The Waffle House on the Pier: A gorgeous feel-good romantic comedy

by Tilly Tennant

  * * *

  Sadie held back an impatient click of her tongue as they drew closer to the harbour and could see straight away that the parking space outside the grey hut that housed the diving school office was empty. It couldn’t be helped and she could hardly be annoyed at Ewan and Kat, who hadn’t known they were coming and probably had lessons booked in anyway. Sadie decided to press on regardless – perhaps one of them would be in manning the fort and whoever was out with the station wagon wouldn’t be too long. It was getting late in the day for diving after all.

  The door was open and Sadie ushered April in, following after.

  ‘Hello, you two.’ Kat smiled brightly, looking up from the desk in the welcoming – if extremely compact – waiting room. She had one of her regular, lurid green protein drinks in front of her and a laptop shoved to one side with a diary page open. Sadie glanced with some suspicion at the protein drink. She’d often thought they must work because Kat looked incredible but it was a sacrifice of taste that was just too big for Sadie to make – everlasting youth or not. She’d take an oozing ice-cream shake any time and the consequences for her waistline with it.

  ‘Hey,’ Sadie said. ‘Are you busy?’

  ‘A little bit,’ Kat replied. ‘Never too busy for you. What can I do for you?’

  ‘We were hoping for a ride home.’ Sadie flopped onto a teal sofa nestled in a nook beneath a panelled window that framed the harbour and the forest of tiny white boat masts bobbing in it. April sat down next to her.

  ‘Tough day?’ Kat asked, looking between them both. Sadie could see her calculating, quickly trying to work out what kind of day they’d had.

  ‘Busy,’ Sadie said carefully, remembering that even if she’d wanted to confide in Kat – as she often did – her sister-in-law might feel obliged to tell Ewan. And Ewan had been one of the doubters who had warned Sadie against this venture, and Sadie didn’t want to give him any reason to say I told you so or any other variation of that most irritating of phrases. Maybe, somewhere down the line, she’d have to admit that they’d been right all along, but she wasn’t ready to admit it yet.

  ‘I’d drive you, but Ewan’s out with a client and I can’t lock up here because I’m expecting a party of four in the next half hour. I need to be here, just in case they turn up early and think we’ve forgotten them. Don’t want to be handing out four refunds.’

  Sadie glanced up at the clock on the wall behind Kat. ‘Isn’t it a bit late to be taking people out?’

  Kat gave a slight shrug. ‘They have a bit of experience so they’re not complete novices. Besides, it’s not dark for ages yet. If they want to go out then who am I to refuse their money?’

  ‘Right. Where are the kids?’

  ‘On the boat, actually, with your mum and dad. Freddie was desperate to go out because your dad said he’d seen dolphins in the bay this morning. I think Freya was less bothered but she wasn’t going to miss out.’

  Sadie nodded. She’d been like Freddie once – full of energy and interested in everything. She’d been so lucky to have grown up in a place like Sea Salt Bay where she could indulge her passions and experience a life that many girls her age would have given their right arms for, and to have parents who had the means to enable that indulgence. She’d taken it for granted, of course, as all children do, and she’d been convinced that the adventure she craved lay in the world outside the bay. There had been plenty, naturally, and it wasn’t that she hadn’t enjoyed life outside the bay. But sometimes, she reflected now more and more often, you simply had to look a little closer to home to find the things that mattered, and it was only by going away that you learnt to appreciate that.

  ‘If you want to wait for Ewan he’ll be finished in about ten… fifteen maybe, then he’ll be heading back. I’m sure he’d run you home then.’

  Sadie was about to say they’d walk it, sure that her brother would be tired and the last thing he’d want to do was be their taxi, until she glanced across at her grandma, whose eyelids were heavy and closing even as she sat in the bright light that flooded the office through the window they sat beneath. Sadie had to admit she sort of felt like falling asleep herself – it had been a long day and the warmth of the sun on her neck as she sat here was lovely and relaxing.

