‘I thought we might go out for the day tomorrow,’ Emma said as she put their meal out. She’d told Dougie he could have anything he wanted as a reward for completing his first week at his new job and, rather predictably, he’d asked for steak and chips. ‘As it’s Saturday and we’re both off,’ she continued. ‘We deserve a bit of downtime, right?’
‘I was going to meet Willard and get a few hours in at the lake.’
‘But you do that every weekend. I thought we could drive out – shopping, countryside, the coast… I don’t mind, you choose.’
‘I’ve already arranged it with Willard now. Can we do it next weekend, babes? I’m shattered; I just want to chill this weekend.’
‘Oh… well I suppose we can if you’re really set on fishing this weekend. I suppose I could go and see Patricia. She mentioned shopping. She’d probably like that.’
‘Got any ketchup, babes?’
‘Sorry, we’ve run out.’
Dougie frowned.
‘We’ve got barbeque,’ Emma said. ‘Would that do?’
‘It’s not the same.’ He took the plate she’d just handed him and slumped onto his chair at the table like a primary schooler who’d just been told playtime was cancelled.
‘I could go and pick some up at the shop on the corner,’ she said. It was the end of the week and having a couple of days’ rest to look forward to gave her more patience than she usually had. Dougie had worked hard all week, and she supposed she could indulge him this once…
‘It’s alright,’ he said, clearly meaning that it wasn’t. ‘I can eat it – it just won’t be the same as it is with ketchup.’
Emma hesitated. If she went out to the shop their dinner would be cold when she got back. She could stay home and eat, but he’d whine and fuss and make little comments about how much better the meal would be with his ketchup, and in the end she decided that tepid food was the lesser of the two evils.
‘I’ll be as fast as I can,’ she said, grabbing her purse on the way through to the front door before rushing out.
Clive was behind the counter. He looked up from his newspaper as Emma dashed in.
‘Where’s your ketchup, Clive?’
‘Third row down, love. You want me to come and show you?’
‘No, got it!’ Emma called, racing back to the counter with some in record time.
‘How are you, love?’ he asked as he checked the bottle for a price.
‘Good.’
‘Dougie still looking for a job?’
He found the price and rang it through the till, Emma wishing he’d be a bit quicker about it.
‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s got one, his first week this week. He’s enjoying it too and by all accounts picking it up quickly.’
She took the change from the five-pound note she’d just handed Clive and smiled brightly before she turned to leave.
‘Oh, I almost forgot!’ Clive called. Emma turned back. ‘Hang on…’ He reached beneath the counter and pulled out a small pack. ‘Jeanette was on this afternoon – she said Dougie forgot to pick up his Rizlas when he left the shop. They’re all paid for. Want to take them home for him now?’
‘Oh, right…’ Emma held up her hand for the cigarette papers. Cogs were slowly cranking into gear, but too slowly yet to make any sense. ‘He came in this afternoon?’ she asked.
‘Yes, love,’ Clive said cheerily. ‘Must have been on a break.’
‘Yes,’ Emma agreed, though it was a heck of a drive from his warehouse just to come to Clive’s shop on his break. ‘Thanks, Clive.’
She left the shop far more slowly than she’d arrived, taking the corner that led back to her own street deep in thought.
It wasn’t odd for Dougie to buy cigarette papers – though he didn’t smoke. He’d often pick them up for his friend Willard when they were going fishing together because Clive’s shop was close to home and there wasn’t one as handy to Willard that sold them. Did that mean Dougie had seen Willard today? But how, if he’d been at work?
Still, there was probably a perfectly good explanation.
Dougie rubbed his hands together as Emma passed the ketchup, though for a man who couldn’t countenance chips without it, he’d eaten quite a few while she’d been out.
‘Money couldn’t buy a diamond like you,’ he said.
‘Oh, and Clive said you left your Rizlas behind when you were in there earlier today,’ she said casually, placing the pack of papers down in front of him.
‘Oh…’
Emma watched closely. Was it her imagination or did Dougie look flustered?
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘It’s a bit of a way out, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Clive’s shop, I mean.’
‘Well, you know… that’s the only place that sells the papers Willard uses.’
‘But you didn’t see Willard today, did you?’
‘I’m going to see him tomorrow, aren’t I?’
‘I suppose so,’ Emma said slowly, and she had to admit that much was true. ‘It still doesn’t explain why you had to drive all the way from work today to get them. Clive would have been open early enough in the morning to pick them up before you met Willard.’
Dougie stuffed a forkful of chips into his mouth and chewed rapidly. Without another word, Emma went to get his car key from his jacket pocket and headed outside. Marching to his car, she unlocked it and started the engine to check the petrol gauge. Unless he’d filled it (and he never filled it), he hadn’t made enough of a dent in the fuel to have travelled far at all through the week. But if he’d been driving across town every day, he really ought to have done.
Dougie came to the front door and, to his credit, lost some of the colour in his face as she relocked the car – the very car Elise had been kind enough to loan him while she was away so he’d find it easier to work. The car he wasn’t using at all to get to work as far as Emma could see. Had he made this whole job thing up? Had he been anywhere this week? Surely he’d never sink that low.
