Sadie turned that way now. She’d pop in, say hello, see how things were going. If they needed help to clear up after the end of trading, she could do that too. But before she’d taken half a dozen steps she stopped and frowned at the sound of a siren. It was close, growing rapidly closer and louder. Looking around she saw the ambulance racing down the road that led to the promenade. It stopped at the gates of the pier, where it could go no further. Two paramedics leapt out, lugging black bags, one barking into a radio as they began to run across the old wooden boards.
Sadie watched them for a moment, something like fear building in her gut.
There had been two occasions in her life when Sadie had been struck by a strange, almost psychic feeling about something that was about to happen. One was when her dog, Binky, had been hit by a car. A neighbour had knocked on the door to tell her parents and, somehow, Sadie had known before they did. The second was when a girl at her school had drowned in the bay. Sadie had been about fourteen, and as the head teacher gathered them to announce the sad news, she’d already known that too, the information somehow beamed into her head moments before, yet nobody had told her. The last time had shaken her, and for a couple of years she’d lived in fear of it happening again. She hadn’t told a soul, thinking it would make her look strange and mad, and she hadn’t wanted the responsibility of that kind of gift or curse or whatever it was. Thankfully, nothing like that had happened in all the years since and Sadie had almost forgotten it had ever happened at all. Until now.
And then the truth crashed over her, the confirmation of the horrible, prescient thought that had only seconds before occurred to her, icy cold and breath-sapping. She watched, numb and stunned as the paramedics went into the waffle house.
Dropping her bag, Sadie broke into a run.
Chapter Two
From the vast windows of Henriette and Graham Schwartz’s conservatory, Sadie’s gaze wandered to the sea as it churned into little rolls of milky foam that crashed against the distant rocks of the bay. It was easy to take for granted how lucky Sadie and her parents were to live in a house that had such an incredible position on the cliffs with such glorious views. Sadie’s mother, Henriette, had said often enough that if it hadn’t been for the (grudging) help of her own parents, she and Sadie’s dad certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford such a spectacular house by themselves. Henriette – Henny, as her friends called her – had turned the conservatory into a casual dining space and, summer or winter, they ate most of their meals in there, the drama of the bay a backdrop most people could only dream of. Henriette didn’t allow televisions or phones at the dinner table, but then, they hardly needed those kinds of distractions when the beauty of the Dorset coastline was distraction enough for anyone.
The sun was hidden today, struggling to break through low cloud, though it was still warm. Summer was coming into its height and the busiest time of the tourist season was upon Sea Salt Bay. The full Schwartz family, including Sadie’s sister, Lucy – who had only come over briefly for their grandfather’s funeral and was due to fly back to New York where she now lived – her brother Ewan, his wife Kat, and their children Freya and Freddie sat around a rare shared lunch. Someone was usually missing – there were extracurricular activities, hobbies, regular meetings, volunteer posts and, of course, as both Henny and Graham and Ewan and his wife Kat ran their own businesses, work rarely stopped. None of them kept the more forgiving office hours that other people did.
That was just another reason that Sadie had decided to train for a job where she could at least get some time off, even if it she might often have to do extra work during it. Ewan and Kat ran a diving school, and would go out with a client whenever it was required of them, no matter what day of the week it was, because business was business and they couldn’t afford to turn it away. One of them needed to be there in case they got a booking, and they got plenty. Henny and Graham had to run trips every day during the summer months, especially on Saturdays and Sundays because most people who visited Sea Salt Bay came for the weekend. Today, they’d decided the sea was too rough to go out, and Ewan had come to the same conclusion – if it was too rough to sail on, then it was most certainly too rough to dive beneath. So they were in the fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you viewed it) position of having a rare Sunday to get together. Only one member of the family was absent: Sadie’s beloved Gampy, Kenneth.
It had been a month since the day Sadie had seen the ambulance on the pier and her grandfather’s absence was still a gaping hole in the heart of the family, threatening to stop its beating, just as his had done that day. Her thoughts were carried back now like flotsam on the tide, and she recalled running blindly down the pier, the paramedics trying to stop her from gaining access, April’s cries for Kenneth that he couldn’t hear. She had finally forced her way in and caught just a glimpse of him as the ambulance crew fought to save his life, then wished she hadn’t seen it after all. When she thought of her grandfather now, it was hard to separate that vision from the happier memories of the man she’d grown up with. They felt forever tainted.
