The Beach Café

by Lucy Diamond

  A couple of women at the next table were turning their heads and looking over at us, with bemused expressions on their faces. ‘Shut up,’ I hissed. ‘For God’s sake, let’s just get out of here. I haven’t shaved my legs for ages, let alone . . . anything else.’

  She gave a delighted-sounding laugh. ‘Aha! So you have been thinking about getting nekkid with the guy at least.’ She made little shooing movements with her hands. ‘What are you waiting for? Go and reintroduce yourself. And don’t come back until you have. I’m not dying of thirst or anything, there’s no rush.’

  I hesitated, biting my lip as I weighed up the options. Ryan and I were both adults. Where was the harm in a smile and a hello, for old times’ sake? Chances were, he wouldn’t even recognize me. But on the other hand . . . Maybe he would remember that summer as fondly as I did.

  ‘No spying,’ I warned her. ‘And no stirring.’ I smoothed my skirt down self-consciously. I was wearing my favourite denim skirt and a black strappy vest-top. Not exactly top-of-the-range designer, but I’d brushed my hair at least and chucked on a string of shimmering blue beads. ‘Do I look okay?’

  ‘Sensational,’ she replied. It was an ego-boosting lie, of course, but it helped.

  ‘I’m still not sure this is a great idea,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Off you go,’ was all she said. ‘See you in a bit.’

  I turned and began walking back to the bar, jittery and uncertain. Nothing was going to happen, of course. I was still getting over Matthew, who’d been a proper boyfriend, a long-term, live-with boyfriend, and not just a holiday fling who’d vanished into the surf one day like a mirage, never to be seen again. I’d just say a friendly hello, gosh-fancy-seeing-you-again kind of thing to Ryan as I ordered the drinks, and that would be all.

  I went back inside, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the dingier light in there. He was still at the bar. Oh, shit. I’d half been hoping he’d have left so that I didn’t have to go through with this. But there he was, still joking around with the barmaid. Okay . . .

  I cleared my throat. I was only going to say hello, for goodness’ sake. And at least it would shut Amber up.

  I stood behind him for a moment, pretending I was waiting to be served, but really sneaking the chance to look him over. The youth had turned into a man. He was wearing a blue shirt with white pin-stripes, and chinos. His surf-dude curls had been cut to a neat short back and sides, and his neck looked fat and red. In fact, it wasn’t just his neck that appeared fat; he seemed bulkier all over than he had done as a teenager. Hell, didn’t we all, though. It was unfair to compare someone with their nineteen-year-old self.

  He was booming with laughter at something the barmaid had said. ‘You’re such a chav,’ he told her. ‘You and your bargain flip-flops and your tatty red nail varnish.’

  I glanced down at my own feet, which were working their very own bargain flip-flops and tatty red nail varnish look. Oh. Did that make me a chav too?

  ‘Oi, don’t be cheeky,’ she told him. She gave him a bright smile and went off to serve someone else, but I had the feeling that her smile was fake and he’d actually hurt her. Hmm.

  I took a deep breath. Right. Come on, Evie. Now or never. Action! Richard Curtis ordered in my head.

  ‘Ryan,’ I said tentatively, tapping him on the shoulder. ‘Is that you?’

  He turned and squinted at me. His face was craggy and well worn, and had seen too much sun, judging by the slightly leathery texture of his skin, but it was definitely him.

  There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. ‘Hey, I remember you,’ he said slowly. ‘You worked at the café. Jo’s daughter.’

  ‘Niece,’ I corrected, a smile spreading across my face. ‘Evie.’

  ‘Evie, that’s it,’ he said, and slapped his thigh. ‘Holy shit! Talk about a blast from the past.’ He stared at me from top to bottom, his eyes lingering on my chest. Yuck, I hated it when men did that. It wasn’t even as if there was anything much to look at, in my case. ‘Well, fancy seeing you again,’ he said, his voice softer and smoother. ‘Where have you been hiding all these years, then?’

  ‘I –’ I began, slightly creeped-out by the way his gaze kept returning to my boobs. Was he addressing them or me? It was hard to tell. ‘I’ve been back in Oxford. How about you?’

  ‘Oh, here, there and everywhere,’ he said, with a casual wave of his hand. I took this to mean Hawaii and other surfing hot-spots, but then he said, ‘Kent for a while. Home Counties. Wherever I lay my hat . . .’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘So, what are you doing with yourself these days?’

