Rosa fingered her wedding ring and with true doggy intuition, Hot put his paw on his mistress’s foot and looked up at her. ‘Come on, Mr Sausage,’ she sighed, ‘let’s take you for a walk and go and get us both some dinner.’
Saying ‘Mr Sausage’ made Rosa think of Lucas – aka Luke to her. Luke was what he had called himself when they had first met; when he was on a find-out mission for his mother at the Corner Shop. It was Luke who had immediately nicknamed Hot ‘Mr Sausage’, making her laugh. She wondered why he hadn’t been down to the Bay to see Sheila for so long. Yes, his mother, Sheila Hannafore, landlady of the Ship Inn, was a tricky character – but it just seemed odd that Luke hadn’t been seen since before last Christmas. That was the time when she had drunkenly thrown herself at him – the night she had been convinced that Josh was having an affair. It was months ago now, coming up to a year soon, and there’d been no sign of him since. Yet Luke had taken great pride in telling her that he never missed a summer or Christmas down in the Bay.
How would she feel about him if she did see him.? Rosa asked herself. There was undoubtedly a spark of passion between them, but this had been ignited carnally just once. Single at the time, Rosa had only been in the Bay for a matter of days and was feeling out of her depth in the shop and its shabby, cold and neglected first-floor flat. Luke had deceived her, and she really should have had nothing more to do with him but, just as she had done with so many other men before Luke, she gave herself to him, driven by loneliness, pure lust and the need of human touch in any form.
In marrying Josh, she had made the choice between security and risky freedom. Lucas was handsome, with a twinkle in his eye and the gift of the gab, but Josh was steady and dependable, good-looking and reliable. And after the turmoil that she had faced throughout her life, Rosa realised that ‘reliable’ was all right. It had taken a long time and many chats with Alec to accept that life was boring sometimes, it couldn’t always be fireworks, parties, hedonistic happenings. She had come from a life in which drama and conflict were the norm – it was all she had known. But she had come to understand now that the day-to-day routine of life had to occur, and that monotony and monogamy were fine – if your head was in the right place.
She hadn’t regretted sleeping with Lucas. He had lit the fire within her when she had needed it; satisfied a craving – almost like the drag of a cigarette, or the first sip of a crisp cold glass of wine on a hot day. But then Josh had come along and filled her life completely.
This didn’t stop Rosa from wanting to know if the handsome plumber was OK. She still had his number but was sensible enough to be aware that she had to let go of everything to do with him. Her respect for herself and Josh was too high for her to go down that road again. Lucas Hannafore being out of sight and almost out of mind was, without doubt, a good thing.
CHAPTER 13
Mary was standing on a stepladder outside Seaspray Cottage pruning back the ivy plant that ran rampant over her wall. She stopped when she heard the familiar steps of her daughter walking up the hill, put the clippers she was using in her apron pocket and started climbing down shakily.
‘Careful, Mother, that doesn’t look too safe,’ Rosa called out. Hot started sniffing around, then cocked his tiny leg against the ladder.
‘Hot Dog, no!’ Mary tutted. Then: ‘You got a minute, Rosa?’
‘Just a few as I’m meeting Ralph at the garage at twelve. He’s taking us to Jacob and Raff’s Polhampton place for Sunday lunch and I don’t want to keep him waiting.’ Despite many pleas for more taxi drivers in town, Ralph Weeks was still the one and only, very busy Lone Ranger.
‘That’s nice. I just got a juicy joint of beef topside in case you wanted to come to me, but I can freeze it for next week, if you like?’
‘You should have said earlier but that would be lovely, thank you.’ Hot scampered through the open door in search of Merlin, who was sleeping peacefully on Queenie’s old chair. On sensing the playful hound, he reared up and hissed, and fled through the kitchen to the cat-flap there.
‘Sit down.’ Mary washed her hands in the kitchen sink and dried them, then with her daughter sat opposite her at the table, she reached for Rosa’s right hand and began to study the palm. So accustomed was Rosa to her mother doing this to her, that she just sat back and relaxed.
‘When is Josh back, did you say?’
‘Mid-December. Haven’t got a date yet.’
‘Are you seeing him before that?’
‘I don’t know, to be honest, and I haven’t told him yet but I’m thinking not. There’s a lot going on, what with Titch’s wedding and everything else.’
‘Don’t be scared, daughter,’ Mary whispered.
‘Mother! Stop going weird on me.’
‘I wouldn’t want to fly for the first time on my own either.’ Rosa, with her closeted childhood and inability to keep a job down, let alone ever save enough for a holiday, had never been abroad. Mary suddenly took a sharp intake of breath, saying, ‘Don’t go this time. And you tell him to hurry up back, eh?’ She paused and her face assumed a look of fear. ‘But not until after the fireworks. You’ve got grandchildren to make – and that’s important. But it can wait a few weeks.’
‘Mary, what can you see?’ Rosa’s voice was firm. ‘Do you mean after the fireworks night here?’ Cockleberry Bay had a legendary annual fireworks display.
Mary lifted Rosa’s hand to her face and pushed it hard against her cheek. ‘Yes, child,’ she hissed. ‘Tell your secret to the wind, but don’t blame it for telling the trees.’
‘Ow. That hurt.’ Rosa screwed her face up. ‘Stop it, please. And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What happened to that Nate fella who released the gulls the other day?’ her mother replied with a question.
‘Last time I saw him, he mentioned that he was liking the south coast more than the north but I–’
Before Rosa could continue saying that she didn’t know what he was doing, Mary cut her short. ‘Bloody newspapers,’ she grunted, then took on the frail voice of an ailing Queenie: ‘Trust your instincts, Rosa, and nothing or no one else.’
‘I miss Queenie,’ Rosa said without thought. Visions of her wise, white-haired great-grandmother with her weather-beaten, furrowed face and sharp tongue came to the fore.
‘She is always with us, child.’ A teaspoon clattered to the floor from the kitchen worktop. Mary yawned. ‘Always with us.’
CHAPTER 14
‘Ciao bella.’ Raff greeted Rosa with three kisses. ‘So, I have cooked the roast lamb for you today with all her trimmings. Jacob has even made fresh mint sauce from the garden.’ He threw a little piece of meat fat onto the kitchen tiles for Hot to gobble up.
Rosa loved coming to the boys’ Polhampton house. It was built high on a hill with the most stunning views of Polhampton Sands below. The couple would quite often entertain, and when they weren’t working at the pub on a Sunday, made sure that all the main Sunday papers were put out on a table in the large conservatory overlooking the sea. There would always be sweet and savoury snacks to nibble, and any drink you could mention would be served at a moment’s notice. Nowadays, Rosa’s preferred drink for occasions like these was either Diet Coke or tonic water.