Tribute Act

by Joanna Chambers

  The next time I glanced over at Mack, all the customers had gone except one guy, dark haired and nice looking, who was chatting to him. I recognised the guy but couldn’t quite place him. The stab of jealousy that went through me seeing them together was . . . new. I’d never been the jealous type, but when the guy clasped Mack’s biceps with one hand and grinned at him, I was seized by an uncharacteristic desire to walk over there and stake my claim or something.

  Shaking my head at my stupid thoughts, I turned away, making myself focus on the tedious business of closing up. I glanced up at the chime of the doorbell a few minutes later. Mack was locking the door. Finally, we were alone.

  When he turned to face me, his expression was uncertain.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He blinked. “What? Oh, nothing.” He crossed the floor and joined me at the counter. Began wiping down the coffee machine.

  “Who was that guy you were talking to?” I asked, careful to keep my voice relaxed.

  “Don? He organises the folk night at the Sea Bell. He said he liked what I did.” He cleared his throat. “He offered me a slot actually.”

  “Really? That’s great!”

  Mack frowned. “I don’t know. I said I’d do it, but I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  “Why not? You love to play—getting paid for doing what you love sounds like a no-brainer to me.” I grinned, but he didn’t return my smile, concentrating instead on cleaning the stubborn milk residue off the steamer wands.

  “There’s probably not much point,” he said after a while, sending a blast of steam out of one wand before turning his attention to the second one. “He said he’s looking for a regular, and I’ll be heading off soon.”

  My stomach sank. “Not that soon.” My voice came out way more relaxed than I felt. “Your final scan’s not for another few weeks.”

  He shrugged. “I feel fine.”

  I put my hand on his arm, pulling him round so he had to face me. “Hey,” I said. “You can’t leave till after that scan. They’ve got to check your liver’s growing back properly—that’s not something you can just skip.”

  He sighed, heavy. “Yeah. I know.”

  His reluctance to stay in Porthkennack was painful, but I covered up my disappointment with a smile. “So . . . are you going to agree to play at the Sea Bell? I think you should.”

  His mouth quirked in a lopsided smile. “Yeah, I suppose. I might as well get a couple of gigs out of this stay before I leave.”

  I wanted to ask him what would happen after that, when he decided it was time to go. I wanted to demand to know if he’d tell me he was leaving or if he’d just get up one morning and decide he was done.

  If he’d even say goodbye.

  But I didn’t ask any of those things. Instead, I took the tubs of sandwich filling through to the kitchen and started stacking them in the fridge.

  On Friday mornings, Denise—a totally unflappable sixty-year-old who used to have a burger van on the sea front—opened up the café. Since she could run the place with one hand tied behind her back, I only had to go in at lunchtime. Even then, I usually felt like I was getting under her feet.

  Thanks to Denise’s efficiency, I tended to have a bit of a lie-in on Friday mornings, so when Mack slouched into the kitchen early one Friday morning to find me up and dressed with my laptop already open at the kitchen table, he seemed surprised.

  “Is Denise sick?” he asked as he poured himself a coffee from the pot I’d made.

  I shook my head. “No, I’ve got that meeting in Truro—the one with the deli people.”

  He leaned against the worktop, all sleep-rumpled and appealing. “Oh, right. Is Derek picking you up?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no. He’s not coming now. Rosie’s got a hospital appointment.”

  Mack frowned. “I see.” He paused, then added, “Are you okay going on your own?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll cope—it’s not like I have a choice.”

  I turned my eyes back to my keyboard but could feel his gaze on me. After a bit, he said, his tone hesitant, “I can come with you—if you’d like a bit of moral support?”

  I glanced up, opening my mouth to say no, it was fine, I could manage.

  But then I stopped myself and really thought about it.

  The truth was, my stomach was knotted with nerves and I felt totally out of my depth.

  And actually, it would be nice to have someone there to chat to me on the way so I didn’t spend the journey fruitlessly obsessing over what to say. And to postmortem with on the way back.

