Ice Creams at Emerald Cove: A heartwarming feel-good romantic comedy to escape with this summer

by Holly Martin

  ‘So what’s new with you?’ Jesse asked. ‘Apart from bringing back Jewel Island’s much-lauded pudding parade.’

  Skye laughed. ‘You’re going to love it. There’s not much happening with me. We’re looking for a new chef to help me in the café. I’ve been so tired lately and I feel like I’m just stretched too thin. We’re interviewing on Wednesday.’ She paused, wondering if he would think about applying himself, but he didn’t say anything and she quickly hurried on. ‘Clover’s pregnant.’

  A huge smile spread across his face. ‘That’s fantastic news.’

  ‘It is. Angel is a good man and he has changed Clover’s life completely. She will make a wonderful mum.’

  Jesse stared at her for a moment and then brushed her hair from her face. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

  He knew her so well. She wasn’t keen to discuss that part of her life but she wanted to talk to him about her worries for Clover. Skye took a deep breath. ‘Well, you know that I divorced my first husband after just over a year together, but what you don’t know is that the main reason we divorced was down to me having a miscarriage, well actually three miscarriages.’

  ‘Oh god, Skye, I’m so sorry. I never knew, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because… It was a part of my life that I wanted to forget. And because I felt that something must be wrong with me if I kept losing my babies. I didn’t want you to think less of me.’

  He stared at her. ‘Skye, I would never think that. Miscarriages aren’t your fault. They’re really common and mostly nothing to do with the mother at all. Babies are… a little miracle, all those cells and tissues have to go together to make a perfect baby with lungs and hearts and eyes, ears, arms and legs. That takes an amazing feat of engineering to get all that right and sometimes those cells just don’t join up properly. It’s no one’s fault. I hate that you’ve been carrying around this burden of guilt for all these years when it’s nothing to do with you or anything you did.’

  Skye felt tears well up in her eyes and Jesse wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against him, cradling the back of her head.

  ‘The doctors said that to me when I lost my first baby,’ Skye said, into his chest. She looked up at him and he kissed her on the forehead. ‘Well, they didn’t put it as beautifully as you just did. They said it wasn’t my fault and that sadly these things happen but… Oliver blamed me entirely. He was so angry and he made me feel like such a failure. I don’t know, I suppose I started to believe it was my fault.’

  She paused, absently stroking her fingers across his chest.

  ‘When I lost the second baby a few months later he was furious. He said it was over between us and, god, I wish I’d let him go then. But I had hit rock bottom at that point emotionally, mentally, I was a mess and the thought of losing him too was not one I could face. I begged him to try again. I was such an idiot. Every night we’d have sex and it just felt so… impersonal. Sometimes he barely looked at me. There was no love between us any more, no connection, not like how it is for us. I was just a means to an end for him. He wanted a baby and I was going to give it to him. He hated me for losing the first two babies and I hated what we’d become, what I’d become. I told him it was over, that I didn’t want this any more. He started divorce proceedings immediately, citing unreasonable behaviour which I felt was a bit unfair, but I would have agreed to any conditions on the divorce by then. I hated him so much for what he’d put me through, for how he made me feel. And then I found out I was pregnant again.’

  ‘Crap,’ Jesse said.

  ‘Well, yes exactly. And for a while I considered not telling him. I thought of running away and raising my baby on my own but I couldn’t do it to him. He wasn’t a bad man, he’d just become obsessed with having a child and part of me still remembered the man I’d fallen in love with. So I told him and every day for the next two weeks was a chance for him to attack me, to tell me off for what I was eating and what I was doing that was potentially harmful to the baby. Weeding the garden was obviously life-threatening, as was listening to music too loudly, and I knew I didn’t want that life with him any more. I knew we were over, that no matter what happened with the baby we could never be together. But I also knew that when I had my child he would be there, being a part of that child’s life for the rest of mine.

