Page 5 of And Then There Was You

Her pierced eyebrow makes a bid for the courtyard’s canopy. ‘You and Seth? Was he drunk?’

‘Maybe a little.’

‘Were you?’

‘No!’ I place a protective hand on the lid of the old instrument. The wood warms beneath my palm. ‘It’s serendipity we found it. Kismet.’

‘It’s a hunk of junk,’ she retorts. ‘And you’re painting it?’

‘It’ll look good in the courtyard. I thought it could be one of those Play Me pianos, like the one we saw in Truro last summer.’

‘So we get bombarded by five hundred renditions of “Chopsticks” every day?’ Ruthie shakes her head. ‘If that happens I’ll need a pay rise.’

I offer her a grin. ‘If we get more customers, I might be able to afford it.’

My assistant is far from convinced. ‘Or they could pay us to not play it. Might be a quicker way of making money . . .’

‘Oh shush ,’ I return, covering the piano up with the dustsheet again as if the thick dusty fabric will protect it from her disparaging comments. ‘We need to get cracking, or we’ll have no customers at all.’

We set about preparing the café for the morning crowd, firing up the coffee machine, refilling sugar pots and placing fresh flowers in little painted jam jars on every table.

I put on the café playlist I compiled last week, a laid-back, breezy collection of songs that evoke the spirit of summer.

I hope it encourages our customers to linger a little, maybe order another coffee or treat themselves to one of the tempting cakes displayed under glass cloches on the counter.

Or maybe it will just keep Ruthie and me in a summery mood as we serve the seasonal crowds.

Either way, it helps.

No matter how I look at it this morning, things are on the up.

Our first customers are waiting by the door when I flip the CLOSED sign to OPEN. Another promising portent for the season ahead.

‘Merryn Rowe, tell me the coffee is ready?’ a bright-eyed man pleads as I let him in.

‘It is, Jack, and I have a fresh delivery of pain aux raisins that you can be the first to test.’

Jack Dixon gives me the biggest hug, then blushes a little as he steps back. ‘Apologies. I just really need coffee and carbs this morning.’

‘Bill Brotherson keeping you busy, is he?’ I ask, heading behind the counter to prepare his order.

Jack grimaces. ‘And then some. Since he started developing the properties on North Terrace the timescales have been shrinking weekly. Not that I’m complaining.’

‘Perish the thought.’

The controversial property developer Jack works for has ruffled a fair few feathers in the town before, but his choice of project manager seems to have had surprising effects on his recent developments.

A lot of that has to do with Jack, I think.

I can’t imagine anyone not warming to his laid-back nature and whip-smart humour.

If he wasn’t happily settled with his girlfriend, I reckon half the town would be queuing up for him – he certainly elicits smiles from my customers whenever he comes here.

‘I love the work,’ he admits happily. ‘But don’t tell Bill. He’s letting us keep all the period detail, none of his usual demolish-the-lot-and-rebuild rubbish. It’s quite a revelation.’

‘What have you done to the man?’

‘Maybe I’m a good influence on him.’ He chuckles. ‘Or maybe he’s worked out he can sell the places for twice the value of one of his boring avant-garde boxes.’

‘Sounds more likely.’ I pass him an extra-large travel cup of hot, smoky coffee and reach for the pastry tongs. ‘So, one of these pastries?’

‘Better make it two. No, three . Seren and Nessie are popping over at eleven. Ness will skin me alive if she finds out I had one of these without her.’

The mention of Jack’s family warms my heart.

He was widowed a few years ago, leaving him caring for his young daughter, Nessie.

Then he met Seren McArthur – one of the loveliest people in this town – and the way they met is the stuff of local legend.

Seaglass stars made over on Gwithian Beach, each of them making and completing them without knowing the identity of the other .

. . It’s beautiful. And now they’re happier than I’ve ever seen them.

A familiar pang of loss sneaks in while I’m not looking.

I hate when my heart does that.

I don’t begrudge anyone a moment’s happiness.

But when I think of seaglass, I remember another meeting, five years ago, down at the water’s edge on Harbour Beach.

Two hands reaching for the same beautiful piece of deep blue, sea-smoothed glass, half-hidden in the tumble of seaweed and tideline shingle.

