People could say what they liked about Welsh seaside towns, but in Mia Page’s opinion, there weren’t many better ways to start a June day than walking barefoot on the beach.

Shoes in hand, she wriggled her toes against the dry sand and stared out over the glistening waves, cheerfully ignoring the line of dead jellyfish left behind by the retreating tide. Even at eight-thirty in the morning, the salt air was already filling with the familiar seaside scents of frying chips and a hint of sugary rock.

‘Magda’s trying to persuade me to open StarFish for breakfasts, and close two nights a week,’ Charlie said, walking beside her with his hands in his pockets. He still had his shoes on, even though Mia had tried to explain to him a hundred times over the course of their friendship that the only proper way to walk on a beach was barefoot. ‘Says we’ll get more customers that way. More people can afford a quick breakfast than a three course dinner.’

‘Makes sense,’ Mia said. ‘But you don’t want to?’

Charlie sighed, and Mia snuck a sideways glance at him as they walked. He looked tired, his broad shoulders slumped. ‘I just always wanted StarFish to be a proper seafood restaurant, I guess. Not just another café diner surviving on serving coffee.’

‘Can’t you be both?’ Mia laughed at the filthy look he gave her. ‘Your problem is that you still think you’re in London, where enough people can afford to eat out every night of the week if they want.’

‘Oh, it’s pretty clear I’m not in London any more,’ Charlie said, gesturing to the seafront and then the rows of pastel coloured houses up above. ‘The smell apart from anything else.’

‘You mean the glorious, reviving sea air,’ Mia corrected him.

‘Something like that.’ Charlie shook his head, then gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Besides, as Magda keeps pointing out, without a few more customers I’ll never be able to afford to move back there anyway.’

A chill hit Mia’s chest, and she tried to convince herself it was the breeze. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Charlie didn’t want to be in Aberarian. That, but for an evil ex-girlfriend and an economic downturn, he wouldn’t be there at all. When it was just them, catching a midnight movie or tasting new dishes at the restaurant, she could almost believe this was enough for him – their friendship, her hometown.

But every now and then, she couldn’t forget that her best friend would be hightailing it back to London, the first chance he got. Which was just enough to make sure she never let on how much she didn’t want him to.

‘I can’t imagine why you’d want to,’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘I mean, who could bring themselves to leave all this?’

Mia turned slowly around, surveying her domain as Charlie watched her with an amused grin on his face. The caves, just up the coast, where A to Z Jones’s smuggler gang were said to have hidden, back in the day. The lighthouse on the cliff above, and beside it the tumbledown lighthouse keeper’s cottage she’d dreamt of owning as a child. The Esplanade, with its dated hotels and faded guesthouses, spanning the length of the beach.

Her boss, attacking the postman on the Esplanade.

‘Oh hell. What is she doing now?’ Mia gave her toes one last wriggle, then tugged her shoes back on. ‘Sorry, it looks like I have to rescue Jacques from Ditsy. I’ll see you later, though?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Charlie stared up at the Esplanade. ‘And you’re right. I can’t imagine how I could ever think of leaving this place,’ he added, as Ditsy walloped Jacques in the stomach with her handbag. 

Mia stuck her tongue out at him and dashed up the stone steps from the beach to the town above. Ahead of her, Ditsy Levine, seventy-six and still spectacular, dressed in a shocking pink and green floral tea dress, had Jacques’ arm twisted up behind his back and was trying to prise a selection of envelopes from his hand. Jacques was not giving in easily.

‘Ditsy, what on earth are you doing?’ Mia grabbed the much older woman around the waist, more to steady her than stop her, since Ditsy looked about to topple over.

‘Getting our post,’ Ditsy said through gritted teeth, succeeding at last in peeling one of Jacques’ fingers out of the way.

Jacques –who’d arrived in Aberarian from France two months before Mia was born, twenty-eight years ago, yet still complained about the weather –was not the world’s most efficient postman. But he did have a system. He started his deliveries on the outer streets of the small seaside town and spiralled his way in to the centre until he reached the post office again. Ditsy’s A to Z shop, being next door to the post office-cum-newsagents on the main street, was his last stop. Quite often, the workday had effectively ended by the time he handed Mia her mail.

