‘We must all stay calm,’ ordered Finn, who was rolling up his sleeves. Grabbing a tea towel from beside the sink, he swung it through the air, only to swear when the bat fluttered away out of reach.
‘Mate, we got this,’ said Samuel, pulling Pepper’s apron off the hook on the back of the pantry door and leaping about a foot in the air.
Pepper stood with her back against the wall and watched them. With every missed swipe and wasted jump, Finn was growing more frustrated. It was clear both men wanted to be the one who rescued the little intruder, but so far the bat was doing a sterling job of evading capture. Finn was definitely the more agile of the two, but Samuel had the edge when it came to height and, by choosing the apron, he also had a far bigger net at his disposal.
‘Shouldn’t we just open the windows and leave it alone?’ suggested Pepper. She was beginning to feel sorry for the Houdini bat, and it was also becoming increasingly difficult not to laugh.
Finn was bright red in the face now, while Samuel had somehow managed to rip two of the buttons off his shirt. What had begun as the two competing against each other had soon merged into them against the bat – and there was a very clear winner emerging.
‘Stop moving, you asshole!’ Finn growled through gritted teeth.
‘Bollocks!’ Samuel fell sideways against Pepper’s kitchen table. ‘I almost had him then.’
‘We must corner him,’ Finn instructed. ‘I will go long, you stay midfield.’
Oh God, thought Pepper, giving in to helpless laughter, they had moved on to football lingo now.
There was an almighty crash as Finn whipped his tea towel through the air and took out a jam jar of coloured sand on the windowsill.
‘Hey.’ Pepper took a step forward. ‘Be careful!’
Finn barely turned.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I will buy you a new one.’
‘That is hardly the point,’ she protested, then ducked as Samuel came flying across the room towards her, both arms raised and the apron billowing out behind him like a cape.
‘Watch out!’ he yelled, but the warning came too late for Finn. There was a crunch, followed by a grunt, and both men went tumbling to the floor.
‘Oopsy,’ giggled Pepper.
‘Scheisse!’ moaned Finn.
‘My nuts,’ muttered Samuel.
The bat, meanwhile, snuck out from its hiding place inside the lampshade and fluttered serenely away into the night.
Chapter 29
‘I can’t remember the last time I did this.’
Finn paused in his application of sun lotion, one outstretched leg smeared white.
‘Did what – ate ice cream?’
Pepper looked down at the scoops of salted caramel and Belgian chocolate that were beginning to melt and run down the sides of her cone.
‘Yes – but also just sat on the beach, on a blanket, with a man,’ she said. ‘It’s nice – I should really try to do it more often.’
Finn smiled at her, his hands returning to their task.
‘You are lucky,’ he said. ‘To have this beach so close to your home. In Hamburg we have the river, as you know, but it is not the same as this. There is something very special about the sea; the feeling you get when you stand – or sit – and look out at it.’
Pepper bit into her wafer and a shoal of crumbs cascaded down the front of her swimsuit.
‘Leave them,’ said Finn slyly, as she attempted to fish them out. ‘Something for me to nibble on later.’
Samuel had stayed long enough for the three of them to finish the bottle of champagne the previous evening, after which she and Finn had called for takeaway and sat together under a blanket on her sofa, feeding each other duck pancakes and prawn crackers dipped in sweet chilli sauce. Eventually, it got so late that Finn had fallen asleep, his long limbs dangling off her settee at all angles and his blond hair tossed artfully against the cushion. Loath to wake him, Pepper had crept around clearing up, stacking empty bottles in the recycling bag and using a dustpan and brush to sweep all the remnants of her broken jar into the bin. The tea towel that Finn had commandeered to catch the bat had ended up filled with ice for the lump on his head – a souvenir from his mid-air slam dunk with Samuel.
Once everything was washed, dried and put away, she had gone back into the front room and lowered herself down onto the carpet until she was sitting cross-legged beside him, allowing herself a few precious moments to take in the light stubble that was just starting to re-emerge across his jaw, the shadows his lashes cast across his cheeks and the soft fullness of his lower lip. The need to kiss him had burnt through her, the compulsion to touch him too strong to ignore. Leaning forwards, Pepper had pressed her own lips hesitantly against his own.
Finn didn’t open his eyes; he simply gave in to a sleepy half-smile and pulled her against him, hoisting her up onto the sofa until she was lying across him. Wrapping his arms tightly around her, he had drawn her close until her body slotted in around his.
‘Hallo,’ he murmured, and when he kissed her, Pepper had felt all her recent anxiety drain away. Finn was her spoonful of medicine, her remedy to the trials she faced – being with him made her feel protected from the world, and from herself, too.
‘You’re right,’ she agreed now, stroking her big toe along the underside of his foot. ‘I don’t know how people cope living in big cities. It must feel so claustrophobic. At least with the sea stretched out in front of you, it feels as if there’s a way out.’
‘That is very important to me,’ he replied, his expression more serious now. ‘I think that moving around so much when I was growing up has made me a nomad – the thing that scares me the most is being trapped somewhere, unable to come and go as I please.’
‘You can come and go here as much as you please,’ she assured him.
‘Danke.’ He put a hand over hers. ‘I am happy to hear that.’
Pepper had spent most of the morning and early afternoon showing Finn around her home town, starting with a walk along the shingle beach to Thorpeness, where he had stared up in awe at the House in the Clouds, followed by a wander past the 16th-century moot hall and lunch at Aldeburgh’s famous fish and chip shop. He’d had something appreciative to say about it all, from the rusted edges of the famous Britten Shell sculpture on the beach to the cluttered storefronts along the high street, and had made Pepper stop endlessly so he could take photos of the pastel-coloured houses, charmed as visitors so often were by the names displayed on decorative plaques beside front doors. Was Sun Trap Cottage the best place to catch a tan, he wanted to know? And did a family of anglers reside at the Bait Station?
Finn was also enchanted by Aldeburgh’s many gift shops and art galleries and helped himself to a number of business cards belonging to local artists whose work he was keen to sell through his website. It was coming along very well, he told Pepper. All he needed now was the right collection to launch it – a showstopper of a piece. Something that would blow people’s minds and put his website firmly on the map. When she asked him what kind of thing he was looking for, however, Finn had simply shrugged helplessly.
‘When I see it, I will know.’
‘I’m glad you like my hometown,’ Pepper told him now, selecting a sun-warmed pebble from between Finn’s feet and balancing it on her knee. ‘I was worried you might find it too twee.’