And since he’d spend most of it chasing around the island with the girls, he wouldn’t even have to worry about gaining a dad-bod in the process.
Now it was mid-morning, he was careening down the path towards Gull Bay on his old bike he’d found at the back of the shed, Abby and Mia were laughing and singing as they followed him, and if he could just get some goddamn 4G signal it would be an actual Julie Andrews movie moment.
Seashell Island hadn’t changed at all, as far as he could see. Same candy-coloured buildings along the high street, and stripy beach huts on Long Beach. Same smell of candyfloss and sea salt and fish and chips and ice cream all rolled into one. Same white clouds puffing along in front of the sun every few minutes. The gorse and grasses still grew on the hills, running into and then giving way to the sand as the land sloped down towards the sea. Gulls cawed overhead as they approached their bay, on the lookout for a stray piece of battered fish, or even an ice cream. Leo smiled to himself as he remembered losing a fish-and-chip supper that way when he was smaller. Maybe even that first summer after they arrived on the island, back when everything still felt so magical.
He supposed it had never stopped feeling that way for Miranda. That must be why she’d stayed.
And right now he could see that same magical feeling in his daughters’ eyes when he glanced back at them, hear it on the wind as they laughed. Why hadn’t he and Emily brought the girls here more? Life had always just seemed so busy, and the island such a long slog away. A drive of five and a half hours just to the ferry, and then there was still the crossing to contend with.
And the lack of internet signal.
Leo raised his hands from the handlebars of his bike to lift his phone higher in the hope his email might finally ping and tell him he had the dozens of new messages he knew must have arrived since he closed down his laptop as the girls finished breakfast that morning. God only knew how Tom was coping. Or how the meeting went. Or—
The path dipped suddenly under his front wheel, and Leo grappled to control the handlebars while still keeping hold of his phone, failing on both counts. As his phone flew through the air, followed by his body, followed by his bike, wheel over handlebars, Leo finally spotted something new about Seashell Island.
The old-fashioned ambulance he flew into the side of.
Abby screamed as his shoulder hit the vehicle, and even Mia called, ‘Dad!’ as he sank to the sand and gravel of the path, his whole body vibrating from the hit.
Then he heard another voice. A woman’s voice. Swearing loudly and creatively from inside the ambulance.
‘Dad! Are you OK?’ The girls brought their bikes to a much more orderly halt beside him, scrambling down to crowd around him, patting his aching body with more concern than gentleness.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ he lied, as his shoulder started to throb. His leg stung too, and when he looked down he winced at the blood pooling on his torn skin.
Abby followed his gaze and gasped, her eyes wide and her face pale as she clapped one hand to her mouth. Mia, meanwhile, scrambled around to find his phone, holding it up triumphantly despite the cracked screen.
‘We need to call an ambulance!’
Leo, dazed, looked up at the strange vehicle he was leaning against. ‘I think we’ve already found one.’
He blinked again, as darkness started to fill his vision. His last thought before passing out was, But vehicles aren’t allowed on Seashell Island.
The first thing Leo was aware of as he came round was that he was much more comfortable. The second was that his daughters were laughing, and apparently completely unconcerned about his plight.
The third was that they weren’t alone on the side of the road any longer.
‘You’re awake.’ A low, melodious voice spoke – last heard cursing like a sailor from inside the ambulance, unless Leo was mistaken – moving closer with each word. ‘That didn’t take long. We only had time for a couple of hands of gin rummy.’
‘Are you teaching my children to gamble?’ he asked, blearily, as he forced his eyes to open.
‘Well, somebody had to. A shocking gap in the girls’ education.’
The voice was very close now, and as Leo finally managed to get his eyes open he saw why: the bad-influence woman was leaning right over him, studying his face. She lifted one of his eyelids higher, peered in, then let it drop.
‘He’ll live,’ she called back to the girls, who whooped with delight. Which was fairly gratifying.
