An A to Z of Love

by Sophie Pembroke

  Ditsy shook her head. “Even better. Your very own tour guide, free of charge.”

  Mia had a horrible feeling she knew exactly where this was going. But Ditsy was freakishly strong for a seventy-six-year-old, and Mia could see no clear way of escaping that didn’t involve pushing her employer to the ground. It was tempting, she admitted, but possibly not the best of career moves.

  “It just so happens today is Mia’s afternoon off, and she is sadly lacking in plans.” Ditsy grinned at her own cleverness. “She’d just love to show you around town, get you familiar with us, help you get a real feel for the place.” Mia wasn’t sure how it was possible to make a tour sound quite so suggestive.

  “A real tour guide would be very helpful,” Tony said, grinning this time. He really did have a very attractive smile. “I’m here for some business, you see, and if it goes well, I’m hoping to be spending quite some time in Aberarian.”

  “With your family?” Mia asked, keen to nip this one in the bud before Ditsy got any more excited.

  “Oh, I’m not married,” Tony told her. “Just haven’t found the right woman yet.”

  At that, Ditsy pushed Mia off her stool, slung her handbag and jacket into her stomach, and shoved her toward the door. “Well, then. You two have fun!”

  As the shop door shut the musty smell of the A to Z shop behind them, Tony burst into laughter. Mia, trying very hard to stay cross with Ditsy, managed to keep a straight face for all of ten seconds before joining him.

  “We start our tour,” she told him when she was finally calm enough to speak, “with the irrepressible Ditsy Levine, proprietor of the strangest shop on the North Wales Coast and perpetual matchmaker.”

  “I like her,” Tony said, in between chuckles. “After all, her matchmaking got me a guided tour of Aberarian.”

  “That it did,” Mia agreed, gazing around the small town square and down the main street and wondering how long she could spin it out for. Since Ditsy had gone through so much trouble to set her up, she supposed she should make the most of it. “So, what do you want to see?”

  “Everything,” Tony said, tucking her hand through his arm like they’d known each other for years instead of minutes. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  Mia swallowed, wondering exactly what Ditsy had let her in for. “Let’s start with the beach.”

  * * * *

  “Are these all the bookings there are for the weekend?” Charlie Frost stared at the almost-blank page in front of him, knowing before she answered that Magda was going to say yes.

  “So far,” Magda said, because she was tactful and, Charlie knew, because last time she’d gently suggested perhaps they should look at closing the kitchen for a couple of days midweek, he’d bitten her head off. She learned fast, it seemed.

  He sighed. “It’s all we’re going to get, and you know it. What about the...” He waved his hands in what he hoped was an illustrative manner. “Thing with the dairy delivery. Did you get it fixed?”

  “All sorted. And there’ll be some walk-ins,” Magda said, her Polish accent managing to sound hopeful even as she peered over his shoulder and winced. Charlie wondered again how a twenty-two-year-old girl who’d come to Britain to experience the bright lights of London had ended up practically running his restaurant in Aberarian, and decided he was just grateful she had.

  “Not enough.” Charlie slammed the book shut. “I’ll have to go see Joe. Cut the order.” He could phone, of course, or even email, but that would mean staying in the almost empty restaurant, watching his dreams continue to circle the drain.

  Magda nodded, her eyes understanding. “I can look after things here.”

  The early lunch crowd–all of two tables–had almost finished anyway. And as yet there was no sign of a later lunch crowd. Charlie supposed they might get a couple of stragglers, if they were very lucky, but otherwise he was shutting up shop at three and then he was free. Magda had the reins for the night, and Kevin had control of the kitchen. Charlie had plans–a tasting with Mia, meaning he’d be on the customers’ side of the restaurant that evening. Then a midnight showing of It Happened One Night at the Coliseum. There were worse ways to spend a Saturday night.

  “Thanks.” He stored the book on the shelf under the front desk. “It won’t take me long.”

  The fresh air as he walked along the front to Joe’s shop was a pleasant relief from the vanilla potpourri Magda had installed on the reception desk at the StarFish. Her theory was, people came to eat the fish, not smell it. Charlie felt people should really expect a little fish stink from a seafood restaurant.

