The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea

by Jaimie Admans

  ‘It sounds beautiful, just like I remember it!’ the lady from the shop calls.

  Bunion Frank, the black Labrador, and the woman from the pub are there too, and a few of the other residents.

  ‘I hope it’s going to look as good as it sounds,’ Charles says and Camilla smacks him.

  ‘Seems like the magic of the carousel is still alive after all these years!’ she shouts, the expression on her face leaving no doubt that they all know exactly what we were doing inside that marquee, if the swollen lips and holding hands weren’t enough of a clue.

  To my surprise, Nathan pulls me closer and bends down to kiss me on the lips. ‘Seems it is,’ he calls back.

  Camilla whoops with delight and the other residents cheer.

  ‘Took you long enough!’ Charles shouts.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like kissing in public,’ I say to Nath.

  ‘Ah, they’re not public, they’re our mates now whether we like it or not. Besides, we’ve got a few more weeks here. They’re going to have to get used to it because I want to kiss you a lot.’

  I smile but it doesn’t reach my eyes and I know he can tell. I don’t have a few more weeks here. I have seventeen missed calls from Zinnia and several missed deadlines, and no idea of how I’m going to get out of it. Where’s a good excuse when you need one?

  Chapter 20

  ‘It looks spectacular.’ Camilla’s nearly bursting with joy as she stands outside the back door and looks around the garden. ‘We’re certain to win. Ooh, it’ll be my first time in years, and it’s all because of you two.’

  I glance in the living room window and I can see straight through to the kitchen where Nathan’s making her a cup of tea.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone put sand on the grass before.’

  ‘It was Nath’s idea,’ I say. ‘I was trying to figure out if we could cover the grass with brown cloth or something, but he suggested dumping actual sand from the beach onto the lawn and then vacuuming it up afterwards and putting it back. Only Nathan could’ve thought of hoovering the grass and make it sound like a sensible suggestion.’

  ‘It’s such a clever idea. The wind blows enough sand from the dunes into the garden anyway, and I bet no one else in Pearlholme will have done it. Ooh, I can’t wait for the judging on Saturday!’

  ‘Me neither,’ I say, because no matter how much I try not to get excited about winning the PPP, a thrill goes through me every time I look out the window and see our little cottage garden. The pink and white flowers planted in the shape of a shell, the blue flowers around the edges, and I’ve fitted pots of trailing blue lobelia along the hedgerow, spilling out to complement the wave shape that Nath’s cut it into.

  ‘Are you sure you can’t stay? You both look so much happier and healthier since you came here and we’re all going to miss you terribly. You’re by far my favourite guests I’ve had in the cottage.’

  I have to laugh at her bluntness. ‘I wish we could.’

  ‘Charles could use some help with the hotel, and the carousel will be looking for a barker. Is that what they still call them these days?’

  ‘They just have operators now, and this carousel will have no competition, so it’s not like it will need a barker trying to draw people away from other attractions.’

  ‘And if we win the PPP, I suspect your garden design skills will be in demand,’ she continues like I haven’t spoken. ‘And I’m getting far too old for the upkeep of the cottage, you could help me out with that, and we’re not very good at “The Online” advertising, you could do that for us …’

  I don’t pay much attention to the low thrum of a fast engine speeding up the promenade, my mind drifting while she talks. It’s nice that she wants us to stay, that she’s willing to offer odd jobs that she probably doesn’t really need help with to try to tempt me, but you can’t live on thirty quid here and there for trimming someone’s hedge or writing a bit of advertising copy about a hotel that could only be advertised honestly to spiders looking for a holiday home.

  The engine noise gets louder as a sleek black car approaches the cottage.

  ‘Probably lost,’ Camilla says. ‘We don’t get many fancy cars like that here.’

  I can’t see much from the back garden, but I hear it come to a stop and the slam of a door as someone gets out, and I don’t know why but it makes a stone of dread settle inside my stomach. I know someone who’s got a black sports car, but there’s no way she’d be in Pearlholme. It must just be a coincidence. Probably a guest in one of the other cottages.