Struggling into a sitting position, Leo bumped his head on the ceiling.
‘Careful,’ the woman said, sounding amused.
He shot her a look as he sat more carefully and took in their surroundings, trying to make sense of what he saw. The girls were sitting on miniature armchairs around a small, circular table that was attached to the floor by a metal pole. They had cards set out in front of them, along with a china teapot and cups that looked to be full of blackcurrant squash. The walls behind them housed a rainbow of fitted cupboards, each door painted a different colour, with a small curtained hatch in the middle. The third wall beside them was missing completely, sunlight pouring in from outside and the sea lapping against the shore in the distance. He frowned. How could a wall be missing?
Then the small curtain blew aside in a sudden breeze, and revealed the steering wheel and front seats beyond it, and suddenly his bashed brain caught up.
‘We’re inside the ambulance,’ he said, in wonder. An ambulance that was also a tearoom. Or a living space, he supposed. And sleeping space, given that he was lying on a surprisingly comfortable single bed, covered in a crocheted blanket made of soothing green, blue and aqua wool, with flashes of white like surf spray on waves.
‘Are you always this slow, or should I be worried about brain damage?’ the woman asked, in a whisper. ‘Only I just told your daughters you’d be OK, so that would be kind of embarrassing.’
There was a slight hint of concern behind her laughing eyes, but only slight. Her smile danced over her lips like the whole world amused her, and him in particular. Her short, black and purple hair dipped over one eye, and she shook it out of the way.
Mindful of his head, he swung his legs round and slipped off the bed, which was raised off the ground by a good metre. The room didn’t spin, which he took as a good sign.
‘Not brain-damaged,’ he assured her. ‘Just confused. Tourist vehicles and motor homes aren’t allowed on Seashell Island.’
‘Dad had to leave his car on the mainland with Tom,’ Mia explained, helpfully. ‘He’s still in mourning.’
‘I am not,’ Leo lied. ‘Anyway. I was wondering how you managed to persuade the council to allow this converted ambulance off the ferry.’
‘How do you know I didn’t smuggle it on in the dead of night with the help of pirates? Maybe I’m a rebel.’
She looked like a rebel, Leo decided. Or maybe that was just the swirly purple and blue vest top she wore that read ‘Winging It’ over an image of a bird flying free.
‘Christabel isn’t a rebel. She’s Auntie Miri’s friend,’ Mia said. Which on the one hand made perfect sense – any friend of Miranda’s was unlikely to be trying to overthrow authority or what have you. But on the other . . . the woman in front of him definitely didn’t look like anyone his sister would be friends with.
‘We met her on the beach the other day when we went rock-pooling. And her ambulance isn’t just a caravan, Daddy,’ Abby piped up, putting down her teacup of squash. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’
It wasn’t until he took Abby’s little hand and stepped down from the ambulance that he realised his leg had been cleaned and bandaged. ‘Are you running an actual first-aid service from this ambulance then?’ he asked Christabel. ‘And thank you, by the way.’
‘You’re welcome. But the first-aid thing is incidental to my actual purpose. Come on.’
Christabel led them around to the back of the ambulance, and threw open the rear doors, revealing – along with a mini generator and water tank – two pink and purple bikes, and rack upon rack of tools, tyres, inner tubes and other bike paraphernalia hanging on the inside of the doors.
And across the top ran a sign that read: ‘Bike Ambulance’.
‘So, how about it, mister?’ she asked. ‘Like me to fix your bike?’
JULIET
By Monday, Juliet thought she was starting to get the measure of the Lighthouse again, this time from a proprietor’s point of view, rather than that of a reluctant guest. She’d always known that a lot of work went into running the place – she’d had her own share of it to do on the chores rota, for a start. But only now was she starting to see how many details went into making the place run smoothly.
