Once the Clouds Have Gone

by KE Payne

  It had been the briefest of touches, but it had spoken volumes. Tag looked down at her hands. To Freddie’s. She didn’t need to look at her face to know what Freddie was feeling; her ragged breathing told Tag everything she needed to know.

  Chapter Twenty

  Large snowflakes were tumbling down like fat goose feathers by the time Freddie arrived up at the mill the next morning. An overnight forecast for light snow had increased to a blizzard, and yet again Balfour was blanketed under a thick carpet of white, the town shivering in the unnerving silence that always accompanied a heavy snowfall. Pure white snow clashed with the purple-and-yellow bruised sky, casting an eerie glow around the town. Muffled footsteps hurried to and from shops. Snowploughs churned powder to slush. But still the snow fell on.

  Freddie’s car had made it as far as the clock tower in the town square, then refused to even attempt the short, but sharp, climb up to the mill. Swaddling up against the snow, she’d set off the rest of the way on foot, arriving half an hour later. Her face, ruddy and moist from her breath behind her woollen scarf, stung from the cold, and not for the first time that morning she wondered just what the point of opening the cafe would be that day.

  “You look how I feel.”

  Tim’s voice made Freddie snap her head up in surprise. He stood, hands buried deep inside the pockets of his padded jacket, and stamped his snow boots hard on the ground in a vain attempt to stay warm.

  “I didn’t see you there.” Freddie put her middle finger into her mouth and pulled a glove off with her teeth. She fumbled in her bag for the keys to the cafe. “You been there long?” she asked, her mouth still full of glove.

  “Nah,” Tim said. “Long enough to need a hot drink, though.” He stepped in through the door. “Remind me why we’re opening on a day like today, again.”

  “Because a light dusting of snow shouldn’t stop us?” Freddie said unconvincingly. “Everything else in the town’s open. Post office, school, grocery store.” She flicked the light switch on, immediately bathing the cafe in a warmer glow. “So what excuse did we have?” She didn’t add, Because if we don’t open then we lose even more money, and then have to close down. Freddie looked around the cafe. It wouldn’t come to that, would it?

  “Because it’d have to be one hell of an emergency for anyone to want to come up here and buy bread,” Tim said, “and it’d have to be a desperate person who’d want to struggle all the way up here just for a coffee.”

  Freddie nodded, only half listening. Her previous afternoon with Tag kept returning to her. How they’d held hands. Unthinking, she rubbed her thumb over her skin, remembering how Tag’s warm skin had felt on hers. She’d come so close to letting her in, despite all her previous reservations, when Tag had told her she was staying on in Balfour. Staying to keep the business going. Tag cared about the business as much as Freddie did, didn’t she? She must do if she was prepared to stay and fight for it. Freddie gazed around her. Well, it was a fight they’d face together. She and Tag. She was damned if she was going to let anyone close her cafe down, undo everything she’d worked so hard for all these years. She’d get it up and running again even if she had to go out and drag customers in off the street herself.

  “Coffee?” Tim’s question was a welcome distraction. “Might as well get one in before the rush starts.” He laughed to himself at his joke.

  “Cheers.” Freddie looked around the empty cafe again. The usual nagging worry returned. It was going to be a long day.

  *

  By the time Tag and Magnus had made the most of the fresh snow and had come back down from a Saturday morning’s snowboarding on the Ben, the snow had started to disappear from the centre of Balfour. Whatever the local farmers’ snowploughs hadn’t shifted had soon been melted by the succession of cars traversing the town on their way to and from the neighbouring villages. Balfour, it seemed, was getting back to normal again.

  Magnus had been delivered safely back to Glenside just as Blair returned from hospital. She and Magnus had waited, a shared sense of nervous excitement at his return, standing side by side against the bonnet of Tag’s car as Blair’s truck bumped and crunched up the gravel path that led to the cottage. Blair’s grey face peered at them from the passenger seat. He looked weary, Tag thought. Weary and anxious. Still. Her heart ached for him. Tag didn’t know what she expected. That her brother would bound out of the car, looking ten years younger? She pulled herself from the bonnet and hurried to the truck.