  A few moments pass and I don’t hear anything else. I try to get my breathing back under control. There is more than one black car in the world. I’m just imagining things because I know how far behind I am on my deadlines.

  ‘Hey, Ness?’ Nathan sticks his head out the back door. ‘Your, er …’

  ‘Zinnia,’ says a voice from the living room.

  ‘Your Zinnia is here,’ he says, glancing back towards her and then at me again and making a face.

  It should make me smile but it doesn’t. I knew I’d be in trouble, but Zinnia is one of these people who thinks life only exists within the M25 and would never deign to travel north of it. If she’s come all the way up to Pearlholme, I’m in something much deeper than trouble.

  Camilla starts walking towards the living room, and I need to follow her, but my feet are rooted to the spot.

  ‘I say, dear, you’ve gone white. Are you okay?’ Camilla takes my hand and pulls me in the back door. ‘Let’s get you sat down. You’d better have my tea.’

  She pushes me down on the sofa and a cup of tea appears in my hand. I stare at it because I can’t bring myself to look at my boss, who I never in a million years imagined would be here.

  You could cut the tension in the room with a knife.

  ‘Well, I was going to stay, but I can see it’s not the best time. Maybe I’ll see you in the pub later?’ Camilla pats my shoulder, making tea slosh around in the mug.

  Nathan helps her into her coat as she introduces herself to Zinnia, who doesn’t say a word in response. Camilla obviously senses the barely contained contempt because she stops and peers at Zinnia’s face as she passes. ‘Oh dear. Have you been in a dreadful accident? Did you have a fight with a plastic surgeon? They have solicitors who specialise in medical negligence, you know.’

  I can’t prevent the laugh bursting out. Nathan hurries Camilla to the door and sees her out, but I can hear how much he’s laughing too, and it makes it even funnier somehow. I know I shouldn’t laugh. I risk a glance up at Zinnia and she is definitely not laughing, but Nath reappears in the living room doorway, his whole body shaking so much with the effort of holding it back that he’s grasping the doorframe to keep himself upright.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says in Zinnia’s direction, so determined not to laugh that he can barely get his words out. ‘Camilla’s harmless. She didn’t mean anything by it, she’s just lost her filter to old age.’

  Zinnia uncrosses and recrosses her arms, her top lip curling into as much of a sneer as the fillers will allow.

  She taps the toe of her stiletto on the carpet. ‘If you’ve quite finished …’

  Nath puts a hand over his mouth. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Green tea.’

  ‘Er, we only have normal tea.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ She looks him up and down. ‘I’m not staying. I didn’t realise places quite so provincial as this still existed.’

  ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  She scans the sofa like she might catch something from it and brushes her black dress down in case the germs have hurled themselves across the gap. ‘I’ll stand.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll leave you to it.’ He looks at me with a questioning look on his face and I nod. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’

  ‘Stay,’ Zinnia demands. ‘You’re part of this too. At least, I assume this is the mystery man, Vanessa.’

  I nod and she looks at him like
something found floating in a public toilet. Not that I expect Zinnia has ever used a public toilet in her very posh life. ‘The blurry photo on the phone was much better-looking.’

  He should be insulted, but Nathan puts on his most dashing smile. ‘I do look better blurry.’

  The insult annoys me. I put my cup down on the coffee table with a resounding thud to let her know I mean business. He might laugh at inappropriate moments, but she doesn’t get to insult his looks. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Why haven’t you answered your phone for the last week, Vanessa? Why has every email been ignored? Where are the fact-checked articles that were due Monday? Yesterday? Last week? And where’s the rest of my article about finding him?’ She jabs a finger in Nathan’s direction. ‘This is the big one, Vanessa. People are dying to know what happens when you finally meet Train Man. Do you know how many tweets we’ve had from people saying they can’t wait for it? We’ve been teasing it all week. It has to go live on Friday morning. I’ve been emailing and phoning to get your first draft so we can make it perfect together. We can’t afford to miss any delicious little details in this one, but I haven’t even seen a line of it yet. Daphne keeps saying that you won’t let me down but it’s getting increasingly difficult to believe her.’