  “Okay. That would be great.”

  His smile was oddly sweet, and I felt warmth bloom in my chest.

  “Can I have ten minutes to shower and change?” he asked.

  “Better than that. You can have fifteen,” I said.

  “In that case, I’ll shave as well, if you like.”

  “Nah, let’s rock the entrepreneurial hipster look. A clean shirt’ll do.”

  He winked at me. “Done.”

  The meeting went well. Really well.

  Angie Fletcher was a former accountant and her husband, Dave, had been a wine merchant. They’d left London for the Southwest eighteen years before to set up their first delicatessen, with a focus on local produce. Since then, they’d grown the business gradually, concentrating on small but well-to-do towns with plenty of tourist trade.

  As soon as we arrived, they confessed how excited they were by the plans I’d outlined in my emails and it was plain they had a genuine passion for local independent producers. They showed us several other local product lines they stocked that had managed to break into national retailers.

  After a quick tour of the deli, Dave led us up to the flat above the main shop and into the kitchen. He made a pot of coffee while the rest of us sat down round the kitchen table and I got out the papers I’d brought.

  “Are these the packaging ideas?” Angie asked, reaching for a plastic folder. She flicked past the generic two-litre tubs Derek preferred with their old-fashioned designs, but paused at the cute half-litre cartons I’d proposed.

  “I love this design,” Angie said, pointing to my own favourite, a small pint-size carton with strong banded colours and a simple logo: shocking pink and acid green for our Rhubarb Ripple, sable brown and vivid orange for Chocolate Orange Fondant.

  “Our customers aren’t looking to fill their freezers with bargains,” Angie went on. “They want something special, and they’ll usually be eating it that night. They don’t mind paying a bit over the odds for it, especially if it’s unusual and luxurious, and this screams unusual and luxurious.”

  The Fletchers couldn’t have been more encouraging and generous with their time—we ended up spending two hours with them and left with screeds of notes of their suggestions and a promise they’d pop in to the café the next time they were passing Porthkennack, to see how things were going and have a taste test.

  I couldn’t stop smiling when we left.

  “I can’t believe how well that went,” I said to Mack when we got back in the car. “They seemed genuinely interested, didn’t you think?”

  Mack pulled smoothly out of the tiny parking space he’d managed to cram us into earlier. “Yes, thanks to you. You were great,” he said. “They couldn’t help but get caught up in your enthusiasm.” When he glanced at me, his eyes were warm. “I got pretty caught up in it myself.”

  I flushed with pleasure. “Thanks for coming,” I said. “It really helped, having you there. I was so nervous.”

  “You didn’t seem nervous,” Mack assured me. “No one would have known.”

  “You knew. You knew this morning, didn’t you?”

  “You had a wee bit of a rabbit-in-the-headlights look to you,” he admitted, and I chuckled.

  “I thought I was hiding it better than that.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got the measure of you now. I’m beginning to recognise the signs of when you’re stressed.”

  “Oh yeah?” I sa
id, amused. “Like what.”

  “You get this distracted expression,” he said. “And you fiddle with your earlobe.”

  I laughed. “Do I? I’ve never noticed that.”

  “Yup,” he assured me.

  “You’re quite observant, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes. Probably comes from moving around so much. You get used to sizing people up quickly when you’re always starting somewhere new.”

  “Do you never fancy . . . not moving on to a new place?”

  He went very quiet. He was quiet so long, I thought he wasn’t going to answer at all. Then he said, “Sometimes. But when it comes down to it, I usually get to a point when I realise I don’t have anything to stay for.”

  His words felt like a gut punch.

  I wondered when he’d reach that point with Porthkennack.

  That evening, we strolled round to the house to find out how Rosie’s hospital appointment had gone. When we got there, Mum was high as a kite. She’d opened a bottle of prosecco and the remains of Chinese takeaway were scattered on the coffee table. Derek was apparently at the pub with his mate.

