Turning the Tide

by Christine Stovell

  ‘Let’s just start with one order, shall we?’ Matthew said, looking pained.

  Frankie drew himself up to his full five feet eight and took a deep breath. ‘This is my partner, Trevor Dillon. There’s not a lot of call for it in Little Spitmarsh, but Trevor’s had considerable experience in dealing with flowers for some of London’s best hotels. He’s handled everything from small-scale weddings to grand corporate occasions and he isn’t flustered by budgets, installation deadlines or anything else you can throw at him. If you want simple, beautiful and original designs in your restaurant, why don’t you let us show you what we can do?’

  As the shop bell jangled for the third time, not even Phil and Kirstie looked up. Harry, who couldn’t bear to watch any longer, closed the door behind her. All right, she was prepared to admit that Matthew Corrigan could turn a few heads, and his personal magnetism was formidable, but it was too soon to panic. Once he’d looked around, would he really want to pursue a rather uncertain project in a dull seaside town?

  Beneath the gold lettering that should have read Crimps but, due to ineptitude or sheer mischief on the part of the signwriter, looked unfortunately like Chimps Hair & Beauty Salon, Carmen Moult lounged in the doorway like Little Spitmarsh’s answer to Sophia Loren after she’d eaten all the pasta. A firm believer that neither hair nor breasts could ever be described as too big, she was pulling at the plunging vee of her tight top and blowing down her cleavage, trying to disperse some of the heat built up blasting perms into submission all morning. As Harry headed towards her, Carmen’s immaculately plucked and sculpted eyebrows rushed towards each other like two playful tadpoles, and her face darkened.

  Harry had plenty of dark thoughts of her own without needing to know how she’d managed to incur Carmen’s disapproval. She tried a smile, the kind she used for fierce dogs, which made Carmen stamp a tiny stiletto-clad trotter and scurry inside.

  ‘Hey, Harry!’ she cried, reappearing and almost making Harry jump out of her skin. She pushed a piece of paper into Harry’s hand. ‘Special half-price offer next week. Make sure you come, yes?’

  Fortunately a stomach-churning waft of permanent wave solution and a tremulous cry of ‘I think I’m done now, Carmen!’ from within made the other woman squawk and run back inside. It also spared Harry the necessity of telling her she’d probably prefer to eat her own foot than take up the offer. Even so, rather than risk being spotted binning the leaflet – which could result in her being forcibly dragged in for half a head of highlights and a leg wax – Harry scrunched it up and stuck it in her pocket. All right, so she didn’t actually feel the need to shout about the fact that she got George to trim her hair when it needed it; but, given that it was one of the few skills he had managed to pick up in the merchant navy, she felt marginally safer in his hands than Carmen’s.

  Harry went into the baker’s and ordered a bacon roll. Wandering back to the boat yard, she was so busy tearing at it in large, fretful bites, that she didn’t see the figure waiting on the high wall of the sea defences until it was too late to take avoiding action. George she could have coped with, but being caught by Matthew Corrigan with bulging cheeks and bacon fat glistening on her chin put her at a considerable disadvantage. With her mouth crammed full, Harry was not best placed to tell Matthew what to do with the single red rose he was holding out to her; but she sincerely hoped that the message in her eyes left him in no doubt about where she thought a suitable receptacle might be. Shrugging, Matthew broke off the long stem and stuck the flower in the top pocket of his faded chambray shirt. He gave Harry a smile which she returned. Deep frozen.

  ‘Don’t think you can get round me the way you seem to be getting round everyone else,’ she told him hurriedly, wiping bacon roll remnants from her mouth. ‘I don’t believe in your restaurant idea, I don’t need your money and I can certainly resist your particular brand of charm.’

  Matthew gave her the benefit of his dimple. ‘What kind would that be, then?’

  ‘The short-lived variety. The kind that lasts just long enough for you to get what you want then fades away like the morning dew. Little Spitmarsh might have been asleep for a hundred years, but it doesn’t mean that I’m fooled by the first handsome prince to try his luck. Let’s not waste any time pretending it’s my good looks or my personality you’re interested in, okay?’

  Matthew jumped down from the wall, laughing. ‘It’s all right, Harry, your body’s safe with me. Seducing owners to get my hands on their land isn’t one of my usual business methods.’