  Past the sea wall, the yellowy-gray sand stretched out to the currently distant sea, revealing shells and stranded jellyfish along the shoreline. The tide had turned, though. Only a matter of time before the detritus of the ocean washed away again.

  Joe’s fishmonger and butcher shop was empty except for Joe himself, stacking cockle shells on the fish counter and staring balefully across at the abandoned butcher’s counter, his apron spotless.

  “Slow day?” Charlie asked from the door, amused as always that Aberarian, realizing it wasn’t big enough to support both a butcher and a fishmonger, had managed to combine the two so effectively.

  “Saturday.” Joe’s voice was glum. “Used to be one of our busiest, when Dad ran the place. Everyone came in for a bit of something special for Sunday tea from the other side. Now they just go to the Tesco in Coed-y-Capel.”

  “Not everyone,” Charlie said.

  Joe’s face brightened. “That’s right. So, got a nice big order for me this week, have you?”

  Charlie winced. “Actually...”

  “Might have guessed.” Joe knocked over his cockle shell tower with two fingers. “Come on then. Give it to me.”

  Sliding the amended order sheet across the counter, Charlie watched Joe’s eyebrows grow closer to his receding hairline as he read. “Business not much better for you either, then.”

  “It’ll pick up in the summer,” Charlie said with a confidence he didn’t really feel. He wasn’t sure StarFish would make it to another winter if it didn’t.

  “It’s already June.”

  “When the school holidays start,” Charlie clarified. That gave them another month to hope.

  Joe tossed the order form into an empty filing tray. “You know what we need? A night off. A night of the blissful forgetfulness only supplied by drinking too many pints of ale at the Crooked Fox. Tonight. You in?”

  “Can’t,” Charlie said with a shake of the head. “Mia’s coming over for a tasting session for the new menu. Then we’re heading over to the Coliseum.”

  This prompted an impressive eyebrow waggle from Joe. “A date? A real one? A really real date?”

  “No. A standing arrangement where Mia tells me which of my dishes suck and what has too much chili for the locals, then we go to the cinema to see something in black and white, pretty much every Saturday. You know this.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know this.” Joe leaned farther across the counter. “What I don’t know and what, to be honest, is the only interesting thing to speculate about here, is when you’re going to finally just snog the hell out of her.”

  “Joe...”

  “Hell, bring her to the pub tonight. Couple of rum and Cokes and she’ll be begging you to kiss her.”

  “It’s not like that,” Charlie said. “We’re friends.”

  “Only because you think she’s too screwed up for love.” Joe rolled his eyes as he said it. “Be honest, if it wasn’t for the whole thing with her father making her crazy, you’d have dragged her into bed with you last year. Once you’d finished moping about Becky the Bitch.”

  “She’s not crazy. She’s just...” Charlie searched for the right words to describe Mia. Beautiful, sensitive, insecure, utterly uninterested in him... “Wary. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “If it were me, I’d have emigrated to Australia. Only place people might not know what he did.”

  “Besides, I don’t
want another relationship. They only end badly.” He’d much rather have Mia as his friend than as someone he’d once loved and now couldn’t bear to look at because she’d ripped his heart out and fed it to the fishes.

  “That we agree on, my friend,” Joe said, nodding sagely. “Next week for the pub, then?”

  “It’s a date,” Charlie promised with a grin.

  Amazingly, Charlie thought while walking home along the front, he did feel better. Enough that he could go back into his kitchen and not want to attack the freezer with a chef’s knife. Maybe it would be okay. There’d be walk-ins on Saturday night. And it wasn’t even July yet. Things would pick up when the sun arrived, when the holidays started.

  He just had to be patient, that was all.

  Reaching the corner of Water Street, where the town met the coastline, he saw the StarFish sign hanging a few feet away, the scent of the sea and the spray still splashing up from the beach, and he remembered exactly why this had been the perfect place for his dream restaurant, with his dream girl. The place to raise a family and grow old.

