The Cafe by the Sea Read online

  Flora blinked again.

  “No, I’m—”

  “She’s just a daft lassie whose dog’s hurt its paw,” said Charlie. “Look at her shoes.”

  The woman did so, and burst out laughing.

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Are you helping out?” Her tone changed when she talked to Charlie or the boys.

  “Yes, Jan!” they shouted.

  “Well, that’s great,” she said. “You head down the mountain, then come straight back up; we have a lot of sausages to eat!”

  She didn’t look at Flora again.

  Chapter Twelve

  The boys were, Flora had to admit, incredibly helpful and careful as they threaded the stretcher down the trickier parts until they once more reached the dirt path. Bramble obviously realized they were trying to do right by him, as he didn’t thrash about too much, and didn’t seem to mind the belt. Flora gently skritched his ears when she could and whispered sweet nothings, mostly about sanctimonious Outward Adventures teachers who thought they knew everything. Her wet shoes squelched on the path.

  As they approached the farm, she yelled to Fintan, who was crossing the path to feed the chickens, and he waved back and came toward her.

  “What the hell happened to Bramble?” he said, his expression concerned. “What did you do to him, Flora?”

  “I didn’t do anything to him!” said Flora indignantly. “He tried to climb a waterfall, despite being the dog equivalent of seventy-five years old! He’s an idiot!”

  Fintan looked at Charlie, slightly bashfully, Flora noticed.

  “Hi, Charlie,” he said. “Sorry about this. What did my sister do?”

  “She’s your sister?” said Charlie. “God. You look nothing alike.”

  “I’m right here,” said Flora.

  “Thank God you were up there,” said Fintan. “Did she really wander up in sneakers? Poor Bramble.”

  “I think it’s just a sprain,” said Charlie. “He’ll probably be right as rain in the morning.”

  The boys had gently laid the stretcher down.

  “Thanks, lads,” said Fintan. “Do you want a . . .?”

  “A what?” said Flora.

  Fintan’s face creased.

  “Oh,” he said quietly. “I was going to say ‘a piece of cake,’ but we don’t have any.”

  There were very few days when there hadn’t been a fruitcake standing underneath its covering, waiting for passing guests. The boys looked up expectantly.

  “There’s a packet of Hobnobs in my room,” said Flora reluctantly. She’d been hiding them to keep them out of her brothers’ clutches; she still didn’t trust them. “Hang on.”

  “No worries,” said Charlie. “We’ve got a nutritious supper up the mountain for them. They live off sugar as it is.”

  “Awww,” said one of the boys, but even as he said it, Flora could see he was missing a tooth.

  “Okay then.”

  “Want a cup of tea? Or a wee dram?” said Fintan.

  “Not while I’m working,” said Charlie. “No, I’d better get these guys back up the hill. It’s getting pretty late.”

  “It is,” said Fintan.

  “I’m sorry,” said Flora. The men nodded.

  “Bye now,” said Charlie, but he was talking to Bramble. He patted the dog gently, then he and the boys turned and headed back up the mountain through the softly falling twilight rain.

  “You calmed down from your little tantrum then?” said Fintan.

  Back in the kitchen, everything was still a complete mess; nothing was washed up, and food was congealing on plates and in saucepans. Flora looked at it and closed her eyes briefly. She put Bramble in his bed next to the range, where, exhausted from his ordeal, he immediately fell asleep. Then she headed off to her bedroom.

  Fintan shouted after her.

  “If you were looking for those Hobnobs, me and Hamish ate them.”

  “I like Hobnobs,” said Hamish. “Buy more Hobnobs, Flora.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  How is this your job, though?” Lorna groaned the next day. “You sit around and get paid for literally absolutely nothing.”

  “I’m waiting for the client,” said Flora. “I’m at his beck and call. And at the moment it’s all beck and no call.”

  “Can you get this coffee on expenses?”

  “I can,” said Flora, looking down at the Harbor’s Rest’s offering in disgust. “I don’t think I will, though. Out of respect to the concept of coffee.”