  Especially not those reeking of brown sauce, thought Harry self-consciously.

  ‘So,’ he said, the hazel eyes watching her closely, ‘what’s your price?’

  ‘My land,’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘is not for sale.’

  ‘I don’t imagine that a boat yard sold on the open market would reach anything like the amount I’d be able to offer you for a parcel of land,’ he suggested, softly.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Harry, ‘I’m not so easily bought.’

  ‘I’m only trying to show you that, if things don’t pick up, you might not have a choice. And who knows,’ he murmured, reaching out very slowly to trace a line across her cheek with his thumb, ‘I might end up with more than your land.’

  Harry flinched, hating the flush of colour she could feel staining her face.

  ‘Stop taking the …’

  ‘Brown sauce,’ said Matthew, raising his thumb to show her. ‘Trust me, I’m trying to help.’

  ‘And I’ve already told you,’ Harry said, as firmly as she could, ‘that I can manage by myself.’

  He considered her for a moment, the hazel eyes flicking over her face to see if she was about to crack. ‘Whatever you say, Harry.’

  Chapter Three

  Just three and a half miles away, as the gull flew, Great Spitmarsh lay on the opposite side of the mudflats and backwaters to its smaller neighbour. The much-hyped marina development was bland, unimaginative and had done as much to reinvigorate the town as a set of gleaming acrylic nails on a wizened old paw. Far from creating a millionaire’s playground, the yacht owners it attracted turned out to be an aloof bunch who, although content to wander a few yards for breakfast at Tesco’s or dinner at the marina bar, brought most of their supplies with them and rarely ventured as far as the old town. In Harry’s opinion, the unsympathetic development had destroyed the town’s character and turned the high street into a ghost town. No way, she vowed, would she allow Matthew Corrigan to subject Little Spitmarsh to the same fate.

  Having collected an order from the marine engineer’s, Harry decided to take another look at the marina. She liked to think that Watling’s attracted all the true sailors, the salty old dogs who weren’t afraid to go a few days without a shower and drank strong tea in tannin-stained mugs; but, casting her eye over row upon row of gleaming white hulls and expensive sails set simply for the sake of showing off, she could certainly see where the smart money lay. A lot of people were prepared to spend a lot of cash to keep their boats lying safely idle.

  Utterly depressed, Harry returned to her van and was about to drive away when there was a tap at the window. From the small gap left between a full set of whiskers, enormously overgrown eyebrows and a nautical cap, a pair of beady blue eyes bored into her. Eric Drummond, Commodore of the Spitmarsh Yacht Club, had unwittingly been the cause of more grief to her than he would ever know, thought Harry, sighing as she switched off the engine; but he was a well-meaning old boy who had known her father and didn’t deserve to be ignored.

  ‘You can’t run off without thanking me!’ he said, leaning down to give her a hairy kiss. ‘Not only have I fixed it so you don’t have to watch the old clubhouse falling down any more, but you’re also, it seems, going to have the best restaurant in town right on your doorstep.’

  ‘Not much use to me, I’m afraid,’ said Harry. ‘I’m not really the eating-out kind.’

  ‘Ah, that’s because you’ve had nowhere to go until now!’ h
e beamed. ‘I could just see you becoming one of those ladies who lunch.’

  ‘Don’t take up fortune-telling for a living, then, whatever you do, Eric.’

  Eric looked sadly at Harry’s van and Harry’s clothes. ‘Ah well, you always were a practical girl, weren’t you? Now, I’m glad I’ve caught you because I’m a man down in the committee boat for the regatta next Sunday. My regular’s gone in for bypass surgery. You’re a fit young thing; you could stand a few hours with me making sure everything’s fair and square, couldn’t you?’

  The blue eyes beseeched her from the ground cover of facial hair, like a faithful old mongrel waiting for its master. A few hours wouldn’t kill her and she could always catch up at the boat yard in the evening.

  Harry sighed. ‘What time would you like me to be there?’

