Love at the Little Wedding Shop by the Sea - Jane Linfoot Page 0,65
spot the difference between real-life humdrum and outright fantasy.
‘How’s the ice cream, Milla Vanilla?’
As Nic arrives at my elbow I jump back to reality and give him the same. ‘It’s fab to have raspberry sauce again after so long, Knickerbocker Glory.’
Nic gives me a nudge. ‘Knickerbocker Glory’s a bit long for a nickname.’
‘And Milla Vanilla isn’t?’ I roll my eyes and try again. ‘You could be Columbus because you sail round the world? Or maybe Captain Kirk.’ Don’t knock how random this is, it’s a great way to avoid more challenging topics.
Nic’s staring at me as we walk. ‘From the Starship Enterprise?’
I nod. ‘I’m not an obsessive, but it’s well known in Star Trek history that Kirk is the person who removes his shirt the most. There may be some parallels there.’
‘And we’re both in charge of our ships – I could go with that.’ He laughs. ‘It’s good to see you with red cheeks today not green ones.’
That’s exactly the kind of conversation bullet I was hoping to dodge here. ‘Just what I need! A reminder of my fail and to hear that I’m scarlet.’ I quicken my pace so we can get there before I go puce and he starts asking me if I’ve read The Sober Diaries or done any dependency workshops. But that only makes me even more breathless.
He’s talking long easy strides beside me. ‘I’m guessing that if we’re widening the search for a venue we’ll be eating a lot of ice cream over the next few weeks.’
Even though it’s pounding from the exertion, my heart still manages to wither. Much as I love ice cream, lately I’m finding him even less comfortable to be with. And him talking weeks not days isn’t encouraging either. I need to crack this venue search as soon as possible before we reach as far as London. ‘Aren’t there boats to deliver?’
‘This is my priority; I’ll be on it full time now until it’s sorted.’
‘Great.’ It’s not great at all. Now he’s back, I can’t think why I wasn’t more delighted to see him go away.
He bobs to pick up a pebble and rubs it between his fingers. ‘The trouble with walking on the beach without a dog is it always feels like something is missing. My mum and dad have a houseful, we need to borrow them.’
We don’t agree on many issues, but he’s right on this. ‘We always had dogs when I was younger. They used to love the beach.’
‘So are your parents still in Rose Hill?’
I swallow away a sudden rush of saliva, then move in to brush it off. ‘My dad left when I was small, so he didn’t ever figure, but my mum died eleven years ago.’
He lets out a long sigh. ‘I’m so sorry, I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known.’
Making other people feel okay is always my first job when they find out. ‘It’s fine. I’m more used to her being gone now. But however long it is, I don’t think about her any less – I still miss her every day.’ Every hour actually.
His face creases. ‘Poor Milla.’
My mum hated wallowers; I owe it to her to lift the mood again. ‘She’s never that far away. Most things I do, I can hear her voice in my head telling me what she thinks.’ I send him a grin. ‘She was so vibrant and alive, she’d hate us to be sad. Most of those party bangers came from what she called her “playlist to die for”. She was never going to leave quietly, she had the whole village reverberating for months.’
‘She sounds awesome.’ He dips across and gives my elbow a squeeze, but I do a spurt in my speed trot and it’s over before it’s begun. ‘That must be where you get it from.’
By the time my mum reached the stage where she couldn’t move out of our living room, she took delight in arguing the toss with the village vicar when he visited, so usually he steered clear. And she never talked about heaven as real. Instead, she insisted she’d be crossing the proverbial rainbow bridge for pets, and finding our dogs and all the guinea pigs we ever had, along with the three rabbits who escaped, gambolling in a sunny meadow on the other side. And she always promised that whatever happened she’d always be here to watch over us kids. But there are times, like now, when I look up and see Merwyn haring along the beach towards