Hope laughed but Sam didn’t look too impressed.
‘I had a feeling that’s where you were,’ she said. ‘I did knock on your door earlier, but when you didn’t answer I guessed you were still sleeping Mum’s punch off. And don’t worry,’ she kindly added, ‘there was hardly anything to tidy away. It was all sorted before the tide turned.’
She certainly sounded more forgiving than Sam looked. He had barely uttered a word and his frown was far from sympathetic.
‘Please don’t mention the word punch,’ I said to Hope. ‘It’s going to be a long time before I can drink another drop of that stuff. I think I had more than three, although . . . crikey, I can barely remember a thing . . .’
‘So, you don’t know if you got lucky then?’ Hope teased.
‘Hardly,’ I said, biting my lip and thinking it was no way for a grown woman to behave. ‘But perhaps . . . oh, I don’t know, but I woke alone this morning so not that lucky.’
The tiniest flicker of a sensuous sensation stirred, but focusing on it, while listening to Hope laugh, made my head pound and, as I was pretty certain it was my imagination playing tricks on me, rather than an actual memory from the night, I dismissed it.
‘I need to change a barrel,’ Sam muttered grumpily and walked off.
‘What’s with him?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t he enjoy himself?’
Hope’s eyes followed his back as he disappeared down the hatch to the cellar.
‘I’m not sure, to be honest,’ she sighed, but didn’t elaborate on why.
‘He’s probably still suffering from the after-effects of the p-u-n-c-h too,’ I suggested, spelling the word out to stop my stomach rolling over again.
Chapter 22
The week after the party, I threw myself back into the role of holidaymaker. I did all the things I had always loved to do in Wynmouth – I visited the rockpools, swam in the still freezing sea, topped up my tan and explored the dunes. On the outside, I no doubt looked like someone making the most of her time in the fleeting British sun, but I was very much on the inside and I knew that wasn’t the case at all.
As enjoyable as it all might have looked to anyone else, my days spent on the beach were really my way of coping with the internal turmoil that descended whenever I set my mind to sorting out what I had run to the village to work my way through.
Rather than helping me come to terms with the shell that I had discovered my parents’ marriage really was, reading Mum’s diary had created more questions than answers and, even though I had decided I wouldn’t be going back to work with Dad, I still hadn’t done anything to match my actions to the decision.
I was even beginning to wonder if my involvement in village events and my desire to keep an eye on Hope and stop her making relations between Sam and Joe worse rather than better, were a way of putting off the inevitable.
Was the role I was playing in Wynmouth really essential to the fabric of local life, or was I simply using it as yet another excuse for not moving on with my own issues? I had made a few inroads into getting on with things but, considering the amount of time I’d now been away, I hadn’t travelled anywhere near far enough and I knew I was running out of diversionary events on the Wynmouth calendar to throw myself into.
I absolutely couldn’t carry on in the same vein, hiding out and treating my weeks away as just a jolly when they had always been destined to be so much more, but maybe just one more afternoon soaking up the sun on the beach wouldn’t hurt . . .
‘He said yes!’ I heard Hope shout from further along the beach as I generously applied another layer of sun cream to my freckle-speckled shoulders and arms.
‘Who said yes to what?’ I responded, laughing as she tripped in her haste to reach me.
‘Sam said yes to you staying on,’ she puffed, flopping down on the sand next to me and covering my already sticky arms in a gritty layer. ‘Turn over,’ she offered, grabbing the factor 30, ‘and I’ll do your back.’
Her explanation, along with her efforts to convince Sam to let me stay in the cottage even longer, did nothing to encourage my conviction to get on with things, but I was grateful that I could stay on. I had become so used to the confined space, quirky stairs and gate that stuck, that I almost considered my residency a permanent one now. If Sam had said no, then this would have been my last week in Wynmouth. Perish the thought.
‘And how exactly did you manage to get him to agree to that?’ I asked, rolling over as requested. ‘He’s been in a right grump all week.’
His continued post-party bad mood had been the reason she hadn’t rushed into making the request and I felt my face redden in case she was about to reveal that some kinky or athletic bedroom behaviour had been the key to putting him in more malleable frame of mind.
‘I asked and he said yes,’ she said, squirting a liberal amount of the chilly cream on to my back.
I can’t deny I was relieved.
‘As simple as that?’ I asked.
‘As simple as that,’ she confirmed. ‘I reckon he’s got a soft spot for you, Tess.’
I was pretty certain the soft spot was all the other way, but obviously I wasn’t going to correct her. If only I could remember what had happened in the run-up to and during the solstice party, then I could say with complete certainty that she was wrong, but there were great chunks of it that were still hazy and some parts were completely non-existent.
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ I told her, knowing I couldn’t magic back my memories even though I wanted to, ‘but I do know that I wouldn’t mind another lend of your Mum’s laptop.’
‘I thought you were eschewing all tech,’ she reminded me. ‘Mum said you were in the café yesterday using the phone as well. Are you beginning to crack, Tess?’
‘No,’ I told her, ‘of course not. I needed to use the phone to confirm my visit to Home Farm, that’s all.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten you were doing that. I wonder if Joe will make any startling revelations while you’re there?’
‘Who knows?’ I said, wondering if I’d done the right thing in agreeing to get involved in the whole Sam and Joe scenario. ‘But,’ I carried on, ‘I did give Joe my email address in case he needed to alter the arrangements, so I need to log in to check it’s all still on.’
Hope looked slightly sceptical that he would change plans once they were confirmed.
‘You know he has a tendency to come and go,’ I reminded her, ‘and I’d rather check my email account than risk getting sucked into messaging him via social media because that really could be a slippery slope.’
I didn’t of course add that, if Sophie didn’t mind me logging back on, then I was about to write something that had the potential to change the course of my life forever.
*
‘Why don’t you go and sit at one of the tables,’ Sophie said kindly, as she handed her laptop over, ‘you’ll be more comfortable than at the counter. I’ll bring you over a drink in a minute.’
‘Thanks, Sophie,’ I smiled.
My legs were a little shaky as I slid into the last free booth, and my mind was already working through the many and varied sentences I could call on to compose the life-altering email.