The Beachside Sweetshop

by Karen Clarke

  There was no vomiting woman, no placards, no angry faces, no Isabel, and no Sandi Brent with her glossy hair and jewelled pumps.

  ‘He must have arrived early, before it all kicked off,’ I said.

  ‘And had an attack of conscience, after what you said.’ Mum’s hand curled around my shoulder. ‘Isn’t it exciting?’

  ‘How come you saw the article?’

  ‘Oh, I often looked on their website for news, when I was in Italy,’ she said. ‘I Skyped Mario on your laptop after you’d gone this morning and thought I’d take a peek, to see if there was anything horrible we weren’t aware of.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Mario?’

  Her cheeks turned pink. ‘I wanted to tell him about this,’ she said, sweeping her arm around. ‘I feel so …’ she gazed up, as though trying to find the right word. ‘Energised!’ Her lips parted in a smile. ‘Like I’ve had a new lease of life.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ I said, truthfully. ‘What did Mario say?’

  ‘Basically, he’s happy if I’m happy.’ Her smile broadened. With her milky skin, and hair folded back in a chignon, there was something charmingly old-fashioned about her appearance. ‘He’s flying over at the weekend, and we might have a look at Seaview Cottage now the Sinclairs are moving out.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ The thought of Mum living so close was strange, but wonderful. It had been so long since she’d stayed in one place, but with Mario at her side, and her issues with Steven Fairfax in the past, maybe it was time.

  ‘What exactly did you say to Harry?’

  ‘That I was sorry for what he’d seen.’ She gave me a frank look. ‘That it was the reason I went away, and that I didn’t want to make trouble.’

  ‘He was OK about it?’

  ‘I think he was.’ She thought for a second. ‘He actually seemed relieved to let go of whatever he’s been carrying around all this time.’

  ‘I think it’s having the baby,’ I said.

  ‘They have that effect.’ Mum’s voice was soft. ‘New start, and all that.’

  ‘Did you tell him I wasn’t Steven’s daughter?’

  She nodded again. ‘It hadn’t even occurred to him,’ she said, echoing what Beth had said. ‘He seemed a bit shocked, but said he’d let his dad know just in case.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  ‘I know.’

  We were silent for a moment.

  ‘So. I should go ahead with the homemade sweets then?’

  Mum’s eyes took on a manic gleam. ‘I’ve already made some and popped them in the fridge out the back,’ she said, clasping her hands. ‘I had to borrow Mum’s car to get them here, and I’m sure I’ve dislocated my shoulder,’ she added. ‘We need to decide how we’re going to display them. I thought we could take the pick and mix out and put them in those cases, so people can’t breathe all over them …’

  ‘Actually, I could add a display unit to the counter,’ I said, though the thought had just occurred. ‘Like they have in that little chocolate shop on Main Street, with nice lighting inside, and everything on silver trays …’

  ‘Or we could put them in jars on the shelves over there.’ She pointed to the wall, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘And maybe have a selection on a plate on the counter, underneath a glass dome.’

  ‘We don’t have any glass domes.’

  ‘We’ll think of something.’

  ‘I’m looking into other ideas.’

  She shifted her eyebrows. ‘I thought you were going away soon.’

  ‘I am,’ I said, switching the computer off. ‘But there are things I want to do first.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well … gift-boxes, for special occasions,’ I said, expanding on a germ of an idea that had taken root the night before, standing at my bedroom window, trying not to think about Alex. ‘And I could do little party bags of low-sugar sweets for children’s parties, instead of the usual sort that probably makes them hyperactive. And think how nice a box of handmade Turkish delight would be as a Christmas gift.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘I don’t think people will mind paying that bit more.’

  Mum’s eyes creased in thought. ‘I can just imagine my chocolate truffles in a little gold box, with a matching ribbon, and we could even supply weddings! We need to get this stuff on the website, Marnie.’ She refocused. ‘You do still have your website?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said defensively, remembering I hadn’t got round to updating it. ‘Actually, I’m going to find someone to design a new one, and set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account.’ Excitement unfurled, like an animal waking from hibernation. ‘I noticed a table in the shed yesterday that would be perfect in the shop,’ I went on. ‘I thought I could use it for a weekly display with a theme, or do a “handmade sweet of the day” on one of Gran’s tiered cake-stands …’

  I paused as the door chimed, but before I could move, Mum rushed out with a cheery, ‘Hello, how can I help you?’

