The Waffle House on the Pier - Tilly Tennant Page 0,35
at lightning speed) but she wouldn’t have expected it to come this far.
‘My cousin, Miss.’
‘Does your cousin live in Sea Salt Bay?’
‘No, Miss. But my uncle’s ex-wife does and she knows the lifeguard. Was it you, Miss? Did you nearly die?’
Every head flicked up from their textbooks now and thirty pairs of eyes regarded her with keen interest.
‘I don’t think this is a conversation we ought to be having now,’ she said stiffly. ‘This class is not about my private life—’
Sadie stopped dead. She’d never thought about it like that before, but wasn’t that exactly what had happened? She’d tried to make light of the incident, for Kat and Ewan’s sake and for the sake of her parents and the guy who’d caused the accident and even – to a certain extent – for herself. But if nobody had been there to pull her from the sea as she’d lost consciousness and slipped beneath the waves…
‘It was fine,’ she said, shaking herself, though it was harder to shake the sudden slap of realisation, the recognition of just how lucky she’d been that day, how fortunate she was to be alive and how easily the story could have had a much darker ending. For the first time she truly recognised how fleeting and precious life was, how easily it was lost, and the epiphany shocked her to the core.
‘Page eighty-five please,’ she said slowly, like a malfunctioning robot. ‘Come on, get on with it.’
For once there was no argument.
Chapter Eight
Sadie’s parents had repeatedly told her that to leave her teaching course was folly. She’d discussed it with them at length, because their family always discussed things, though in truth she’d made up her mind even before the conversations had begun. She was making a huge mistake, they’d said, underestimating how difficult running the waffle house would be, how she might regret her decision. Ewan had taken their side, strongly in agreement, while Kat, for once, had been uncharacteristically reserved in airing her opinions.
Gammy, on the other hand, had been the most animated Sadie had seen her since Gampy’s death. While she wasn’t exactly jumping for joy, she did seem to be filled with new purpose and set about trying to instruct Sadie in order to help her to be ready when the big day came. Most of what she needed to know Sadie had already gleaned from the years she’d spent hanging around the waffle house, and some of it – though she couldn’t be certain – sounded a bit mixed up. But Gammy still wasn’t really herself and perhaps it would take a while for her to get back into the swing of things. Once she was working again, the tills of the waffle house ringing with the most joyful, satisfying sound, she’d start to come to life again, of that Sadie was sure.
And in the end, no matter what, Sadie was always going to win the battle to get the waffle house reopened. She had her now infamous knock on the bonce to thank for that. Her parents were just so relieved to have her safe and sound they’d have agreed to almost anything she could think to ask for.
* * *
The place had been kept relatively clean during its closure, but April and Sadie went in early anyway on reopening day to give it a more thorough going-over. It had been April’s suggestion – she’d insisted that it had to be cleaner than clean if it was going to give returning customers confidence that the standards hadn’t changed in the time it had been locked up, and that made perfect sense to Sadie.
April’s seemingly methodical planning and common-sense ideas gave Sadie hope that she’d be back to normal sooner rather than later. It meant that she didn’t see the other, more hidden clues that her hopes might just be dashed. Perhaps she’d simply wanted too badly to believe that her gamble would be a roaring success, to prove all the doubters wrong, to prove to herself that she’d made the right choice when she was still terrified that she hadn’t. Whatever the reasons, in the weeks to come she would wish that she’d taken more notice.
As it was, Sadie yawned widely as they walked the silent pier, the dawn light still pink and peach over the grey line of the sea. ‘I could do with a coffee before we do anything.’
April gave her a sideways look. ‘You could have had one before we left. It wouldn’t have mattered