  ‘And do you know what I did?’ her voice broke. ‘I wished I wasn’t pregnant. What kind of awful person am I? This tiny baby that I had wanted so much and I was wishing him away, wishing he didn’t exist. And then I lost him, which kind of felt like punishment for wishing him away. But I felt… relieved. Isn’t that horrible? And then there was this horrendous guilt that it was somehow my fault that I’d lost him and, coupled with this heartbreaking grief that I’d lost another baby, I didn’t know how to feel.’

  Jesse stared at her in shock and she felt a sob burst from her throat.

  ‘Christ, now you hate me,’ Skye said.

  She moved to roll away from him but he stopped her, cupping her face in his large hands and kissing her gently. ‘It is absolutely not possible for me to hate you, Skye Philips. And it sounds like you were married to a complete bast— asshole,’ he quickly corrected himself. It made her smile how he would always try to not to swear around her. He had an old-fashioned, gentlemanly soul. ‘You were going through the worst time in your life and you needed love and support and you never got that. It was only natural you wanted a clean break from him, you shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting that.’

  ‘I wished away my baby, don’t you think I got what I deserved with the miscarriage.’

  He frowned. ‘You can’t wish away a baby, that’s not how it works. Believe me, if it was, Ginny would have wished Bea away as soon as she found out she was pregnant. If there was some divine power that was listening to your thoughts, which I very much doubt, then maybe they realised that you needed to get out of a toxic relationship. Maybe they knew that a baby wouldn’t actually be safe with him.’

  She stared at him. There was no judgement here, no anger, just unending patience and understanding.

  ‘A miscarriage is not a punishment, it’s crap of course it is, it’s traumatic, but you didn’t do anything wrong and you need to stop thinking like that.’

  She snuggled against him and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. She sniffled a little against his chest. It felt so good to talk about this after all this time. She had spent years bottling it all up inside her, the guilt, the shame, the responsibility. But Jesse was right, none of this was her fault.

  She pulled back slightly to look at him. ‘I didn’t mean to dump all this on you, I never talk about it with anyone.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you did,’ Jesse said. ‘I’m so sorry you went through that, it must have been so hard.’

  She swallowed down the lump of emotion in her throat. ‘It was. God, looking back the man was a complete arse. Once we split up, I travelled for a while, running away from those memories, and him. And over the next few years, I just kept running, drawing a line under that past, reconciling myself to the fact I may never have children. I didn’t feel like I deserved to have a proper relationship or have a family. I kept running, kept moving around until I met you.’

  She stroked a hand down his arm. Meeting Jesse had been like coming into harbour after being out in the storm. She had put down her anchor and been prepared to stay where she was for the rest of her life. But since the divorce she’d felt cast adrift. She pushed that feeling away.

  ‘And now Clover is pregnant and it should be wonderful news, but I think for both of us it’s overshadowed by the worry that whatever was wrong with me could be wrong with her too. Although Angel has done some research and miscarriage can be attributed to poor-quality sperm. If anyone had crappy sperm, it would be Oliver. He was a big drinker and a complete dick. He’s never had any children – we still have mutual friends so I would have heard if he had. Maybe it was all down to him.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jesse said. �
�But it’s just as likely that there was nothing wrong with either of you. Although I do understand why you’d like to pin the blame on him after he made you feel so bad.’

  Skye smiled. He was so pragmatic sometimes, frustratingly so.

  ‘You could at least pretend it was his fault,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes, definitely his fault,’ Jesse agreed. ‘Maybe it was natural selection, survival of the fittest. Maybe the powers that be thought it best that he didn’t continue his line as he was such an ass.’

  ‘That’s better,’ Skye said.

  ‘But actually, if we focus on the thought that there was probably nothing medically wrong with you or Oliver, then that would most likely put Clover in the clear too.’

  ‘I like that thought.’

  He ran his hand down her back. ‘I hate that you went through all that. Miscarriages are so painful. And for you to have three of them when you were so young must have been so distressing, and it sounds like you were married to a complete asshole who didn’t support you. I’m so sorry.’