  I sidled into the kitchen, trying to ignore a churlish curl of resentment. The sweets had been my idea – albeit forced by Isabel’s hate-campaign – but Mum was taking over.

  I couldn’t deny hers looked tasty as I took a tray of marzipan crunch from the fridge, but I suddenly felt possessive of the recipes and wanted to make them myself.

  There might even be a book in it …

  My phone buzzed, and I put down the tray to read a text from Phoebe.

  Are we talking about Auntie Laura running the sweet shop??? NO WAY, JOSÉ!! Sorry, but I couldn’t work with your mum, hun. I’ll think of something else xxx

  I knew it. Phoebe and Mum together would be a disaster, even if Mum couldn’t see it. Which meant there was no way I could swan off to Thailand and leave her running the shop on her own.

  Thinking of Thailand brought Alex to mind. I glanced at my watch, wondering whether he was already back in America. I wanted to text him, and thank him for sending me Donal Kerrigan, but my attempts sounded either sarcastic (thanks for doing me a favour) or over-emotional (what you did for me yesterday meant the world.)

  In the end, I messaged Beth.

  How’s my soon to be god-daughter? X

  Screamed all night, we’re wrecked. Loving every minute xx

  A photo of a tired but happy Beth popped up, her glowing face pressed to her daughter’s dimpled cheek. Bunty was eyeing the camera like an A-lister suspecting she’d been papped.

  Her very first selfie.

  ‘MARNIE!’

  Mum’s voice made me jump. She sounded panicky.

  ‘Won’t be a minute!’ I said, pulling out another tray of raisin fudge, and looking around for a jar to put it in.

  ‘Marnie!’

  ‘I’m COMING!’

  Grabbing my apron, I pulled it over my head and sprinted through.

  ‘I can’t work the till,’ she wailed, frantically jabbing at the buttons. It was emitting a series of beeps, like a life-support machine.

  I nudged her aside. ‘Here, I’ll do it.’

  ‘And we’ve run out of bags, Marnie, where are the bags?’

  ‘In the bottom drawer.’ I pointed with my eyes.

  She yanked it too hard. It flew out, scattering the contents.

  ‘For the love of Moses,’ she muttered, scooping everything back in before attempting to jam it back on its hinges. She stood on a bag she’d missed, leaving a footprint. ‘Well, we can’t use that.’ She sounded close to tears.

  ‘Pass me another.’ I exchanged a tense smile with the customer, patiently waiting for her lemon bonbons. ‘Hurry up, Mum.’

  ‘Alright, alright.’ She slapped one in my hand. ‘Here.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Her lips were tight. ‘You’ve got your apron on inside out,’ she said, two spots of colour on her cheekbones.

  As the customer left, I put my apron on the right way. ‘OK, Mum?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you very much.’ Turning, she whipped a jar of chocolate limes off the shelf. It promptly slid thro
ugh her fingers and smashed on the floor.

  ‘Oh Jesus and Mary Berry!’

  ‘For god’s sake, Mum, what’s going on?’

  ‘It was an accident, OK?’ Her voice shook. ‘I’ll get the dustpan and brush.’

  She dived out, returned seconds later, jaw rigid with tension. ‘Where’s the dustpan and brush?’

  ‘In the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen.’

  ‘Well, that’s just silly.’

  As she cleared up the mess she’d made, I served several more customers, blushing as the congratulations kept coming.

  ‘Bit hairy at one point, when the ambulance turned up,’ said Ruby, who owned the flower stall in the square at the end of the parade, ‘and when I popped in the newsagent’s later on he was trying to foist his wholesale peanut brittle on a customer, telling them it was nicer and more brittle than yours.’ She shook her stack of straw-blonde hair. ‘I reckon he’s jealous of you.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t be?’ Mum said, from where she was crouched at my feet.