Sadie’s gaze turned from the sea now, where her thoughts had been vague and distracted as she’d watched the waves, towards her Gammy. Still the head of the family – if only by distinction of age and experience – she was surrounded by the chat and noise of a family who loved her very much, the smells of roasted vegetables and meat on the warm air, a light drizzle kissing the windows that looked out on the bay, and yet Sadie had never seen her look so lonely. Small and inconsequential and sad… so utterly lost. Even though her family were all squashed together around the table, it was like there was a space around her that should have contained Gampy – the man she’d loved so much. Gammy’s protection, her buffer, her steadying anchor, all her strength, had gone. Life still had to be lived, of course, even when some were lost to it, but though the Schwartz family were doing their best to soldier on, one member – April – was in serious danger of getting left behind.
‘Gammy…’ Sadie said gently. April turned to her.
‘Yes, darlin’?’ she replied, forcing a brave smile.
‘Do you want some wine?’
April shook her head. ‘Water will be just fine for me.’
‘It’s nice wine,’ Sadie said.
‘I’m sure it is. Maybe later.’
Sadie glanced at a side plate that had contained a small starter of melon and Italian ham. Everybody had eaten theirs apart from April.
‘Didn’t you like the melon?’
‘Oh yes, I liked it just fine,’ her grandmother said. ‘I just wasn’t so hungry.’
Sadie looked again. It didn’t look as if April had touched it at all – not even to taste it – but she let the matter slide. Before she could say anything else, her grandmother had turned to listen to something that Graham was saying.
Sadie had always thought it a little clichéd when people said that when someone died, a little bit of the people who loved them most died too, but she’d been able to see it clearly since they’d lost Gampy. The evidence was there now in the small figure of her grandmother. Once she had been April Schwartz, feisty, outspoken, quick-witted, smart and adventurous, the woman who had forged her own path in life in a foreign country with the man she’d loved by her side. Now she was only a memory of that woman, and even that was fading faster than Sadie could bear to see.
‘Sadie…’
Sadie shook her head to clear it. ‘Huh?’ She turned to see Ewan looking expectantly at her. Clearly he was waiting for an answer to something, though Sadie had no clue what the question had been.
‘Salt,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Could you pass it?’
‘Salt?’ Sadie repeated.
‘Salt…’ he said. ‘Dopier than usual and that’s pretty dopey. Burning the candle at both ends again? Another late night with Whatshisface?’
‘No.’ Sadie handed her brother the salt cellar. ‘Whatshisface is now Gonehisface.’
‘Ah,’
Lucy said, tossing a dark curl away from her face and picking up her wine glass. ‘I didn’t dare ask about the love life but as Ewan opened up the discussion anyway…’
Ewan grinned at her and then turned back to Sadie. ‘When did this happen?’
‘A couple of days ago,’ Sadie said with a deliberately airy tone. She knew that she was about to get a serious ribbing from her brother, who seemed to find almost everything she did these days a rich seam of things to rib her over, and she was determined not to give him the satisfaction of thinking she cared.
Ewan looked at Kat with eyes full of mischief. His were a soft brown, just as Lucy’s were. Both Ewan and Lucy were blessed with dark, thick curls and dark eyes like their mother’s. Only Sadie had inherited the grey-eyed, auburn-haired colouring of their dad’s side. It sometimes made her feel like the odd child out, as if she didn’t really belong, and growing up that feeling hadn’t been helped by the huge age gap between her and her siblings. In his meaner moments, Ewan would tease her that she’d been an afterthought, a baby who had arrived when their parents thought they’d finished, and often Sadie thought that was true, even though Henny and Graham would never have said it to her. But Ewan was thirty-eight and Lucy was thirty-six and Sadie was twenty-six, so the figures spoke for themselves really.
‘So,’ Kat chipped in as she took the salt from Ewan, ‘on a scale of one to ten, how bothered are you?’