‘I filled it,’ he said.
Emma walked to the step and looked up at him. ‘How do you know that’s what I was looking at?’
‘Just a guess.’
‘OK… So have a guess what I’m thinking now.’
‘I don’t know. This is stupid. Are you coming in to finish your steak?’
‘I’m not hungry anymore. Dougie… tell me the truth. Are you even going to work? Did you make the whole job thing up to shut me up?’
‘God, no! Of course not!’
‘Then why do I feel like a mug right now?’
‘Call the warehouse if you don’t believe me!’
Dougie glared at her. She wanted to believe him but, even as he issued his challenge, she still didn’t and she couldn’t even explain why. Something was wrong; she felt it deep in her gut, and even if he was telling the truth about the job he was keeping something from her.
One thing was certain: she couldn’t call the warehouse to check right now – it was too late to get an answer and it would tell Dougie that she doubted him, and maybe he really didn’t deserve that after all. It was a hell of a thing to spend a weekend stewing over. It could be that she’d been let down so many times before it was easy to disbelieve him this time, but she’d felt like he’d really been trying this week and she’d liked that – she wanted it to be true. She wanted to believe that he was finally making an effort for the sake of her – for the sake of them.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Let’s forget it.’
‘I don’t know if I can,’ he said sullenly.
‘Look, it’s been a good week and I’m sorry, I don’t want to ruin it. Honestly, I was just confused why you drove out to the shop, but if you say it was to get Willard’s papers then that’s fine.’
‘We’ll say no more about it?’
Emma forced a smile and nodded, even as that little voice of doubt whispered to her again.
She felt horrible doing it. Like some sneaky, unreasonable, distrust
ful wife, and it wasn’t even like Dougie was having an affair. Perhaps that would have been a far easier lie to unpick and she’d have certainly felt more justified in snooping around.
But Dougie had gone out to the lake early, as he so often did, and Emma had jumped in her car to drive to the warehouse where he’d spent his last week working, if only to silence that voice of doubt with proof. The best way to do that was to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Her heart was thumping as she pulled up in the car park. It was strange, but it almost felt as if her entire future hinged on this one event. They’d either move on together, or Emma would have to make a call, one way or the other, and live with it. She only knew that if Dougie was lying to her and she let him get away with it, she’d never deserve any respect from him, whether she got it or not.
The building looked quiet. It was Saturday, but she thought she’d heard Dougie say weekend work might be an option once he was trained properly, so it stood to reason there would be staff around somewhere today. A moment later a door opened and a couple of men wandered out, lighting cigarettes. She leapt out of her car.
‘Excuse me…’ she called, hurrying over. ‘Do you know where I have to go to ask about a lost thing?’
‘A what, love?’
‘My boyfriend works here; he lost his AirPods and he asked me to come and see if anyone had found them here. He can’t remember, but he might even have left them in his locker. Could I look there? I wouldn’t be a minute.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Dougie Prince.’
The first one shot a puzzled look at the other. Then he turned back to Emma. ‘Are you sure he works here? I don’t know anyone named Dougie.’
Emma smiled. ‘Maybe that’s because he only started Monday.’
The second man suddenly looked enlightened. ‘Brown hair? Wears it in a ponytail?’
‘That’s him,’ Emma said.
‘I don’t know if anyone found anything Monday morning but I would have thought it would have made its way to lost property in the office by now if they had. He doesn’t have a locker so I wouldn’t know about that.’
‘Oh, you don’t have lockers? But I thought—’
‘We have lockers, sugar,’ the first man said. ‘That’s because we work here. He’s not going to have one – we don’t keep them empty for people who aren’t coming back, do we?’
Emma looked from one to the other, her stomach lurching. ‘What?’
‘He doesn’t work here, love.’
‘But he…’ Emma faltered. This was the one response she’d been afraid of, and now it was the one she wished she could unhear.
‘Walked out Monday lunch and never came back. Don’t you talk to each other if you’re his girlfriend?’
‘Oh, right… of course we do,’ she said. ‘I mean… never mind. Thanks anyway.’
She walked back to the car. She could feel the eyes of the two men on her back as she went and goodness knew what they made of her. They probably thought she was an idiot.
And, apparently, so did her boyfriend.
Chapter Eight
She was strangely calm as she drove to the fishing pool. Part of her had been expecting something like this and, had the situation come as more of a shock, she might have crumbled. Instead, she was gripped by a controlled rage. She wasn’t going to rant and make herself look like a hysterical woman; she was calmly and assertively going to tell Dougie what she knew and what she was going to do about it. That was the important bit, the bit that was going to be different this time. It wasn’t going to be about what he did next because she’d seen and heard it all before – but about what she did.
And she was going to do something about it.
The sky had darkened and it was drizzling as Emma spotted Dougie and his friend Willard at the lakeside. They’d set up a canvas shelter and were passing a roll-up cigarette back and forth, laughing hysterically at something, rods propped up on stands and dangling idly in the water. As Emma drew nearer, Dougie saw her and shoved the cigarette at his friend before shooting up off his seat and coming to meet her. Emma could smell it on him as he got close – not the normal cigarette smell – and it did nothing to quell her rage.