  ‘Sales,’ he said grandly. ‘I’m an account manager for an engineering firm. Doing pretty well, although I say so myself, ha-ha.’ His fake laugh set my teeth on edge. ‘But where are my manners?’ he asked my breasts. ‘Let me buy you a drink. We can reminisce about the old times.’

  I hesitated. He was really creeping me out now. Someone seemed to have changed his setting to Sleaze and turned it up to max. ‘Um . . .’ I began, but before I could say anything else, I felt someone barge past me.

  ‘Ryan, are you getting those drinks or what?’ came a shrill voice, as a blonde-haired woman shoved her way through. She glared at me and then at him, and I recognized her, with a sinking feeling, as the woman who’d had a go at me in the village shop that day. Not Betty the shopkeeper, but the other one. And now she seemed intent on laying claim to Ryan too. Ah. Perhaps it was time to step away from the ex.

  ‘Evie, this is my lovely wife, Marilyn,’ Ryan said, putting a meaty arm round her shoulders. ‘Marilyn, this is Evie. An old friend.’ He winked at me, and I felt nauseous.

  Marilyn’s eyes scrunched into an even tighter glare, if that were possible. She seemed to be bristling with some pent-up rage as if she were longing to take a swing at me, and maybe one at her husband, for good measure. Oh God. I was totally regretting introducing myself now.

  ‘Yes, I know who she is,’ Marilyn said bitterly. The coldness of her eyes made me squirm. ‘She’s the one who just sacked our Saffron today – that’s who she is.’

  There was a horrible lurching feeling inside me, as if the bottom of my stomach had fallen right away. ‘Our Saffron,’ she’d said. Which I guessed meant they were Saffron’s . . . parents. Oh shit.

  The look on Ryan’s face changed. ‘That was you?’ he said, his eyes narrowing. ‘You sacked her? She was very upset when she came home this afternoon. She’s only a kid. Why the hell did you have to sack her?’

  The colour surged into my cheeks. ‘Why did I sack her? Because she was stealing my stock, and taking money out of the till, that’s why,’ I said defensively. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know she was your daughter, but—’

  ‘That’s rich, coming from you,’ he sneered. ‘I remember you helping yourself to stuff from there all the time, back when you were a teenager, that summer we – ’

  He broke off. Marilyn looked as if she were going to combust.

  ‘I always checked with Jo first, before I took anything,’ I replied, indignant at the very notion that Saffron and I had acted similarly in any way. ‘And she was my aunt, she was family, it was different.’

  ‘Well, we’ll be pursuing this,’ Marilyn spat. ‘Unfair dismissal, that’s what this is. You should be ashamed of yourself, lady. Jo would have been ashamed of you too.’

  That was the last straw. ‘Jo would have sacked her just like I did,’ I retorted hotly, brimming over with anger. ‘Jo would have sacked anyone she caught stealing. Face facts – your daughter’s a nasty little thief, and good riddance to her. You’re lucky I didn’t go straight to the police.’

  There was a horrible silence as I finished speaking – or shouting, rather. I glanced round to see that everyone in the vicinity was listening in, eyes glued to the slanging match. Oh, great. So much for me being Evie-from-the-Café, everybody’s friend. I’d probably just lost half my clientele in one stroke.

  Marilyn raised her hand as if she were about to slap me a
round the face, but Ryan grabbed her arm just in time. ‘How dare you say that about my daughter,’ she hissed. ‘How DARE you!’

  Ryan got to his feet. His eyes were flinty. ‘You’ve changed,’ he told me contemptuously. ‘Come on, Marilyn.’

  And with that, he took their drinks and they went back to their table.

  I felt myself turn scarlet with embarrassment and stood there, staring after them like a prize pillock. Right. Okay. So that probably couldn’t have gone any worse if we’d scripted it beforehand. Bollocks.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the barmaid asked, and I turned, trying to snap out of my daze. She saw me looking at Ryan and Marilyn (who were glaring daggers back) and clicked her tongue sympathetically. ‘Ignore them,’ she said in a low voice. ‘She’s a nasty old cow and he’s just as bad. He’s a car salesman over in Wadebridge, not an engineering manager, or whatever it was he said to you.’