  ‘So you came all the way up here?’

  ‘Believe me, this is a last resort. I phoned the hotel where you said you were staying and some old bloke started talking about his bathroom habits. I couldn’t get a word of sense from him. I phoned the local pub but they’d never heard of a Vanessa Berton. This article is one of the biggest Maîtresse has ever had, no matter how useless the writer I sent to write it has proved herself to be. The amount of readers we’re gaining offsets the inconvenience of driving up here in person, but I certainly couldn’t trust anyone else to do it, and time is of the essence. I don’t like being ignored, Vanessa.’

  ‘I wasn’t ignoring you …’ It’s not exactly a lie. I haven’t been ignoring her – I’ve been looking at the growing number of missed calls and emails and worrying myself sick over what to do about them and trying to pluck up the courage to email her and say I can’t do it. I didn’t expect her to turn up here before I managed it though.

  ‘I suspected that I knew exactly what you were doing, lazing around on the beach all day, so I thought I’d catch you in the act, so to speak, and judging by your tan, I’d say that is the only thing you’ve been working on, no matter how many times Daphne has tried to tell me otherwise. I come up here and find you nattering away in the garden with some old woman.’

  ‘I wasn’t nattering, I was talking about the …’ annual village gardening competition, which I’ve got involved in instead of working.

  ‘I don’t want to know. I didn’t send you up here for a holiday.’

  ‘And I haven’t been taking one.’

  ‘She’s been working all the time,’ Nathan says. ‘She’s up until all hours. She’s always got her computer on her lap.’

  It’s so sweet of him to try to stick up for me, and yet he must be wondering what all this is about by now.

  ‘Okay, great. Where are the fact-checked articles that were due last week? You can transfer them to me now and at least we’ll have some chance of getting back on schedule.’

  ‘I’m behind, okay? I’m trying to catch up but there are only so many hours in a day.’

  ‘When you’re busy lying around on the beach?’

  ‘I haven’t been—’

  ‘Your tan says otherwise, Vanessa.’

  ‘Oh, that’s my fault. She’s been helping me with the carousel. I’ve made her take the horses onto the beach to sand them down to disperse the dust. The tan is from working outside. I’m the same – look at my arms.’ He lifts the sleeve of his T-shirt to show her the tan line around his bicep, which is enough to make me go giddy, but Zinnia looks at him like he’s a caterpillar she’s just plucked from her Harrods broccoli and avocado salad.

  He doesn’t realise that Zinnia is not a normal person. Most people would have at least one hot flush at the sight of Nath’s arms.

  Zinnia smiles but it’s not really a smile at all. ‘Well, I’m glad the carousel is more important than your own job.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What is it then? An excuse to get to know him? If it’s all for the article, where is the article?’

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘Do you know you made several mistakes last week? You’re letting down the journalists who work hard on these stories. We’ve printed things that are incorrect and readers have called us out on Twitter. I’ve had to issue retractions. As you would know if you’d answered your phone. I’ve always been pleased with your work in the office because you’re so thorough, but suddenly you come up here and your pride in your work goes to hell in a handbasket. Now I have to hire another fact-checker to fact-check you, do I?’

  I shake my head because I don’t know what to say. I have messed up and I know it. I’ve kept telling myself I can still write the article I promised her, without realising how quickly my time is running out. I should have come clean and told her I didn’t know how to write about meeting Nathan as soon as I realised I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know I’d made mistakes in the stories I’ve fact-checked since I got here, but I do know I’ve been rushing through my work because all I’ve wanted to do is spend time at the carousel. It shouldn’t have become more important than my real job, but it has. I love it, and I don’t love my real job.

  I hold my hands up. ‘I don’t have any excuse to make. I’m sorry, Zinnia. I’ve screwed up. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘You’re bloody well right it won’t.’ She throws her hands up and lets out a huff of air to rival a horse digging around in its chaff bag. ‘I don’t understand what you’ve been doing here, Vanessa, because it’s certainly not work, is it? What have you spent the past three weeks doing?’

