The Waffle House on the Pier - Tilly Tennant Page 0,48
late. I was on my way back to the office and he was going to meet Melissa from work.’
‘That’s so nice of him,’ April said. ‘He’s such a thoughtful boy – he always was my favourite.’
‘Your favourite what?’ Sadie asked, though she knew full well what April meant.
‘My favourite of all the boys you brought to meet me. I always thought he was the one you’d settle with.’
‘The others never lasted more than five minutes, that’s why,’ Ewan said, and Sadie stuck her tongue out at him in exactly the same way she would have fifteen years before.
‘Just because you married the first girl who would have you,’ she said, ‘doesn’t mean we all have to do that.’
‘So you’re into girls now?’ he fired back. ‘I wish you’d told me this before; Kat’s got loads of single friends and I think one or two of them might be into girls too.’
Sadie rolled her eyes. ‘Hold my sides – I think they’re about to split. I don’t know why Kat married you – you’re such a dick.’
‘Sadie!’ April chided.
To her credit, Sadie blushed. ‘Sorry, Gammy. I meant idiot. Ewan’s an idiot. And even you have to admit that he is.’
‘I’ll admit no such thing,’ April said. ‘He’s a fine boy. You’re both wonderful.’
Sadie glanced at Ewan. Banter was an art that had completely passed Gammy by. She either meant something or she didn’t – sarcasm, irony and teasing; they were concepts she’d never really understood.
‘I am a fine boy,’ Ewan said with a grin. ‘Kat was lucky to get me and she knows it.’
‘You were lucky to get her more like,’ Sadie shot back. ‘You might be good-looking – though that’s up for debate as far as I can see, even though everyone else seems to think you are – but you’re still as annoying as hell. I can’t even imagine how annoying you must be to be married to.’
‘Kat says every moment married to me is like heavenly bliss.’
‘I’ll ask her if that’s true when I see her next. I think she might have something different to say about it.’
‘Yeah, yeah… you say all this but you’d be devastated if I ever left the bay and you couldn’t see me every day.’
Sadie grimaced and pretended it wasn’t true at all, but it was. She couldn’t imagine life without Ewan on the doorstep. Her sister Lucy was almost a stranger to her these days, but she and Lucy had never been that close anyway, not like her and Ewan. From the moment Sadie had arrived in the world it was Ewan. Lucy hadn’t been interested in Sadie as a baby – as it turned out, she wasn’t interested in babies at all – but Ewan had loved her. Over the years he’d become her unofficial guardian and protector. Whenever there had been bullying at school he’d been there to sort it out, unsuitable boys had been warned off (though they didn’t always heed the warning and Sadie didn’t always either), misdemeanours had been covered up and hidden from their parents with his collusion and shoulders had been offered to cry on. By the time Sadie had turned eighteen, it was common knowledge in Sea Salt Bay that if you messed with Sadie Schwartz then you messed with her big brother too.
These thoughts led to others as Ewan turned his attention back to the road, wearing a grin. But then Sadie spoke again and wiped it from his face, even though she hadn’t meant to.
‘You had Luke’s business card, didn’t you?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who I mean – don’t pretend that you don’t. Luke. Boat man… the man you were so mean and rude to earlier on.’
‘Oh, him.’
‘So you must have already known he’d moved to the bay.’
Ewan shook his head. ‘The card shows an old address. He had absolutely no intention of being available for assistance if we’d needed it – he was trying to stitch us up.’
‘I don’t see how that makes sense because he must have realised that sooner or later we’d find out he’d moved here.’
‘Who knows what he was thinking, but I don’t believe for a minute he was accepting any kind of responsibility for what happened.’
‘Aww, come on, Ewan… that’s ridiculous. You saw him – he couldn’t have been more sorry. What did you want from him? And I’m assuming that there would have been a mobile number on the card and there was a good chance that would still be valid.’