The Waffle House on the Pier - Tilly Tennant Page 0,69

poked the key in the lock and gave the door a shove to open up. April went round the dining room to open the blinds and let the morning stream in while Sadie began to switch everything on.

‘Want any help before I go?’ Graham asked.

‘You’ve got enough of your own to do,’ Sadie said. ‘Thanks though.’

‘I’ll be off then,’ he said. ‘Sea’s looking good today – should get plenty of trips in.’

‘It is,’ Sadie said. ‘Away with you then.’

Sadie could hear him chuckling even after the door had closed behind him. She turned to April.

‘Mum said you went to the cemetery this morning.’

‘Yes,’ April said. ‘It was such a lovely morning to go.’

‘Hmm. Maybe next time I’ll come with you.’

‘I’d sure like that, darlin’.’

‘Me too.’

‘You always were his favourite,’ she said, walking to the little office. ‘You were his first granddaughter after all, and grandpas sure do love their little girls.’

Sadie frowned. ‘Second granddaughter…’

‘What’s that, darlin’?’ April called from the office.

‘I’m the second. What about Lucy?’

April came back with a bag of change for the till. She stared at Sadie. And then she shook her head. ‘Silly me. For a moment I clean forgot about your sister.’

Sadie stared at her, but April didn’t seem fazed at all. Lucy didn’t come home very often but she could hardly be forgotten. How could you forget a whole person, your actual first granddaughter? How could you forget she existed and not even be worried by that?

‘Did you email Timpson’s yet?’ April asked briskly. ‘We’re gonna be clean out of batter by the end of today if it’s as busy as I think it might be.’

‘Yes,’ Sadie said. ‘They said they’d be here by nine.’

‘Good girl. How about you count this change while I go and get mixing?’ She handed the bag to Sadie as she waltzed past to the kitchen like she hadn’t a care in the world, like a woman half her age who hadn’t spent the morning at the grave of her recently passed husband. Sadie was beginning to freak out. Her conversation with her mother that morning hadn’t helped either. If everyone was noticing April doing weird things, did that mean her condition was worse than Sadie had thought?

She turned her attention to the change in the bag. There was nothing else she could do except soldier on – at least for today. As for tomorrow, she couldn’t even think that far ahead and there was absolutely no way to know what it might hold even if she could. Every day with Gammy right now was a crazy ride, as unpredictable as the rickety, twisting old Mad Mouse that rattled people around its tracks on the fairground nearby.

At least she had her date with Luke to look forward to. Her stomach fizzed as her mind went back to their night in the Listing Ship. And then afterwards beneath the pier… But then thinking about being beneath the pier also brought back the reason they’d hidden under there in the first place. She’d often fantasised that Declan and Melissa might split up and leave him free, so it was strange that this morning she found herself hoping that whatever they’d been arguing about last night had been resolved and that they were OK.

There was a knock at the window, and she looked up to see her current favourite distraction grinning through the glass at her. She ran to open the door.

‘What are you doing down here so early?’

‘I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d take a walk. Are you busy?’

‘A bit.’

‘Oh.’

‘I am trying to run a business here,’ she said, laughing. ‘It’s alright for you – you can start work whenever you like but I have to be open when the sign on the door says I’m supposed to be. Did you need anything in particular?’

‘No, I just wanted to see you.’

‘You’re seeing me later.’

‘I know; I’m greedy. I wanted to see you some more. I can’t stop thinking about you.’

‘Are you always like this?’

‘Like what?’

‘Going at a hundred miles an hour.’

His face fell. ‘I’m sorry, I just…’

‘I’m joking,’ Sadie said with a smile, though she was aware that she might have said the wrong thing. The heartbreak he’d mentioned in the pub the night before came back to her and she had to wonder whether perhaps it had made him emotionally fragile. Maybe she should have gone ahead and heard the story after all, because maybe it was a story she really ought to know so she could act accordingly.