A shared look of surprise that quickly became something else . . .

No . I’m not revisiting that memory today.

It only leads one way and I’m not travelling there again.

‘Three it is,’ I say, handing Jack a brown paper bag with the still-warm pastries safe inside.

‘You’re a lifesaver.’ He grins, tapping his card against the reader. ‘You still on for the beach clean on Sunday?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it.’

‘Great, I’ll tell Seren. Cheers an’ gone!’

Ruthie joins me as we watch Jack leave.

‘Now that is the kind of man you don’t kick out of bed for eating pasties.’

‘Ruthie!’

She shrugs, unlikely to ever be dissuaded by anything I say. ‘Well, where else am I going to get my eye candy? It’s slim pickings around here, especially in summer. Unless I shack up with an emmet – and that’s never a good plan.’

‘Hasn’t stopped you before,’ I return, ducking to miss the tea towel she aims at my head.

Ruthie’s summer flings are well documented, my assistant responsible for shattered hearts right across the south-west and beyond.

It’s a shame she doesn’t seem to notice a certain good-looking surf shop owner, right next door, who has been holding a candle for her for three years . . .

Twenty minutes later, the morning rush begins in earnest. A line of locals awaiting takeaway coffee and pastries, another line of early-rising tourists queuing for tables.

It’s noisy and bustling and it keeps us on our toes, but it makes the time pass quickly and I’m glad of every sale.

Summer is the time all of the businesses in St Ives make the most money – takings that have to sustain us through the quieter months of autumn and winter.

We’re not on the main tourist drag, so visitors tend to stumble across us as they’re exploring the winding backstreets of the town, unless they’ve found us before.

I can’t imagine how manic the coffee shops and bars are on Wharf Road this morning, the harbour-front attracting the lion’s share of visitors and day-trippers.

Once again, I’m glad I could never have afforded to set up a business there.

It’s beautiful, and the view across the harbour is the iconic St Ives setting, but in the summer it’s a never-ending crush of jostling, impatient holidaymakers.

I don’t think my new business would have survived its first year, let alone made it to its third, as we have here.

At half past ten there’s a lull in the queues, so I fill a large cup with a three-shot coffee, tip two packets of brown sugar into it and turn to my assistant.

‘I’m just nipping out for five minutes.’

‘Is that for His Nibs?’ she asks, knowing me too well.

‘I think he might need it.’

‘It’ll take more than a three-shot Americano to sort Seth Hartley out,’ Ruthie observes, dismissing me with a wave of her order pad. ‘Go. Attend to the poor lamb. I’m good here.’

‘Cheers, lovely. Back soon.’

I leave her serving a young family with her famous loaded milkshakes, their gasps of delight the loveliest sound as I walk out of the café.

Porthia Surf is busy next door, its rainbow of surfboards and bodyboards flanking the entrance attracting the attention of a group of damp-haired, barefooted teens, fresh off the beach.

T-shirts and wetsuits dance in the gentle morning breeze from their hooks across the shop’s bay windows and rows of beach shoes, buckets, spades and crabbing reels line the boundary between the shopfront and the pavement.

A line of sand leads from the Surf ’s Up!

doormat into the heart of the shop, as it does in most of the businesses in town.

Running a business here is a constant battle with beach sand carried in on the shoes and bare feet of visitors.

There’s no sign of Seth when I enter, blinking in the low light of the shop after the brightness of outside. Behind the vintage surfboard-topped counter, a young man with a veil of dark hair raises a hand.

‘Hey, M. Medicine run?’

I smile as I approach, holding the coffee cup aloft. ‘As always, Flynn. How bad is it?’

‘ Monumental , dude. What did you let him drink last night?’

‘Tequila. Which wasn’t my idea.’

‘Never is when Seth’s involved.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In the back,’ Flynn Rawlins replies, miming quotation marks in the air with the index and middle fingers of both hands, ‘ stocktaking .’

‘Ah.’ It’s worse than I expected. ‘I’d better get this to him.’

‘Please. Because if he doesn’t stop growling soon, he’ll scare our customers away.’

