‘It needs to brew for about five minutes,’ I say. ‘If you take it over I’ll bring the cups.’ I choose matching cups and saucers – dark blue with silver painted stars that I found in a shop in Hull that was closing down. I don’t use them very often as not many people come in late enough for the soothing evening blends. Mostly I sell my night-time blends for people to drink at home.
‘Do you make the teas yourself?’ Ben asks, as I take the cups over and sit down.
‘A lot of the herbal tisanes,’ I reply. ‘I have a herb garden in the back and then I dry them myself. I grew the lavender and valerian but I find camomile really hard to keep alive so I do order that in along with all the actual tea which obviously I can’t grow here!’
‘Obviously,’ he says and smiles the smug version of his smile at me. ‘What made you so interested in teas and herbs?’
‘It started with the herb garden really,’ I say as I pour the tea. ‘I started growing herbs when I was about fourteen. We only have a small garden here but it’s very sunny and I just wanted to do something nice with it as my aunt and uncle were so busy with the café. I wanted it to be something that didn’t need much upkeep and that’s the beauty of a herb garden. Once it’s established it does its own thing.’
‘You grew up here too?’ he asks.
I shake my head. ‘I grew up in France,’ I say. ‘But I came to England to go to boarding school when I was thirteen. My school was near Harrogate so I used to come back here for the Christmas and Easter holidays and I just went back to France in the summers.’
‘So you didn’t spend Christmas with your parents?’ he asks, looking straight at me. I look away.
‘No, but it was fine,’ I lie. ‘I loved Christmas at Sanderson Bay and things haven’t changed that much despite appearances. We still have Christmas carols at the Model Village – you’ll probably remember them from your childhood. They’re tomorrow night actually, after the Christmas lights get switched on if you’re still here and fancy coming along.’
‘That would be nice,’ he says. ‘They used to mark the start of Christmas for me when I was a kid.’
‘I was never back from school in time but my aunt always told me about them.’
When I look back at him, he’s looking into his teacup as though he’s about to see his future there. He has the same expression on his face that he had when Miranda questioned him about his father and I watched him stare into his pint glass.
‘I’d already left when your aunt and uncle opened this café,’ he says. ‘Our paths never crossed.’
I don’t know what to say to that and I wait for a moment to see if he’s going to say anything further about when he lived here, but he doesn’t.
‘You were telling me about your herb garden,’ he says instead.
‘Well I wanted something to do with all the herbs I’d grown – lavender, lemon verbena, peppermint – and I discovered that if I dried them I could make teas out of them and it sort of grew from there. I wanted to sell the teas in the café, I even suggested to James and Miranda that I sell them to raise funds for the lifeboats but they were having none of it.’
I notice a look pass over his face when I mention the lifeboats, but I can’t work out what it is. Most of the men who live in Sanderson Bay are either current lifeboat volunteers or, like Eric, they used to be when they were younger and I wonder about Ben’s father and if he volunteered on the lifeboats too.
‘Anyway,’ I carry on. ‘My aunt and uncle were adamant that the sort of customers they had in the café were not going to buy or drink herbal tea. This was before Sanderson Bay became a hip place to be of course.’
‘And now look at you,’ he says, looking around the café at the row upon row of different teas and tisanes – black, green, white, oolong and every herbal blend imaginable.
‘It’s a bit of a dream come true to be honest,’ I say and I can feel my cheeks heat as he looks at me. I can’t work out if it’s the embarrassment of admitting that my dream was to sell herbal tea or if it’s the intensity of his stare. I feel his hand covering mine gently on the table between us and that spark of electricity returns.
‘I think it’s fantastic,’ he says. ‘I think this and all the other changes are exactly what the Bay needed. Things can’t stay the same forever.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I had a bit of backlash about the changes at the beginning but most people seem to have come around to it now.’
‘Did you stay in Sanderson Bay after you finished school?’ he asks. ‘Or did you go back to France?’
‘Neither,’ I say. ‘I went to university in York.’
‘Snap,’ he replies. ‘What did you study?’
‘Art history, how about you?’
‘Law,’ he says.
‘But I thought you worked in marketing?’
‘Reading law made me not want to be a lawyer anymore,’ he says and when he smiles it’s that big genuine smile again that lights up his whole face and makes my stomach fizz and in that moment I suddenly realise how attracted I am to this stranger who blew into my café on Monday evening holding a whole host of secrets close to his chest.
And as clear as the attraction is, it’s also clear that being attracted to him is a very bad idea.
‘Did you stay in York after graduating?’ he asks.
I pick up my blue and silver teacup and think for a moment about those long years I lived in York and how lonely I was. And then I think about Marcus and how I thought he was going to change my life.
‘I stayed on at university for another year to do my masters,’ I say. ‘And then I got offered funding to do my PhD if I stayed on as an undergraduate lecturer.’
‘That sounds amazing,’ he says but he must see the look on my face and I watch his brows knit together. ‘Wasn’t it?’ he asks.
‘On paper it was an amazing opportunity, but in reality…’ I pause. ‘I’m quite shy and anxious and I felt sick every time I had to give a lecture. My professor told me it was just nerves and that I’d get used to it. But I never did.’
‘You don’t seem shy,’ he says.
I laugh because I hear this all the time when I’m in Sanderson Bay.
‘You’re seeing me on my home turf,’ I say. ‘I know everyone in town and I’ve lived here on and off since I was a teenager. I’m comfortable here.’
‘You don’t know me though,’ he says.
‘Yes, but this is just a one-on-one situation. I’m fine talking to just one person, especially if it’s about something I’m interested in.’
‘Like tea?’
I smile. ‘Yes, like tea,’ I say. ‘But also art. The problems came when I had to stand up in front of a lecture theatre of students who are only a few years younger than me.’
‘How long did you do it for?’
‘Nearly five years and then…’ I stop and I look at him. I can’t talk about what happened. Not tonight, not here with this beautiful dark-haired, grey-eyed man. I don’t want to feel like this or think about Marcus or my unfinished PhD when I’m talking to him.