Summer on Seashell Island: Escape to an island this summer for the perfect heartwarming romance in 2020 (Riley Wolfe 1)

by Sophie Pembroke

  Abby’s obsession with weddings had begun at almost precisely the same time Emily and Mark had announced their engagement. While Mia had moaned about having to wear a pretty dress, Abby had fallen head first into the magic of the wedding industry. Even Leo had been dragged along to a wedding fair at a local hotel one weekend, where all the vendors had been utterly charmed by Abby’s intense knowledge of wedding favours, and blissfully unaware of Mia’s accompanying black mood.

  Unlike Leo, who had been required to make it up to her in the form of overpriced takeaway pizza (‘And you have to get the cookies, Dad, they’re the best bit’) and letting his eldest stay up late to watch Harry Potter, which she cried at.

  Even after nearly ten years of parenthood, Leo wasn’t sure he had a clue exactly what he was doing or what was happening.

  Which was basically how he felt now, heading downstairs to the Lighthouse kitchen, to sit down with both his sisters and try to figure out why one of them was there – both of them, actually, since he’d seen Miranda’s empty suitcase sitting on her bed. With no guests booked in, there was no reason for her to stay, was there? Why hadn’t she gone home to Paul? Leo found it hard to believe it was because of him and the girls.

  And of course that was just part of the bigger mystery – what exactly his parents were playing at. Leo wasn’t at all sure they’d solve that one tonight between them. Wasn’t sure he even wanted to try.

  Like he’d told Miranda: whatever his parents were doing, it was their problem. They’d tell them when they were ready. Until then, he needed to keep his focus where it mattered. On his business, and his girls. That was more than enough to be going on with anyway.

  And as for Juliet . . . well, she’d talk if she wanted to, and he’d listen. But he was under no illusion that he’d be able to fix whatever was going on with her. That was OK, though. With Juliet, trying to fix things just made her madder. It was better to listen, and pour more wine when needed.

  Juliet, he realised, was possibly the one relationship in his life he did have figured out.

  ‘This is a surprise,’ he said, smiling at Juliet as he entered the kitchen. He opened his arms and she fell into his hug.

  ‘You too,’ she mumbled against his shoulder. ‘Girls running rings around you already, so you had to come for backup?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Which was worse? Letting people believe that he couldn’t manage his kids alone, or admitting he’d been so sure his ex-wife wouldn’t actually go through with her new marriage that he hadn’t bothered organising childcare for his working hours while she was away on her honeymoon?

  Juliet wouldn’t care either way. It had been him and her against the world for too long, back when they were kids, for her to judge him that way. Besides, he knew all her teenage secrets – even the ones that Miranda never uncovered.

  He pulled back from Juliet and held her at arm’s length to study her. She looked exhausted, red rings around her eyes and her skin pale even in the middle of July. Her blond waves were flat and almost greasy. She looked nothing like the vibrant, excited Juliet he’d seen in London just last month.

  ‘I’m guessing whatever it was you were hoping to tell me soon didn’t come off?’ he murmured, low enough that Miranda couldn’t hear.

  Juliet gave him a sad smile and a small shake of her head, and stepped away.

  ‘Why don’t we take these out on the terrace?’ Miranda suggested, holding up three bottles of beer.

  Leo grabbed his bottle and raised it in a toast. ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  Juliet followed more slowly, and Leo noticed that the smile she gave them never met her eyes.

  The Lighthouse terrace spanned the back of the bed and breakfast, stretching out into the garden with space for a wooden swing seat at one end, and a bistro table with four seats at the other. The rails looked out over the neighbouring farmland that stretched inland, with sheep dotted around and hedgerows glowing in the fading summer sunlight. Leo squinted at a long-necked sheep-like creature in the distance, wondering what the hell Max and Dafydd were breeding over there these days.

  Juliet curled up onto one end of the swing seat, while Miranda took the other, so Leo dragged one of the other chairs over to sit beside the railing opposite them.