  ‘We’ll wait if it’s OK with you,’ she said.

  Kat smiled. ‘You want a drink?’

  ‘Have you got tea?’ Sadie replied, eyeing Kat’s protein drink doubtfully. Kat gave a light laugh as she noticed the distrustful gaze towards her plastic bottle.

  ‘I’m sure I can find a couple of teabags. Give me a minute.’

  She disappeared into a back room while Sadie sank deeper into the sofa and let the sun warm her, allowing her eyes to close for a moment. Before she could do anything about it she’d started to drift, letting the room and her tiredness fall away.

  ‘Um… Hello…’

  Sadie opened her eyes. For the briefest moment she was disorientated as she looked to see April was smiling up at a man who’d just come in. Why the hell had she allowed herself to fall asleep knowing that Kat was expecting clients? Although, hadn’t she said a party of four was coming? There was only one person here that she could see.

  ‘Kat will be right out, darlin’,’ April said.

  ‘Right, thank you,’ the man replied, jamming his hands into his trouser pockets. But then he turned back to Sadie. He paused, and she could see the same cogs and gears shifting into place in his head as were in her own.

  ‘Haven’t we met…?’

  With a jolt, Sadie realised that they had met before and where, and she saw that he’d worked it out too. They’d met before alright!

  To his credit, he blushed.

  ‘Oh, right…’ he said awkwardly. ‘Of course… How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ Sadie said.

  ‘I’d wanted to check up on you but… well, I wasn’t sure where to find you or if I’d even be welcome if I did.’

  ‘To be fair,’ Sadie replied with a rueful smile, ‘I don’t think you would have been welcome. Not that I hold a grudge,’ she added hastily. ‘I think my parents might though. It’s probably a good thing you didn’t come looking, especially not at the house.’

  ‘Well.’ His hands couldn’t have got any deeper in his pockets but he shoved them down anyway with a half shrug, half embarrassed stoop. ‘I guess it’s just as well I didn’t…’

  A brief silence followed. April looked up at him with an unconcerned smile. She didn’t appear to have worked out that this was the man who’d practically mowed Sadie down in his boat, but he clearly didn’t realise this fact because the smile he gave her in return was one that said ‘Ground, please swallow me now’. Sadie didn’t blame him for feeling awkward, and she even felt a bit sorry for him, because there was no obvious polite or plausible escape from this excruciatingly awkward moment. He could run out, but that might leave Sadie or her grandma offended, and if he’d come into the office for something specific then it would mean running out on that too.

  ‘Oh… this is my grandma,’ Sadie said into the silence, desperate to fill it with something and not knowing what else to say.

  April nodded. ‘Hello. You can call me April.’

  ‘Good to meet you, April,’ he said with an awkward smile. ‘I’m Luke.’ Then he turned back to Sadie. ‘When I left my card for you at the beach, I take it you didn’t…’

  ‘Oh, Ewan has it,’ Sadie said. Her brother hadn’t offered to give the card to her at the time and in all the excitement of so much else going on she’d forgotten all about it until now.

  ‘Ewan? That’s your…?’

  ‘My brother,’ Sadie said. ‘And you’re Luke? I’m Sadie,’ she added, but Luke’s attention had gone to the walls, where various photos of Ewan and Kat showed them out on location with clients and friends, some in their swimming gear, more often than not in wetsuits. His face seemed to lose three shades as he recognised the faces as belonging to the people he’d upset on the be
ach the day he’d rowed right into Sadie’s head.

  ‘Your brother owns this place?’ he asked as his gaze settled on one photo that had a smiling Sadie in it, a large crab hanging from a careful grip.

  ‘Along with his wife,’ Sadie replied. ‘Have you booked a lesson with him?’