  Well. He still had the restaurant, anyway.

  He paused at the door as he saw Mia farther up the street, and it took him a full thirty seconds to realize that not only wasn’t she alone, he didn’t know the man she was with. Or why she was holding his arm. Or what he’d said to make her laugh so openly, her face shining and bright with the sort of relaxed joy Charlie had never yet managed to get her to show.

  Charlie blinked. Mia hadn’t noticed him at all, and was already leading her friend farther along Main Street, toward the tiny rundown cinema. She’d tell him all about it later, he was sure. There was probably a perfectly innocent explanation.

  Except it didn’t need to be innocent, did it? Because he had absolutely no claim on her anyway.

  Depressed once again, Charlie pushed open the door and retreated into the dream restaurant that had become a nightmare.

  Chapter 2

  Becky waited until she saw Tony and Mia take the turning down Water Street, toward the Esplanade, before she ducked out of the newsagent’s doorway and over to the A to Z shop next door.

  It had been a good idea, having Tony lure Mia away first; this was a family matter, after all. And Mia, for all they’d been friends as kids, before the thing with her dad, was never going to be family. She’d wondered how he’d managed it, but not for very long. Tony always seemed to manage to get what he wanted one way or another, often leaving the other party thinking it had been their idea in the first place. It was one of the reasons Champion Casinos were such a success.

  The other reason, of course, was that Becky got what she wanted pretty much all the time, too. When they worked together, they were unstoppable.

  The thought made Becky smile. Aberarian was going to roll over and beg for them to save it.

  It was a good feeling, knowing she was just one deal away from ruling her old hometown. She hadn’t been ready last time she’d come back. They hadn’t taken her seriously. But this time, they weren’t going to have a choice.

  She’d have her business, she’d have Charlie, she’d have her dream life. And, yeah, she’d have Tony to thank for it, she supposed. But he was a businessman. He’d understand the importance of shaping circumstances to get what you wanted.

  She was his protegee, after all. He’d probably be proud of her, once he got over the part about not being able to sleep with her anymore. It was almost a shame, that part. They were as fantastic together in bed as they were in business.

  Becky paused at the window of the A to Z shop before going in. No customers, of course. She hadn’t seen a single tourist all the way in from the station.

  Roll over and beg.

  Ditsy sat behind the counter, pouring over something–either the accounts or the crossword, probably. You could never tell with Aunt Ditsy. Becky paused, hand on the door, remembering better times for the shop, when Uncle Henry was still alive and sneaking sweets to his favorite niece. When she was still the town’s sweetheart and her biggest responsibility was remembering to keep the jars of lemon drops on the L shelf filled.

  With a deep breath, Becky pushed the door open, bracing herself for surprise and hugs and amazement. What she got instead, when Ditsy looked up from her papers, was a look of utter shock.

  “Hello, Aunt Ditsy,” she said with a calculatedly nervous smile.

  “I thought...” Ditsy still hadn’t moved from behind the counter. Becky felt a twinge of concern. Not the best start. “When you didn’t come home for your Aunt Hannah’s funeral, I thought we’d never see you in Aberarian again.”

  Ah. Right. “I felt just terrible about that, Auntie. I just... It was too soon for me, so soon after everything.” Ditsy nodded, the movement jerky, and Becky decided the best thing was probably just to steam ahead and hope Ditsy would forget, eventually, some of Becky’s failing as a niece. “But I’m back now. Things have been going really well for me in Manchester. And now I’ve got the opportunity to share some of my success...”

  But before Becky could get into the revelation that had prompted her return, the shop door opened again, its brass bell jingling as Mrs. Heather Jenkins entered and bustled straight up to the counter without acknowledging Becky’s presence at all. That wouldn’t last long. She was going to show them she mattered in this town.

  “Now, Ditsy, what’s all this about a letter from Mia’s father?” Mrs. Jenkins hadn’t become any less blunt over the years either, it seemed.