Figuring all this out would have been a lot easier if her parents had left comprehensive notes or operating procedures, like the ones for making the printers at work actually print rather than just beep alarmingly. Working for Callum, Juliet had almost got used to the constraints of having a standard operating procedure to follow for every tiny task that needed doing, right down to the clients’ coffee preference chart in the office kitchen.
Here, on Seashell Island, everything seemed a lot more free-form.
Determined not to be put off at the first hurdle, she decided to tackle it like a project at work. For all that she was technically Callum’s assistant, in reality she knew she’d done a lot more work than most of the admins – partly because it gave them an excuse to stay late and work together. Something that, now she thought about it, probably wouldn’t have been necessary if his marriage had been quite as over as he’d claimed.
Still, it had given her plenty of experience of setting up and managing projects. Running a B&B couldn’t be all that different to running a street-food event, could it? Both started as a list of things to be done to achieve the right outcome. Then she just had to split the list up into who would do them and when.
From the records on the computer, the scrawled lists stuck inside cupboard doors, and the stacks of sheets and towels in the linen cupboard, Juliet was able to gain a pretty good idea of what needed to be done, whenever they finally got some guests. To begin with, she decided on the most important tasks – the ones that, if a new guest arrived tomorrow, they’d need done – and tackled them first.
She started by making up the rooms, ensuring that each had a full set of the mini-soaps and lotions made locally in a nearby farmhouse. She updated the local information file that still seemed to contain fax numbers rather than email addresses, and put a mini-printout of all the most important details in each room. She cleared out the fridge and freezer of any out-of-date or dodgy-looking food and drinks.
And she ignored the amused looks from her siblings.
She knew what they were thinking – that this was another fad, something she’d take on for a few days before losing interest. Well, they were wrong. Because losing interest was no longer an option.
She felt like she had when Miranda had tried to talk her out of getting her first tattoo. ‘Don’t you know they’re painful, expensive and permanent?’ Miranda had said, as if Juliet had no common sense at all.
She’d got the tattoo anyway – a small sunflower on her shoulder. And now she was about to become the proud owner of something else that was painful to get, expensive to keep, and terrifyingly permanent.
Still, she’d never regretted the tattoo, even if she had given it considerably more thought than the baby growing inside her before it happened.
By the time she’d finished her most urgent tasks, her siblings had both disappeared – Miranda to work, she assumed, and Leo wobbling on a bike with the girls following behind laughing. Juliet took in the rare peace and quiet, and got planning.
Sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of sadly decaffeinated coffee, Juliet looked at the notepad in front of her, tapping her biro against the paper until it left a smattering of freckles across the page. Would her baby have freckles? Callum was a redhead; it was definitely possible.
His other kids did. She’d seen photos.
Focus, Juliet.
She couldn’t think about Callum, or the siblings her baby would never know existed, or the future she’d thought she might actually be heading towards.
She had a new future now. And she was bloody well going to make it work.
So. The rota.
Writing the list had been easy enough – but knowing what needed to be done was just the start. With the immediately urgent actions ticked off, now she had to turn to the bigger problem: how to keep the place running.
She’d never been much of a list maker before she started working for Callum. That was always Miranda’s domain. But right now, with her thoughts scattered far and wide and her rolling stomach making it hard to focus, writing down the vital next steps for the B&B was helping. Everything else – like telling her family she was pregnant, for instance – would have to wait until they reached the top of the list. Possibly around the time she was the size of a house and calling for the ambulance, if she had her way.
And she was wool-gathering again.
Growing up, there had always been a rota stuck with a magnet to the fridge door – the one area in which her parents showed some level of organisation. On it, each family member was assigned tasks that needed doing on different days of the week. Making the beds, clearing up the breakfast plates, cleaning the bathrooms, everything was on the rota – and they all had to do their part.
Juliet didn’t see why it should be any different now.
So, with her list of essential daily and weekly tasks on one side of the table, and her decaf on the other, she drew up a large timetable on a piece of plain paper and started assigning tasks.
