Christmas at the Beach Café: A Novella

by Diamond, Lucy

  Excitement and intrigue coursing through her, she ran up the stairs to her flat. Anna had come to Sheffield as a student fourteen years ago, and never left. She’d graduated from uni accommodation through to shared houses in Broomhill and Crookesmoor to her own small first floor flat near Ecclesall Road. She hadn’t intended to stay long in the flat; just a few months while she saved up enough to do something exciting like live in London or go travelling. But then she landed a job at the local paper, and somehow, six years later, hadn’t moved either job or home. Her dreams of working in the newsroom of one of the nationals, or backpacking to far-flung beaches, remained mere dreams, less likely with every passing year.

  Returning to the flat now, she found herself eyeing it anew. It was cramped and cluttered, with persistent damp in one corner of the ceiling where the roof leaked. A plant was in its death throes on top of the TV and a grey sprinkling of dust lined the skirting boards. It definitely looked like a ‘Before’ picture in the ‘Clear Out Your Clutter’ features the newspaper ran every spring. She was totally going to make it amazing and chic one day, though. Definitely. It just hadn’t quite happened yet.

  Impulsively she dialled a number on her phone and sank into the ageing red sofa. Her mum picked up after three rings. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mum, it’s me. Listen, I saw Nan today and . . .’ The words suddenly tangled together in her mouth and she hesitated, unsure how to go on.

  ‘Is everything all right? Is she okay?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ Anna swallowed. ‘The thing is, she said . . .’ Again, her voice faltered at the crucial moment. Ask her! Just ask her!

  ‘This is a terrible line. You keep breaking up. What did she say? Is she having one of her turns? Only nobody’s told me anything about it.’

  ‘No, she’s fine, it’s just . . .’ She ran a hand through her long hair helplessly, then her eye was caught by a photo on the dusty mantelpiece. Her and her mum on holiday in Rhyl one summer, back when she was about nine, both of them tanned and wearing sunglasses, smiling into the camera. It was one of her favourite photos, conjuring up memories of sandcastles, ice cream, and a ride on a sandy, hairy donkey. They’d gone through a lot together, she and her mum. Could she really do this, now, over the phone?

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she mumbled. ‘I just thought I’d let you know that she’s fine. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Tracey replied, sounding slightly confused. ‘Great. And you’re all right, are you? Has that cough gone yet?’

  ‘I’m fine, Mum, yeah. I’d better go. Love to Graham. Bye.’

  She ended the call, feeling like a coward. Talk about bottling it. Now she was none the wiser, no further along at all.

  Abandoning her phone, Anna hunted through the books and folders heaped randomly on her shelves until she found her old school atlas, then leafed through the pages. Italy, Italy, Italy . . . there it was.

  She stared at the outline of the country as if it could reveal secrets to her, running a finger down the Alps, tracing a path along the wild eastern coastline. There was a pull in her stomach as she whispered the names of towns and cities to herself. Naples. Florence. Siena. Where are you, Gino? she murmured under her breath.

  She knew virtually nothing about the place, she realized in shame, other than pizza and Chianti and the Romans. Pathetic. And to think this was the land of her father!

  Well, then. High time she started swotting up, wasn’t it?

  In all the drama, Anna had completely forgotten about Pete and the roast she was meant to be cooking until the doorbell rang at six o’clock and she jumped, startled out of her daydreams. Oh shit. Dinner.

  Pete was not exactly the hunk of burning love Anna had always imagined herself with – it was more of a ‘he’ll do’ arrangement if she was brutally honest, a Cornish pasty of a man rather than pure beef steak. That said, he was a decent bloke who had never cheated on her, ripped her off for thousands of pounds, or turned out to be gay – all of which had happened to her friends. Okay, so he might not be the most dynamic or passionate man in the world – she had wondered in the past if he even knew the word ‘romance’ existed – but he was good enough. They had a laugh together. Not that he was laughing now, mind.

  ‘What do you mean, you forgot?’ he moaned plaintively as she let him in. ‘All the trimmings, you said. I’ve been looking forward to it since breakfast!’ His whole face dropped with dismay, like a bloodhound having a bad day.

  ‘Sorry, Pete, I lost track of time. Something really amazing happened, you see,’ she began, then blurted out what her grandmother had let slip, the tiny shining fragment of truth. ‘I’ve not been able to think about anything else all afternoon.’

  He gazed around the grubby, food-free kitchen area where no bronzed roast chicken sat waiting to be carved, no thick bread sauce bubbled volcanically on the hob, and no roast potatoes sizzled golden and crunchy in the oven. ‘Shall we go to the pub, then?’ he sighed, one hand on his belly. ‘My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

  It was all right for him, Anna thought sourly. Pete knew exactly where he was from, with his china-cat-collecting mum and dad in their spotless semi (aptly named Wits’ End), and his two sisters, married with kids, elsewhere in Sheffield, both of whom had lives as thrilling as a pair of socks. He had a family, roots, he was certain of his place in his world. He had no idea how lucky that made him.

  ‘Pete – here’s me telling you I’m on the verge of tracking down my dad, and all you can talk about is your stomach? Can you not show a bit more interest?’

  Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended and a look of bafflement crossed his face. ‘Love, with the greatest respect, you’ve hardly “tracked him down”, finding out his name and nationality,’ he pointed out with his usual annoying pedantry. ‘There’s probably quite a few blokes called Gino from Italy, don’t forget.’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘Yeah, you’re dead right there, Pete,’ she replied sarcastically. ‘Might as well give up already.’

  He nodded as if that was the end of it. ‘Shall we go, then?’

  Oh, what was the point? He didn’t have a clue. ‘I suppose so,’ she muttered, rolling her eyes.

  She wondered where her father would be having his Sunday dinner. You could bet your last penny it wouldn’t be in some noisy dive where the toilets didn’t flush properly and the landlord was always trying to look down your top. No way. He – Gino – would be holding court at a large outdoor table on a sunny Tuscan hillside, with olive trees shimmering in the fields below. There would be fat scarlet tomatoes, creamy mozzarella drizzled with olive oil, rustic red wine in a carafe. Bambinos scampering barefoot on the hot dusty ground, a dog lifting its head drowsily and barking at them from time to time . . .

  Did he know he had a daughter here in drizzly Sheffield? Had he ever even seen her before?

  ‘You’re not listening, are you?’ Pete said, sounding exasperated as she locked the flat and they traipsed downstairs. ‘You’ve not heard a single thing I’ve just said.’

  She was still in Italy. It was so much nicer there. ‘Sorry, no,’ she confessed. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I was asking if you saw the United result. I watched the match at my dad’s, you know he’s just got Sky Sports? Bloody amazing. That new striker is gold, I’m telling you . . .’

  ‘Great,’ she said, but she was already slipping away, flying back to her father and his sun-drenched life. She had to find him. She simply had to.

  Guilt for the roast dinner debacle, along with most of a bottle of red wine, meant that Anna didn’t protest when Pete pawed at her later that night back at her flat, despite feeling about as amorous as an oven glove. It was an in-out, in-out, breast squeeze, grunt and collapse sort of event, and she felt unsexy and distracted for the entire three minutes.

  ‘Cor,’ he said afterwards, rolling off her. ‘Reckon that was a seven and a half.’

  Anna had thought he was joking the first time he gave their sex sessions marks out
of ten, but he was apparently deadly serious. Much to her horror she had then discovered that he actually charted the scores on a spreadsheet on his laptop. Seriously. She hadn’t been snooping but he’d left the page open accidentally one day and the title ‘Sex With Anna’ had leapt out at her. And there it was in black and white: the date, score and a brief description of each act.

  A on top, baby oil, light on – that had scored a ten. But A in strop, too pissed, bit of rush merited a measly six.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she’d said, aghast, eyes boggling. ‘Pete – what the hell is this?’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he’d replied, looking shifty. ‘I thought it was kind of sexy.’

  Kind of sexy? A bit nerdy, more like. It was hardly love letters on scented notepaper, or a passion-filled journal. She wished she’d never seen it, that she could erase it from her brain. ‘You’re not going to . . . show it to anyone else, are you?’

  ‘Course not, babe. This is private. Password protected. For our eyes only.’ He scrolled up the page. ‘Look, you got a ten here. Remember that night? Hell-o, Nurse.’

  And hell-o, Doctor Perv, Anna thought with a queasy lurch, but he seemed so boyishly pleased with himself that she didn’t have the heart to argue. From then on, though, she couldn’t help wondering – often during the act itself – how he’d describe each sexual encounter. Talk about killing the moment.

  ‘Pete,’ she said to him now, ‘maybe keep the scoring thing in your head? Like, just in your head? It makes me feel under pressure, like I’m a performing seal or something.’

  He reached out and twiddled one of her nipples. It was extremely irritating. ‘I don’t want to have sex with a seal though, babe,’ he said, snuggling up to her. She could feel his warm alcoholic breath on her neck.

  ‘I know, but . . .’ And don’t call me babe, she wanted to say. That just made her feel like a pig. A bad-tempered pig who didn’t want to be marked out of ten each time she spread her trotters. ‘I just don’t like it, all right?’ she said after a few moments. ‘Pete?’

  But his hand had fallen slack on her chest, and a guttural snoring started up in his throat. Now who was the pig? she thought, turning away from him crossly and putting the pillow over her head.

  WOMAN SUFFOCATES CRAP BOYFRIEND spooled a new headline in her brain. But just then he rolled over and flung an arm across her. ‘Night, gorgeous,’ he murmured in his sleep, and she felt herself softening. He loved her really. She knew that. And being with him was a damn sight better than being on her own, surely?

  She shut her eyes, hoping she’d dream of Italy. Her quest would continue in the morning, she vowed. Whatever Pete said.

  Christmas at the Beach Café

  Lucy Diamond lives in Bath with her husband

  and their three children. When she isn’t slaving away

  on a new book (ahem) you can find her on

  Twitter @LDiamondAuthor

  or on Facebook

  www.facebook.com/LucyDiamondAuthor

  By the same author

  Any Way You Want Me

  Over You

  Hens Reunited

  Sweet Temptation

  The Beach Café

  Summer with My Sister

  Me and Mr Jones

  First published 2013 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-6208-4

  Copyright © Lucy Diamond 2013

  The right of Lucy Diamond to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’). The inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on such sites.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.