  She looked around.

  “Does Colton Rogers ever come in here?”

  Lorna snorted. “Seriously, I don’t think he’s here at all. Nobody sees him.”

  Old Maggie, who was a stalwart of Mure’s social scene and sat on the town council, leaned over.

  “He sucks money out of this community,” she sniffed, “and gives nothing back. He takes all our beauty and our natural advantages . . . and he spends no money here.”

  Lorna glanced at Flora, who shook her head fiercely. She didn’t want Maggie to know Colton was her client.

  “He’s like the invisible man,” said Lorna. “You’d think he’d pop in for a pint.”

  “I don’t think Americans do that,” said Flora. “I think they just like wheatgrass shots.”

  Maggie blinked.

  “Well,” she said.

  She leaned over again.

  “It’s good to see you back, dearie. For the summer?”

  “Um, no, just . . . just popping in,” said Flora.

  “Your dad will be pleased.”

  “You’d think,” said Flora mournfully.

  “Oh well,” said Lorna, wary of Flora getting morose again. “We’re happy to see you.”

  “Quite right,” said Maggie. “And will you be dancing again? I’m sure Mrs.—”

  “No,” said Flora shortly.

  Maggie and Lorna exchanged looks.

  “Hello!” a loud voice called from the door.

  The girls turned around. Standing there was a large, hearty-looking woman Flora didn’t recognize at first.

  “LORNA!” the woman boomed.

  “Jan,” said Lorna, with none of her normal bouncy friendliness. Flora realized it was the woman from the hill in the rain. “How are things?”

  “Not bad, not bad.”

  Lorna looked rather dejected, Flora thought.

  “Jan, have you met Flora?”

  “No,” said Jan.

  “Actually, hi, we met yesterday?” said Flora tentatively.

  The woman squinted.

  “Oh YES!” she bellowed. “You’re the sulky one! Can you believe she marched up the fell without any proper shoes?”

  “Well, she’s lived on it for nearly thirty years,” said Lorna mildly. “I think she’s probably allowed.”

  “Would have died if we hadn’t found her.”

  “I so wouldn’t have,” said Flora crossly.

  “Those mountains are dangerous.”

  “Yes, I know that, thanks, seeing as I was born and bred here.”

  Jan sniffed.

  “Really? Because you look like a city dweller to me.”

  “Oh thanks,” Flora said, then was annoyed because she’d taken it as a compliment.

  “Are you having a good trip?” said Lorna quickly.

  “Well, obviously we have huge responsibilities to our less fortunate friends,” boomed Jan. “Which of course is why we were thinking . . . have you thought any more about taking some of the children on at the school?”

  “I’ve explained before,” said Lorna. “We’d be absolutely delighted to have any of your children. But they need to live here. Their parents or guardians need to apply.”

  “They can’t!” said Jan. “They don’t have the capability!”

  “Well, how can I take them, then? Be reasonable. I can’t run a boarding school.”

  “It would do them a world of good.”

  “I’m sure it would. But Scotland doesn’t have state boarding, and ev
en if it did, we don’t have the facilities, and even if we did, we can’t find the staff . . .”

  Lorna was looking increasingly dismayed.

  “Jan, anytime you want to bring them over for a week in term time, we’d be more than happy to welcome them.”

  “They need more than that,” said Jan.

  “I’m sure they do,” said Lorna. “I’m just sorry we’re not able to provide it.”

  “Another door slammed in their faces,” Jan said, and left with an aggrieved sniff.

  “She seems mean,” said Flora.

  “Oh, she’s all right,” said Lorna. “Runs Outward Adventures for underprivileged children. Thinks it gives her the right to bully everyone who doesn’t do that.”

  “I know, I met her other half.”

  “Charlie? He’s all right. And pretty hot for a Wester. Jan just feels that anyone who isn’t trying to save the world all the time is morally lacking.”

  “That must get tiresome.”