  Ruby looked startled, as if I’d thrown my voice. ‘Just thought you might like to know, the rest of us are rooting for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Ruby.’

  Mum hovered anxiously in the office doorway after that, and kept offering to make cups of tea.

  ‘You’re not going out are you?’ she said, toying with a roll of Parma Violets as I headed out to do the banking.

  ‘You’ll be OK for ten minutes, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ she said, smoothing stray strands of hair back into her chignon. ‘Just … don’t be too long.’

  There was a queue snaking out of the door at the bank, and when I returned to the shop, Agnieszka was behind the counter, serving a tired-looking couple with triplet toddlers.

  There was no sign of Mum.

  Thirty-Three

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said as the couple left, trying to break up a fight between two of their toddlers.

  ‘I came in for gilet I forgot yesterday, under counter,’ she said, and she was indeed wearing it again. ‘Your mother, she seem distressed.’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘She mix up order and give man cubes instead of drops, he not very happy and she cry very hard.’

  Shit. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Out back.’ Agnieszka looked grave. ‘You like me to stay, Marnie? I’m not work for pub any more, too many very late night, so am free.’

  ‘Would you mind, Agnieszka?’

  ‘Please, call me Aggie.’

  ‘Oh.’ I smiled. ‘OK. Thanks, Agnies … Aggie. That would be great.’

  Mum was outside, in Celia’s car, slumped over the steering wheel as though she’d been shot. She jumped when I tugged the door open.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘I was only gone twenty minutes.’

  ‘Oh, Marnie, I don’t think I’m cut out to be a manager,’ she said, her pale cheeks stained with tears. ‘I’ll just end up giving things away, and I cannot get on with that till.’

  I tried not to laugh. ‘You worked in a supermarket once, Mum.’

  ‘But I was on the deli,’ she protested. ‘Derek wouldn’t let me anywhere near the tills.’

  ‘What would you have done if Aggie hadn’t turned up?’

  She shut her eyes. ‘I was going to lock the door until you came back.’

  Crouching down, I rested a hand on her knee. ‘Maybe you need more time to get used to it.’

  She dabbed at her face with her apron. ‘Yesterday was such fun,’ she said. ‘But …’

  ‘ … working for a living’s a different matter,’ I finished. For some reason, I was smiling.

  ‘Something like that.’ She gave a watery laugh. ‘But I don’t want to let you down, yet again,’ she said. ‘Maybe I could stick to making the sweets, and you can find someone else to be a manager.’

  ‘But I want to make them,’ I said, not caring if it sounded childish. ‘I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.’

  The shop was my grandfather’s legacy, I realised. The handmade sweets could be mine.

  ‘But your trip …’

  ‘Ah yes, my trip.’

  And just like that, I knew I’d never intended going all along. I was no traveller. I’d loved being in Peru with Alex, but he’d been right. I had missed home, and I was glad to get back. I’d rejected Shipley because Mum had, not realising then that she’d had her own reasons for wanting to leave.

  Looking at her worried face, everything swung into focus.

  I loved Shipley, and I loved my sweet shop.

  I wasn’t Mum. I was me, with several shades of my grandfather. Doris had been right about that.

  I’d wasted years planning my escape, instead of running the shop the way it deserved, but it wasn’t too late.

  ‘How about I stay?’ I said to Mum, and my voice was steady. ‘If you really want to, you can be my assistant.’ I rejected the idea as I said it, but wanted to give her a chance too.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, darling.’ She sniffled a little, and took hold of my hand. ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at taking orders.’

  ‘What Mario said, about you needing something …?’

  ‘He’s talked about us opening a wine shop,’ she said, perking up. ‘It was going to be in Italy, but I kept stalling.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘I think it’s because I wanted to come home.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’

  ‘I know.’ She looked at me sadly. ‘I’m an arsehole.’

  ‘Mum!’

  A giggle escaped. Mum joined in and we were doubled up, holding our sides, when Agnieszka came out to see what was going on.

  ‘You should offer her a full-time job.’ Mum wiped her eyes again. ‘She’s a little diamond.’