  Falling in love.

  I can see Nath chewing on his lower lip out of the corner of my eye but I can’t bring myself to look at him. I can’t bring myself to look at Zinnia either. I’m ashamed because I don’t know how I ever thought I’d get out of this.

  ‘How about you?’ She turns to Nathan. ‘What do you think of the article? Are you in love with her yet?’

  ‘Er …’ His face shows his confusion. ‘I think I might be,’ he says carefully, clearly thrown by the question.

  ‘Yes!’ She raises a fist in a victory gesture and turns back to me. ‘I assume that that is what you’ve been waiting for and now you’re going to turn in part three tomorrow, fully formed, proofread, fact-checked, and ready to go online?’ She holds her hand out like I’m going to pull the story out of my armpit and hand it to her right now.

  I shake my head.

  ‘What article? What’s it got to do with me?’ I can hear a tone of frustration edging into Nath’s voice. I know he’s getting worried, and I know it’s way past time I explained myself. ‘I didn’t even know you wrote articles, Ness.’

  Zinnia doesn’t hide the gasp of surprise. ‘You haven’t even told him? What the hell are you playing at, Vanessa?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say honestly. ‘It was never the right time …’ It’s just another excuse and I know it. I should have told Nathan by now. I should have told him on the first day. I should have told him any other time between then and now. He would’ve understood. At the very least, we could’ve talked about it in private. It wouldn’t have been sprung on him by my very put-together, quite scary boss turning up unannounced.

  ‘You’re Train Man.’ My voice barely squeezes out of my tight throat.

  He looks even more confused than he did before. ‘What? Who’s Train Man?’

  Zinnia whisks her tablet out of her handbag, touches the screen a few times and hands it to him.

  ‘He’s the subject of an article that’s gone viral online.’ I can’t bear to watch his face go from amused to serious as his fingers scroll down the screen, so I watch the wa
y his hands move, and see the exact moment he clicks the link at the bottom of part one that leads to the second part. ‘I wrote it on the day you dropped your phone.’

  ‘These are my photos.’ He doesn’t hide the surprise in his voice. ‘That’s me. How the hell did you get this? You can’t use these without my permission, can you?’ He looks exasperated as he holds up the iPad so Zinnia and I can both see what’s onscreen.

  I’ve never seen part two of the article. I sent it and tried not to think about it. I didn’t want to see what a show Zinnia had made of it with her wanted posters and photos from his phone, but instead of the shopping list that I expected published with the article, she’s used not just the picture of a wooden horse with his shoe in it, but the actual picture of him standing on a carousel in the distance, the one we all pored over in the office when I’d just found his phone.

  Zinnia waves the screen away. ‘We blurred it out more than enough. No one will recognise you.’

  Everyone will recognise him. He doesn’t even need to say it. It’s a distant photo but it’s a photo of him. ‘I didn’t agree to letting you use that one.’

  ‘You were there when I told Daphne to transfer everything that might be useful. After the success of part one, it turned out to be very useful indeed. Readers were dying to see this man, the real thing, not just the faceless model in my graphics. Have you seen how many hits it’s had?’

  Nathan goes back to the screen and his face visibly pales. ‘Twenty-seven thousand on the first one, twenty-one on the second.’ He sinks down to sit on the sofa, but his eyes don’t leave the screen in his hand. ‘Please tell me you didn’t do this, Ness. You wrote about me?’

  ‘I didn’t know you. It was just meant to be a fun little story. I didn’t mean for it to get the reaction it’s had.’ I drop my head into my hands and then look up again because the very least Nathan deserves is eye contact. ‘You were meant to be anonymous. There was going to be a model in your place. We were never going to use that photo.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight …’ He taps the screen and goes back to the first part of the story. ‘You thought we had a connection and that you picking up my phone was a sign from the universe, so you … thought it was in the national interest to make sure everyone knew about it?’