  ‘So,’ Miranda said, after a swig of beer. ‘This is unexpected. All of us here together, I mean. Without any threats of disinheritance or anything.’

  ‘And without Mum and Dad here to appreciate it,’ Leo added. That part still rankled – especially now it looked like a deliberate plan on their part.

  Although they couldn’t have predicted that all three of them would end up here at the Lighthouse, could they? Leo didn’t fully understand it himself.

  ‘Nowhere better to be on a summer evening than this terrace though, is there?’ Juliet said with a soft smile.

  Miranda raised an ironic eyebrow, and even Leo had to hold back a laugh.

  ‘That’s not a sentiment you’ve ever expressed before,’ he pointed out when she glared at him.

  Shrugging one shoulder, Juliet placed her beer on the boards beside the swing. ‘That’s not entirely true. I spent a lot of my teenage years on this swing. It’s basically one of about five things on the island that I liked, and most of them were on this terrace.’

  She shot Miranda a quick pointed glance as she spoke, but their big sister didn’t seem to notice. Beside her, Miranda was staring out into the distance, perhaps in the direction of the weird sheep.

  ‘What were the other four?’ Leo asked, mostly to fill the silence that followed Juliet’s words. Miranda didn’t even seem to be aware they were there. Like she was in a different world to the two of them.

  But then, she always had been, in some ways.

  When had they stopped being able to talk to each other? Or maybe they’d never really started. The age difference, the personality difference, the . . . distance. Maybe it had always been there, and him and Juliet moving away from the island had just made it grow.

  ‘Like . . . lunches out on this terrace after we’d spent all morning swimming down at Gull Bay and raced back still damp and covered in sand.’ Juliet tipped her head back to stare up at the stars as they twinkled into life, and Leo couldn’t help but do the same.

  Maybe Juliet was right. All he knew was that nothing in the world looked like the skies above Seashell Island on a summer night.

  Something in his shoulders started to relax, and Leo knew it wasn’t because of the half bottle of beer he’d just drunk.

  ‘Or the birthday parties Mum and Dad would throw us out here. With the fairy lights and the millions of candles,’ Miranda added. Leo hadn’t even been sure she’d been listening.

  His own memories started to kick in. ‘Or sitting here on the swing, fixing the kites for the Seashell Island Kite Festival.’ Straightening the strings, tying on the bows, fixing the handles and bending the sticks. Listening to his dad talking about the fighting kites he saw flown in India, years before. Hearing Mum tut as she leaned over to fix a knot that Dad had missed, or tighten a bow Leo had tied.

  ‘Or getting ready for the Lighthouse Festival!’ Miranda said, just as Juliet said, ‘And our festival!’

  The girls laughed, smiling at each other. Leo thought it might be the most in sync they’d been in years.

  Then Juliet frowned. ‘Mum and Dad will be back for the festival next month, right?’

  Leo and Miranda exchanged a look. The Lighthouse Festival was an annual tradition, started the first year the B&B was open. When it began, it had just been Josie and Iestyn and a stall full of homemade cakes and homebrewed elderflower wine, plus a couple of their friends from earlier days playing guitar and singing. It had grown over the years, although Leo hadn’t made it back for the last five or six to see it for himself, despite his mother’s entreaties. Life had been too full, too busy, and before his divorce there had been ot
her holidays in other places to take with Emily and the kids or with Emily’s family or their friends. They’d managed the odd long weekend on Seashell Island, but never timed it right to be there for the festival.

  And since his divorce, he’d never wanted to be there, without the girls.

  But this year, they were all there to enjoy it – to see the old-fashioned fairground rides his dad had raved about, and taste the apple cider brewed across the island.

  If it happened at all.

  ‘We don’t know, Jules,’ he said.

  ‘Mum and Dad haven’t taken any bookings for August,’ Miranda explained. ‘And we’re always booked through August. I think they knew they weren’t coming back this weekend. I think they planned it.’