  ‘They aren’t exactly the friendliest couple I’ve ever met,’ I managed to say, trying to keep my tone light. Inside, my heart was thudding. I felt as if I’d just made some dangerous enemies.

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Stay away from them, that’s my advice. I wish I could, but . . .’ She shrugged and indicated the bar. ‘Anyway. What can I get you?’

  I ordered the drinks, my face still searing, and went back to Amber, deliberately not looking in the direction of Ryan and Marilyn. What a prat I was. Fancy getting up my hopes for an old flame when everyone knew that first loves were best left in the past. What had I been thinking? And then for it to turn out that he and his bitch-wife were actually Saffron’s parents. Typical Evie luck. Just typical. I glanced up at the sky as I went into the garden. I had a feeling that some celestial beings were playing tricks on me, and having a good old laugh at my expense. How else could things have gone so catastrophically wrong?

  ‘Oh dear,’ Amber said as I returned to the table. ‘Is it a No on the rebound-shag front?’

  I put her drink down in front of her and took a long, thirsty gulp of mine. ‘Ha,’ was all I could say.

  She sipped her drink, looking as if she were trying not to laugh. ‘So he’s no longer a heart-throb, then?’

  ‘He’s fat,’ I said, ‘and sleazy, and he couldn’t look me in the eye. And he was rude to the barmaid, and he’s married to a woman who makes Nurse Ratched look like a pussycat. Oh, yeah, and they’re Saffron’s mum and dad. And I also managed to bellow out around the whole pub that their daughter was a . . . How did I put it? A nasty little thief.’

  She burst out laughing. ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘I bloody did.’ I buried my head in my hands. Talk about a disaster. I couldn’t believe how horrifically one innocent conversation had spiralled out of control. ‘Honestly, Amber, I know what this place is like. Everyone will get to hear about it. Everyone will be bad-mouthing me. I’ll be driven out of here with pitchforks by the end of the week, you wait.’

  ‘Oh, love, no you won’t,’ she said, still gurgling with laughter.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ I snapped, irritated. ‘This is all a big joke to you, isn’t it? But I’ve got to live here. I’m supposed to be making a go of it here, and all I’m doing is making things worse on a daily basis.’ I slammed my fist down on the table. ‘Shit,’ I moaned. ‘What am I going to do?’

  She put her arm around me, finally having stopped gurgling. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t laugh—’

  ‘No, you bloody shouldn’t.’

  ‘But you’ve got to admit it’s kind of funny.’

  I pulled a face. ‘Yeah, absolutely hilarious,’ I said.

  She nudged me. ‘Come on, grumps, it’ll be all right.’

  ‘Will it? Saffron’s horrible mum was talking about making a claim for unfair dismissal just then – that’s the last thing I want.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ Amber scoffed. ‘Unfair dismissal – for stealing? She’d be laughed out of court. No chance. She’s just trying to scare you.’

  I sighed. ‘What a disappointment,’ I said. ‘Ryan, I mean. Honestly, I’ve been having erotic dreams about that man for the last thirteen years. Never again.’

  ‘They’ll be nightmares now,’ Amber said, with her usual frankness. ‘Wake-up-screaming-in-the-middle-of-the-night nightmares, by the sound of it.’

  ‘And what a let-down too,’ I said. ‘That whole precious first-love thing – the one that got away.’ I gave a snort that a wild boar would have envied. ‘After speaking to him just now, I’m bloody glad he got away. In fact, I wish he’d get away a bit further, and take his crappy wife and daughter with him.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Amber agreed. ‘It’s like all the pop stars I used to fancy as a teenager. Seeing them get fat and bloated and start to lose their hair . . . It’s all wrong. They should be preserved in aspic, those first crushes, and never allowed to age, let alone sire revolting children.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said. ‘To think that the last time I saw Ryan, he had a six-pack and surfer shorts. Now he’s just a porky middle-aged dad.’

  Amber raised her glass. ‘To not having married a porky, middle-aged dad,’ she said solemnly, and I clinked mine against hers.

  ‘To not having married a porky, middle-aged dad,’ I echoed with a sigh.

  Our food arrived – fish and chips twice – and we tucked in hungrily. It wasn’t the most amazing dinner I’ve ever had: the chips were pale and slightly undercooked, and the fish batter was rather soggy. If I did start serving evening meals at the beach café, I thought, at least I could be pretty confident that the competition wasn’t up to much.