‘I thought you didn’t have any of Willard’s dope?’
‘Babes, what are you doing here? I can—’
‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘It’s not why I’m here.’ She paused. Dougie really had taken her for a mug and now that she was here, the stench of marijuana clinging to him, she wondered if he even deserved the explanation she’d prepared so he’d be able to accept her next actions. Maybe she ought to be more like him: do whatever the hell she wanted and screw the consequences for anyone else. After all, it had worked pretty well for him all his life as far as she could see.
She took a breath. ‘Willard’s got a spare room, right?’
‘I don’t know…’
He looked worried. Good, she thought savagely.
‘He’ll have a couch, at least,’ she continued. ‘As you like spending time with him so much you’ll be happy to use it tonight. In fact, you can use it the night after that too, and the one after that and the one after that…’
‘Babes?’
‘I want you out. If you’re not over to collect your stuff by sundown you’ll find it on the street – rain or not.’
‘But what have I done?’
‘Do I really have to tell you?’
‘You’re kicking me out over that?’
‘It’s my house and I don’t want you there – that’s why I’m kicking you out.’
Emma began to walk away, a curious triumph building in her. She suddenly felt lighter and freer than she had in months – perhaps even years.
His hand closed around her arm to pull her back and she shook him off.
‘I said sundown!’ she hissed.
‘But I haven’t done anything!’
‘Exactly!’
‘But, babes… I love you!’
Emma turned once more and began to stride towards her car.
‘You know what, Dougie…?’ she called, never looking back. ‘I don’t love you.’
Knowing that Dougie would likely head straight back to the house to try to talk her out of her decision, Emma didn’t go home. Instead, she drove to her dad’s house.
He opened the front door to her looking faintly confused. ‘Hello… have we…?’
‘Don’t worry, Dad, you haven’t forgotten anything. I know you’re not expecting me, but is it alright if I come in?’
‘It’s always alright, love.’ He stepped back and Emma followed him into the house.
‘It smells good in here,’ she said.
‘I’ve just had an omelette,’ he said. ‘You could have had… I can make you one if you’re hungry? It wouldn’t take me a tick.’
‘No, thanks, Dad, I’m not hungry. I wanted to…’
Even now, desperate to ask for the help he’d offered freely so many times before, the words stuck in her throat. She wanted this new start – she needed it – but to take this from her dad went against every principle she had.
‘I’m going to sell my house,’ she said, sitting on the sofa across from his favourite armchair, where he now settled.
‘What’s brought this on? I didn’t know you were thinking of moving house. Is this something to do with Dougie’s new job?’
‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘But we’re not moving, not as such. Well I’m planning to, I suppose. Dougie is too, in a fashion… just not with me.’
‘I don’t follow, love.’
‘We’re splitting up. I suppose I could have put that more succinctly, but there it is.’
Her dad let out a long, sad sigh, and the fact that he looked at her with such pain now, and with no pleasure at the news at all – when she knew a bit of him must be pleased – made her love him more than she’d ever loved him before. No crowing, no ‘I told you so’, no ‘Good riddance’ – and he’d have had every right to all of
those sentiments. He only saw her unhappiness and he wanted to be there to make it better.
‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t say it’s unexpected and I can’t say I think it’s a mistake – you know my feelings on that boy well enough. Are you alright? That’s all I need to know.’
‘Strangely, I am. At least, right now I am. It’s all a bit new to me. In fact, I only decided about an hour ago.’
‘You’ve told him?’
‘Yes, he knows.’
‘And he’s accepted your decision?’
‘He doesn’t have a choice.’
‘So you’re selling up. What are you doing that for? It’s only your name on the mortgage, isn’t it? I thought Dougie wasn’t able to get credit.’
‘He couldn’t. And I pay the mortgage too, along with pretty much everything else, so it’s really my house.’
‘In that case, is there really any need to sell up? Can’t you just kick him out?’
‘I want a fresh start, Dad. That includes the house… There just feels like too much about it that would drag me down if I stayed.’
‘Fair enough. You know there’s always space for you here if you need it.’
‘I know, Dad.’ She gave him a grateful smile. ‘But…’ She drew a long breath, a sudden courage filling her. She didn’t even know where it had come from, but it was all she needed; it was now or never. ‘I was thinking… if that offer of help is still there, I might go a little further afield. I was thinking Dorset maybe…’
Chapter Nine
The weeks between Emma’s decision to leave Dougie and her arrival in Dorset had been a mad blur.
When Emma had approached Tia with her proposition to come on board as a business partner so they could buy Honeymoon Station, she’d been thrilled. They’d talked into the night, making plans and lists, researching and working out the maths, and had spent many evenings after that doing the same. Along the way they’d found out a lot about each other, about their lives since school, their heartbreaks and their triumphs, about what each valued, and Emma was reasonably confident that Tia was a woman she could trust with the next phase of her life. As her dad and Elise and Aunt Patricia had reminded her, she had to be, because everything now depended on it.
The Hotel at Honeymoon Station : A totally heartwarming romance about new beginnings Page 9
