by Con Riley
Jude did, and Rob played an unsuccessful game of Tetris with his boxes of eggs, local produce, and chunky bars of hand-made soap. “I know, I know,” he said. “It’s not a practical vehicle. I should sell her and buy a Transit van instead, something big and boxy. You don’t have to tell me,” he added as if he expected Jude to do exactly that.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jude promised while admiring Betsy’s gleaming chrome before leaning in to rearrange Rob’s groceries, making short work of nesting each item with its neighbour, not an inch of boot space wasted. “Try stowing supplies for eight into the galley of a yacht for a few months, then talk to me about tight fits. This, by comparison, is easy. And anyway,” he said as he slid the egg box into a snug spot, “anyone who’d choose something like a Transit van over something this lovely needs their eyes tested. That’s like saying Tom should sail a car ferry instead of the Aphrodite because it could fit more clients.”
Jude still had his head in the boot making some last adjustments when Rob said, “Yeah?” almost questioning as if this was an argument that usually ran in a different direction. “You really think so?”
“Yes,” Jude said firmly. People paid a lot for the Aphrodite’s beauty. “And I like that you can feel it when you put your foot down. All that power so low to the ground? Makes you feel every mile you travel.” That was what sailing felt like as well—not always smooth, but physical and present.
Rob didn’t say anything in response. Instead, he held out his keys.
“You trust me to drive her? I thought you said she was priceless?”
Rob only nodded and Jude got in, strapping into the driver’s seat, engulfed all over again by the scent of leather—another reminder that Rob’s car was likely worth many times more than the rust buckets Jude’s mum and dad owned.
Had owned.
Jesus.
When was he going to wrap his head around which tense to use about them?
Thinking about it made him gruff. “What if I scrape it getting out of this space?” The lanes back to the main road weren’t exactly wide, either. “You ready to pay the excess on your insurance?” Because there was no way Jude could afford it.
Rob blinked at him from the passenger side, surprised, as he buckled his seatbelt. Then he squinted in a way that shouldn’t have been half so attractive. “You ever get to steer the yacht?”
“The Aphrodite? Yes, of course.” Sharing the work was a necessity with a small crew. Slicing through waves so fast his eyes had watered had been quite something, the first time. All that wind-power making her huge sails billow; the warm wooden deck creaking beneath his bare feet as she strained forward. His dad would have….
Jude swallowed.
He would have loved her.
Maybe Rob noticed his second silent struggle in as many minutes. He sounded more kind than teasing as he said, “I can’t help thinking that yacht must have been worth a whole lot more than Betsy.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“So quit worrying.” Rob reached across him, his lips brushing Jude’s cheek, seemingly accidental before he snagged the seatbelt and pulled it over Jude’s chest. “She’s insured for business use, and we’re partners.” He paused. “In the Anchor, I mean. After a fashion.”
That quick brush of lips hadn’t felt businesslike, nor did the way Rob still sat angled sideways, his gaze fixed on Jude before he let out a deep sigh. “Was it something I said?”
“What?”
“You seemed happy while we ate.”
He had been. “It was nice to see so many people here.”
“So why the long face now?”
That was much harder to verbalise. Conversations about his parents only left him hollow while he was still no closer to knowing what happened to them. “Just… just family stuff with no answer.” He unclenched his fingers from the steering wheel where they’d tightened. “A bit like what you don’t want to talk about.”
“You’re not going to let up, are you?”
“Asking about your dad?”
Rob’s nod was slight.
“Maybe I’m just confused.” Jude started the engine, which purred to life so much more smoothly than anything else he’d ever driven.
“About what?”
Jude reversed the car from its tight spot, concentrating. “About why you’re so anti your dad when he keeps trying to give you things.”
“Ancient history,” Rob said, gaze fixed out of the windshield.
“He sounds a lot like you.”
“Who? Dad?” Rob’s snort was surprised.
“He seems generous.” Jude hesitated before adding, “Like you’ve been with your time.”
