Meet Me on the Beach

by Hilary Boyd

  “OK, I’ll do that. But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I could do a lot of the work from home. I’m not keen on leaving Sophie alone too much, after what happened last time I took my eye off the ball.”

  “I was planning to refit the new place this winter, open up around April, when the punters begin to come back. But it would be a year-round business, with the emphasis on website orders over the winter months when there’s less footfall on the seafront.”

  Karen found her heart lifting. “Could be exciting, Mike. We’d be partners . . . as long as I promise not to hit on you again.”

  Mike chuckled. “Yeah, kisses not part of the deal,” he said, getting up to order another pint.

  *

  Karen got home by late afternoon. She felt a manic, exhausted energy, her mind buzzing with ideas for Mike’s cupcake business.

  She refused to think about Will. Each time he crept into her consciousness, she batted him away. She had told Mike it was over, and it had to be. She couldn’t afford any more heartache. He loved her deeply, in his own way—she was certain of that, despite Mike’s doubts—but his love was so compromised by his fear of being vulnerable that he would never allow her to get close. Janey had found that out, to her cost. There had been the odd moments when the strength of feeling between her and Will had broken through his fear, but he was determined enough to put those memories—and Karen—back in the box.

  And now the cancer, she felt, had given him the perfect excuse not to commit.

  Ever.

  It broke her heart.

  *

  Sophie came home from Christmas a day early.

  “It was not good,” she said, as they sat by the fire with a glass of wine her first evening back. “Mum was exhausted and feeling sorry for herself, which given the whole Nanu business was totally understandable. And I was really sympathetic. But she kept narking at me all the time as if she blamed me for something. I couldn’t do a thing right.”

  “Maybe the money thing?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it is, whatever she says.”

  “It must be pretty galling to do all the work and then be cut out of the spoils.”

  “I agree.” The girl sighed. “Anyway, I couldn’t wait to leave, but of course that was the wrong thing to do too.”

  “Oh, well. You and half the country must be sighing with relief that it’s all over for another year.”

  “So tell me what you did?”

  Karen laughed. “In a nutshell? I saw William. I was dumped by him. I’m planning a cupcake business with Mike.”

  Sophie’s jaw dropped. “In four days?”

  “Yup. Shows it’s not safe to leave me alone for a second.”

  She told Sophie the details of William’s illness.

  “Poor William,” Sophie said.

  “Yes, it must be awful.”

  “Not the cancer,” Sophie said, “although that’s real crap. I meant him not being able to share his life with you. It’s so sad he can’t be true to himself.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Spring was a long time coming. It rained relentlessly throughout February, the ground sodden, rivers tipping their banks, everyone on permanent flood alert. The anniversary of Harry’s death had come and gone, Karen and Sophie marking it with a trip to his grave, where Sophie gave a loving and heartfelt eulogy. It was something of a relief for Karen to have passed the year marker. And as Sophie spoke the words, standing on the damp grass facing her father’s headstone, Karen realized she was beginning to appreciate the loving sentiments spoken by her stepdaughter and to forgive Harry’s excesses—to remember him more as he had been before the drink took hold.

  And although Karen, like everyone else, found the dark winter months difficult, this year—despite William, despite the foul weather—she was full of inspiration, her single-minded focus being Mike’s cupcakes.

  She had canvassed everyone she knew for a good website designer, whom Volkan finally came up with. She spent days with Mike discussing the layout and design of the website, the shop, the cupcakes themselves and talking to Barry Rivers about contracts. Mike had done most of the renovations by the third week in March and they both thought the shop looked perfect.

  They had opted for a simple interior for the narrow space, with a reclaimed wood (painted sky blue) and glass counter, brown cardboard boxes with a matching blue logo for the cakes, bright seascapes on the white walls and an art deco multi-colored glass ceiling light.

  All that was needed now were the cupcakes.