Sadie couldn’t help a slight smile as she poured herself a glass of water. ‘I’d say about five.’
‘Oh,’ Kat said with a light laugh. ‘So you quite liked this one?’
‘What was his name again?’ Lucy asked.
‘Jason?’
‘That’s it,’ Kat said. ‘I’m so used to Ewan calling him Whatshisface I forgot!’
Sadie gave a light laugh. ‘Jason was bearable, I suppose.’ She put the water jug down. ‘Better than Ash.’
‘Ash is the one before, right?’ Lucy asked. ‘I lose track these days. How long did he last?’
‘I forget,’ Sadie said.
‘About ten minutes,’ Ewan said.
‘No,’ Kat said. ‘At least twenty.’
‘Wow,’ Lucy exclaimed with an indulgent laugh. Sadie often suspected that her older sister found her a little silly. Perhaps it was the age gap, but it sometimes felt like Lucy thought Sadie immature and misguided. And often, when Sadie reflected on Lucy’s success in New York as a theatrical agent, a powerful personality making her way in a difficult, cut-throat industry, Sadie could see why she might view her that way. There was no room for procrastinating in Lucy’s world, no time for sentiment or immaturity and definitely no time to waste on unsuitable men.
‘So Jason was bearable? That’s true love in your world, that is,’ Kat said.
‘No,’ Sadie said, joining in the banter because really she had no choice but to laugh at herself. Even she could see how silly it all looked to everyone else that she couldn’t keep a boyfriend. The reason why wasn’t so funny, but if she didn’t laugh then she’d think about that and cry. ‘True love is at least an eight. Seven maybe, but that’s pushing it. Jason was definitely not true love.’
‘So what went wrong this time?’ Lucy asked.
‘Nothing really. I just couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm at the thought of a date, so what was the point?’
‘None,’ Kat agreed. ‘Is there anyone who does fill you with enthusiasm though? Going by your score chart, I don’t think the man exists who would be a seven or eight.’
Sadie shrugged and took a sip from her glass. ‘I’d like to think he does,’ she said, putting it down again. ‘I just don’t know if I’ll find him in Sea Salt Bay.’
‘I don’t know if you’d find him in this hemisphere,’ Ewan said.
‘You could always try New York.’ Lucy passed her empty starter plate to Henny, who was collecting them up to make way for their main course. ‘Come and stay with me for a few weeks and I’ll get you hooked up with some eligible bachelor.’
‘New York’s alright for a holiday,’ Sadie said, ‘but I don’t think living there would suit me.’
‘There’s a big world outside the bay,’ Lucy said.
‘I know,’ Sadie replied. ‘I went to look for it once – remember?’
Lucy gave that indulgent smile again. ‘Yes, I suppose it’s not for everyone to leave the bay. Sometimes when I’m back here I do see why you wouldn’t want to. I don’t miss it when I’m busy day to day back in New York, but when I’m home…’ She paused, looking distant for a moment. ‘When I’m home I do feel different… sort of calmer. Like I’ve spent the whole month at a yoga retreat. It makes me remember how lucky I was to grow up here.’
‘You could always come back,’ Graham said.
Lucy shook her head. ‘After I’ve worked so hard to get where I am in New York? As lovely as the thought is, I’d be mad to do that. For the next few years at least I need to stay put. After that… who knows?’
‘I think you had found your man once,’ April put in, and Sadie turned to her, almost surprised to find that her grandmother had been following the conversation and had managed to muster an opinion on it. Sadie didn’t often admit it, because she hated that everyone knew what she wouldn’t say out loud, but April was right about that much. Everyone else looked vaguely uncomfortable and probably hoped that April wouldn’t say the name of the man she meant.
Sadie gave her a tight smile. The truth was, she’d once imagined she’d found a whole ten, and it had been here in Sea Salt Bay, just as Gammy had said. She’d had him once too, before she’d gone to university and let him slip through her fingers. She’d been fickle, silly and headstrong; she hadn’t realised what she’d had until she’d driven it away. And all because she’d been searching for something more, something she hadn’t really needed in the end, something she thought was beyond the borders of the town. Now he was with someone else. For the last three years someone else had had the perfect ten, and that girl wasn’t about to let go of him. Sadie wouldn’t have blamed her either. If she’d had him still, knowing what she knew now, she wouldn’t be letting him go either.