  “She’s good at what she does, though.”

  “Maybe I should get her to take the boys,” said Flora gloomily. “Teach them how to look after themselves for a few days.”

  “Are you making dinner again?”

  Flora sighed.

  “If I don’t do it, nobody does,” she said. “They just eat sausages every night. They’re all going to die of coronary artery disease. So. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it, though.”

  Lorna smiled. Her own mother had tended toward the Findus Crispy Pancakes end of things. The best present she’d ever received was a chest freezer. Lorna had always loved going to the MacKenzies’, Flora’s glamorous, otherwordly-looking mother puttering about with steaming dishes on the go; perfect pies turned out of glass tureens; always a little bit of shortbread to go with the warm, frothy milk that came straight from the dairy.

  “I don’t know,” said Flora. “I thought maybe I could try a pie.”

  “When’s the last time you did that?”

  Flora laughed.

  “Don’t. I’m sure it will come back to me. Mind you, I thought that last night.”

  “Do you want me to come up?”

  “And cook for my family and show them how much better you are at everything than me? Not likely. They already like you better than me as it is. Are you sure you can’t marry one of the boys and move in and just take over? Come on, everyone fancied Fintan at school.”

  Lorna smiled.

  “Not bloody likely. No offense—I love them dearly.”

  “Plus you’re still trying to cop off with that doctor.”

  “Sod off.” Lorna blushed deeply. She had a huge crush on the local GP, so big, it was actually mean of Flora to tease her about it, and she apologized immediately.

  “Sorry. And I do know what it’s like, I promise. My boss . . . you might meet him, actually.”

  Even saying this much made Flora extremely pink.

  “What?”

  “I think he’s going to come up, try and chivvy Colton along.”

  “You like him?”

  “He’s . . . he’s attractive. That’s all.”

  “You do! Is he single?”

  “Hard to say,” said Flora. “He always seems to be with a tall, skinny blonde, but I can’t tell if it’s the same girl. Like Leonardo DiCaprio.”

  “Hmm,” said Lorna. “Doesn’t sound like your type.”

  “He isn’t!” said Flora. “In fact, when you see him, tell me how disgusting you think he is.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want me to do the same thing with the doctor?”

  “Don’t you dare,” said Lorna loyally, and Flora laughed.

  “God, it’s nice to meet someone worse than me. Right. I’m off to buy pie stuff. Wish me luck.”

  “Humble pie stuff, more like.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” said Flora.

  But as she trudged off, the sun warm on the back of her neck, the breeze lifting her hair, she felt undeniably cheered by spending time with her friend; not a work friend, or a passing friend, but someone she’d known as long as she could remember.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Flora worked up a sweat marching up the hill carrying her shopping bags, and was hungry again by the time she got home, but with that nice tiredness that comes from exercise and the feeling you always get when you wake up after a bad day—that things can’t be quite as bad as they were yesterday. And there was still no word from London. She wasn’t sure quite what was going on. It was utterly peculiar not being at work and yet not being on vacation either—neither feeling she ought to be filling up her time better nor feeling slightly sunburnt and hungover (it took Flora about fifteen minutes slathered with sunblock 50 to get sunburnt, and not much longer to get hungover).

  Bramble looked up as she came in, and his heavy tail beat a rhythm on the old flagstones. Obviously he’d forgiven her for his terrible day. She checked his bandage—it had gone on pristine, but was already getting gnawed. He was going to need one of those cone-shaped collars, she thought. She always thought dogs looked embarrassed in those things.

  The house was empty, of course; the boys would be out at all four corners of the farm.

  She tuned the Internet in to Capital FM—which downloaded at a speed that would have made a snail sad—so she could cheer herself up with the London traffic reports. The trains had all been canceled again. The Blackwall Tunnel was closed. It helped knowing that not everyone was having a fabulous time all the time.

  “And be careful, temperatures will hit the high seventies by four P.M., so it’ll be a sticky commute home for you guys,” said the smug mid-Atlantic DJ, and Flora rolled her eyes.