  As Bella Vista gently rocked to a rhythm that had nothing to do with the tide, Lola Moult sat on deck drinking her tea and thought about the prospect of pulling pints for most of the day. It was better than thinking about her parents, just below her feet, starting the day with a bang. By now, she should have been so used to the morning ritual that she was beyond disgust; but it was like they’d just discovered sex and couldn’t stop showing off about it. Perhaps that’s what came of being such late starters. Her mother, after all, had been thirty-nine when she’d had Lola; but, even so, you’d think that after nineteen years they’d have had the grace to call it a day, instead of going at it hammer and tongs trying to make up for lost time. And her mother seemed to take such delight in pegging out her FF-cup basques and the thongs that must have been completely engulfed by the cheeks of her outsize bottom. All Lola could do was fervently hope that no one connected these shameful items in any way to her.

  When the rocking of the houseboat slackened to a close, Lola was simply relieved that it wasn’t an Old MacDonald’s Farm morning: here a ‘Royee!’, there a ‘Royee!’, everywhere a ‘Royeeeee!’ A little later they would emerge, Carmen flushed and dozy and Roy beaming with pride that thirty-five years of winkle picking had ensured that his mighty whelk had never shrivelled.

  Lola grimaced at the last of her tea swirling round her cup. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the real tragedy – one that she could hardly bear to face – was that she was doomed, apparently, to follow in her parents’ footsteps. Already that rare creature, a nineteen-year-old virgin, if she took after her mother she would go without sex for another nineteen years; well, eighteen and a bit, she supposed, from the time of doing the deed. Almost her entire lifespan all over again! It wasn’t that she hadn’t had the opportunity, she reminded herself; she could have had sex on any number of occasions. She’d probably get a few offers today, at the regatta, once those crabby old yachtsmen, high on adrenaline from the racing, crawled into the bar, convinced they were born-again studs. And if things didn’t improve, then one terrible day she might take one of them up on it.

  Perhaps that’s what had happened to her mother? Perhaps she’d got so tired of waiting that, in the end, fat old Roy Moult, with his greasy quiff and spivvy little moustache, had seemed – hard to believe it – almost attractive? Was that her fate too? Stuck in Little Spitmarsh until she finally did it with –

  Whoa! Wait a minute! Sauntering along the bank like he owned the place, all brooding arrogance and animal beauty, was a vision of sex in Levi’s.

  Almost bored by the predictable drop of masculine jaws when they first caught sight of her, Lola knew she didn’t have to make the slightest bit of effort to be noticed. So she just sat and waited, pretending to be engrossed in deep, important thoughts whilst silently praying that her mother wouldn’t come squawking up the companionway with an armful of underwear. With her eyes half closed, Lola heard the crunch of footsteps along the path and waited for the hesitant cough, the ‘Lovely morning’ with a not-too-subtle pause between the two words; or even the frequently purred and truly unoriginal ‘Bella Vista!’

  Nothing. Interesting. Keeping her gaze averted until she was sure his back was safely turned, Lola spun round to see where the first man to completely ignore her was heading. She could have howled with disappointment as he wandered towards the boat yard. No doubt he’d be back to his boat and off to sea without ever knowing what he’d missed. Then she saw him walk past the boat yard and down to the old yacht club building that now sported a ‘sold’ sign.

  Lola smiled as the sun came out. Suddenly the day looked a lot brighter.

  Reflecting that the regatta had very nearly been the death of her, Harry staggered into the relocated Spitmarsh Yacht Club, desperate for a pee; grateful, even with all the experience of a seasoned sailor, not to be bouncing around in the committee boat any more. But she was dreading coming face to face with the competitor who’d repeatedly tried to cross the starting line too early and who she’d had to disqualify – because Eric refused to do it on the grounds that ‘He knows where I live!’ She’d just have to hope that the man had calmed down a bit and was not as big as he appeared in his cockpit.

  Having relieved her most pressing need, Harry realised she was trapped. Short of launching herself out of the fanlight in the Ladies, she had no alternative but to run the gauntlet of yacht club wives brandishing sausage rolls and vol-au-vents in the post-regatta spectacular that was the awards ceremony. Bracing herself for a gas attack of Trésor and face powder, Harry took full advantage of the rumpus caused by a smoke alarm going off in the kitchen to make for the bar.