  “The warrior returns.” She opened the passenger door and held out an arm to help Blair from his seat. He took it gratefully, hauling himself down from the high cab.

  “I like the welcoming party.” Blair gave Magnus, still standing by Tag’s car, the thumbs up. “I should be ill more often.”

  “Or not,” Ellen said. She came round to his side of the truck. “Okay. Inside.” She bundled Blair to the front door, rolling her eyes as he mock-grumbled at her.

  Tag followed them in, Ellen clucking round Blair like a mother hen, instructing him to sit in the front room and wait for her to bring him coffee. It was at times like this, Tag thought, that Ellen became a mother to two children, not one.

  “So how is it?” Tag sank down on the sofa next to him. “Really?”

  “Better.” Blair pulled a footstool out, gently swatting away Tag’s hand as she went to help him. He put his feet up on it and rested his head back. “At least I don’t feel like I’m going to hit the floor every five minutes,” he said. “I’m on a course of iron tablets that the doctors say will have me well enough to get back onto the land in a few days.”

  “So soon?” Tag tucked her legs up under her on the sofa.

  “Yuh-huh.” Blair made himself more comfortable. “About time too. Another day in that place and I think I’d have gone nuts.” He glanced at Tag. “So how was the snowboarding with Magnus this morning?”

  “It was good. Did I do the right thing? Taking him?” Tag asked. “Or would you have preferred me to sit over him until he did his homework, which he insisted didn’t have to be handed in until next week?”

  “No, you did the right thing,” Blair said.

  Relief.

  “I’m really grateful you took him out with you, to be honest,” he added. “He’d rather be hanging out with you than anyone else.”

  And a brownie point from Blair too. Win-win.

  “Well, he’s shit-hot at snowboarding,” Tag said. “Left me in his wake on more than one occasion again.”

  “He’s pretty fearless,” Blair agreed. “But then I guess you are when you’re only thirteen, right?”

  “Has all this made you more fearful?”

  “Nah. Life makes me fearful.” He laughed hollowly.

  “And the mill?”

  “You got it.”

  “We’ll get through this, Blair,” Tag said. “I promise.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  Tag rested her head against the back of the sofa. “The one thing Dad was adamant about was that the mill stayed in the Grainger name,” she said. “I owe it to him to try my best to honour that.”

  “We both do.”

  “I told Freddie yesterday, by the way.” A fierce snapshot of her and Freddie holding hands in the canteen dizzied Tag’s senses. It still made her ache. The way she and Freddie had sat while looking at the photo of Skye, the chemistry between them, so intense it gave Tag goosebumps now just to think about it.

  “What did Freddie say?” Blair asked.

  “She was upset.”

  “Understandable, in her circumstances.”

  “I guess. I know she loves the cafe,” Tag said. “She called it her little empire once.”

  An overwhelming desire to see Freddie tumbled over Tag as she pictured her now up at the cafe, the blue apron she always chose to wear wrapped round her. What time was it? Tag glanced at her watch and smiled. It was four thirty. Right now Freddie would be sitting at one of the tables, drinking her last cup of coffee of the day. Despite h
ow quiet it might or might not be the next day, she’d be thinking ahead to the menu. You had to, she’d told Tag once, otherwise you might just as well give up. Guilt pinched at Tag. Right now, Tag knew, and despite everything, Freddie would still be mulling recipes over in her head, lost in her own thoughts. It was a well-worn routine that Tag now knew. That’s what made Freddie special. Adorable. And she’d still be worried, Tag was sure of it. Freddie was right, at the hospital: they did all rely on Tag. So she needed to go to her, right now, and reinforce to her that everything was going to be okay. She owed her that at least.

  Tag tapped a rhythm with her finger on the arm of the sofa. She needed to tell Freddie of her plan too. The damn good plan that had come to her while she’d lain in bed that night, unable to sleep, thanks to her persistent thoughts of Freddie that had ticker-taped through her mind the whole night. Tag needed to prove to Freddie that she was trustworthy and honourable. Now, more than before, Freddie needed to know Tag would always look out for her.