  She looked around the kitchen. The pots and pans she’d used to absolutely no effect the day before were still sitting in the sink and had been joined by the porridge pot, an ancient brown and orange thing that was only ever used for the morning oats. Flora had the faintest memory of her mother saving up something—was it stamps?—to buy the set of different-size pans. This was the only one left. Its screws were coming loose.

  She followed the line of sunlight that danced in and out of the dirty kitchen windows. This place was utterly filthy. It wasn’t the boys’ fault exactly—they worked hard—but it certainly wasn’t going to get any better on its own. And there was something about mess and dirt that made it hard to relax. Flora wasn’t a clean freak, not by any means, but this was so dispiriting and couldn’t be doing any of them any good. And that was before they all caught amoebic dysentery.

  No. It wouldn’t do.

  She cracked open the ancient dishwasher and emptied its filthy filter. As it ran through a cycle with the dishwasher cleaner that had obviously never been used, she started washing everything by hand, using a vast amount of the cleaning products she’d gathered up along with the pie ingredients in the supermarket, filling and refilling the sink with hot water and making the creaky old boiler start up over and over again. She didn’t just wash the dirty dishes; she washed every single smeared bit of crockery, piling a load up in the corner to be taken to the island’s sole charity shop. When, after all, did they ever have thirty-five people round who all needed a saucer? How many freebie mugs from fertilizer companies could conceivably be useful?

  Then she started scrubbing the shelves, thick with dust and sticky rings; she made herself filthy crawling into cupboards, and swilled bowl after bowl of gray water down the drain. She threw away piles of old advertising leaflets and used envelopes, gathered up bills and bank statements and divided them into piles that she could go over with her father—she would have to get him into Internet banking; it would make his life a lot easier. Possibly. Or Innes, at least.

  She threw out all the old packets of half-eaten pasta and out-of-date rice—it was amazing they didn’t have mice, truly—and tidied up the contents of the cupboards. She didn’t know what to do with them, but it was nice to know that such peculiar items as corn flour and suet were all in there.

  The work
was tiring, but it was satisfying to see results as she refilled the mop bucket again and again. Just to be doing something felt like a triumph in itself, lifting her from the slightly panicky morass into which she’d steadily felt herself sinking since she’d known she was coming back. She thought of Jan the night before, out in the hosing rain, putting up tents for poor kids from the inner city. Well, Jan wasn’t the only person who could do good things, she found herself thinking, then realized this was ridiculous.

  She’d filled the oven with noxious chemicals—she made a note to dispose of them carefully, in case they got into the duck pond—but it had to be left on for a good couple of hours. She might as well put the kettle on. She was pleased to see it gleaming, having been left to soak in limescale remover. She rinsed it under the tap about a billion times, feeling the satisfaction of watching the little white flakes disappear, then boiled some water. She’d refilled her mother’s little tins with Tea, Coffee, and Sugar written on them, although she had vowed to herself that as soon as there was any money—and she’d have to take a look at that with her father too: was there any money?—the first thing she was going to do was get a proper coffee machine so she didn’t have to drink the powdered stuff she’d weaned herself off long ago.

  Then she realized that thinking like that made it seem as though she was going to be staying longer than a week.

  Which she wasn’t. Job done. In and out and home again. Back again. Home again. Ugh. The terminology was confusing.

  Reaching up to run a finger along the newly polished dresser top, she knocked over the pile of recipe books that stood there. She had bought her mother lots, whatever was fashionable, figuring that if she spent that much time in the kitchen, she might want to try cooking different things. So there was Nigella, Jamie, anything Flora had thought looked interesting but not too technical or weird. Anything with zucchini spaghetti was absolutely out.

  She looked at them now as they cascaded onto the floor. Pristine. Utterly untouched, practically the only tidy things in the room. Her mother—who had always thanked her profusely—must have politely put them up on the shelf then never, ever opened them. Not even for a look.