my mother really,” said Flora, feeling she didn’t deserve this. “She taught me.”

  “She taught you very well. Hang on. Fintan!”

  Fintan was crossing the courtyard, heading back to his beloved dairy.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “I need two pounds of that cheese. For the catering. Can you sell me some? It’s tremendous.”

  Fintan colored.

  “Well, I don’t know . . . I mean, it hasn’t been passed by the cheese council or anything . . .”

  “The cheese council?”

  “To sell it. You need to make sure it won’t poison anyone.”

  “You just fed it to us.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s just us. I mean, if you’ve got clients and stuff . . .”

  “You could leave yourself wide open,” said Flora self-importantly. “To a civil case. Maybe even criminal, seeing as we’re just discussing that it could poison people.”

  Charlie sniffed.

  “I let them drink out of mountain streams filled with nineteen different types of cow piss,” he said. “I reckon they can take a little unpasteurization.”

  In the end, Fintan agreed to sell it to him on the understanding that he’d make everyone eating it sign a waiver that Flora promised to draw up. Charlie nodded with an amused look on his face.

  “Or,” he said, “you could just get the cheese people round to okay it.”

  Fintan looked confused, but Flora nodded.

  “You should, Fintan.”

  Flora and Bramble accompanied Charlie back to the gate.

  They stood on either side of it, and looked at each other. The wind had dropped, but the familiar pattern of dark clouds and bright sunshine lit up the side of the hill like an alien landscape. The heather pressed down quietly; the air tasted of spring. Charlie leaned down to scratch Bramble on the neck, which Bramble liked very much.

  “So,” he said.

  Flora looked up at him. He was so solid. Joel was tall, but he was fine built, lithe. She groaned mentally. When would she stop comparing every other man in the universe to one annoying one? When would she get over her crush and start living in the real world?

 
Charlie’s handsome, broad face was completely open, but also calm. She could see how safe he must make his charges feel. When she was with him, she just . . . she felt like she was in the moment. Not worrying about the island or what people thought of her; not thinking about work, or missing her mum, or anything other than standing with this slow-talking, solid, comforting man. She smiled at him. He smiled back shyly.

  “Well, it was good to run into you,” he said, just at the very second her phone, which could just about get a bar of connection out here, rang. She jumped and turned away.

  “Flora.” There was no greeting. “I’ll need to see your notes and who you spoke to today. How the land lies. Can you get them over to me? First thing in the morning? I don’t know how much longer I can stay here.”

  “Of course,” said Flora. She looked up at Charlie, but the spell was broken. “That was my boss. I have to—”

  “I know, I know,” said Charlie. He smiled. “Your real job.”

  He turned to go.

  “I’ll see you in a week.”

  “Unless it rains!” said Flora, grinning.

  “Especially not if it rains.”

  And she watched him walk, nimbly for such a big man, all the way down the track, raising his hand briefly in farewell, before she turned back to the farmhouse to shout at the boys to do the dishes.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Dr. Philippoussis was the closest Joel got to . . . Well. Whatever. Joel often called him at antisocial hours, and he didn’t bother to call when he didn’t have something on his mind. Dr. Philippoussis was also, fortunately, about the only person on earth who could put up with this behavior. He just wanted to know that the grave little boy he’d gotten to know as he’d bounced in and out of child services—and who had now become a serious, hugely successful highflyer—was okay, or as more or less okay as anyone could be.

  In his years as a professional child psychiatrist, Dr. Philippoussis had seen many difficult things, and done his best not to think too much about his clients, beyond how he could help them professionally. But when it came to Joel, who had escaped—in such spectacular fashion—he found it hard not to think about him. Because, as he and his wife often reflected, they were the only people who did.