  ‘A pint of best bitter, please,’ she asked, doing a double take as she recognised Lola Moult behind the counter. With a figure that made Beyoncé look like an ironing board, glossy black hair and the proud, straight nose of an Egyptian princess, Carmen and Roy Moult’s beloved teenaged daughter must have rivalled Helen of Troy for launching ships. So many yachtsmen had unintentionally dropped their lines and lost control of their boats at the sight of her, that Harry was seriously thinking about getting all new nautical charts of Little Spitmarsh marked with a navigational warning.

  Lola had done the occasional weekend stint at the old yacht club, but Harry hadn’t expected her to move with the premises. In Little Spitmarsh, however, there was no such thing as a casual job, since they were all taken by the surplus of serious workers.

  ‘Make that two, please, and whatever you’re having.’

  Lola Moult was like a dangerous mountain with tremendous peaks and plenty of ice. Many men had tried to conquer her, but were always beaten back to base by the hostile environment. Now, as Lola returned the comment with a little flirty smile instead of her perpetual sulk, Harry didn’t need to look over her shoulder to see why.

  ‘I’ll get these, Harry,’ said Matthew.

  Harry watched Matthew watching Lola. She wouldn’t have thought that, style-wise, there was a lot to choose between her own denim shorts and rugby shirt, chosen to suit the afternoon in the committee boat, and Lola’s jeans and white tee shirt. So it had to be the way Lola moved, like a couple of giant peaches in a silk body stocking, that made Harry feel like the invisible woman. She was about to pick up her beer and figure out a way to swim against the tide of men surging towards the bar, when Matthew did it for her.

  ‘Come with me.’

  Harry had no choice; she was tired, she was thirsty, Matthew had hijacked her beer and the bar was heaving behind her. He led her to a table in the corner and made her sit down; then went off and came back with a paper plate laden with the yacht club ladies’ non-burnt offerings. He was a thorn in her side, but he had his uses.

  ‘Eat.’

  Harry shrugged and picked up a drumstick.

  ‘You did a good job this afternoon. It’s not easy laying down the law when everyone’s pretending they can’t hear you. My brother and I used to do some dinghy racing when we were kids, so I know every trick in the book.’

  And still did, she thought, peering inside a sandwich to check the filling, which was a lot easier than having to meet his sleepily sexy gaze.

  ‘I thought I might get out on the wate
r again now I’m here. You know, buy myself a jet-ski, perhaps, or a little speedboat.’

  Harry drew in her breath so sharply that she sucked in a crumb from the sausage roll poised at her mouth. Matthew waited for her to stop choking and handed her her beer.

  ‘Relax,’ he said, whilst she was still unable to speak. ‘I’m more of a windsurfing kind of guy. I’m not trying to add to your list of reasons to dislike me, but I knew you’d have me down as a flash boy racer and I was right.’

  Matthew in a wetsuit? If she didn’t have sunstroke already, then conjuring up images of that lean, hard body wrapped up in rubber was definitely making her feverish. At least if he was on a jet-ski, he’d be moving so fast it wouldn’t disturb her for very long. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than engines tearing through the backwaters, scaring off the birds and churning up the marshes.’ She gulped, hoping he’d think the catch in her voice was down to the crumb.

  ‘And neither can I. Do you think I’d have accepted the invitation to be a guest of the yacht club today if I had such little respect for the place?’

  The first part of the sentence had been fine, but any tentative goodwill towards him faded at the mention of the yacht club. Yes, the Matthew Corrigan approach to business had been very successful in that instance, hadn’t it? The club could afford to subsidise the bar for a good few months yet, thanks to the cheque he’d waved at them. No wonder he’d been invited along; the committee had probably fallen over themselves in the rush to make him their guest at the earliest opportunity. Harry glared at her sausage roll, wishing she could tell the committee how many sleepless nights she’d had. If the town was about to become a smart London outpost, that would fuel demand for holiday homes; and she’d come under more and more pressure to let her land be concreted over …

  ‘Depends what you mean by respect,’ she began, wondering if by sounding reasonable she could make him listen to her. ‘It’s true that most of the locals won’t see any harm in your restaurant idea. They’d probably agree that it’s better to restore an unused building than let it rot. But the locals aren’t the ones who’ll pay your bills, are they? And the kind of people you’re hoping to attract are not exactly going to be charmed with Little Spitmarsh as it is.’