  “Look at this lot,” Karen was saying as they hovered over her laptop. “Spiced banana, peanut and caramel, Earl Grey, carrot and parmesan . . . they all sound so yucky.”

  “Yeah, but someone must like them. They’ll have tried them out before they put them on the website, surely.” He sighed. “How are we going to know what varieties to choose?”

  “I think this lot are missing a trick. People with small kids want something simple. We should combine simple with exotic. I mean, who would walk in here and order an Earl Grey cupcake? Tea with cake, but tea in cake?”

  “Here’s a gooseberry one. Sounds good. But no one eats gooseberries these days, do they? Half of our customers wouldn’t recognize one if they fell over it.”

  “We’ve got time to experiment. We can spend the next two weeks making ourselves sick trying out different combos.”

  “They’ve got to look really good as well as taste good. Most of these have more icing than cake, that must be a sugar hit to send you into outer space.”

  “That’s the plan. Get them all addicted.”

  Mike laughed. “Scary, isn’t it, now it’s so close to being real? I sort of started this on a whim, but now I really want it to work.”

  “Me too.” Karen stretched her arms above her head, yawning. “Easter’s a good time to open, so long as the bloody weather perks up.”

  “No worries there. Easter weekend’s always busy on the coast, even if it’s pissing down. Can’t be sitting indoors all day with a houseful of kids and two bank holidays.”

  Karen and Mike had both decided to be in the shop the first week, although Karen would mostly be working from home drumming up orders on the website in future, leaving Mike to sell the cakes in the shop and Darren—a friend of Kim’s—to make the cakes in the kitchen behind the shop.

  “Will you miss the café?”

  “No way. It’s the first summer I’ve looked forward to since Margie died.”

  Karen didn’t reply. She realized with a shock that it was the first of any of the seasons for a very long time when she’d felt a glimmer of hope about her life. But even now, when she was so involved in the new business, the shadow of William still hung over her.

  Mike had noted her expression. “Were you thinking of him?”

  “No . . . well, yes. I can’t help it. How do you think he is? You don’t think he’s . . .?”

  It was a thought that haunted many a dark night. And then the agony of not being with him—not being able to say that she loved him one final time—would drag her down, threaten to overwhelm her.

  “Dead?” Mike said. “No. I’m sure you’d have heard. And they can do miracles these days, doctors.”

  “Yeah . . . OK, well, let’s not dwell on it. Because all this is so good, Mike. Your cupcakes have saved my sanity.”

  “I always said, cupcakes lift the soul.”

  She laughed, remembering a similar conversation on the hill above her house with William, right at the beginning of this whole saga, when she’d replied with some clever riposte about blood sugar.

  “You’re not tempted to go and see him again, are you?”

  She shook her head.

  This wasn’t true. She was tempted, sorely and often, to the point where she was seconds away from getting into the car and heading for Hastings. What stopped her was the knowledge of the pain she would feel when she saw William and was reminded that he didn’t want her in his life.

  “The on
e that got away,” Mike said sadly.

  *

  When, three days after opening, William Haskell walked into Best Cupcakes, holding the hand of a small child, it was hard to know who was most surprised: Karen, William or Mike. The shop had done a brisk trade all morning, the sun shining for all it was worth outside, the Bank Holiday Monday drawing record crowds to the seaside after such a dismal winter.

  Mike was joshing Karen about her sky-blue apron, which was way too long and made her look like a Victorian grocer. She was bending over, trying to fold the waist to make it shorter and didn’t see William until Mike nudged her, by which time he had drawn level with the counter.

  “Oh . . .” William’s fair skin blushed scarlet at the sight of Karen.

  He was dressed in jeans and a dark jacket, trainers on his feet. He looked thin, his hair beginning to gray around the sides, but not ill. The child, a girl, could have been no more than three or four, her blonde hair a pudding basin over solemn blue eyes. As she clutched William’s hand she was gazing at the glass on the cabinet, where the colored light from the ceiling shade was reflected in rainbow prisms as it swung in the breeze from the door.

