Page 27

‘Oh god. I’m sorry, mate. I’ve put my foot right in it.’ Mark’s eye went wide and an awkward silence draped over them all.

Temperance broke in. ‘You weren’t to know you’re sitting with The Absent Dads Club. Suse and I didn’t have ours in the picture either. We still don’t.’ She shrugged and gave a jokey grimace. ‘But you can’t miss what you never knew.’

Temperance’s dad was another market trader that Lee met when she was still selling vintage, come rain or shine, from her stall in Bristol.

It wasn’t exactly a deep and meaningful thing, and by the time Lee realised she wasn’t alone in her own body, he’d moved onto a different market rotation and was long gone.

Susie’s dad had been a bit of a crazy fling on a short holiday to Iceland, with Temperance a toddler cared for by some good friends in the village for the week .

‘I want you to know I’m not ashamed,’ Lee often said when the subject of dads came up.

‘If you can take anything from it, let it be that even adults don’t always learn from their own pasts, but they can still be very happy with their lot.

Very.’ And at this point she would kiss them both wetly on the head, whatever their age, as they tried to squirm away.

The idea of family was always a blurred one in East Prawle: Margie sometimes felt like a gran, albeit one that would tease you rotten.

Gary at the bakery was the soppy uncle who cried when you passed your driving test. Besides, having a dad didn’t always look so great if some of the holidaying fathers were anything to go by: they’d be snappy over repeated ice cream requests, or they’d miss a springy cartwheel on the green because they were checking cricket scores on their phones.

And Temperance was yet to see a dad – even one of the good ones – do anything that Lee hadn’t done for them.

She was fun, she was firm, she was reliable. Hell – she was magic.

Mark rubbed his fingers across his forehead. ‘Fuck. I really am sorry, guys. That must have been tough. For everyone.’

‘The mums probably had it worst.’ Abel shrugged. ‘Being two parents in one. Paying all the bills, stressing about the future. And in my case, having to raise the son who looks exactly like the man who did a runner. Who needs a reminder like that at the breakfast table?’

‘But you and Diane are as close as anyone could be,’ Temperance said quickly, her heart suddenly hurting for him.

‘Yeah,’ Susie chimed, ‘you’re your own person. Not just a carbon copy of your dad. And your mum loves you. She always used to boast about you winning the county hurdles, remember?’

Abel smiled. ‘See? A natural runner. Maybe it is all in my genes.’

Susie laughed and elbowed him in the ribs.

‘She’s right, though. You’re nothing like your dad, Abel. You never could be.’

‘Thank you, Temperance,’ he replied quietly.

Susie looked between the two of them and cleared her throat. ‘Speaking of families,’ she turned to Mark. ‘There’s a Beston portfolio company based in Salcombe, Mark. Is that a coincidence?’ She squinted slightly.

His eyes widened. ‘No, no coincidence. My parents set it up.’

‘Right.’

‘Are you OK?’ Mark asked, his usually mild manner slipping. ‘Has something . . . happened here?’ His index finger swiped the space between them like a window wiper trying to clear a deadly fog.

‘I fancy a game of darts!’ Temperance leapt in with forced enthusiasm. ‘I’ll go and borrow them from the bar, shall I?’

Not a flicker of recognition from Abel. Their last summer together – just before he split – their gang of mates would trek into Salcombe whenever they could to try their hand at being cool, playing darts and getting served underage.

Would it really cost him that much to say just one, ‘Do you remember when . . .?’ Apparently it would.

When Temperance returned, Susie was over at the jukebox and Mark look relieved to be out of the interview chair and chatting to Abel. A rapid set of synth chords played out, with Rihanna growling ‘Na na na na na’ over the top.

Temperance plonked the darts down on a little table and put her hands to her temples. ‘Oh man, Suse! ‘S&M’: I haven’t heard this in so long!’

Susie made her way over to Temperance, a winding motion in her shoulders and hips as she went.

‘You used to come back from a Salcombe night out and play it on a loop in your bedroom. I was twelve and had no idea what the lyrics meant. Got a bit of a shock when mum explained why I couldn’t blast it out of the car speakers on the school run. ’

‘Yeah, it’s not all that family friendly, right?

I didn’t get most of it back then. But the beat is just so .

. . satisfying.’ The music snaked its way into her head and heart, drawing up long-lost memories of adrenalin and rum-fuelled nights that felt like they would never end.

