One Night on the Island(84)

My stomach flips as I wait for Ali to appear on the screen, the ringing tone amplified in the silent café. My bags are ready to go, but I am not.

‘Come in, my roving reporter, are you receiving me? Is this thing on?’ She taps on the screen as she looms in close to the webcam.

I grin and take a sip of coffee. ‘It’s good to see you too,’ I say.

‘So much hair,’ she says, making big air motions around my face with her hands. ‘Spa day on the cards asap, you’ve earned it, girl. The wedding ceremony column has lit up social media. Those photos, just wow.’ She crosses her hands over her heart and nods, priest-like.

Sometimes, it’s best to just come out with things, to say what you need to say quick and fast before you can back down. This, I know, is one of those sometimes.

‘Ali, I want to resign with immediate effect. I’m working on one last piece and then it has to be over.’

She blinks, craning her immaculately made-up face towards the screen, her hands still over her heart.

‘You can’t resign. Put your red bobble hat on and get back here, we need you.’

‘Ali, I’d really like to get this off my chest in one go.’

‘Cleo,’ she says, but stops when I shake my head.

‘Please?’ I say. ‘The last thing I’d ever want to do is leave you in the lurch after you took a chance on me. You’ve done more for me than you could possibly know and I’m forever grateful.’ I pause. ‘You saw that I needed some time out so you sent me here on this mission almost against my will, and I’m so glad, Ali, because it’s been absolutely life-changing. Cataclysmic. I’ve fallen in love with Salvation Island, and with a man, and then with myself, in that order. I don’t care if I’m having a bad hair day, Ali.’ Of all the things I’ve just said, I know that last bit will land. ‘I’ve been writing like I’m possessed, words spilling out, and if I come back to London now that will stop. I’m not asking you for more time off. I know you need a bum in my seat. But it won’t be my bum. My place is here for a while yet. The boat is coming today and I’m not getting on it. If I do, I’ll lose the impetus – being here is an essential part of the magic equation.’ I stop speaking, breathless.

‘You fell in love with him?’ she says. ‘You found your flamingo?’ For a cynical businesswoman, she’s just swooned like a teenager in her bedroom.

‘Oh, Ali,’ I say. ‘Yes, I fell in love with him, and no, he’s not my flamingo. This isn’t really about him, it’s about me. I mean, he’s part of the story, of course he is. We had this major micro-love affair, and a man like that takes some getting over.’ I steal Ailsa’s line about Mack. ‘And I don’t really want to get over him, anyway. I’ve internalized all the brilliance of us and now it’s part of me. I don’t have him, but I don’t regret him.’

She sucks down a sharp intake of air. ‘Fucking hell, Cleo, behave. You sound like you’re reciting lines from a Hollywood rom-com.’

‘I feel as if I am living my own movie,’ I say. ‘I don’t know if it’s a rom-com, though. More one of those finding yourself dramas.’

‘Can we get Emma Watson to play you?’

‘Hell, yes,’ I grin. ‘That girl knows how to rock a bad hair day.’

Ali falls silent, and serious. ‘You’re really not coming back?’

I shake my head. ‘No.’

‘We can’t keep paying you, you know that, right?’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’ll be okay for a while.’

She narrows her eyes at me. ‘You better dedicate that fucking book to me.’

And then, in true Ali style, she blows me a kiss and slams her laptop shut. No lingering goodbyes for that woman. She’d get on well with the seabirds at the lodge.

I sit in the quiet of the closed-up café, contemplative. Delta made me an offer I couldn’t refuse this morning. Raff owned this café, and the pub too; both places now belong to Dolores, who in turn has handed them straight to her daughter – Delta laughingly said it was to make sure she’d stick around and there’s probably some truth in that. Closer to the truth, though, is that she was never planning to leave anyway, and this small new property portfolio has set her up for the future.

‘Stay at the pub,’ she said. ‘The flat up there is empty now. Raff’s staff are going to manage the place between them, but I could really use some help in the café, just a few hours a day. My hands are kind of full of this baby.’

I look around the simple whitewashed café, remembering back to the first day I came in here. I loved how the light streamed in through the stained-glass window, casting rainbows across the stripped wooden floor, the radio in the background. It only opens eleven till two in these darkest months, it should be just enough of an income if I’m frugal. I don’t need much, especially here. So I’m staying a while. The relief of not having to leave feels as if someone has taken their hands off my shoulders. I turn back to the computer, not looking forward to telling Mum I won’t be home for Christmas after all.

Barney isn’t at all like his distant relative, he’s whippet-wiry with a mop of white-blond curls, a perpetual traveller’s tan and wooden beads around his tattooed wrist. He trudged into the pub just now, dragging his battered rucksack behind him with one hand, his other arm bandaged against his chest.