A Season for Second Chances(46)

She had wondered if she might feel lonely, but in truth, she didn’t, not a bit. Alex and Peter texted regularly, and she called them each weekly for a proper catch-up. She had the book club and she was feeling more and more a part of the Willow Bay community. The evenings were quiet, but Annie reveled in them; she had spent her entire adult life in a career that demanded her evenings and now she had them back.





Chapter 36



The transition from autumn to winter was accented by the creeping of early-morning frosts, which glittered on the sage leaves in the garden and left telltale wet patches on the ground when the sun and salt dissolved it. As per Mari’s notebook, Fred had delivered the winter logs, and thankfully, Alfred had been on hand to help Annie sweep the log store and pile them into it. She hadn’t asked Alfred to help her, he had simply appeared when Fred’s van turned up and set to work. One morning she’d stepped out for her walk early and found bundles of rosemary tied with string on the doorstep, ready for drying, and the garden neatly chopped back—a job she had kept meaning to get to—and she understood that she had entered into a bartering agreement with Alfred: food and shelter for odd jobs. He wasn’t much for polite conversation, but Annie found his quiet company oddly reassuring. An odd sort of friendship, if you could call it that, but it suited Annie as much as it did Alfred.

“Don’t you ever worry that the tide will come in while you’re in the cave?” Annie asked Alfred as they worked.

“Nope. I know the tides like I know myself.”

“You’ve never been taken by surprise? By a storm or something?”

Alfred chuckled and shook his head.

“Nope. I respect the sea. I don’t ever take for granted that she won’t sweep me out to the depths. I know her moods, and when she’s in a tempest I’m wise enough to stay out of her way. She’s just like any other woman: You’ve got to know when to worship and when to take cover.”



* * *



—

The man from the council’s environmental agency department had been due to drop in today to give her the okay for opening, which she had penciled in for Saturday the 18th, but he hadn’t turned up, so Annie assumed he’d either got lost or been held up on other business. The air was heady with the scent of newly sawn pine and freshly ground coffee. Not having had time to bake for tonight’s book club, Annie had bought three boxes of macarons at the Willow Bay Stores, which she would offer with coffees of their choice.

The candles flickered as the book club attendees blustered into the café, sopping from the rain that fell in sheets across land and sea. Dripping coats were slung across the backs of chairs to dry, and wet boots made footprints on the dusty floor.

“Oh, wow!” exclaimed Gemma. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”

Annie smiled, pleased.

Maeve surveyed the room and nodded.

“Mari would approve. You’ve done just enough to bring it up to date without losing the essence of the place.”

“Thanks, Maeve. I’m glad you think so,” said Annie.

“You kept the old pictures,” said Sally, pointing to the vintage prints.

“They fit the place somehow,” Annie replied, and Sally bobbed her head in agreement.

“Oh, I do wish you’d have a proper opening ceremony,” Gemma pouted.

“It’s only a pop-up,” Annie reasoned. “If it was a permanent fixture I might have, but sadly, it isn’t.”

“The Willow Bay Historical Society aren’t best pleased,” said Maeve.

“No,” Annie agreed, biting her lip.

“They’ll come round,” said Gemma. “They just need to see you as a custodian of the history, rather than a hijacker.”

“Your sunshine-and-rainbows outlook is really quite refreshing,” said Sally.

“Thank you,” Gemma said, unable to flatten out her grin. She held up a bottle of wine. “Right! Let’s get started.”

The women took their seats, Maeve digging out handfuls of crisps from the bowl in the middle of the table with her big, rough hands. They each pulled out their copies of Nicholas Nickleby, except Maeve, who once again tapped her head; Sally’s copy was particularly dog-eared.

“That school,” Gemma began. “Dotheboys Hall. Made me cry, it was so awful!”

“Everything makes you cry,” said Maeve. “You cry at adverts for cat food.”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t touched by the plight of those poor children, Maeve,” Gemma admonished. “Even you aren’t that hard.”

“Of course I was,” said Maeve.

“It wasn’t entirely fictional,” added Sally. “It was a crappy time to be alive if you were without social standing or money.”

“When Nicholas whooped Wackford Squeers’s arse, I almost yelled for joy,” said Annie.

“Poor Smike,” Gemma lamented. “What a sad little life. He barely had a glimpse of happiness. All that fear and pain.”

“I think Smike was Dickens’s comment on society. Yes, he wound the story up in a neat bow for the most part. But in reality, many people lived hard, short lives. Smike epitomized their plight,” said Sally.

“I agree,” said Annie. “Dickens was giving a voice to the people who had none. It wasn’t the poor reading his work; most of them wouldn’t have been able to read, let alone afford the stories. He was trying to reach the socially buoyant.”