  Karen didn’t say a word. She couldn’t.

  “What can I get you?” Mike asked, when he had finished serving the previous customer.

  “Umm . . .” Panic clear in William’s eyes, it looked as if he were about to turn tail and flee.

  But the child pointed to the cupcakes. “Chocolate,” she said without hesitation.

  And he was trapped.

  “Yeah, OK . . . I’ll have one . . .” he peered at the labels beneath a row of cakes, “one Chocolate Dream . . . two Lemon Freddies . . . one Minty Choc Chip.”

  The cupcake names, spoken by William in his careful diction, sounded infantile to Karen, who stood fixed and silent by the till.

  “This is Molly,” he said, suddenly addressing Karen.

  “Hi, Molly,” she said, her mouth dry.

  “She’s Alistair’s great-niece.” When Karen didn’t reply, he added, “I like the shop.”

  “Glad you do,” Mike said. “We opened three days ago.”

  Karen saw the “we” registering with William, making him cast a quick glance between her and Mike.

  “Right.” He took the box of cupcakes and proffered his money to Karen. “It’s good to see you,” he said, the blush once more flaming his cheeks.

  “Yes,” she said. “How are you?”

  “I’m not bad—” he began.

  But Molly was tugging at his hand. “Can I have mine now?” she asked.

  “Better wait till we find Mummy, don’t you think?” He glanced at Karen. “I should get back . . .”

  She nodded.

  He was almost at the door when he turned. A crowd of girls had just come into the shop and were checking out the cakes, giggling in anticipation. William had to peer over their heads. She was watching him, and Mike was watching her watching him. When William looked back, searching for Karen, their eyes met.

  There. The same. It was the same.

  For an eternal moment they stared at each other. Then the child must have pulled him away again, because he looked down at Molly, turned toward the door and was gone.

  “Aw . . . he likes the shop and he’s kind to little kiddies. I think I’m warming to the fella,” Mike said, a mischievous grin on his face.

  Karen knew her own face must be burning like Will’s and she quickly involved herself with the girls, packing up their choices in the brown cardboard boxes, taking their money, ignoring Mike.

  “Bit of a coincidence,” he went on, when the shop was clear again. “Unless he knew you were here, of course?” He was waiting, eyebrows raised, for her explanation.

  “If you’re implying I told him, you’re wrong. I haven’t heard a peep out of him since last year,” she said crossly.

  “OK, keep your wig on.” He grinned. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns . . . I reckon he must have been tipped off, no?”

  Karen thought about this. “By whom? Who would have told him?”

  Mike shrugged. “You’d know that better than me. Sophie? Someone in the village?”

  “I doubt it. He burned his bridges there.”

  “Must be that old six-degrees-of-separation thingy, then,” Mike said, giving her a wink.

  “Must be.”

  “Still, now he knows you’re here—”

  “Shut up, will you?” Karen growled under her breath as another family came through the door.

  But she spent the rest of the afternoon hoping William would come back, wondering if he had, in fact, known she would be there. Was the blush on his face one of surprise, or one of embarrassment? She had no idea. But as the afternoon wore on and he didn’t appear, she began the painful task of closing down her heart again. If he had been with Fisher and his family, he would have gone back to Hastings by now, she was sure of that.

  It was when she and Mike were having a drink in the pub after work that her mobile, lying on the table between them, pinged with a text. The number was unknown, but as she reached for her phone she knew it was from William.

  The text read:

  Is there any chance you might meet me sometime? Will x

  “What did I say?” Mike’s look was triumphant. “Now he knows where you are . . .”

  Karen put her phone down without answering William.

  “Aren’t you going to reply?” Mike asked. “The man’s dying, Karen. Have a heart.”

  She dug him in the ribs. “Shut up, it’s not funny.”

  But she did have a heart. And it was pumping nineteen to the dozen with excitement.

