*
He’s wearing a green and white striped shirt and a dark green pullover that makes his eyes look almost blue. He smiles at me as I walk towards him and my stomach turns somersaults.
‘Ellie,’ he says. His voice is barely more than a whisper. I feel as though everyone is staring at us.’
‘What are you doing here, Ben?’ I ask as we sit down. ‘I mean I know Sascha called you but—’
‘I wanted to be here, Ellie,’ he says putting his hand over mine. ‘When she told me about the fire I wanted to do something. I wanted to help.’
‘The fire was all my fault,’ I say. ‘I don’t deserve all this kindness.’
‘The fire was Marcus’s fault and nobody got hurt as I understand it,’ he replies. ‘People make stupid mistakes, Ellie, and I can hardly judge anyone after the stupid mistake I made with you.’
‘This is different. Somebody nearly did get hurt. If Marcus hadn’t—’
‘Ellie,’ he interrupts gently. ‘It’s not different. I hurt you.’
I don’t say anything for a moment, because what he says is true. He did hurt me.
‘I should have told you about Moby’s plans right from the start.’
We stare at each other for a moment.
‘It’s good to see you,’ I say.
‘You too.’
‘Thank you for the table and chairs – they’re perfect.’
‘You’re welcome. Don’t be angry with me but I didn’t get them off the internet.’
‘Where did you get them?’ I ask.
‘Well… I knew of a Moby’s franchise just outside York that was having a refurb and I know how Moby’s just tend to throw out any unwanted furniture so I went and collected them for you.’ He pauses. ‘Do you hate them now you know they’re from Moby’s?’
I laugh again. ‘Of course not, I quite like the idea to be honest. But isn’t that like stealing from work?’
‘Nobody will know.’
‘How long are you staying?’ I ask.
‘I have to go back to York this afternoon,’ he says. ‘Couple of things I promised I’d do for Mum. But I was wondering if you had some time before I leave. There’s something I want to show you.’
29
‘I owe you a huge apology, Ellie,’ Ben says as we step out of the pub on to the High Street.
I want to wave his apologies away and avoid talking about this. I want to just hold on to the feeling I had when I first saw him, when he first smiled at me. But I know we have to have this conversation. Neither of us will be able to move on if we don’t.
‘I should never have allowed myself to get so close to you,’ he goes on.
My stomach drops. It feels as though he regrets what happens between us.
I have no regrets, he’d said.
‘No,’ I say looking straight ahead as we walk down the street. I have no idea where we are heading. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t. I don’t want you to feel as though you regret the time we spent together.’
I hear him stop walking and I stop too, turning towards him.
‘Is that what you think?’ he asks. ‘That I regret what happened between us?’
‘You just said you should never have let it happen.’
‘I should never have let it happen without telling you the truth, without telling you the full story about why I was really here.’
‘To persuade me to sell the café to Moby’s.’
‘That wasn’t the reason I came back,’ he says. But his eyes flick away and I don’t know whether he’s telling the truth or not. I wonder what I was expecting. Did I expect him to be more apologetic? More contrite? In many ways he was just doing his job. But I had thought what happened between us had been special. Maybe I’m wrong?
I’m sure I’m not wrong though.
He turns and walks towards the promenade. I walk next to him just out of reach.
‘I don’t quite know how it happened,’ he says as we walk. I have to strain to hear him as the cold wind whistles in off the sea and I wrap my coat more tightly around myself. ‘I work in marketing not acquisitions. Persuading people to sell their cafés to us isn’t in my job description, but my line manger found out that I came from Sanderson Bay and that I was planning to visit before Christmas.’
I turn slightly towards him. ‘So you’d planned to visit anyway? You didn’t come specifically for Moby’s?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I’d been thinking about coming back for a while. I had some annual leave owing and it seemed as good a time as any. I didn’t want Mum to know at first, I just wanted to see what it felt like being back here as an adult.’
I think about Paris and how I’ve avoided it for so long. It was brave of Ben to come back on his own. Paris is a huge city. I can pretend I’m just another tourist when I finally do go back, with or without my father, but Sanderson Bay is a different story entirely – people here still remember who he is and, presumably, how his father died.
‘I was asked to check out the café whilst I was here,’ he goes on. ‘I was told that Moby’s had been trying to buy it from a couple who were retiring but the sale fell through and Moby’s wanted to know if the owners had changed their mind.’
‘That’s why you seemed so surprised when you found out that I was Eloise Caron,’ I say.
He nods. ‘They gave me your name but they’d given me the impression that you were…’ He pauses, a half-smile on his lips. ‘Somewhat older,’ he finishes.
‘Moby’s had mixed up their facts,’ I say, mostly to myself.
‘So it would seem,’ Ben replies. ‘As soon as I saw you, as soon as I realised who you were and that the café was yours, I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t possibly get you to sell to Moby’s.’
‘I’d never have said yes however hard you tried if that makes you feel any better.’
‘It really doesn’t,’ he says with a sigh and carries on walking towards the green where the war memorial is and I follow.
‘What did you want to show me?’ I ask.
Next to the war memorial is a smaller sculpture that marks the lifeboat disaster of 2000 – several years before my aunt and uncle moved to Sanderson Bay, several years before I’d even heard of the place. Ben walks towards this smaller memorial and beckons me over. Six men lost their lives that afternoon when a storm came out of nowhere and a two-man yacht had got into trouble. Four of the lifeboat crew and the two people in the yacht never returned – Eric had been in the crew that night and had been one of the lucky ones. The bodies of those who died were never recovered. It happened two nights before Christmas and suddenly everything clicks into place as Ben runs his finger over one of the names on the memorial.
Alistair Christian Lawson.
‘Was that your dad?’ I ask.
Ben nods slowly and then goes to sit down on a nearby bench, wrapping his coat around him. After a moment I sit next to him.
‘We’d had this enormous row,’ he says quietly. ‘That afternoon…’ He pauses, rubs his eyes. ‘Christ it all seems so stupid now. So pointless.’