  “Are we celebrating?” I asked carefully. Rosie was sitting in her usual spot, headphones in place, though she tore them off when she saw Mack and got up to greet him, hugging him tight. I’d noticed that Mack seemed to be getting more comfortable with her hugs lately.

  “It went really well,” Mum said, her voice cracking a little with emotion. “The doctor said she’s doing brilliantly.”

  Rosie grinned, letting go of Mack to hug me too, before dragging Mack over to the sofa and pulling out her guitar. Within a couple of minutes, they were absorbed, leaving Mum and me to talk.

  She gave me the lowdown on the appointment, talking me through everything the doctor had said and his final assurance that Rosie was recovering well.

  “That’s brilliant,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?” Mum said, her expression a little misty. “Just look at her: she’s like a new person.”

  And she was. I hadn’t realised how badly Rosie had been affected by her condition until after the transplant. Seeing her well again, I was reminded of what a livewire she’d been when she was younger and how much she’d changed when she’d been ill.

  I watched her and Mack, fascinated. With Rosie, he was different than he was with everyone else. More open, though in a painfully cautious way. Like always, I felt a weird mix of emotions seeing them together. My heart ached to see the wariness in Mack—that fear of letting others in—but the ache was lightened by fond amusement as I witnessed Rosie trampling all over his careful fences and Mack trying to deal with her oblivious trespassing. To my shame, there was still an element of envy in there, that Rosie could reach a part of Mack—hell, say it, his heart—that I couldn’t touch.

  Mum must have seen something of my thoughts on my face, though she misinterpreted them.

  “I know it’s hard to see the way Rosie is with Dylan,” she murmured beside me. “But it doesn’t mean she loves you any less. You’ll always be her big brother. It’s just that Dylan’s . . . well, he’s new and exciting.”

  No arguments from me on that front.

  I wondered what Mum would think if she knew that it was the tender, almost confused looks Mack was giving Rosie that I coveted. Her ability to step over that invisible line of his without being pushed back.

  A couple of hours later, Mack and I were lounging side by side on the sofa watching TV. Rosie was on her phone as usual, and Mum had her nose in a book.

  I stretched and yawned. “I’ll make us all a cuppa.”

  I’d just stood up when the front door banged, and a moment later Derek rolled in, all merry after a few pints.

  He saw me first and greeted me with a shoulder slap and a guy hug, ruffling my hair affectionately. He wasn’t much of a hugger, Derek, but he got a bit more that way after a few beers.

  When we broke apart, he spied Mack on the sofa, and for an instant, he froze. It was only for an instant, but it might as well have been an hour. We all noticed, and I suspected we all knew why he paused. Having hugged me—something he rarely did—should he try to hug Mack too?

  Eventually, he seemed to make a decision and stepped toward Mack, but Mack stayed where he was, his expression strained and almost panicky. Derek checked himself midstride, his hands curling into fists at his sides, his cheeks flushing.

  “Good to see you, Dylan,” he said with awkward formality. “It’s been a while.”

  “It’s only been a week,” Mack replied, his tone abrupt. And fair enough. Given how many years had passed without him seeing his dad at all, a week wasn’t worth mentioning.

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “So, Derek,” I said, sitting myself down again. I’d decided a change of subject was in order. “I had the meeting with Fletchers’ Delis today.”

  “Without me?” Derek turned to me, frowning.

  “Mum said you couldn’t make it because of Rosie’s appointment.”

  His frown deepened, and his voice was irritable when he replied. “Well, couldn’t you have rearranged the meeting? You knew I wanted to go!”

  I suspected he was redirecting his angry embarrassment over what had just happened with Mack at me, but frankly, I was so fucked off, I didn’t care what the reason was. Since I’d started on my retail project, Derek had done nothing but bitch and complain, disagreeing with everything I’d suggested, yet insisting on being included every step of the way. And if he’d really wanted to be at the meeting, why hadn’t he asked me to rearrange it?