  Skye stared at him. ‘You’ve shown me more compassion in these last few minutes than Oliver ever did during our year of marriage. I felt like such a failure but he made me feel that way and he had no right to do that.’

  ‘No he didn’t,’ Jesse said.

  They lay in silence for a while as Jesse stroked her hair.

  ‘One of my girlfriends had a miscarriage,’ he said after a while.

  ‘What? You never told me that.’

  ‘I was seventeen, so was she. We’d been together for a month. It wasn’t anything serious, we were just having fun and she fell pregnant. Of course I hadn’t thought about having kids at that age, Ellie had plans to go off to college so it wasn’t the best time, but… I was excited. I was going to be a dad. We didn’t love each other but we were determined we were going to make it work. She lost it a few weeks later. Everyone said it was for the best but I didn’t see it that way.’

  ‘Oh Jesse, I’m sorry. I know how you feel. I don’t think I was really ready for kids either when me and Oliver started trying. There was a part of me that wanted a baby but deep down inside I felt so underprepared. When I took that first pregnancy test, I actually felt a bit scared that it would be positive. It was a whole chapter of my life that I simply wasn’t ready for. But when I saw that little line that said I was pregnant, I saw the rest of my life ahead of me, surrounded by three or four kids, and I was overjoyed. I wanted that life more than anything. I was devastated when I lost it.’

  ‘I get that, I really do,’ Jesse said. ‘Ellie and I had made plans; we’d even discussed baby names. I understand what you went through and to go through that three times must have been awful.’

  Skye nodded and they fell silent again as she thought about the life she could have led. If she hadn’t lost that first baby, would she still have been with Oliver now? She couldn’t imagine spending the rest of her life with that man. And in some weird way having those miscarriages had led her to travel the world, and that had led her to Jesse. She could never regret the path that had taken her to him.

  She ran her hand across his shoulder. ‘At least you have Bea now. You are an incredible dad and I’m glad you had that second chance.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it felt like. When Ginny fell pregnant with Bea I thought it was wonderful news. Although I had to rein in my excitement a little, Ginny was not so keen. She hated being pregnant. She said it was nine months of hell. I thought once Bea was born and Ginny saw how lovely it was having children, she would want some more but she was adamant that one was more than enough.’

  ‘It’s sad she didn’t enjoy her pregnancy. I think if I was pregnant with your baby I would feel nothing but joy.’

  He stared at her and she knew she had taken a step too far with this conversation.

  ‘I didn’t mean with your baby, I just meant if I was pregnant. I always wanted lots of children but after losing three of them, I kind of decided that being a mum was probably not for me.’

  Jesse frowned. ‘You were a fantastic mum to Bea when we were married, more so than her real mum ever was.’

  ‘She’s an easy girl to love. I miss her,’ Skye said, softly.

  ‘She misses you too, we both do.’

  She smiled sadly and snuggled back against him. He rolled her so she was on his chest as he held her, stroking her hair.

  She closed her eyes, breathing him in. In another life, she would have met Jesse before she’d met Oliver, before he’d met Ginny who had put him off ever having another relationship again, and they would have been perfect together. If she’d had a miscarriage with him, he would have supported her through it and then when she’d been ready they might have tried again. In an ideal world, they might even have two or three children together now. She smiled as she closed her eyes. And although that thought felt like an impossible dream, maybe one day they could have that.

  She pressed a kiss against his chest and was still smiling as she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Six

  Jesse added chopped strawberries and blueberries to the stack of hot pancakes he’d just made and handed them to Bea, who tucked in hungrily.

  He sat down opposite and moved his strawberries around the plate. He felt wrecked. He had barely slept the night before as he’d spent most of it in bed with Skye and then when he’d left her in the early hours in the morning he hadn’t slept a wink after that. The jet lag was well and truly catching up with him now but it wasn’t just that. His heart felt heavy.