Rob seemed to find the gorse lining the lane back to the coast road fascinating. He studied its yellow-flecked blur beyond the window before pulling out his phone and typing swiftly.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing down the date and time.” Rob added a few more lines of type. “Pretty sure this is the first time you’ve said anything nice about me.” He gestured for Jude to go on. “Anything else you want me to add to the list? Maybe about how you still fancy my pants off, because you can say it aloud if you want, Jude. We both know it’s what you’re thinking.”
He wasn’t wrong, but Jude didn’t rise to the bait Rob dangled, recognising it as a diversion tactic. Instead, he cast his line farther and into waters a whole lot deeper. Trees covering the lane made the windscreen reflective, Rob’s flinch visible when Jude said, “He has to miss you.”
“Well,” Rob finally said a long, slow minute later. “Like I said….”
“It’s complicated?”
“Yeah. That.” Rob’s gaze remained fixed on the screen of his phone for a few seconds before his face reanimated, segueing into a different subject as if his life depended on it. “You know what else was great about that village?” He raced on with his new topic just as smoothly as the car managed the incline inland, almost at the coast road junction already. “I’ll have to tell you myself because you probably didn’t even notice, but have a guess first.” He brandished his phone like it was some kind of clue to a puzzle Jude had no interest in solving. “Go on. Guess!”
“I don’t know. The way they’ve spread markets all through the year instead of just holding them in the summer?” Locals coming to Porthperrin in the same way year-round would breathe new life into the village. “The different festivals sound great too.” Art, music, and a book festival had been detailed on the leaflets on their table, and would likely attract more tourists.
“Nope.” Rob waggled his phone again as they crested the hill, text and app notifications chiming one after another as his phone found a signal. He raised his eyebrows as if Jude should make something of those sounds. “Oh my god. You really didn’t pay any attention, did you?”
It would only swell Rob’s head to tell him he’d been the focus of most of his attention. Jude chose to ignore the question rather than give him any more ammunition.
Rob responded as if he’d said no. “Okay, okay. I’ll give you one more clue. Think about while we were eating. What did you notice about everyone sitting around us?”
That they’d all been happy? Chatty? There had certainly been lots of laughter. Jude pulled at the seatbelt crossing his chest as if it had tightened. “There were a lot of families.”
“You are as thick as mince, aren’t you?” Rob said in wonder. “It’s a good thing you’re so pretty.” He held up his phone one more time. “Did you happen to notice if anyone was on their phone while we were there?”
Jude hadn’t noticed, but now that he thought about it, he couldn’t say that he had.
“It’s just like at home.” Rob pointed at a road sign for Porthperrin. “There’s virtually no signal.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
Rob didn’t answer.
Jude stopped at the coast road junction. “Which way, Rob?”
“Hang on.” Rob stared at his phone, reading a text messa
ge before saying, “Turn left.”
“Home? I thought you said we should stay out for the whole day? Give Lou some space.”
Rob held his phone towards him, Louise’s name at the top of the screen, her message only containing four words:
Come home right now.
Three dots appeared while he watched followed by another message.
We got an early booking.
The final text had Jude almost stalling Betsy’s engine.
It’s a food critic from London.
16
After reading that message, Jude drove back, very aware that Rob sat beside him in uncharacteristic silence. He finally spoke when the Porthperrin turnoff came into sight, his curt tone another signal that something was up.
“Pull over. There.”
“Why?” A food critic’s arrival meant they’d need to pull together, even if Lou had asked for some space. It was likely a good thing; a chance to show her that they could still work together. “Why don’t we go straight ho—” Jude cut off his question after he glanced Rob’s way, almost fooled for a moment that he sat next to a stranger. Jude stopped at the next lay-by. “What is it?”