‘You know, the first ever time I got into The Fort, Abel bought me a gin and tonic and assured me it was a proper grown up drink: it would make me look legit. I had two and started weeping about climate change. You put this on and started grinding with Tim Havers to cheer me up, do you remember, Abe?’ she turned to face him, the memory of the scene brightening her whole face with an unstoppable grin.

Abel’s eyes were on the space ten centimetres above Temperance’s head.

She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her. In the silence of waiting for him to speak, Rihanna listed all the things she liked to do with whips and chains, being an unashamed bad girl.

Temperance felt a surge of red-hot embarrassment travel from her toes right up to her hair follicles.

How did she keep forgetting that clearly Abel would rather gouge his own eyes out than relive the old days?

Somehow, she kept falling into unconscious ways to sexually harass him too, grabbing at his sweaty body in the strawberry field, leering at him in his wet suit and now making him relive a memory of dry-humping in a public place.

After a significant pause, Abel said, ‘Not really, sorry.’ And just like that, he took the bulb from her lighthouse yet again. He wasn’t going down memory lane – he was tarmacking over it.

Mark laid his arm along the back of Susie’s chair and she felt his thumb lightly brush the back of her neck twice. Despite herself, a charge of something thrilling shot down her spine.

It’s all part of his game! She reminded herself, hunching forwards in her seat and away from him. Never in her life had Susie had trouble moving on from a guy. Why did the one that she just couldn’t shake thoughts of have to be a corporate sell-out?

‘I’d love it if you could give me some paddleboarding lessons,’ he said warmly. ‘I’m a bit of a klutz, but I bet you could sort me out. Maybe if I get halfway decent we could follow the estuary as far as we can, make a day of it?’

Get me alone so you can dig up more insider info? I don’t think so .

It took all of Susie’s mental powers not to growl at him.

‘Hmm. Maybe. Anyway, let’s throw some sharp objects. I’m really in the mood.’

‘Are we doing teams?’ Mark asked. ‘I think the sisters will be deadly together, Abel – let’s split them up. I’ll take Susie, if that’s OK with her?’

She flashed the briefest of smiles in his direction. ‘But we play darts with drinking forfeits, you know,’ she said coolly. ‘So I’ll go and get some shots in, to be ready.’

Mark’s eyebrows pushed up. ‘Right. Guess we aren’t bothering with dinner then? Fair play. I’ll do anything but sambuca. It destroys me.’

Two hours later, the little pub table was Velcro-like with spilled sambuca.

Susie had been expertly bodging all her throws, meaning that she and Mark took the forfeits – except that she’d feign disgust and let Mark valiantly take a shot on her behalf.

As a result, he was three super-king-sized sheets to the wind, while she had merely a nice buzz from a few ciders.

Temperance was starting to worry just how sensible an idea it was to let Mark keep playing darts – a drunk person throwing small arrows was just the kind of thing the doom hanging over them would love to make use of.

Sure, she’d had a lingering desire to throttle Abel now and again when he’d only grunt in reply to a question, but a dart in the neck was a whole other thing.

When no one was looking, she slipped them under the table and onto a windowsill, behind a lamp.

Susie wasn’t lobbing questions at Mark anymore, but she was still sneaking up on him with the odd curveball.

‘You like the pub, don’t you? The Witch’s Nose, I mean.’

Mark leant his head back on the padded cushion behind Susie. ‘Yeah. Certain things about it I like very much. ’ His wink was so drunken that it made his whole skull move.

‘And what do Beston portfolios like about it, in particular?’

Mark’s eyebrows clumped together, his brow deeply wrinkled. ‘What? What are you saying, Susie?’

Temperance knew they needed to keep Mark sweet until a chance came to lift his jacket subtly – they couldn’t risk him storming off now. ‘I think we could all do with coffees. I’ll get them.’

At the bar, the middle-aged barman talked to Temperance over the hiss of the coffee machine.

‘You’re not on the gin tonight, then?’

‘Sorry?’

He gave a dry laugh. ‘You don’t remember me. I had a lot more hair at twenty-five.’ He patted his bald spot. ‘And you don’t sport a ‘tache these days.’

The memory hit Temperance like a freight train and her hand slapped over her mouth.

‘God, I’m sorry. We were such plonkers.’

‘Who isn’t at sixteen, seventeen? And it certainly gave us a good laugh. Though, whoever you nicked those clothes from probably wasn’t laughing when you returned them.’

‘Eurgh. No, they weren’t.’