‘If somebody would employ a sensible delivery system,’ Ditsy carried on, separating another finger from the letters, ‘I wouldn’t have to resort to such actions.’

‘Fine, fine!’ Jacques finally released the post, and the sudden action caused Ditsy to jerk backwards, pushing Mia against the railing separating the Esplanade from the rocks leading down to the sandy beach. Glancing down, she could see Charlie walking back along the beach the way they’d come, heading for StarFish and another day not serving breakfasts. From the slump of his shoulders, he didn’t look happy about it.

With a sigh, Mia turned back to see Ditsy settling her skinny frame onto a nearby bench and sorting through her mail. Jacques rooted around in his inside pocket and pulled out another envelope. Ditsy made a disgruntled noise from the bench, obviously personally offended he’d kept any mail hidden from her.

‘Since we’re ignoring any sense of order today, you might as well have this too.’ Jacques shoved the letter into her hands. ‘It was addressed to your mother’s old house, but I would have brought it over to you.’ He sounded hurt at the accusations thrown at him for doing his job in an orderly manner, and for a moment Mia wondered if he was hanging around for an apology from Ditsy, in which case she suspected everyone’s post would still be waiting to be delivered tomorrow.

Then she glanced down at the envelope. Written across the reverse flap was a return address: G E Page, 15 Cottle Way, Cottlethorpe, East Yorkshire. Well, at least she knew where dear old Dad had got to now. And it had only taken him fourteen years to write. Suddenly it was very clear why Jacques was still there.

Mia pushed the letter into the corner of her handbag. She wasn’t giving Jacques, and by extension everyone on his post round, the satisfaction of knowing what her father had to say to her. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know herself.

‘Thank you.’ She turned away and grabbed Ditsy’s arm, pulling her up from the bench. ‘But we’ve got a shop to open.’ Ditsy followed, after returning to Jacques all the letters addressed to other people. They left him reordering it according to his spiralling system.

‘You really shouldn’t attack people in broad daylight, you know,’ Mia said, once Jacques was out of earshot and they were safely headed up Water Street. ‘It’s not going to make these people like us any more.’

Ditsy bristled. ‘They like me just fine, thank you very much. They just preferred my sister.’

‘They think you’re ornery,’ Mia corrected, peeking through the window of StarFish seafood restaurant to see if Charlie was at work yet. He wasn’t.

‘I’m seventy-six. It’s my right.’ Mia didn’t have an argument for that. As far as she was concerned, Ditsy had earned the right to do whatever the hell she liked. It was just a shame the rest of the town didn’t always agree.

Passing the crumbling Coliseum cinema, with its peeling yellow paintwork and faded movie posters three years out of date, Mia waved to Walt Hamilton, who was opening up for another day of classic movies and stale popcorn. Walt raised a hand to wave back, but lowered it when his wife, Susan, glared first at him then at Mia.

Susan thought Mia was more than ornery. Mia was pretty sure Susan thought she was a disgrace. Another reason to be glad that she’d turned down Dan Hamilton’s proposal and gone to university instead, ten years before. Susan as a mother-in-law would have been unbearable.

‘So, who’s the letter from?’ Ditsy went on, sounding like she didn’t care, as they turned onto Main Street and the tarnished brass sign above the A to Z shop came into view.

Mia rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t pretend Jacques didn’t tell you. I’m sure he’s told every single person on his rounds this morning. And I don’t for a second believe you were actually attacking him to get the phone bill and a Fish Festival flyer.’

‘I just can’t believe he was hiding it in his pocket,’ Ditsy grumbled, fumbling for her keys. ‘All that wasted energy. I’m going to need a nap today. You might not get your afternoon off, after all.’

Ditsy’s A to Z shop was an institution in Aberarian. It had been there all of Mia’s life, and before, and any visitor to the town always remembered it long after they’d forgotten the jellyfish and the boat trips. Usually because they’d spent twenty-five minutes searching for mustard before realising every item in the shop was stored alphabetically on the twenty-six antique wooden shelves, each with a gilt letter resting atop them. It wasn’t practical, or particularly profitable, but it was certainly memorable.