  “You’re tired,” Tag said to Blair. “So I’m going to leave you in peace.”

  Blair didn’t argue.

  Tag unfurled her legs from under her. The pull to go and see Freddie to reassure her that everything was going to be okay was too strong. She stood and looked down at her brother. “You good? Need anything?”

  Blair shook his head.

  “Blair?”

  He looked up.

  “I meant everything I said in the hospital,” she said. “So let me get us out of this mess and get the mill up and running again, just like it used to.”

  “How?” Blair blinked wearily. “Where do we even start?”

  “We’ll talk some more about it tonight.” Tag walked out the door. She pulled her phone from her pocket and pointed it at him. “For now, rest.” She automatically dialled the number she wanted. Last call dialled. Last call received. No need to look it up any more. The panic when Freddie didn’t immediately answer drifted to relief when she finally answered on the sixth ring.

  “It’s me.” Tag’s heart crashed against her ribs. “Can I come up and see you?”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Just as Tag had anticipated, when she arrived up at the cafe, Freddie was bowed over her notebook, coffee cup by her side. The sight warmed Tag. Familiarity. Routine. Her hand on the cafe’s door handle, Tag watched her through the door’s small windows, wondering how someone in a flour-spattered apron could look so endearing. Freddie, completely unaware that Tag was watching her, continued to scribble in her notebook, a look of concentration on her face.

  Finally, Tag entered.

  Freddie glanced at the clock on the wall. “Seven minutes.” She smiled. “You’re getting quicker. I timed you.” Her face flushed so adorably, it was all Tag could do to not go straight to her and pull her into her arms. Instead, Tag hung back.

  “I’m jotting down some ideas for this place.” Freddie tapped her notebook by way of explanation. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I put my mind to work.”

  “Me neither.” Tag caught her eye. “Sleep, I mean.”

  A shared memory of the hospital canteen flitted between them. Realizing she was still standing by the doorway, Tag walked to Freddie’s table and slid herself onto the chair opposite her.

  “I wanted to talk to you about yesterday.” Tag’s voice was small. She cleared her throat. “About how we left things.”

  Freddie lifted her eyes to Tag’s but didn’t respond. Tag took her silence as a spur to carry on.

  “I think we could be good together.” Was she talking about the business now? She had no idea. “It could work.”

  “Do you want it?” Freddie asked slowly.

  “I do.” Tag’s heart thrummed. Was Freddie reading between the lines? Freddie’s expression remained impassive, but her eyes, Tag noted, blazed.

  “In the canteen. Last night.” Tag wanted to reach across the table, but something held her back. “I wanted to…”

  “I know. Me too.”

  “You’ve no idea how much.”

  Tag watched as Freddie looked down at her notepad, then back to Tag. Her expression had changed, as though just looking at her notes had jolted Freddie back to the here and now, taken her out of whatever cloud she’d just been in.

  “I’m scared.” Freddie’s voice was almost a whisper. “Scared of what might happen.”

  Tag was confused. Was she talking about her future at the cafe? Or a future with Tag?

  “This place is my life.” Freddie frowned. “It’s all I’ve ever known and all I probably will ever know.”

  “Forget anything you’ve ever heard about me or thought about me,” Tag said. “I want to help. I want us to be a team. You and me.” Freddie would be formidable, Tag knew. She knew the place inside out; if there was anyone who could help get them out of the mess that they were in, then Freddie could.

  “I need this job. Skye needs me to have this job.” Freddie’s voice grew emphatic. “That’s why I’m so fiercely loyal to the place.”

  Tag’s heart fell heavy. Freddie was putting up a wall, brick by brick, in front of her very eyes. Tag wanted to talk about them. Freddie didn’t. Freddie, it seemed, wanted to talk about anything but them. The wall was still impenetrable. Well, she could talk business.

