Scarlett shook her head.
‘No. Thanks all the same,’ she told them and turned to the children, who were both still crying with fear.
She led them through to the yard at the back, where she kept the trusty pram in a dilapidated shed. She heaved Simon inside it and pushed round the alleyway to the sea front pavement. It was a dull autumn day with a brisk easterly wind blowing along the Promenade. She realised that they all had only their indoor things on. Simon was all right with a blanket over his knees and the hood up, but Joanne started to shiver. Scarlett took off her cardigan and put it on the little girl, rolling up the sleeves and tying a hair ribbon round it to make a belt.
‘Where are we going, Mummy?’ Joanne asked.
Scarlett had no idea. Perhaps they ought to go up to the council offices straight away. Looking as they did at the moment—a scruffy trio of waifs and strays with no money and nothing but what they stood up in—surely they would get some sort of accommodation? But she couldn’t face it, not quite yet.
She crossed over the road and looked westwards, past the gasworks and the Golden Mile to where the pier strode out across the mud-flats to the deep water. She remembered that first day when she and Jonathan had gone up the pier. She had just lost her mother and her home then, now she had lost her father and was about to lose her temporary home. In seven years, despite all the hard work, she hadn’t managed to get very far. The only difference was that then she and Jonathan had only just found each other and everything was fresh and new and full of possibilities. Now, what she and Jonathan had was coming to an end. The thought of it made her want to howl out loud.
Joanne tugged at her hand. ‘Mummy?’
‘All right,’ Scarlett said automatically.
If she went towards the town, she could call in on the Mancinis. She would be sure of a welcome, warmth, a cup of coffee and drinks and cake for the children. But she didn’t think she could bear to start explaining what was going on to anyone, even lovely motherly Mrs Mancini.
‘Beach! Beach!’ Simon said.
Scarlett looked at him. Poor homeless little thing. She pulled her face into something like a smile.
‘All right, darling, we’ll go to the beach. We’ll walk along to the huts.’
Joanne perked up. ‘Yes! The huts!’ she said.
Scarlett turned her back to the pier and plodded along towards Thorpe Bay. The wind blew through her thin dress and brought her arms and legs up in goosebumps. Scarlett hardly cared. It was all of a piece with how she felt inside. After a while Joanne let go of the pram and started running on ahead. The baggy blue cardigan flapped around her legs. She looked like an urchin. Scarlett felt she was failing her children, letting them grow up in poverty like this. The tears that she had tried to hold back rose and flowed uncontrollably down her face.
Beyond the Halfway House pub, there were gardens instead of buildings alongside the road. Joanne stopped at the top of some stone steps down to the beach.
‘Here, Mummy?’ she called.
‘Yes, go on,’ Scarlett croaked.
She reached under the apron of the pram, pulled out a corner of the sheet and wiped her face and eyes.
‘No cry, Mummy,’ Simon said anxiously.
She parked up by the steps, hauled Simon out and held his hand as he made his way ponderously down to the beach. Once there, he immediately sat down and began running his hands through the sand and pebbles, crowing with pleasure. Under the lee of the promenade wall was a long row of beach huts in ice cream colours, their little wooden steps leading up to miniature verandas. None of them was occupied on this blustery day. Beyond the breakwater, Scarlett could see Joanne waving from the top step of a pink and white hut along the beach.
‘Come on, Mummy! This one’s the prettiest!’
Scarlett pulled Simon up, lifted him over the breakwater and trudged along to join her daughter. She sat on the veranda of Joanne’s chosen hut with her feet on the step and hugged her knees. It was warmer down here, sheltered from the wind.
‘We haven’t got our buckets and spades,’ Joanne complained.
‘Never mind. You can still play houses. And you can dig with your hands. But don’t go out on the mud. I haven’t got a towel or clean socks or anything with me,’ Scarlett told her.
Joanne wandered off to examine the other beach huts, while Simon made growling noises and crawled along pushing the sand in front of him with his hands like a bulldozer. Scarlett clasped her legs and rested her chin on her knees and wondered what was happening back at the flat above the restaurant. What were they all saying? More to the point, what was Jonathan saying? She had a pretty good idea of what his parents and Corinne thought of her.
