your usual life once you return to it.’
‘But that’s the great thing. Since I’ve been here I’m wanting less and less to go back to my usual life. In fact, I’m thinking of staying on here permanently.’
He waits for my reaction.
‘How very … unexpected!’ I reply carefully, wondering how he wants me to react. ‘But is it practical for you? I mean we’re so remote here. We’re hardly handy for commuting or transatlantic flights.’
‘I’ll manage,’ Julian says with a wave of his hand. ‘I’ve got my eye on some interesting properties that will make much more impressive permanent homes than the place I’m staying in now. That was once my father’s too, you know. He bought it as a little bolt-hole so he could come back here from time to time. When he died he left it to me. It’s only small, but it’s very quaint and cosy if you like that sort of thing.’
‘It’s great you’re thinking of staying on, Julian,’ I say, still wary. ‘I have to say I’m a little surprised though. I can’t imagine you living here permanently. It seems so … rural, I suppose, and you always strike me as much more cosmopolitan.’
‘Things change,’ Julian says, holding my gaze across the table. ‘And so do people. Meeting you has changed me, Kate, and I hope to show you just how much influence you’ve had over me in the coming weeks and months, as we get to know each other a whole lot better.’
I open my mouth to say something, and then I close it again in relief as a waiter appears at the table with our first course, preventing me from having to respond.
As we begin to tuck into our tiny yet delicious appetisers, however, I can’t stop my mind from wandering back to Jack earlier today and what he’d so crudely told me.
I glance at Julian, and he smiles at me and lifts his glass in a toast.
‘To the two of us,’ he says, his eyes shining, ‘and to St Felix. May the three of us have many, many good times together.’
Twenty-five
I stand outside my shop and stare into the window at the latest artwork to appear underneath the sewing machine’s footplate. Although it’s upside down, I can just about see what looks like a face staring up at me.
Usually when a new piece of embroidery appears I can’t wait to retrieve it from the window and see what it’s of, but this time the sight of this fresh creation is doing nothing but make me sigh. Now I’ll have to go and see Jack again. No doubt he too will have received something very similar this morning in his own shop.
‘Couldn’t you have waited?’ I murmur, looking into the window. ‘At least a few days until the heat dies down a bit.’
‘It is a warm one, isn’t it?’ a voice behind me says, and I turn to see Anita arriving for work wearing a flowery sundress and carrying a parasol. ‘Goodness knows what it will be like later if it’s this hot now. Good morning, Kate.’
‘Morning, Anita,’ I say, greeting her, but not revealing that the heat of the sun wasn’t the type of heat I’d been thinking about. ‘Yep, we’ll have to get the fans out and that air-con unit we bought last summer,’ I reply, turning away from the window and following her into the shop. ‘I think they’re in the back room somewhere. If you hold the fort when you’ve put your things away I’ll have a search.’
Once Anita is settled in the main shop I head out back. I find the fans without too much bother and, eventually, the small air-conditioning appliance we’d purchased in the record-breaking heat St Felix had bathed in last year. I ferry them back one by one and place them in various positions that will allow a cool breeze to flow through the shop.
‘There, that’s better,’ I say when I’m done. ‘At least we won’t die of heat exhaustion now, and we might get a few extra customers venturing in if it’s cooler in here than outside.’
‘I was going to make a cup of tea,’ Anita says, handing me a glass. ‘But I thought you might prefer an iced lemonade instead? I gave Eve a wave across the road and she brought us two over.’
Eve runs the fresh coffee and juice shop a few doors across from us. Whatever weather St Felix throws at our visitors Evie is prepared with either a hot cup