  “Look, it was circumstances that got us into this mess in the first place,” Tag said. “The bypass. The poor summers. Okay, Dad didn’t help by ignoring our problems, but if we can work out a way to pull customers back, then I think we have a fighting chance.”

  Now Freddie looked so lost. As though everything hinged on Tag’s words and, depending on what she now said, Freddie would either be in floods of tears or running from her. A rush of protection washed over Tag.

  “I know I can help.” Tag was on a roll. If she stopped now, then what? Freddie would never hear all the things Tag had spent over twenty-four hours thinking about saying to her. “I don’t want to let Magnus down any more. Or Blair. I think I’ve let everyone down enough already,” she said. “But no more.”

  “How are you going to fix things?” Freddie asked.

  “I have a plan.” Tag grinned. “And like I just told Blair, you’ll have to wait to hear about it for a while.”

  “A plan?” Freddie asked.

  “A bloody good one.”

  “I’m glad.” Freddie visibly relaxed.

  “So are we good?” Tag held up her hands. “No more worrying?” A smile touched her lips.

  Freddie studied her. “We’re good,” she said, nodding. She took her empty cup to the sink, and started to hum a tune that Tag couldn’t recognize, mostly thanks to the fact that Freddie occasionally veered off-key at the higher notes, before settling back down to normal for the chorus.

  Not that Tag cared. She was transfixed by Freddie, humming her out-of-tune song. Her heart—which friends had always joked was made entirely from flint, quite incapable of ever being broken by anyone—was now shattering into a thousand shards, mainly because she’d gained Freddie’s trust. Freddie believed in her, and Tag had never been so relieved. That’s what Freddie did to her. That’s what wanting Freddie did to her.

  “So, what have you done today?” Freddie glanced over her shoulder at her as she rinsed the cup.

  “Snowboarding,” she said. “With Magnus.”

  “You cool dude.” Freddie grinned.

  “Not so cool when I kept falling over.”

  Freddie faced away again. Tag’s gaze returned to Freddie’s body.

  “How many times?” Freddie stole another look to her. Tag instantly looked away and studied the menu in front of her. Had she been caught looking?

  “Hmm?”

  “Today. Snowboarding.” Guess not. “Falling. How many times?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Are you sure you’re not exaggerating the truth there?”

  Tag met Freddie’s eyes. A mischievousness danced across them.

  “Couple of times, that’s all. I swear.” A rush of p
leasure hit Tag as Freddie met her grin with the loveliest look on her face Tag thought she’d ever seen. They were okay again. Back to how they were. “Ask Magnus.”

  “I will.” Freddie wiped her hands down her apron. She pulled the grip from her hair, letting it tumble around her shoulders. “He’ll tell me the truth.”

  “He’ll tell you that he took me out at least five times on the way down,” Tag said. “Don’t believe him. The kid exaggerates.”

  Freddie sat opposite Tag again.

  “I’m glad you came up here,” she said. “I wanted to call you all day, but…”

  But, what? Tag studied her face, searching for clues. She’d been too scared? Just like Tag had been scared?

  “You want my help,” Freddie continued, “and I’m glad of it. I really do want to work with you to get this sorted. I like the idea of me and you being a team.”

  “Me too.” The expression on Freddie’s face was just too much. “We’ll come up with something between us all, I’m sure.”

  “Thanks. I mean that.” Freddie paused. “Now are you going to tell me what your plan is?”

  Tag considered her answer. “I reckon the whole place needs an overhaul,” she eventually said. “A rethink.”

  “Mm.” Freddie scanned around her. She looked at the walls, the paintings. “You mean like a rebranding?”

  Tag’s antennae sprang up. “Just like a rebranding, yes.” A thought wormed its way in. “A redevelopment. New advertising, new features. Inject new life into the place.”

  “Except…”

  “Except?”

  “If the mill’s already in debt,” Freddie said, “how do we afford it?”

  “We do it ourselves.” Tag sat back. “We do the redesign ourselves. I thought Magnus could do some drawings,” she continued. “I’m going to photograph this place and Magnus can put his own swing on them via his sketches.” She stood up and started walking around the cafe.