The couple spent little time together but when they did, they made it count and for them, the arrangement somehow worked.
Kara picked the cardboard tray up from the counter. Just as she was about to leave, Frank turned from the customer he was serving and said in her ear, ‘I had a young lad in here earlier. Gutted he was. Been dumped by his girl.’
Kara wasn’t quite sure where Frank was going with this.
He finished up with: ‘I told him to get over it. That some break-ups are meant for wake-ups.’
A watery smile was all she could manage in return.
Chapter 4
Kara couldn’t help but smirk at the loud wolf whistle that greeted her on arrival at the ferry quay. It was Billy Dillon, the handsome assistant ferryman. As she made her way past the line of cars waiting in the queue for the next short trip over to Crowsbridge, he winked and waved at her. He then deftly opened the metal gates, causing a flurry of engines to rev to life and the vehicles on board to drive off the flat ferry float, after which they would head either to the main road out of town to their left, or straight up the steep incline of Ferry Lane towards the market.
Meanwhile, Kara’s dad was carefully manoeuvring the ancient tug that pulled the ferry float. It came to rest with a small thud against the buoy on the side of the creaky platform on the quay. On finishing this task and seeing his daughter, he let go of the boat’s wheel and waved at her with both hands.
Oh, how Joe Moon loved that old red and yellow tug, named Happy Hart. The very same one that had been used since her Grandad Harry had taken over the ferry business from the Trevelyan family in the 1950s and had stayed in the Moon family ever since. The joining of the car ferry float in the 1960s had created the iconic shape of the ferry on the River Hart, the old-fashioned charm of which had become a tourist attraction for those visiting Hartmouth and Crowsbridge.
Billy came to Kara’s aid and took the coffees from her. ‘Kerry baby,’ he said. Only three special people in her world called her Kerry, and Billy was one of them. Her mother had wanted to christen her plain ‘Kara’, the short form of Kerensa, the Cornish name meaning Love, but her father had insisted, and on a windy 13 September in Hartmouth General Hospital, Kerensa Anne Moon, a second daughter to Joe and Doryty Moon, was born. ‘Better be one for me, or I’ll be having to slap that gorgeous aris of yours.’ Kara was amused by both his whistles and unaffected lapses into cockney rhyming slang. The word ‘aris’ had a complicated history: ‘bottle and glass’ to rhyme with ‘arse’ had been shortened to ‘Aristotle’ (to rhyme with ‘bottle’) and then shortened once more to ‘aris’.
For one glorious second, Billy’s cheekiness had made her forget the reason why she was here. But she couldn’t let this go unanswered. Kara turned around and, keeping her face dead straight, she bent over and did a quick twerk, shimmying her denim-covered booty in Billy’s direction.
Billy tutted. ‘You’re such a little tease.’
‘And you’re so immature.’ Kara smirked. ‘One of these days, Billy Dillon, someone will slap your face for being so rude.’
‘And one of these days, Kerry Moon, you will go on that date with me.’
The ‘date’ joke had been a long-standing banter between Billy and Kara ever since the lad had started working on the ferry as a teenager. A compact five-feet nine, with dark brown hair cut short with a floppy fringe, he had long-lashed, almond-shaped eyes that were a unique, almost violet dark blue, and the ferryman’s uniform of long black shorts and white T-shirt and hoody suited his lean but honed physique. His face was already deeply tanned from the lovely weather they had been having. He had dimples to die for, which not only made him look younger than his twenty-five years, but also made him a big hit with the ladies.
‘Come on, lad,’ Joe Moon said with a smile on his face. ‘Stop flirting with my girl and get these cars on, will you.’ He jumped across on to the float and kissed Kara on the cheek. At sixty-one, he was fit for his age. Kara had got her height and colouring from her mother, for her father stood at an average five-foot ten and