“I need to make a quick call before the signal gets too patchy.” Rob selected a name from his contacts and held the phone to his ear, his body angled away and shoulders hunching. Someone answered. There was no salutation, no mention of a name to help Jude guess who Rob had called. All he said was, “Who did you send?” Then he straightened his shoulders. “Don’t pretend you don’t know why I’m calling. I know it must have been you.” He listened for a moment. “You’re telling me that a busy critic like Guy Parsons would come all the way from London for pub grub without you calling in a favour?”
Guy Parsons? When he wrote up a restaurant, the whole of London took notice, but that wasn’t the part of the conversation that had Jude frowning. Rob calling his menu pub grub had sounded dismissive.
Rob used the same phrase again. “Because pub grub is what you said I’ll be stuck serving, remember? Pub grub, until the Anchor folded? A complete waste of my training, let alone the prize-winnings.” Rob’s voice rose. “Is that why you’ve done this? So we’ll get a terrible write-up before we even get a chance to reopen?”
Jude quietly let himself out of the driver-side door. Through a break in the hedgerow, the harbour was visible, its sea wall a protective curve around what was left of Porthperrin. Then he glanced over his shoulder, breath catching at the sight of Rob white with anger. Even when other chefs had pulled stunts to wreck each other’s chances, Jude had only ever seen Rob laugh as if nothing mattered. Now, Jude saw visible fury and heard it too in the loud slam of Rob’s car door after he ended his call.
“That fucking, fucking….” Rob ran out of adjectives as he stalked over to Jude.
Jude supplied a noun. “Your dad?”
Rob’s phone rang in his hand. He thumbed it off without looking.
“You sure you don’t want to answer that?” It might have been Louise calling. Jude’s gaze strayed to the break in the hedge, and Rob’s, of course, followed.
“Oh, trust me. That won’t have been Lou. She’ll be too busy frantically clearing the last of the crap to call either of us right now.” He didn’t censor his thoughts, making zero attempt to sugarcoat them. “We still had a couple of weeks before the summer season kicked off,” he said, despairing. “There’s still so much shit to clear out. So much decorating still to do just to make it even half-way decent.”
“What’s any of that got to do with your dad?”
“Because he’s the reason we’re going to be forced to face criticism before we’re anywhere near ready.” He raked his fingers through his hair, pushing it away from his face and leaving his expression unguarded. Anger now warred with despair. “He says he did it as a favour. A village pub in the middle of nowhere isn’t most restaurant critics’ first choice of destination. It might keep us afloat if we get a good write-up.”
“And if we don’t,” Jude asked, although, in his heart, he knew the answer.
“Then we’re sunk before we’ve started.”
The next few days passed in a blur of preparations. All three of them ploughed through Louise’s chore list, Rob, in particular, working like a machine without an off-switch. No scuffed wall was safe from his paintbrush, no corner of the kitchen that didn’t gleam after he scoured it. When he didn’t come to bed in the boatshed by one o’clock on the third night, Jude went to find him.
The laptop screen in the office lit Rob’s face as he clicked between online reviews that Guy Parsons had written. “He’s going to slaughter us,” he sighed without looking away from the screen. Gone was the determined automaton Jude had witnessed over and over, striving hard to create perfection. Instead, a beaten man replaced him before the battle had even commenced.
“Then I’ll just tell him he’s not welcome.” Jude moved to close the laptop lid.
Rob stopped him. “Doing that would make it worse.”
“How.” Jude hesitated for a second before placing a hand on Rob’s shoulder. “I could go to the station early,” he suggested. “Tell him that his booking’s cancelled before he gets off the train from London.” He’d do it in a heartbeat if that dragged Rob back from a cliff edge he acted as if was his alone to jump from. “Seriously. This is our place. Ours. All of us.” And wasn’t that easier to admit now he’d witnessed Rob working flat out? “We get the final say. He can’t exactly write a review if he hasn’t eaten or slept here, so what’s the worst that could happen if I sent him packing?”