  Then I heard a man’s voice behind me. ‘Hello, stranger. When did you arrive back in town?’

  We turned to see Ed with a pint of lager, and I couldn’t help my spirits lifting two-hundredfold. ‘Hello,’ I said, twisting round on the bench. ‘I was wondering what had happened to you.’ I clamped my mouth shut quickly, hoping that didn’t sound as if I was some kind of weird stalkery type. ‘I mean—’

  ‘I was wondering what had happened to you too,’ he replied, thankfully, before I could dig myself further into a hole. ‘First that jerk of a chef was back in the café, and then it was closed up, and . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I was starting to think you’d done a bunk.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, yes, but I’m back now. Back for the summer, bridges smouldering in ruins behind me all the way from here to Oxford.’

  Amber stretched out a hand. ‘Hello, by the way. I’m Amber, seeing as Evie has so rudely forgotten to introduce us.’

  ‘Oh God, sorry,’ I said, flustered. ‘Ed, this is my best friend Amber, and Amber, this is Ed.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Please do,’ Amber said fervently. ‘Evie’s had a meltdown in the last five minutes, and I’m not sure I can stand it any more.’ She stuck her tongue out at me cheekily and I blushed.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Ed said. ‘Sorry – if this is a private moment, I can sit somewhere else, but—’

  ‘No, stay,’ I told him. ‘It’s cool. I’ve just . . . made a prat of myself. Again.’

  ‘She’s just shouted at her long-lost ex and his evil wife, quite loudly in the bar,’ Amber said. ‘Slagged off their daughter in public, and probably made even more enemies amongst the locals. That’s the gist, but—’

  ‘Yeah, all right, all right,’ I said sharply. ‘He doesn’t need to know every gory detail.’

  Amber winked at me. ‘Just making conversation,’ she said. ‘Who wants another drink, then?’

  ‘Me,’ I said, with rather too much desperation in my voice.

  Ed was kind enough not to ask any more about what had happened with Ryan and Marilyn, thank goodness, and by the time Amber returned with our drinks, we were deep into a debate about which was better: swimming in the sea by moonlight or in full beaming sunshine, and any awkwardness was forgotten. Amber, inevitably, had something to say, and then we got into a debate about skinny-dipping, and the most daring places we’d
all done it; and then we were off onto a conversation about other outrageous things we’d done, and we were laughing so much that time seemed to sprint along unnoticeably. Before I knew it, the sky was becoming darker and a chill was creeping in. I shivered and rubbed my bare arms, wishing I’d had the sense to bring along a cardigan or jacket.

  ‘So, what do you do down here?’ Amber asked Ed after a while. ‘Are you working, or . . . ?’

  She let the question tail off politely, and I noticed him give the faintest of grimaces. I pricked up my ears, waiting for his response. I was curious too. I didn’t actually know much about him, I realized, apart from the fact that he’d gone skinny-dipping on Bondi Beach, he loved swimming in the sea when there was a full moon, and he’d once allowed himself to be made up as Barbara Cartland for a student party.

  ‘I’m not working at the moment,’ he said. ‘Just dog-sitting for a mate. I was working in London, but . . . not any more.’

  I detected a certain awkwardness about him, as if he really didn’t want to talk about this. Amber didn’t seem to notice any such thing, though. ‘Go on, then, don’t leave us in suspenders: what happened? Where were you working?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Ah. Don’t tell me. You’re one of those disgraced bankers. A hedge-fund squillionaire who lost everything.’

  ‘Amber!’ I protested. ‘Leave him alone.’

  But he gave a hollow laugh. ‘No, I’m not a disgraced banker,’ he said. ‘I was in the restaurant business actually.’

  I did a double-take. A classic, staring, did-he-really-just-SAY-that? double-take.

  ‘The restaurant business?’ I screeched, leaning forward. No wonder he’d been such a perfectionist about his bacon roll. Had I actually been right first time, thinking he was a food critic? ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? I’d have been picking your brains for advice, if I’d known that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Amber chimed in. ‘She’s been dying on her arse out there – well, not today, obviously, with me mucking in, but . . .’ She grinned suddenly. ‘Don’t tell us. You’re a chef.’