‘Speaking of the Fish Festival,’ Ditsy said, pushing the door open, ‘they’re in trouble again.’

Ditsy struggled out of her camel hair jacket, revealing the full glory of the floral fantasia of fabric draped over her skinny body and tied with a pink and yellow beaded necklace for a belt around the waist. ‘The only person who ever cared what I looked like died a decade ago,’ Ditsy always said. ‘Besides, I like flowers.’ The camel hair coat found its way onto the usual peg behind the counter, next to Mia’s apron, and Ditsy dropped onto the stool by the till.

Mia pulled off her jacket to reveal her more sedate tea dress. As uniforms went, she supposed it wasn’t a bad one. Ditsy claimed they gave the shop a retro feel. Mia secretly believed the tea dress choice had more to do with Ditsy’s reluctance to go clothes shopping over the last few decades than any business motivation.

She pulled her attention back to the Fish Festival. ‘Again?’

Ditsy nodded. ‘Getting harder to pull it off every year, it seems.’

‘Well, they’re really in for it this year, then.’ Ditsy raised an eyebrow, and Mia explained, ‘With Mayor Fielding stepping down and all. It won’t be her problem by the autumn, so why should she care?’

‘You’re far too cynical, my dear.’ Ditsy reached over and patted her hand. ‘Now, time to get to work.’

They settled into their usual routine – Ditsy made the first cups of tea while Mia checked the till, set up the float from the safe in the back room, and straightened up the stock. When they were ready, she flipped the Closed sign over to Open, and they both sat down to wait for an influx of customers at nine o’clock.

Three hours, four customers –two tins of baked beans, a packet of chocolate hobnobs, and five hundred grams of plain flour – and eight cups of tea later, Ditsy asked, ‘Now, what are you going to do with your free afternoon?’

‘I can stay, if you like,’ Mia offered. Ditsy did look tired after her morning’s exertions.

‘Not at all. Not a word of it,’ Ditsy said. ‘It’s your afternoon off. And it might be your last chance before the summer rush starts. So, tell me, what have you got planned?’

The summer rush, Mia feared, grew less rush-like by the year. Last summer had been more of an amble. She sighed. ‘Nothing much. Although I did have some ideas about a large bar of chocolate and an Agatha Christie.’

Ditsy looked scandalised. ‘An attractive young thing like yourself, with no plans for an afternoon off? Nobody whisking you off for a romantic walk on the beach? Or champagne cocktails at the Grand? What will become of you?’

‘I’m meeting Charlie for a tasting and the cinema tonight, if that’s any better.’ Mia tried to imagine her morning walk with Charlie as romantic, but couldn’t. Especially since they’d mostly talked about how he wanted to leave her and Aberarian behind.

‘Charlie doesn’t count.’ Ditsy’s expression turned suspicious. ‘Unless there’s something you haven’t been telling me. You haven’t finally persuaded that handsome young man to break his vow of celibacy?’

The excitement in Ditsy’s eyes at the prospect was profoundly disturbing. ‘He’s a chef, not a priest, Ditsy. And it’s not a vow, as such. It’s understandable he’s reluctant to get into another relationship after Becky.’ She gave Ditsy a meaningful look, and the older woman looked suitably sheepish as she remembered exactly whose niece it was who had brought Charlie to town to start a new life then left him there alone with a restaurant, a fallen-down cottage and a broken heart. Not to mention the ways she’d made Mia’s life hell when they were teenagers.

‘Besides, Charlie and I are just friends.’ Mia quashed the small part of her that sometimes –very occasionally, mind – wondered what would happen if that wasn’t the case. No point dwelling on impossible things.

‘Which is my point!’ Ditsy said, raising a finger in triumph. ‘When are you going to find someone who isn’t just a friend?’

‘In Aberarian? Probably never.’ Mia sighed. She loved her hometown and had fought hard to stay there despite the decline in business, the gossips and the jellyfish. But it wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams with eligible bachelors. Which was another thing. She didn’t want Charlie – or anyone else for that matter – to fall into a relationship with her through lack of alternative options. She was worth a little more than that, thank you.

Ditsy looked sympathetic. ‘Well, who knows? Maybe the summer crowd will have some lookers this year.’