  “Go on, you know you want to.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Seems like a nice guy,” he encouraged, when she showed no sign of texting William back.

  “Well, you’ve certainly changed your tune. Hope it’s not cancer sympathy talking. He’d hate that.”

  Mike laughed. “Maybe. But I saw that blush, Karen. That wasn’t a guy who was just popping in to buy a cupcake. He was on a mission. Trust me, I’m a bloke, I know these things.”

  But Karen couldn’t go there.

  Later, when she was home and alone, she texted William.

  We could meet on the beach one evening.

  And a reply came almost immediately.

  Tomorrow? 5:30?

  His sudden eagerness made her laugh.

  *

  William looked decidedly nervous when she found him waiting outside the shop at five thirty. The weather had changed for the worse, a cold wind bruising the sea. But at least it wasn’t raining. Karen called goodnight to Mike, who was staying to lock up, and she and William crossed the road and walked down on to the beach, turning away from the small scattering of families huddled on the shingle.

  Neither spoke. They walked by the water, the sand soft, giving way beneath their feet. Karen had on canvas beach shoes, William the trainers from the day before. He wore a navy cotton T-shirt, navy sweater and black jeans, the dark colors reminiscent of his Church clothes. But otherwise he seemed very different from the vicar she had picnicked with an age ago on these same sands. If he had changed, however, so had she. And maybe both of them, back then, had loved people who were not their real selves.

  When he finally broke the silence, he said, “It was such a shock, seeing you in the shop yesterday.”

  “Mike thought you must have known I’d be there. He thought it was too much of a coincidence, you pitching up like that.”

  William turned to look at her. “Mike was right. I did know.”

  Stunned, she stopped, stared at him. “Who told you?”

  “Patrick Gascoigne.”

  “Patrick? How come?”

  He gave a brief smile. “Odd how these things happen. I’ve become friends with a guy at the archery club, Gavin—I’m teaching there two days a week now, and I hope to get back into competition in the autumn. Anyway, Gavin had a fiftieth drinks party and asked me, an
d there was Patrick and Volkan. I have no idea how they’re friends of Gavin . . .”

  Karen wasn’t paying attention to William’s narrative. It didn’t really matter. Patrick hadn’t mentioned it to her, but then he didn’t know the significance William had for her, as she had never told him.

  “And I asked him how you were and he told me about the cupcake shop. So when Alistair’s sister, Shona, who lives a mile away from here, asked us to come over for Bank Holiday, I thought—”

  “So why was it such a shock to see me?” Karen found her heart had slipped the leash, come out of the box and was yammering away in her chest.

  It wasn’t chance, as Mike had somehow known. William had come in search of her.

  They were not walking anymore but standing on the shore, looking out to sea, watching the veiled pink of the sunset bathing the sea.

  “Because . . . because I wasn’t sure you’d really be there, I suppose.”

  “Why did you want to see me?”

  Now he turned to her. “Why? Because I’ve been a total idiot, Karen. I thought I was doing you a favor in walking away . . . and I probably was.” He stopped, lips pursed, as if gearing himself up for the rest of his speech. “I was in such a mess . . . then the cancer. I didn’t want your pity.”

  She started to speak but he held up his hand to stop her.

  “Let me finish, please, Karen. I’ve been rehearsing this for weeks and if you stop me I shall get flustered and forget what I need to say.” He took a deep breath. “I have been in denial about my feelings for you ever since we first met. I just couldn’t go there. And then I lost sight of myself . . .”

  “It’s understandable.”

  “No, it’s not understandable, treating you the way I did. I was so stubborn. I should have told you, I should have been more honest.”

  “Yes, you bloody well should have.” She glanced up at him, then turned away. It was safer not to look at him.

  Tears brought on by the sheer tension of their meeting were building behind her eyes, but she was definitely not going to cry. They stood like two statues at the water’s edge.

  “And now?” he asked.

  “Now?” She finally turned to face him.