  I opened my mouth to bite out a terse reply, but before I could say anything, to my shock, Mack blurted out, “Nathan was amazing—he had them eating out of his hand. You should be thanking him, not criticising him.”

  Derek blinked at him. “You were there?”

  “Yeah,” Mack said flatly, offering no explanation.

  Derek’s gaze shifted between us.

  “So, what did they say?” he asked at last, turning back to me. “Did you show them the packaging designs? What did they think?”

  “I showed them all the designs,” I said. “They liked the contemporary ones.”

  Derek’s brows knotted. “What? But they’re all wrong. Who wants to buy tiny little cartons of ice cream like that?”

  I was usually pretty even-tempered, but that got to me. Derek was quite happy to leave the business to me when it came to running the café or doing the books. But this? This he wanted to be in charge of? When marketing was what I did?

  Biting back the desire to tell him to fuck off, I said calmly, “The point of the meeting was to get the benefit of the Fletchers’ retail expertise. They sell luxury produce, day in day out. They know what their customers want and they said that—”

  “Yes, but you can’t just think about the one or two dozen people popping into the local deli!” Derek interrupted. “If we want to take this nationwide, we need to appeal to the masses.”

  I huffed out a frustrated sigh. “Derek, we’re not bloody Wall’s! We can’t compete with mass-market products. We want to aim for a smaller luxury market—”

  “No, you want to aim for that. I don’t,” Derek snapped.

  “Derek!” Mum said sharply.

  “What?” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “This is my business, if you remember, Lorraine.”

  I opened my mouth to point out that it wasn’t, not anymore, but before I could say a word, Mack beat me to it.

  “Christ, you’re ungrateful!” he exclaimed, his Scottish accent more pronounced than I’d ever heard it. He glared at his father, lip curling. “Nathan does everything around here. Everything. And it’s obvious he started way before Rosie got ill. He sorts out the work rotas and makes sure all the shifts are covered. When he can’t cover a shift, he does it himself on top of all his own shifts. He does all the paperwork. He gets all the supplies in. He banks all the takings and pays all the bills. And this retail thing was all his idea. Not
yours. Not anyone else’s. His.” He gave a huff of disgust. “And you. What do you do? Spend a few hours a day on your own, making ice cream. That’s it. That’s your contribution. And you think that entitles you to make every decision?”

  “I started this business up,” Derek said hotly, jabbing himself in the chest with his thumb. “I think that entitles me to some say about what happens round here.”

  “Yeah, you’re good at starting things off,” Mack sneered. “Not got much appetite for putting in the hard graft over the long run though, have you?”

  Derek went white. He looked at Mum, as though for support, but her expression was uncharacteristically stony.

  “Jonathan bailed us out,” she said in a low, furious tone. “His inheritance stopped us losing the house. And then he gave up his job to come and help us sort out the mess. Our mess, Derek, not his!”

  Derek swallowed. “I gave him half the shares in the company,” he muttered, gaze shifting away.

  “Exactly. He’s an equal owner! And you know he was being generous only taking half the shares after what he sunk into the place. We were this close to liquidation!” She held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart, trembling with anger. “And Dylan’s right about him doing the lion’s share of the work. I worry about him, he does so much.” She glanced at me then, her expression anxious. “I’m not much help either these days, and I’m so sorry, love.”

  My throat was tight with sudden emotion. I shook my head at her. “It’s okay, Mum,” I said hoarsely. “I know things have been hard lately.”

  “Lorraine’s right,” Derek said. I glanced at him, but he was addressing Mack, his gaze bleak, his voice thick with self-loathing. “And so are you—about me dropping out when stuff gets tough. I dropped out of being a musician and a business owner, and worst of all, I dropped out of being a father. The truth is, I’m a fuckup, Dylan. A failure. I don’t even know why you—”

  “No, Dad!” Rosie scrambled up from her chair and ran to him. “You’re not a failure—you’re not!” She burst into noisy tears, her arms tight round Derek’s waist while he looked down at her, his expression pained.