  Ditsy gave a frustrated sigh. “Heather, since I don’t want to spend all afternoon repeating myself, and now Mia’s out of the way I’m sure you’re not going to be the last to ask, could you just get Jacques to amend his story when he’s telling people? He just needs to tell them I have no idea who the letter was from, what it said, or even if Mia’s got any plans to open the damn thing. She certainly hadn’t when she left here.”

  Heather Jenkins gave an almost-snort of polite disbelief. “And I’m sure if she had you’d have told me all about it.”

  “Then why did you bother to ask?” Ditsy said with raised eyebrows. Check and mate. Aunt Ditsy had obviously been practicing that comeback.

  But even as Mrs. Jenkins left, grumbling under her breath, Becky could see the vicar, Dafydd Davies, striding purposefully toward the shop. Ditsy dashed out from behind the counter with surprising speed and flipped the sign on the door over to Closed, smiling with false apology at Reverend Davies while he fumed outside the window.

  “Never known a man of God to gossip so much,” Ditsy muttered, watching him turn and leave.

  Becky decided to seize the opportunity. “Since you’re closed early for the day,” she said, her mind already playing out the next part of her plan, “Why don’t we go and get lunch at StarFish? I’ve got a...business proposition I’d like to discuss with you.”

  Ditsy snorted, but reached for her coat. “You just want to see Charlie again.”

  Becky smiled. The plan was coming together just fine. Tony would be so proud.

  * * * *

  Mia led Tony along Main Street, toward the Esplanade, and stared at the town she’d lived in all her life with new eyes. It looked shabbier than she remembered, more rundown. And when had so many shops closed? One at a time, she supposed, and it was always sad when they did, but then two weeks later she’d forget about them. Until she had to find a way to make Aberarian interesting to an outsider, and she realized the whole place looked abandoned.

  Maybe she should tell him the tragic life of Mia Page, so he’d run screaming for the hills now, saving her the bother of scaring him off slowly, over time.

  Instead, she guided him down Water Street, past the bright blue and gold sign of StarFish, and drew his attention to the beautiful holiday homes on the other side of the street, rather than the charity shop and the Neil’s bucket and spade stall. She glanced into StarFish’s window, but it didn’t look like Charlie was there anyway, so there was no point stopping.

  On the corner of the E
splanade, she directed him to the window of Treasures, Kim Williams’s tourist trap, selling overpriced slate objects and Celtic-designed jewelry made overseas. That was what people wanted from a seaside town these days, wasn’t it?

  Although, if she was honest, Tony didn’t seem particularly interested in the town anyway.

  “So, you work in the A to Z shop?” Tony asked, turning away from Kim’s overly sentimental window display to point at a plaque beside it declaring the smuggler A to Z Jones had once stayed there. “Named for the man himself, I assume?”

  Mia shrugged. “Probably. Story goes he could get you anything from A to Z. A bit like an illegal Harrods. But it’s mainly because everything in the shop is arranged alphabetically.”

  “Really?” Tony paused in the middle of the pavement. “How the hell does that work?”

  “Badly, most of the time,” Mia admitted.

  “Huh.” Tony smiled. “Well, you did say she was crazy.”

  Mia didn’t reply, just took his arm and carried on in the direction of the beach. Maybe the sea views would win Tony over.

  But somehow, with Tony beside her, even the beach had lost some of its appeal.

  “Are those...jellyfish?” He stared, horrified, at the shoreline.

  Mia winced. “Yeah. They... We tend to get a lot of them, this time of year. They wash up with the tide and wash out again later. Usually.” Tony still looked horrified. “You’re not really seeing it at its best.”

  “What if you step on them?”

  “They sting.” Perhaps it was time to take Tony away from the jellyfish.

  “Well, you wanted the coast,” Mia said, leading him up to the Esplanade. Aberarian wasn’t the most exciting place on the planet, but it was her home and she loved it. And for some reason, it was important to her Tony like it too. “This is it.”

  Tony turned to her and smiled again, and Mia felt some of her worries fade away. “It most certainly is.”

  Not feeling she was making any progress, Mia started along the Esplanade, saying, “Well, there’s more to see, still.”