The Waffle House on the Pier - Tilly Tennant Page 0,47
today, haven’t we?’
‘Oh yes!’ April beamed. ‘It’s been just lovely having you there today. But when your grandpa gets—’
She stopped mid-sentence, her mouth open, still formed around the words she’d been meaning to say. But she didn’t say them, and instead closed her mouth and looked out of the window. Sadie stared at her – she couldn’t help it – with a mixture of dread and relief. Dread, because she’d had a horrible idea where her grandmother’s statement had been going, and relief that she’d stopped herself before she’d uttered it. If April was getting a little confused from time to time, at least she wasn’t so far gone that she no longer had any recognition of reality. At least she was aware that Gampy had passed, even if she allowed herself to occasionally and briefly forget it.
Sadie exchanged a meaningful look with Ewan, but both of them knew now wasn’t the time to say out loud what they might be thinking. He’d want to talk to her later though. Could she tell him about the other worrying little slips of the day? Did the fact they’d happened even mean they were something to worry about? Perhaps this was Gammy still adjusting to her new life after all, and nothing of concern. But she saw in her brother’s face that he was already concerned, even without the knowledge of those other things, and that as soon as the opportunity arose he’d want to know more about how their grandma had been that day. At home she’d been quiet and a little withdrawn, and perhaps that had been the reason nobody had seen just what was happening in her head until now, when necessity had persuaded her to function and engage with the world again. Sadie only hoped that Ewan wouldn’t bring this conversation up with their parents before she’d had a chance to discuss it fully with him, because Henny and Graham were already strongly in favour of Sadie and April ‘giving this madness up’ and they didn’t need any more reasons to pressure them into thinking again about reopening the waffle house. If she allowed herself to dwell on it, Sadie had enough doubts of her own too, but she was still as determined as ever not to give those doubts room to grow.
‘We are opening again tomorrow, aren’t we?’ April asked uncertainly, as if she’d been able to read Sadie’s thoughts, or at least the strange, charged silence that had passed between Sadie and Ewan.
‘That’s the plan,’ Sadie replied, sounding as confident and airy as she could. ‘That’s if you can stand another day of me getting everything wrong.’
‘Oh, you did just fine, darlin’,’ she said, her features relaxing now.
‘That’s good to know.’
April nodded. ‘A few days and you’ll be running the place good enough to make your grandpa proud.’
Sadie welled up as the thought of her recently lost, dearly loved Gampy squeezed her heart in a way she’d been completely unprepared for. If she was honest, there were times when Gammy wasn’t the only one who momentarily forgot that he was no longer with them. They were all getting on with their lives and, for the most part, coping – as people did – but his loss had changed them all forever, even if it was hard to admit it. It seemed to Sadie that losing a loved one always did that for everyone, even if the change was so small it was hardly recognisable, because how could a person fail to change when the world around them had changed? Someone who had once occupied a space in the world was no longer there, and the world was forced to bend anew around that space, so that even though they no longer existed they wouldn’t be forgotten.
Sadie turned to the window, not wanting April to see her cry. She didn’t really want her brother to see it either, but at least it wouldn’t set him off if he did, unlike April. Sadie didn’t want to be responsible for upsetting her when she’d already cried so hard and so long since Gampy’s death.
‘Dec asked after you today,’ Ewan said. Perhaps he’d wanted to distract Sadie with something innocuous. He couldn’t have realised that this was probably the only other subject that would make her feel worse. But she tried to look unconcerned.
‘Yeah?’
‘He’d wanted to pop by at the waffle house to see how it was going but he didn’t get time.’