Page 62 of Second Chance Summer
‘I’ll help tie up,’ she said, as he secured the bow rope to an old iron post.
‘OK.’ He threw the rope to her and she looped it around the cleat on the stern, tying it off with two hitches.
‘I’ve been practising,’ she said. ‘With the curtain cord in my cottage.’
He laughed. ‘We’ll make an islander of you yet.’
Finally, they were together on the quay, in the deep blue twilight of a June evening.
‘I have no problem with you staying on,’ he said.
‘I also thought it would give me the chance to help you finish Samphire and Starfish.’
‘It would, but you don’t need to do that. What about your own business? Aren’t you desperate to get back to it?’
‘Not as desperate as I was,’ she said, walking by his side up to the retreat, conscious of his quiet, solid presence beside her. It felt good, yet she was also conscious of the supermarket deal looming in the corner of her mind.
‘Is that a good thing?’ he asked.
‘When I arrived, I didn’t want to let go. Not even by a millimetre. I was clinging onto the business, my work – to all kinds of things – so hard, I was exhausted. I had to let go, let myself fall a little way, to realise that.’
They stood side by side, gazing out over the Atlantic where the horizon was still tinged with pink, a reminder of the day that had passed. Soon, the sky behind them would lighten again, hinting at a new day full of possibilities.
Lily had to seize them.
‘You understand what I’m saying?’ she said to Sam.
He let his eyes rest on the horizon. Lily waited, her pulse beating faster, hardly daring to imagine what might happen next.
‘I’m pleased you’re staying,’ he said, with a brief smile, before stretching and yawning. ‘Now, it’s late and I’m knackered. I think I’ll get an early night. I’ll take you to Bryher first thing so you can try to rearrange your flight.’
To her relief, he didn’t add ‘again’.
The next morning, Lily lay awake for a good while, wondering whether she’d made the right decision to stay – and why Sam had blown hot and cold the evening before. Were hismood swings the result of his break-up with Rhiannon? Had one woman left such scars on him that he was too scared to open himself up to another?
Lily wouldn’t know unless she asked him straight out and she wasn’t going to do that and risk shattering the fragile connection they’d built – or that she thought they had. She wondered which Sam she would see today: wounded lover, tender man or reluctant host.
In the end, he was polite and pleasant over breakfast but seemed preoccupied. She’d heard him talking on the radio to Aaron about soil pipes so decided she was being over-sensitive and that Sam was too busy worrying about finishing the bathrooms to give much thought to anything else.
He dropped her at the Bryher quay and immediately headed over the channel to Tresco where he said he was meeting Aaron.
Lily had her own list of tasks and the first was to break it to Richie that she wanted to stay on for the craft fair. Boss she might be, but she had an inkling he wouldn’t understand why she was staying away to open a few market stalls. She kept privately questioning the wisdom of her decision and was steeling herself before the call with a slice of carrot cake on the café’s terrace.
In the event, the surprise WhatsApp video call she received from Étienne felt like fate.
‘Hello, Lily! Thank goodness I got you,’ he said, sounding almost out of breath. ‘My God, that sky looks blue. It’s pissing down here, which is why I’m standing under thecar-park machine shelter outside the hospital. Now, listen up,’ he said, holding up a Greggs paper bag. ‘I’ve got exactly ten minutes to down a cappuccino, eat a cardiac-inducing doughnut and ask you a bloody enormous favour.’
Did he need her to dash home for some emergency? He sounded agitated – or perhaps he was simply buzzing from adrenaline, sugar and caffeine.
Lily’s stomach clenched. ‘Are the girls alright?’ she said with sudden alarm, knocking her cake fork onto the terrace.
‘Oh, they’re fine. They’re more than fine. They’re bouncing off the bloody ceiling and that’s why I’m asking you a favour. Look, a miracle has happened: the teachers are on strike the Friday after next.’
‘And that’s a good thing?’
‘Yes, because I also have the weekend off duty and a day owing … so basically, we could come and see you. We’ll need a place to stay, though, and I haven’t even checked if there’s any way of getting to you, but the girls have already worked it out and seem to think they can click their heels three times and be beamed up to you. Now I’ve said all that, it’s probably a ludicrous idea …’
‘Not ludicrous. It sounds absolutely amazing. I’d love to show you Stark but I was supposed to leave the island that day.’