‘All married with small children on a family holiday at the seaside. Just what I’m searching for.’ She wasn’t even really searching. Life was pretty good just how it was. She had her flat above the shop, her friends… and a letter from her father in her bag. Mia’s mood took a downward slump.

Rolling her eyes, Ditsy shuffled into the back room and Mia heard the click of the kettle switch again. ‘Well with that kind of attitude there’s no hope for you. Just let me make another cup of tea to keep me going and I’ll let you run free to do your laundry or whatever.’

Mia let herself smile, since Ditsy couldn’t see her. ‘Own up, Ditsy, you just want to live vicariously through me.’

‘Of course!’ Ditsy stuck her head through the doorway. ‘I thought that much was obvious. It’s ten years since my Henry died. I’ve got to get my kicks somewhere, you know.’

‘Ditsy, I really don’t want to know about your…’ Mia trailed off as she realised Ditsy was paying her no attention whatsoever. The grin on the older woman’s face had spread even wider, and she pointed a sharp, bony finger towards the window.

‘Now,’ Ditsy said, her eyes bright. ‘What about him, then?’

It would have been less embarrassing, Mia thought, if the – admittedly very attractive – man on the other side of the glass hadn’t chosen that exact moment to look up and smile at them. Unfortunately, Mia’s world didn’t seem to believe in less embarrassing.

She groaned, sinking down onto her stool, bowing to the inevitable. The guy pushed open the door, ringing the antiquated shop bell above it. Mia tried for a polite customer service smile, but Ditsy had everything under control anyway.

‘Good afternoon,’ Ditsy said, her own smile manically bright. ‘And how can I help you this fine day, Mr…’

‘Anthony Fisher. Call me Tony,’ he said, unfazed by Ditsy’s really rather frightening grin. Mia was almost impressed. ‘And I’m looking for a guidebook to the town, if you have such a thing.’

‘We most certainly do,’ Ditsy said. Mia started to get up to collect the Aberarian guide from the G shelf, and the corresponding map from shelf M, but Ditsy flung out an arm to keep her in her seat. ‘But actually, you’re in luck. For one day only, I can offer you something much better.’ Mia tried to break free, but the old woman’s arm was strong.

‘Really?’ Tony leaned his forearm on the counter and raised an eyebrow at Ditsy. ‘Lunch with you?’

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. ‘Haven’t found a woman willing to take me on, yet!’

At that, Ditsy pushed Mia off her stool, slung her handbag and jacket into her stomach, and shoved her towards 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 even 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.

‘Or we could open for breakfasts…’ Magda started, then trailed off when he glared at her. ‘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 Nightat 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-grey 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. He smiled, remembering the blissful look on Mia’s face as she’d dug her bare toes into the sand that morning. He didn’t often manage to join Mia on her morning walks, but it was always worth it when he did. She never looked as happy as when she was walking along Aberarian beach in the early morning light.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he let himself imagine that he could make her look like that. But not too often. Mia would always snap him out of it with a comment about what a good friend he was, or how he’d be back in London where he belonged, any day now.

With one last glance at the sea, he cast Mia out of his mind and jogged up the stairs towards Joe’s.

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, realising 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 chilli for the locals, then we go to the cinema to see something in black and white, pretty much every Saturday. You know this.’ Everyone knew this. Everyone knew that he and Mia were just friends. Mia made very sure of that.

‘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. What with her dad, then Dan, and whatever the guy in London was called driving her crazy.’ Joe rolled his eyes as he said it. ‘And because you’re too hung up on 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 still be talking about what George Page did. Not to mention the whole Dan debacle.’

‘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 sound of distant waves rolledup 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.

And maybe Mia was right. Maybe he would make it back to London one day. Even if he wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing. Aberarian, as Mia often told him, had many charms.

He paused at StarFish’s door as he saw Mia farther up the street, and it took him a full thirty seconds to realise that not only was she not alone, he also 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, towards 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.

 

• Text Copyright © 2014 by Sophie Pembroke
• Cover Art Copyright © 2014 by HQ Digital
• Permission to reproduce text granted by HQ Digital. Cover art used by arrangement with HQ Digital. All rights reserved.