instead they carried on gossiping, and when everyone else headed home to their beds Lucy was left alone with Tilly, who pushed a stopper into the unfinished bottle and slotted it into Lucy’s fridge.
‘We’ll have to hold the club somewhere else next time,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s not fair if I get all the leftover booze.’
‘Good point. Mine next time, save me stocking up if I get leftovers. Cup of tea?’
‘I don’t want to sound old or boring, but that would be lovely.’
When the tea was made Tilly said, ‘You look worn out. Work crazy busy still?’
‘And then some,’ said Lucy, opening her eyes as she nursed her tea. ‘Rather that than the other way around but just when I get on top of things I get another order.’ Or she made something on a whim for a certain man up the road.
‘No more business signs for eligible bachelors?’ Tilly smirked behind her mug of tea.
‘Very funny. But no, no more of those.’
‘The sign is brilliant, by the way. And I can’t wait for opening night tomorrow. I may well turn into a waffle – I intend to eat loads, just so you know.’
‘I’ll remember to look out for a waffle-shaped Tilly after Christmas, shall I? And I’ll let Daniel know you’ll be a regular – it’s great for business.’
‘You’ll let Daniel know.’
‘Or you can,’ she said, her turn to hide behind her cup.
‘I saw you with him last night when you took the sign over to the shack.’ That explained the teasing earlier, then. It seemed Lucy hadn’t hidden her emotions quite as well as she’d thought. ‘You both looked in cahoots so I didn’t interrupt.’
Lucy put two and two together. ‘I don’t suppose you told Julian where to find me?’
‘I assume Julian was the man I bumped into who asked after you,’ Tilly nodded, it all coming together in her mind. ‘Wasn’t I supposed to? I know you guys have history and are keeping it together for his gran. I thought I was helping – he seemed anxious to find you so I told him you’d gone up to the new waffle shack with the owner.’
Lucy set her mug on the coffee table beside her and unfurled her legs from beneath her when she got a cramp. Anxious to find her wasn’t what she wanted from him at all, it wasn’t the way it should be when they were divorced and had gone their separate ways. But Julian never had been very good at accepting a decision that hadn’t been made by him. ‘Honestly, Tilly, don’t worry about it. And Julian and I are not keeping it together, we’re pretending – it’s all a lie. A lie that will be ending very soon, believe me.’
‘You sound angry.’
‘I’m not,’ she bristled. ‘Well, maybe I am, but not at you for pointing him in my direction. At him, for coming to the Cove, for hanging around when we’re over, for keeping me in his life in a way I didn’t see coming so went along with it. Now it’s Maud who’d be hurt if I stopped. It’s going to be horrible to tell her. She’ll realise there won’t be the grandkids he led her to believe we were almost at the point of having either, and I can’t bear the thought of upsetting her.’
‘Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. He can’t keep lying forever.’
Actually, if anyone could, it was Julian. He had form and he was good at it.
‘If you ask me,’ said Tilly, ‘Julian wants you back. He even asked what you were doing at the waffle shack. I said you’d made the sign for the place and he asked when it was opening. He’s taking a lot of interest in anything that’s going on in your life for someone who’s supposed to be moving on.’
‘I know.’ And she was tired of pretending.
Shadow had taken a liking to Tilly and it wasn’t easy to convince him it was time to get off her lap when she finally decided to go home. ‘I’d take him with me if I could,’ Tilly admitted when Lucy showed her out the front door, the skin on her arms breaking out in goose pimples at the cold. ‘Stick to your guns with Julian,’ she told Lucy as she hugged her goodbye. ‘He doesn’t look as though he likes to hear no for an answer.’
Tilly had got it in one.
With Tilly gone, Lucy washed up the glasses and swept the crumbs from the