Page 8 of Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop

LARS

I was usually a good sleeper but my first two nights without Nanna had been restless.

I’d spent many nights in the house on my own while she went on holiday with Hilary and Geraldine but knowing she wouldn’t be back this time hit differently.

The house was too quiet and the thoughts swirling round my head were too loud.

So far I’d managed to fill my days, but the evenings had been tough and the rest of the week stretched out ahead of me, woefully empty.

I stirred my second coffee of the morning a little too aggressively, angry with myself for not pre-empting this and lining up a job to walk straight into.

But what sort of job, and when would I have had time to search for one?

As my business responsibilities eased off, any spare time had been swallowed by volunteering at the library, helping Nanna pack and what felt like a million decisions on the refurbishment of The Lodge.

And the decisions still weren’t at an end as the builders had asked me to drop by after two this afternoon, which meant I had five hours to kill.

I took my drink into the lounge and picked up the latest novel in a Viking series I was loving, but I couldn’t focus on the story and gave up after reading the same page several times.

I swapped it for a non-fiction book about Norse mythology but that was worse as I kept staring at the pictures, my thoughts drifting. I closed the book with a sigh.

‘Mum’s room it is,’ I muttered.

In the dining room, I opened a pack of cardboard boxes and taped up the base on six of them while I finished my coffee but, standing in the middle of Mum’s bedroom a little later, I felt like the walls were closing in on me.

Today wasn’t the day for packing up Mum’s belongings.

I needed to get out of the house instead.

I’d go for a drive and maybe a walk somewhere.

My car needed fuel so I stopped off at the nearest petrol station.

When I stepped out of the pay kiosk I was in a world of my own, trying to decide where to go for a walk, and almost collided with a blonde-haired woman coming in.

I looked up to apologise and did a double-take at my ex-girlfriend, Catryn, who I hadn’t seen since our three-month relationship ended amicably two months ago.

‘Cat? What are you doing here?’

‘Why aren’t I at work, you mean?’ She gave me a mischievous wink. ‘I slept in.’

‘Danika didn’t wake you?’

Cat lived with her older sister and they both worked for their dad’s dental practice, Danika as the practice manager and Cat as a dental nurse.

‘I stayed at Miles’s house last night.’

‘No, Cat! Not Miles again.’

Miles had been Cat’s ex when I started seeing her. They’d had an on-off relationship for years which had ended, supposedly for good, after she moved in with him and caught him cheating on her. It was at that point she’d temporarily moved into her sister’s house.

‘You know he’s no good for you,’ I added.

‘I know, but that’s the appeal. If nice boys did it for me, you and I would still be together.’

I chose not to correct her on that. ‘Still at Danika’s?’

‘Yes, and still she’s nagging me about the mess and demanding to know when I’ll be moving out.

Honestly, she’s such an old woman!’ Cat’s phone rang from her handbag and she rolled her eyes at me.

‘Speak of the devil! That’ll be her now, chasing me again.

I’d better go. Lovely to see you again, Lars.

’ She kissed me lightly on the cheek and dashed inside the kiosk.

I returned to my car and headed out of town, reflecting on Cat’s comment about us still being together if nice boys had been her thing.

There was no chance of that. I’d known that Cat wasn’t right for me from our very first date, but Nanna’s voice was in my head.

She’d caught me scrolling through the dating app I’d been on for months without actually going on any dates.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ she’d said, peering over my shoulder as I was reading Cat’s profile. ‘She’s stunning.’

‘She is, but we’ve got nothing in common.’

‘How do you know until you go on a date?’

‘It lists her interests.’

She glanced at the profile, shaking her head.

‘You can’t make a decision about compatibility based on a few sentences.

Your problem is that you look for perfection and it doesn’t exist. Your grandpa wasn’t perfect but did that stop me falling in love with him?

All humans have imperfections and that’s what makes them interesting, exciting, challenging. ’

‘I know, but…’ I shrugged. ‘I want perfect. I can’t help it.