  * * *

  We’d just finished dinner when the doorbell rang.

  ‘I’ll get it, you stay where you are,’ Celia said to Paddy as he made to get up. ‘I’m fully mobile, remember?’

  He sat back down, seeming perfectly at home in her kitchen, and the sight of him there, eating her venison casserole while Muttley and Chester eyeballed each other from opposite ends of the room, wasn’t as unsettling as I’d imagined.

  ‘It can’t be Mario, already,’ Mum said, putting her fork down and crossing to the window to look out. ‘I know he’s dying to see me, but I only called a few hours ago.’ Apparently he’d brought his flight forward, keen to discuss their future.

  ‘It’s for you,’ said Celia, coming back in, her bright eyes resting on me. She looked quietly satisfied, as though something she’d long suspected had been confirmed. She sat beside Paddy, and Chester waddled over to rest his head on her lap. ‘You might want to wipe that gravy off your chin.’ She winked at me.

  Puzzled, I dabbed at my face with my napkin before getting up.

  Perhaps Isabel had come to apologise – or say goodbye. On my way home, I’d noticed the SUV had been stuffed with boxes and bin-bags and the life-size picture of her Vogue magazine cover.

  ‘It’s not Donal Kerrigan is it?’ Mum joked, in quite a giddy mood now she knew Mario was on his way, and she didn’t have to be a shop manager after all.

  ‘If it is, send him through here when you’ve finished with him,’ called Celia, and there was a comfortable rumble of laughter around the table.

  I entered the hallway and saw a figure on the doormat, backlit by the evening sunshine.

  ‘Who is it?’ Mum called.

  ‘It’s Alex,’ I squeaked. It was all I could do not to fling myself into his arms.

  ‘Oh!’ I heard Mum say from the kitchen table.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, my heart rate tripling.

  ‘Hi yourself.’ He glanced through the kitchen door and gave a wave.

  When his eyes returned to mine, I knew he was remembering the last time he’d been under the same roof as Mum, after my grandfather’s funeral, when she’d asked him if he was castrated.

  ‘Sorry, I meant circumcised,’ she’d slurred, and Mario had to explain that she�
�d taken two Valium for the grief and didn’t know what she was saying.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Where’s Bobbi-Jo?’ I peered out through the front door, in case she was waiting in the car.

  ‘On an aeroplane,’ he said.

  My legs turned to rubber. ‘How come?’

  He inclined his head. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’

  I nodded. ‘Just popping out!’ I called, grabbing my jacket and following him down the path, loving the sight of his battered old jeans and soft, grey sweater, and the way his hair curled on his neck. The loafers had gone. He was wearing his favourite desert boots, and I wondered what it meant.

  We didn’t speak as we made our way down the hill, past Doris’s house at the bottom. She was polishing her ornaments and her eyes were out on stalks when she spotted Alex.

  Wordlessly, we found the spot on the beach where, four years earlier, I’d sat to eat my lunch and watched him walk out of the sea.

  When we were sitting on the sand, I scooped up a handful and let it run through my fingers, breathing in his familiar cologne as he shuffled closer to me; the one I’d bought him before he went away.

  ‘I thought you were going back to New York.’

  ‘There was no point.’ The intensity in his eyes stopped my breath. ‘Not when everything I want is here.’

  Exhilaration flooded through me. ‘But, you’re engaged.’

  His brow furrowed. ‘What gave you that idea?’

  ‘Er, the giant ring.’

  His face cleared. ‘That’s not an engagement ring,’ he said, a smile tilting his mouth. ‘Well it is, but it belonged to her grandmother. She wears it when she goes out, that’s all.’

  ‘On her wedding finger?’

  He shrugged. ‘I think that’s the only one it fits.’

  ‘Well, that’s a bit weird.’ My heart started galloping. ‘It gives totally the wrong impression.’

  ‘Is that why you ran away?’

  I studied my feet. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Listen, Marnie.’ My head whipped up. ‘I tried to move on, because I thought that was what you wanted. Bobbi-Jo’s lovely, but it was never going to work.’