Abby and Mia weren’t old enough to do some things, but they could definitely help with others – emptying the bins, for instance, or loading the dishwasher with supervision. And Miranda and Leo were definitely both old enough to do everything, however much they complained.
The big advantage of setting the rota was that she got to pick and choose the jobs she liked, although she made sure she did a reasonable share of the ones everyone hated too. Juliet assigned herself breakfast cooking duties six days out of seven, and smiled at the thought of feeding crowds passing through the Lighthouse this summer.
She’d always enjoyed cooking, even before she’d moved away and had to start fending for herself. Back when she lived at the Lighthouse, her days on the breakfast rota were always her favourites. And working for a company promoting and helping start up food businesses had only exposed her to more interesting possibilities in the food world.
Her stomach rumbled at the thought. Well, with the rota done, she supposed her next job was figuring out the breakfast part of the B&B equation. She’d cobbled together pastries, porridge and cereal, along with toast and homemade jam (found at the back of the cupboard), for the family the last couple of days, but she knew that couldn’t be all that her parents usually offered. In fact, the in-room information she’d just printed mentioned locally sourced sausages, bacon and eggs. As did the website.
Which meant she should probably get sourcing, she supposed.
Until Miranda found them some proper customers, Juliet intended to treat Leo and the girls – and Miranda, until she went back to the flat she shared with Paul – as paying guests. Their parents had left Miranda access to the B&B’s accounts, and she’d reluctantly handed the business credit card over to Juliet for ‘Essential spending only, absolutely nothing else, OK?’, which meant she had the funds to get started. And if she was the one running the place, Juliet figured she got to decide what was essential, not Miranda.
It had been years since she’d spent any real time exploring the town of St Mary’s. Normally, in an effort to keep her visits to the island short, she headed str
aight up to the Lighthouse and stayed there until it was time to catch the ferry back again. Since it was usually Christmas when she visited, most of the shops would have been shut anyway.
But not today. Today the high street, while not exactly bustling, boasted open shop doors, brightly coloured awnings, and cafe tables and chairs on the pavements.
Juliet started her exploration at the small craft centre at the far end of the high street, where she stocked up on sea salt and summer-scented candles for the bathrooms and bedrooms. She ticked ‘candles’ off her list with a sense of accomplishment, before spotting a beautiful patchwork quilt that would look perfect on the back of the sofa in the day room.
It had clearly been a long time since her parents had made any real updates to the Lighthouse, she reasoned. A few fresh touches would make all the difference.
She added ‘quilt’ to the bottom of her list, then ticked it off as she paid.
By the time she’d made it to the far end of the high street her bags were bulging with locally sourced everythings – except the food she’d actually come out for. Already wondering how she was going to get all her purchases back up to the Lighthouse without dropping them, she finally spotted a deli/restaurant she didn’t remember from the last time she visited this end of town.
The Flying Fish was nothing like the Crab Leg Cafe, Juliet realised as she pushed open the door. There were no plastic chequered tablecloths here, or tomato-shaped ketchup dispensers. And it wasn’t like the Smuggler’s Inn, either – the nicest pub in town – or the Anchor (not quite so nice), yet it also wasn’t as pretentious and stuffy as the Yacht Club across the water on the mainland, with its dress codes and its membership fees.
In fact, the Flying Fish looked kind of like the sort of place she’d have liked to hang out with her London friends, if she could have found it in the city. Scrubbed wooden tables were laid with mismatched crockery, and with painted wooden chairs around them. Pendant lamps in shades of aqua and cream hung over each table, giving them the feel of a private dining space. And behind the long, wooden bar – complete with comfy-looking bar stools – was a full array of spirits, wines, beers and non-alcoholic drinks. Through a large, open archway, Juliet could see another counter, this one with glass covering cured meats, dishes of olives, and a huge selection of cheeses.
Summer on Seashell Island: Escape to an island this summer for the perfect heartwarming romance in 2020 (Riley Wolfe 1) Page 10