Stocktaking , it turns out, entails a row of boxes pulled together with a foam bodyboard laid on top, upon which a softly moaning Seth Hartley is currently lying.

‘Coffee,’ I whisper, stifling a grin at the groan he makes in reply.

‘I hate my head . . .’

‘Come on, you poor thing. Get up.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Well, if you want this magical elixir that will solve all your ills, you’ll have to.’

‘You sound like my mum.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

I watch him struggle upright, then gently deliver the travel cup to his grateful hands. As he takes a sip, I sit beside him on the boogie board bed.

‘I started painting the piano.’

Eyes screwed tight against the pain, Seth manages something between a smile and a grimace ‘You did?’

‘Sketching the design, at least. I think it’s going to look amazing.’

‘What did you go for?’

‘Flowers, mostly. So a certain surf-shop Swiftie would be happy.’

‘Aww.’ He leans his head against my shoulder. ‘I love you. Did you know?’

‘You only love me for my coffee.’

‘This mornin’, yes. But for lots of other reasons when my head isn’t trying to murder me.’ He opens one eye to look at his cup. ‘This is amazin’, Mer. Thank you.’

‘My pleasure. I’d better get back – I’ve left Ruthie on her own.’

‘How is the lovely Ruthie this mornin’?’

‘As Ruthie as she always is. And still single. . .’

He winces at the mention of it. ‘I know what you’re gettin’ at, Mer, but I can’t even think of it while my head’s murderous.’

‘It’ll keep,’ I concede, with a smile. ‘I should get going, anyway.’

‘Busy day?’

‘Very. You?’

He winces when he tries to laugh. ‘I wouldn’t know. Flynn’s pretty much run things this mornin’. Did you know he’s leavin’ soon?’

‘At lunchtime?’

‘No, leavin’ this place. For good.’

This is a surprise. Flynn’s been Seth’s right-hand man for four years since he finished his college course. He started as a Saturday kid on his sixteenth birthday and never really left. ‘Where’s he going?’

‘Surf comps.’ The face Seth pulls tells me exactly what his opinion of Flynn’s career choice is. ‘I’ve told him it’s a mug’s game, but his heart is set.’

I’ve watched Flynn competing in the local surf meets at Porthmeor and Gwithian.

He’s good, whatever Seth says. According to Flynn’s mum, he’s been on a board pretty much since he started walking.

Kids round here do that, the surf school on Porthmeor Beach a regular haunt for hordes of young surfers.

If I’d grown up in the town, instead of Penzance, I would have loved to go to a surf club. Problem was, my mum hated the water and did her level best to keep me away from it, too.

‘He’ll be great at that,’ I offer, despite Seth’s pained eye-roll. ‘He will .’

‘Maybe. I’m just so used to him bein’ here. He knows the shop better than I do, can sell boards to anyone. What am I goin’ to do without him?’

‘Maybe not drink tequila on a school night?’

He groans again. ‘You’re not helpin’.’

‘As long as the coffee is, that’s all that matters.’ I stand and pat his shoulder. ‘I’m going to do more piano painting this evening, after I finish for the day, if you fancy it?’

‘Yeah, go on.’

‘Cheers.’

‘Pleasure, bird. And anyway, if I’m helpin’ you I can’t be repeatin’ past sins at the bar, can I? Besides, it’ll give me a chance to bend your ear about the evenin’ openings again.’

Of course it will. Even with a hangover from hell, Seth won’t let me off the hook.

I leave him nursing his coffee and say goodbye to Flynn on my way out.

I don’t mind Seth nagging me: evening hours are something I’ve thought a lot about. It makes sense. I think I just need a push to make it happen.

And if we can use the piano as a centrepiece, maybe it could attract diners in. Another reason its arrival in my life is serendipitous.

My café is sparkling in the mid-morning sunshine that’s finally broken through the cloud.

I pause for a moment on the pavement, gazing up at it.

I like how positive everything feels today.

I want to bottle this feeling, so I can dole it out on days when the clouds don’t break and the customers don’t arrive.

I’ve waited too long to have a day like this. I’m determined to enjoy it for as long as I can.

Seeing Ruthie beckoning me urgently through the window, I treat myself to one last inhale of the sweet, salty air before I head inside.