  Skye had poured her heart out to him the night before and he’d wanted her to wake up safely wrapped in his arms but he’d had to sneak out before Bea got up so he could go back to the sofa. He felt really crappy about it.

  She deserved so much more than he was giving her. He’d held back from having a proper relationship with her before but his reasons didn’t seem valid any longer. When he’d first met her he’d found out she had married at eighteen, the divorce was finalised by the time she was twenty and she’d spent the next few years travelling around the world, never putting down roots. He had assumed she was flighty, afraid of commitment and didn’t want to be tied down, just like Bea’s mom. But now to find out she had been running from a traumatic past, trying to move on from the heartbreak of three miscarriages, his reasons for not trusting her no longer seemed to ring true. And now, more than ever, he wanted to be that salvation for her, the haven she’d been without for so long.

  So what was holding him back?

  He glanced over at Bea. If it was just him, he could probably take a risk, try having a proper relationship with Skye. But how would that work when they lived on opposite sides of the world? Could he move to England? It was something that had crossed his mind before. Or would she move back to Banff if he gave her something to move back for?

  Just then Skye walked into the kitchen, pulling on a hoodie over her dress and rubbing her eyes. Her blonde hair was swept up into a ponytail and she gave him a brief sad smile as she grabbed a pancake and wrapped it up in a piece of kitchen towel.

  Crap. He’d hurt her by not being there for her this morning. She’d needed him and he’d let her down.

  ‘Right, I’ve got to go and deliver leaflets to all the villagers to tell them about the pudding parade. I’ll catch up with you both later,’ Skye said.

  ‘Me and Bea can help,’ Jesse said.

  Skye shrugged. ‘I’m sure Bea would rather do something much more fun.’ She gave her attention to his daughter. ‘The sheep up on Amber Meadows are lambing, you could go and see the lambs if you fancied that.’

  ‘Oh yes. I’d love to see them. But I can go up there later. I’m happy to help with your leaflets.’

  Skye smiled and kissed Bea’s head. ‘Thank you. There’s a pile on the table in the lounge. You can do the houses on the far side of the village. Take the road behind the school and deliver to all the houses up there.’

  Bea nodded.

  Skye gave Jesse another small
smile and walked out the house.

  He was on his feet before he even knew what he was doing and Bea looked at him in surprise.

  ‘I’ve just got to check with Skye about… these leaflets,’ he said and hurried out the house after her, closing the door behind him.

  Skye turned at the noise and Jesse quickly grabbed her and bundled her round the side of the house where Bea wouldn’t see them.

  ‘What—’ Skye started but he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. He felt her melt against him, wrapping her arms around his neck as she kissed him back.

  Eventually he pulled away slightly.

  ‘What was that for?’ Skye said, her breath heavy.

  ‘Because that’s how you should have woken up this morning. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you that.’

  She smiled, leaning up to kiss him again. He wrapped his arms tight around her, bringing her close to his body, the kiss quickly turning pretty heated.

  She pulled back. ‘Meet me in the caves at the back of the Golden Lagoon at ten.’

  ‘I, er…’ Jesse started. Bea largely did her own thing whenever they were on the island but he didn’t want to just ditch her so he could go off to be with Skye.

  ‘I’ll be naked,’ Skye whispered.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Jesse said, just as they heard the front door open.

  They quickly leapt apart.

  ‘So if you can take the leaflets down to the houses by the harbour while Bea does the houses at the back of the school that would be great,’ Skye said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And can you talk to Michael about borrowing his carriage?’ Skye said.

  ‘Yes, no problem,’ Jesse said, having no idea who Michael was but just going along with the façade. He turned to see Bea walking round the corner of the cottage. ‘Oh hey.’

  He saw Skye suppress a giggle next to him.

  ‘I’m off now to take these leaflets out,’ Bea said, waving a handful in the air.

  ‘OK, I’ll see you at lunch, in the café,’ Jesse said.