“The worst?” Rob’s chuckle was hollow. “Oh, the reviews where he hasn’t even eaten a bite are his most popular by a mile. We wouldn’t be the first place he broke before getting a single booking. He doesn’t even need to cross the threshold.”
Rob clicked open a scathing review. Jude read, his mouth drying. “Wow.” He read some more as Rob paged down to the comments, hundreds of readers agreeing online to never darken that business’ doorway. “At least not everyone reads Sunday papers these days.”
Rob scrolled to the bottom of the page and clicked on a blue bird icon. “This isn’t the only place his reviews post. And you don’t get hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter by being boring. Syndicating this kind of review—” he clicked open another review that decimated a fledgling business “—is how he makes his living.”
“So we’re screwed if we don’t let him come here, and screwed if we do?”
“Maybe.” Rob let out a deep sigh. “Probably, if I’m honest.” The look he cast Jude’s way was defeated. “I’m so sorry.”
Jude had seen and heard more than enough of that from Rob lately. He tightened his grip on Rob’s shoulder. “You don’t have a single thing to be sorry about.”
The next sound Rob let out was a groan, muscles knotted until Jude gripped his other shoulder as well, and Rob’s head fell forward. He gasped, “How much do I need to pay you to do that forever?” his voice muffled as he rested his forehead on arms he’d crossed over the desktop.
“No charge.” Jude kneaded another whimper from Rob as he chased tremors across Rob’s shoulders, smoothing them away. “But seriously,” he said as he squeezed. “No one could have worked harder than you.”
“Don’t.” Rob’s voice was so quiet even after he turned his face to one side. “Don’t say that.” His eyes were closed, the light from the PC screen painting his face technicolour. Jude didn’t like that any better than his former pallor.
He did shut the laptop then, leaving them both in near darkness, faint light spilling through the gap where the door stood ajar to the hallway. “Why not, Rob?” That light fell across a sheet of creamy card— the new menu Rob kept revising, featuring the showy signature dish he’d first watched Rob practice for the contest finale. He knelt by Rob’s side. “You have worked hard.” Harder here than Jude had ever seen him work during the contest, getting through each heat based on what Jude had guessed was nepotism, holding onto
his dad’s famous coattails. Of course, he’d been wrong about that. Rob had cooked well enough to win the title, after all. “So why shouldn’t I tell you the truth?”
“Because…” Rob opened eyes that were inky and shadowed. “You and Lou wouldn’t be under all this pressure if I hadn’t come here.”
“If you hadn’t come…?” Jude could only imagine how Louise had felt watching their home swamped, livelihood washed away while all alone, without him. “Rob, if you hadn’t come here, I’m not sure there would have been anything left by the time I got back.” The banks would certainly have called in all of the debts, creditors lined up to carve the Anchor into slices long before he could have got home to make any difference.
Jude let go of the last of his shame at finding the Anchor saved due to Rob’s investment; now gratitude made him honest as well. “I don’t care what happens with that critic. What you’ve done is more important. Yes, you’ve made the Anchor different, and yes I didn’t like that at first, but for the first time in my life, I get to be me here. Me. Exactly as I am, without hiding.” His gaze drifted to the colourful leaflets they’d brought home from their breakfast date. “You’ll bring this whole village back from the brink.” Then he tried to insert a touch of Rob’s humour. “Don’t forget, you’re Britain’s best new chef, for God’s sake,” a title Jude once would have killed for. “If this Guy wanker can’t see any of that… If he doesn’t like your menu or what you and Lou have done with the rooms here, that’s his loss.” He leaned in and repeated, “You earned that title. He’s lucky you’re letting him eat here before anyone else gets to.” The urge to kiss away the crease in Rob’s brow was almost overwhelming.
That crease deepened. “Don’t.” Rob’s breath shuddered. “Don’t be nice to me, Jude.”
“Why not?” From this close, Jude saw Rob quiver as though all of the muscles he’d worked hard to relax had pulled tight in concert. Him closing his eyes again gave Jude courage. “Come to bed.”