’ We weren’t talking perfection in looks – I wasn’t that shallow.

It was the perfection of the match that I wanted – someone I could talk to endlessly but with whom I could also enjoy the silence, someone with the same interests as me and the same outlook on life, someone who told the truth and kept their promises. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask.

‘Then you’re likely to end up alone which will be a crying shame because I think you’d be an amazing husband and father.

You have so many wonderful qualities. You, my darling boy, are ridiculously handsome and, when they were dishing brains out, I think you got a double dose.

You’re thoughtful, generous and funny. But you do overthink things and you’re so cautious and considered. ’

‘What’s wrong with being cautious and considered? My Study Hub would never have been the success it was if I hadn’t taken my time to get it right.’

‘I wholeheartedly agree, but there’s a big difference between the approaches needed for a successful business and a successful personal life. Sometimes I think it would help if you were a little more spontaneous. Throw away the plan and see where life takes you.’

‘I can be spontaneous. I was when it came to selling the business.’

She shook her head. ‘You might have met up with that Calvin Warboys fella quickly but you took months to make the actual decision. Remember I saw the pros and cons Post-its list on your office wall.’

So to prove to Nanna that I could be spontaneous, I contacted Cat and was stunned when she agreed to a date with me, and even more stunned when she wanted to see me for a second one.

I liked Cat and she made me laugh, but she was obsessed with her appearance and keeping up with the latest fashion trends.

On our third date she shared that, when she was maxed out on her credit cards, she kept the tags on dresses, wore them out, then returned them to the shop the next day.

‘Everyone does it,’ she said when I challenged her on it. ‘Stop being such a boring bookworm and live a little.’

At that point, it was clear that there wasn’t just a massive difference in our interests but a chasm in our values too so it was time for me to bow out. I instigated the I don’t think this is working conversation but Cat talked me down.

‘I know I’m high maintenance,’ she said, ‘and I’ve no intention of changing that for you or anyone else.

It’s who I am, just like being steady and reliable is who you are.

I know I joked that you should let your hair down and live a little, but I was wrong.

I don’t think you should change being you because you’re great the way you are and, someday, you’ll meet someone who wants that and who isn’t flaky and chaotic like me.

Until she comes along, why don’t we have a bit of fun together? ’

So we did and it was all right for a while because neither of us were in danger of getting hurt.

I knew she was using me as a shield to stop her running back to Miles but the thought that I was using her – even though she had no issue with that – niggled away at me.

I didn’t really miss Cat after we finally agreed to call it a day but I did miss her sister because I’d developed a friendship with Danika.

There were only fourteen months between them but the sisters couldn’t have been more different.

They looked nothing alike, Danika being brown-eyed and brunette like their dad and Cat being blue-eyed and blonde like their mum.

Danika was organised and structured, whereas Cat was all over the place and her timekeeping was shocking.

Every time I turned up for a date, Cat was at least half an hour off being ready so I sat in the lounge and chatted to Danika, with whom I discovered I had so much more in common.

I’d been driving on autopilot and registered that I was in Hutton Wicklow so I parked by the green which gently sloped down to the slow-flowing river and exited the car, looking up at the pretty whitewashed cottage where Nanna had been raised.

My great-nanna had still been around when I was a child so Nanna had often taken me to visit her before going on a long circular walk.

I could clearly picture Great-Nanna on the doorstep wearing a floral tabard apron with a large pocket on the front from which she always plucked a packet of sweets for our walk and a couple of crusts of bread for us to feed to the ducks.

Noticing the curtains on the cottage twitch, I turned to face the river.

A woman was crouched beside a young boy who was tossing what looked to be rice and peas towards three ducks.

Another two ducks appeared from under the road bridge and the boy squealed excitedly.

I could understand that as I’d been duck-obsessed when I was little thanks to so much time spent here feeding them.

I’d bring my own kids here to feed the ducks and hope they developed the same love I had.

Tutting to myself, I set off alongside the river. What kids?