Where were she and the children going to sleep tonight? If things went the way she feared, she was going to have to throw herself on the mercy of the housing department and, if they didn’t have anything, then she supposed she would have to go and grovel to the Harringtons. She certainly couldn’t afford to go to a bed and breakfast place like the last time she’d been homeless. She could just imagine Mrs Harrington’s reaction to finding them destitute on her doorstep.
She found herself looking longingly at the beach huts. They were no more than sheds on legs really, but she was sure she could make one very homely inside. But even a beach hut was out of her reach.
She sighed deeply. Maybe she should move out of Southend and start again somewhere else. The place hadn’t brought her much luck. And she didn’t think she would be able to bear walking along this part of the sea front ever again if it meant passing the restaurant and knowing that Jonathan was there with Corinne. She should never have phoned him up that morning after the fire. The times they had spent together since then, that window of hope, had only caused trouble for him and made it harder for her to give him up for ever. She hardly dared look ahead, the future seemed so bleak. She thought backwards instead, back to the happy days at the Red Lion, when her mother had still been alive.
‘Fiddle-de-dee,’ her mum always used to say if something went wrong. ‘Now what would Scarlett O’Hara have done?’
What would her namesake have done in the situation she found herself in now? She would not have sat here feeling sorry for herself, that was for sure. She would have got up and done something. Scarlett racked her brains. She didn’t have a Tara to go back home to. All she had was her skills as a pub manager. And then it came to her. Of course! Now that she no longer had her father to consider, she could get herself a live-in job, then she would have an income and a roof over her head. Bert and Nell would give her a good reference. They might even know of an opening. And she could go anywhere. She had no ties now, she didn’t have to stay in Southend. She just had to smarten herself up and slap a smile on her face and convince someone that she was the person they needed. With a surge of energy, she stood up and brushed the sand off her skirt.
‘Scarlett!’
Her heart gave a painful leap. Was it—? She spun round and gazed along the beach in the direction of the steps.
‘Jonathan!’
There he was, running towards her. Scarlett clutched hold of the veranda post of the hut, hardly daring to believe this was happening. Jonathan sprang over the breakwater and dashed up to her.
‘Scarlett, what are you doing hiding down here? I couldn’t find you. It was only when I saw the pram—’
‘I wanted to go somewhere quiet.’
For a breathless moment, they stood looking at each other. Scarlett was still hanging onto the post for dear life. She hardly dared ask the fatal question, but something in his expression gave her courage.
‘What happened?’
He stepped forward and took her hand.
‘There was a lot of shouting—’
‘Yes, yes, I know that—’
‘And Corinne was so hurt—’
A big black gulf opened up, threatening to swallow her. She nodded, unable to answer.
‘—but when it came to it, there was only one thing to do. I
told her I was sorry, but I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with her.’
Scarlett stared at him. It took a couple of beats for his words to sink in and make sense.
‘But—the restaurant—what will you do for money?’
‘I’ll sort it out, go to the bank—it doesn’t matter. It can be fixed, somehow. There’s no point in having a nice place if you’re sharing it with the wrong person, and Corinne was the wrong person. It would have been a terrible mistake to go ahead with it—terrible for her as well as for me. Because you’re the right person, Scarlett. You always have been, right from the start. Right from the first moment I saw you. I convinced myself that I loved Corinne, but really there’s never been anyone else but you.’
Scarlett could hardly believe this was happening. Just minutes ago she had nothing, and now—this. She let go of the post and moved into Jonathan’s arms.
‘I loved you from that very first day too,’ she said.
This time there were only the children to interrupt their kiss. Simon hung onto Scarlett’s legs saying, ‘Huggy, huggy!’ and Joanne tried to put her arms round both of them.
‘You’re frozen, darling,’ Jonathan said as their lips parted. He rubbed her bare arms.
‘Not any more,’ Scarlett said, snuggling closer. ‘Not now I’ve got you to keep me warm.’
It felt so right there, being held by him.
Jonathan took off his jacket and slung it round her shoulders.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to stop us now. Let’s go back to the flat together. Back to our home.’
Also available from Patricia Burns
WE’LL MEET AGAIN
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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Published in Great Britain 2009
MIRA Books, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,
Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1SR
© Patricia Kitchin 2009
ISBN 9781408910900
Bye Bye Love Page 33