  ‘Not yet but I was hoping… I probably ought to…’

  He began to back away, moving towards the exit, but then Kat returned and he turned to her, looking vaguely mortified that he’d been caught here at all. She was carrying a tray of hot drinks and set it down on the desk as her gaze fell on him. For the shortest second she looked as confused as Sadie had when she’d first woken to find him standing before her, but then it was replaced by illumination.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, though not with the anger that the man might have been greeted with had it been Ewan.

  ‘I was just about to…’ he began sheepishly, but his sentence faded to nothing.

  Kat’s manner – though not angry – was immediately stiffer and more formal than normal, though she remained courteous.

  ‘Did you want to book a session or something?’

  Luke rubbed a hand over his chin, glancing at Sadie and April in turn before looking at Kat again. ‘I had wanted to…’

  Kat went to her laptop. The screen had timed out and the screensaver showed a stunning picture of the bay at sunset. She logged back in. ‘Have you ever been diving before?’ she asked as she looked at the screen.

  ‘A couple of times in Greece. I’m no expert but’ – he glanced at Sadie again, his expression looking more sheepish than ever, but this time Sadie was convinced there was a hint of humour there too – ‘at least I’m safer in a wetsuit than I am in a boat.’

  Kat stared at him, but Sadie found herself giggling. It was hard to stay mad with a guy who had such obvious charm and humour, so much so that it was hard to keep down, even in a situation like this. And now that Sadie could look without a huge bruise and a thumping headache, she could appreciate that he was very attractive too. And, judging by his choice of hobbies, he not only had charm and a sense of humour, but he had an adventurous streak as well. Not that it mattered, of course, because she was quite sure her entire family would think she’d gone mad for so much as airing any of these thoughts to them. And she could hardly blame them – he had almost killed her after all. As introductions went, it was hardly conventional.

  April suddenly straightened in her seat. ‘Is this the man?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ he said. April opened her mouth to say something but Sadie got in there first.

  ‘Don’t get mad,’ she said to her grandma. ‘The poor guy’s already had enough of a roasting from just about everyone else in Sea Salt Bay.’

  ‘Deserved, though,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe what a clumsy idiot I was. I’m not usually like that and I still feel just terrible about it. And, like I said to you that day, if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, just say the word and it’s done.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Sadie said, giving him a playful grin, ‘I don’t think you want to go around making promises like that.’

  ‘Within reason,’ he added, smiling himself now – a proper, more relaxed smile.

  Kat seemed to relax a little too.

  ‘So, about this session,’ she said, turning back to the laptop. Business was business, she and Ewan always said, and Sadie was glad to see her sister-in-law had enough sense to view this situation in that same way. The last thing she wanted to do was lose money for Kat and Ewan.

  ‘Oh, I…’ Luke began to edge towards the door again. ‘Maybe another time…?’

  Kat looked up from the screen. ‘You don’t want to book now?’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just—’

  He stopped dead as he backed into Ewan, who was walking in, hair still wet from his last dive.

  ‘Ewan,’ Sadie said firmly, as her brother’s face darkened, ‘we’ve already had about a thousand apologies; let’s not make it a thousand and one, eh? After all, it was my head and I’m happy to leave it.’

  ‘Even so,’ Luke said, ‘I’m truly sorry for the whole thing.’ He held out a hand for Ewan to shake. ‘Could we at least call a truce? I’ve just moved here and I really don’t want to make myself an army of enemies before I manage to make any friends.’

  Ewan automatically took it and shook stiffly, though he looked annoyed with himself afterwards.

  Sadie sat up straighter. ‘You’ve moved here? You’ve moved to the bay?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and despite the confrontational situation there was a sort of boyish glee in his expression. ‘I’ve always dreamt of living somewhere like this and finally, at the grand old age of thirty-five, I’ve managed it.’

  Kat frowned slightly. ‘There’s only one house I know of for sale around here and that’s—’

  ‘Yes,’ Luke cut in. ‘The Old Chapel.’

  It was Sadie’s turn to frown. ‘But the conversion is only half finished. I didn’t think it was ready to sell.’