  By unspoken agreement, they didn’t tell her the rest – the missing accounts, the sales listing for the B&B. Perhaps it was habit. Juliet was the baby and, whatever else happened, they’d all always tried to protect her. From hard truths, from secrets – and from herself.

  They’d have to tell her eventually, Leo knew. But not yet. Not when she actually seemed happy to be here for the first time since those long-ago days of swimming in Gull Bay and fixing kites.

  Juliet’s eyes were wide in the starlight, her face pale and small. Folded in on herself on the swing seat, she looked like a small child again. Like she’d been when they all lived here, the two of them dreaming of escape.

  Had any of them ever really grown up?

  ‘Then we have to keep the Lighthouse open for them,’ Juliet said suddenly, the look in her eyes turning to determination in the twinkle of a star above. ‘We have to keep the lights on.’

  JULIET

  Juliet knew that her siblings were looking at her like she’d been taken over by a pod person, but her words were true. Yes, maybe she’d never be ready to be an ‘island person’, but she still belonged to this island in the way that anyone who’d grown up there did.

  It had turned out that when the chips were down, it was still the place she thought of as home. The place she ran to when she was in trouble.

  Like now.

  She’d planned on confessing everything to her parents the moment she arrived, transferring the horrible burden of knowledge to them. She’d longed to make this . . . not someone else’s problem, but to share it, at least.

  Now, she knew that wasn’t an option.

  She loved her brother and sister, of course she did. But Miranda would make judgey eyes and even Leo, who could normally be counted on to take her side in most things, wouldn’t understand getting pregnant by another woman’s husband, by her boss, and losing her job and her relationship because of it. Hell, she hardly understood how it had happened herself.

  She couldn’t face the disappointment. This wasn’t like the time the police brought her home after some guys she was hanging out with tried to steal a boat. It wasn’t like the time she threw a party in the cottage on the edge of their property and absolutely trashed the place. This wasn’t something that could be fixed with some of Miranda’s sweet-talking and a lot of cleaning.

  This was something she needed to figure out on her own.

  Maybe if she went to her family with a plan – told them not just everything that had happened, but what she was going to do next, how she was going to fix her life – they wouldn’t give her that look. The one that said, ‘Here we go again: Juliet screwing up her whole life despite every advantage she’s had and everything everyone has ever done for her.’

  She hated that look.

  She needed to prove to them that she wasn’t the baby any longer. She needed to prove to them that she was responsible enough to deal with the consequences of her actions. Responsible enough to be a mother, to look after another living being as well as herself.

  Maybe she needed to prove that to herself, as well.

  But for now, she needed another reason that they’d buy for why she’d want to stay, since it seemed they weren’t totally buying nostalgia. Another something to focus everyone’s attention away from her rapidly growing middle. How fast did that happen, anyway? Would she need to go clothes shopping soon? She’d need to see the doctor, or a midwife before too long. There were scans and things, weren’t there? At the very least, she needed to download some sort of app to tell her what was happening to her body, and what she should expect beyond the exhaustion, constant low-level nausea, and the fact that just the smell of the bottle of beer Miranda had handed her made her gag.

  Focus, Juliet.

  She needed to stay here while she figured things out. And if she was working hard to save the Lighthouse then no one would question that, right? It gave her a purpose – and a chance to prove that she wasn’t the flaky little sister they remembered. She was a grown-up now too – one who could take control, get things done, and not collapse into a puddle at the slightest setback. Like the small matter of an unplanned pregnancy.

  Miranda sighed, kicking the floor so the swing seat bobbed back and forward again. ‘You’re right.’

  Juliet blinked in surprise. ‘Really?’ Because she was pretty sure Miranda had never, not once, said those words to her before.

  ‘Yeah. I have to save the Lighthouse.’