However she looked at it though, that door had closed and that life was out of her reach. Though she often saw him around town and they’d always exchange a laugh and a joke for old times’ sake, she’d never tell him how she sometimes wondered what might have happened had she never given him up, or that sometimes she fantasised that they’d stayed together and now lived in a little cottage on the cliffs, perfectly comfortable and madly in love. She often thought that the woman he’d settled with was completely wrong for him too and occasionally she daydreamt about telling him so. But to say these things would be unfair to them both, and she couldn’t, no matter how she might like to.
‘There’s no point in going on about that now, is there, April?’ Kat said, giving Sadie a sympathetic smile. ‘You know what they say: no point in reliving past glories.’
‘Who says that?’ Ewan asked. ‘I’ve never heard anyone say that.’
‘I don’t know,’ Kat fired back. ‘I’ve heard it so someone does. I’m not exactly going to keep a written record, am I?’
Ewan grinned and Kat’s look of irritation instantly melted.
‘I’m not going on about it,’ April said with a slight look of indignation. ‘I’m saying it as I see it. Everybody in town knows they were meant to be and I still say Sadie was crazy to let him go.’
Henny came back in from the kitchen and retook her seat at the table. ‘In the end it’s Sadie’s business. And I for one am glad she’s being choosy,’ she added, spooning redcurrant jelly onto the side of her plate to go with the lamb Graham had just served up. ‘There’s no reason for her to rush into anything. You don’t settle for second best.’
‘Nobody’s saying she should,’ Ewan said. ‘Nobody else around this table has done that.’
‘Exactly,’ Henny said. ‘When you marry, you marry for love.’
Sadie spluttered, choking on her water
. ‘Nobody said anything about getting married!’
‘Apparently everyone is trying to marry you off regardless,’ Lucy said.
‘Alright then,’ Henny said with a slight frown. ‘What I mean to say is that nobody should settle down for anything less. Move in together, cohabit… whatever couples do these days.’
‘Mum,’ Ewan began with a lazy grin, ‘you make it sound like you were born when Victoria was on the throne.’ He slopped a mound of mashed potatoes onto his plate. ‘I’m sure people lived together when you and Dad were young.’
‘Shacked up, we used to call it,’ Graham said. ‘I wouldn’t have minded that but your mum wouldn’t have had it – too posh. Everything had to be proper.’
‘Oh boy, do I remember that,’ April said. She looked at Henny. ‘I recall the first time Graham brought you home – we thought you’d come direct from Buckingham Palace.’
Henny rolled her eyes. ‘For the last time, we were not posh. We were just…’
‘Loaded?’ Ewan offered.
‘Insanely privileged?’ Lucy said.
‘Descended from actual royalty?’ Sadie cut in.
‘Terribly distantly,’ her mother said, waving the comment away, though if anyone cared to look closely enough they’d see a secret, pleased pride in her expression as she turned her attention to cutting a slice of meat on her plate. Her family was probably as closely linked to royalty as the rest of the world were to Adam and Eve, but Sadie’s rather aloof and tedious maternal grandparents loved to tell everyone about the connection anyway.
Sadie was bored of hearing the story. Although the same blood ran in her veins, it didn’t really mean anything to her. She often felt that the fact they kept telling everyone was just a bit needy. Those grandparents, living on a remote estate in Scotland with their butler and cook and groundskeeper, couldn’t have been more different from the grandparents who lived here in Sea Salt Bay, running the little waffle house with a smile and a kind word for everyone who crossed their paths. They couldn’t have been more different from Sadie’s mother, Henny, either. It was hard to know whether she had always been that way or if she’d changed after she’d met Sadie’s dad and because of him. But somehow, her turning into a normal human being was responsible for the fact that she’d even looked twice at a man whose world was about as far from hers as you could get.
The Waffle House on the Pier: A gorgeous feel-good romantic comedy Page 2