  ‘I think the last owner had had enough of the job. As far as I know he’s gone to a new build somewhere near Poole. I’ve got time on my hands and no family to worry about so I’m happy to finish converting the chapel. In fact, I’ll enjoy it.’

  Sadie nodded. Nobody had really known much about the previous owner of the Old Chapel, other than he was another out-of-towner who’d moved to the south coast from London and was planning to turn the disused little church into a second home. It meant the full-time residents of Sea Salt Bay hadn’t made much of an attempt to get to know him all that well. It wasn’t that they were being deliberately unfriendly, but most of them knew from experience that he probably wouldn’t be around that often – if he even kept hold of the chapel at all once it had been converted to a home. It seemed that they’d been right too. But Luke… this might be different, Sadie mused, because he was making Sea Salt Bay his proper home by the sounds of it. It meant there was every chance he was going to stay for good, and so people would want to know more about him. In which case, she had to feel for him, because he hadn’t got off to a very good start.

  ‘You’re planning to live here full-time?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes…’ Luke shot a glance at Ewan, whose expression gave nothing away. He began to back towards the exit again. ‘Maybe I’ll come and book that lesson another time, eh?’ And with a last awkward smile, aimed more at Sadie and Kat than at Ewan, who even he could probably see was a lost cause – at least for now – he let himself out.

  Kat aimed a withering look at Ewan as the door closed. ‘Well done.’

  Ewan blinked at her. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘What do you think it means? He was just about to book a lesson.’

  ‘Well I wasn’t about to take him out so I don’t know what he’d be booking it for.’

  ‘Don’t be so childish. Honestly, sometimes I think I get more mature decisions out of Freddie than I do you.’

  Ewan’s mouth fell open. ‘I was perfectly civil to him!’

  ‘But not exactly friendly and welcoming,’ Kat said.

  ‘I’d say it’s still pretty obvious that you don’t like him,’ Sadie agreed. ‘And there’s really no reason to keep holding this ridiculous grudge, because I’m alright now and he’s just told us he’s going to be a new neighbour. You probably ought to make an effort to be nicer.’

  Ewan huffed as he went round to the back of the desk to drop his kitbag down. Kat let out a sigh, and there was a brief silence, in which they all came independently to the same conclusion that there would be no common ground on this matter for the foreseeable future and it was probably better for the sake of some family harmony that they dropped it.

  ‘If you’re not too busy, darlin’…’ April said into the silence, ‘Sadie and I would very much appreciate a ride home.’

  Ewan looked at Kat.

  ‘I’ve got a party of four due – remember?’ she said in answer to his silent ques
tion. ‘Could you give them a lift? I said you’d be able to.’

  He paused, and then gave a surly nod.

  ‘Thanks,’ Sadie said. ‘We’re just absolutely exhausted after the day we’ve had.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Ewan said. ‘Give me two minutes and I’ll be with you.’

  * * *

  Ewan was still sulking as he started the car but it didn’t last long. It never did. He didn’t know how to stay angry with anyone for long, least of all Sadie or April who, other than Kat and the children, were probably his favourite people in the world. Rose-gold light fell on his face as the station wagon climbed the cliff road to Sadie’s parents’ house and, after a bit of gentle ribbing, Sadie got him talking again. As the conversation began to flow, she saw him relax back into his usual easy-going self.

  ‘So you two have managed a day working together and you’re still on speaking terms,’ he said, feeding the steering wheel through his hands as they negotiated a sharp bend in the road.

  Sadie pretended to pout. ‘Did you think we wouldn’t be?’

  ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.’ He gave a low chuckle. ‘Come on, you must have known we were all wondering it a little bit.’

  ‘I don’t know why you would think that,’ April replied indignantly. ‘Sadie and I are always the best of friends. Now, if it had been your mother or father working alongside me…’

  ‘It’s one thing getting along at home, though,’ he said. ‘It’s another to stay on good terms trying to run a business together. Take it from me; I should know.’