  Oh, right. Of course Miranda thought she had to be the one they all relied on. That she had to take charge and take over and boss them all around until they did things her way. Like always.

  ‘Actually, I meant—’

  ‘I can probably funnel some bookings through from Seashell Holiday Cottages – we’re always getting last-minute calls for cottages that are all booked up. I can add the Lighthouse to our alternatives list and talk it up a bit. Plus, Christabel said she might have some friends looking for somewhere to stay this summer – that could buy us some time while we figure out what to do next.’

  Of course, the problem was that was exactly what they needed. And Miranda, who seemed to know every person who stepped on the island, was the best placed to do it. How was Juliet supposed to argue with that?

  ‘Glad you’ve got it all in hand,’ Leo said, sounding relieved that this didn’t seem to be his problem. ‘But who is going to run this place when all these hypothetical guests start flooding in? You already have a full-time job, and I have two right now, between the kids and my business. I think we should at least talk about not doing anything until Mum and Dad get home.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Miranda said, dismissively. ‘Of course we need to do something.’

  Juliet’s shoulders straightened a little as she realised that even if they needed Miranda to find the guests in the first place, there was still plenty for her to do. She’d spent almost her whole life until the age of eighteen at the Lighthouse – she knew what running a B&B took, even if that was only because she’d usually avoided having to do any of it.

  ‘I could do it,’ she said, before Miranda could come up with any other ideas that made her unnecessary.

  Miranda and Leo shot her matching looks of disbelief.

  ‘For the weekend, maybe, but you’ll be running back to London soon, right? We need a longer-term solution than you.’ Miranda dismissed her offer without further thought, and Juliet’s shoulders slumped again. ‘I could call Mum and Dad’s friends, the Warburtons, see if they could come and run the place for the summer? They’ve done it before, for odd weekends and such. Mum and Dad have to be back by the autumn, right?’

  They all looked at each other, and Juliet could almost hear the same thought echoing around the terrace. What if they’re not?

  She knew there had to be more to their parents’ absence than the others were telling her, but that was just par for the course. No one ever told her anything. Either they thought she couldn’t be trusted with the information, or they were trying to protect her, the baby, as usual.

  Well. She had her own secrets this time, and she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d get to the truth sooner
or later.

  She swallowed, hard, and pushed her fears away, ready to try again. ‘I’m not planning on heading back to London for a couple of weeks at least. Maybe even longer. I’d like to see Mum and Dad before I go, apart from anything else. So, um, really. Why don’t I take over running this place for a little while? Just to keep things ticking over?’

  This time they didn’t dismiss her offer out of hand. That was something.

  Or that’s what Juliet kept reminding herself through the barrage of questions and objections that followed.

  ‘Are you sure you’re really up for that, Jules?’ Leo asked.

  Miranda jumped in. ‘Because if you take on the B&B you can’t just dash back to London because someone is throwing a party or something.’

  ‘And it means a lot of early mornings. No lie-ins or late nights. Or hangovers. You have to be up and smiling before the guests.’

  ‘And you have to be nice to guests, however odious they are. It can’t be like that time when that American couple stayed and you told them that cake was not a breakfast food and they could have eggs instead.’

  ‘Plus there’s all the cleaning and tidying and making up of beds – you always hated doing that.’

  ‘You’d have to be here, on call, all the time. No running off because you fancied doing something else for a change.’

  ‘And we’re not going to be able to bail you out if you decide it’s too hard. We’ve got our own jobs and responsibilities, you realise.’

  Patience. That was what she needed right now – something she’d sadly been lacking for most of her life so far. Her parents always joked that she’d spent her childhood desperate to catch up to Leo and Miranda, leapfrogging whole stages of child development because she didn’t have the patience for it. She’d started school able to read and do some of her times tables, but never learned to play with other kids her own age.

  But mothers needed patience, didn’t they? They needed to stay calm and not shout too much even when any reasonable person would want to, like when a baby wouldn’t stop crying.