The Seafront Tea Rooms Read online

‘Does it have to be a secret? Couldn’t you tell them about us?’

  Séraphine shook her head. ‘No. How could I?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Carla said, shrugging. ‘Open your mouth, say the words —’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Séraphine said. ‘They’ve always assumed I’d marry a nice boy from the village, stay here, have lots of children.’

  ‘You can still have children,’ Carla said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘I know. But it’s not only that. They wouldn’t be able to take it in. They wouldn’t understand – and I don’t think the rest of the family would either.’

  ‘They might surprise you,’ Carla said. ‘My parents took the news better than I expected.’

  ‘Your parents sound pretty laidback, though. It wouldn’t be the same with my family.’

  ‘It still wasn’t easy telling them,’ Carla said. ‘It was a big adjustment. It’s OK now, but it took them a long time to get used to it.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ Carla said.

  ‘You were sure then?’

  Carla nodded. ‘I’ve always known.’

  ‘I envy you,’ Séraphine said. ‘I put a lot of energy into trying to change myself. If a boy at school asked me out, I’d go, hoping that my feelings would turn from fondness or admiration into something else, that maybe I’d start to understand what all my friends were getting so excited about.’

  ‘And did that ever happen?’

  ‘Never,’ Séraphine replied, smiling. ‘So, here I am. With you. All those years, I had no idea what my friends were talking about. Now, finally, I get it.’

  ‘Before me, you never went out, tried to meet other women?’

  ‘Have you seen our village?’ Séraphine laughed.

  ‘OK, yes.’ Carla smiled and put her hands up. ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘Barcelona must be quite different from here.’

  ‘It’s the polar opposite,’ Carla said. ‘More open-minded. Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking, coming here. This beautiful, crazy place. But then I did get to meet beautiful crazy you.’

  Then they’d kissed.

  Séraphine smiled at the memory. She looked down at the imprints that the soles of her shoes made in the soft, wet sand on the beach. However far you went, there were some things you couldn’t outpace.

  15

  Monday 15 September

  When Jacob and Flo were finally tucked up in bed, Charlie saw Kat to the door. Kat had shown her how to strap on the sling and she’d grown to enjoy the comfort of Gracie’s small body against her chest, close enough that she could feel the gentle rhythm of her breathing.

  ‘Thanks for everything,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Any time,’ Kat replied. ‘I enjoyed it. I’ve been missing Leo, and Jacob reminds me of him when he was that age.’

  ‘Well, it was good of you to come.’

  Kat waved it away. ‘It was nothing. Anyway, I hope things get better for your sister soon.’

  ‘Me too. Maybe I’ll be seeing more of you now.’

  They said goodbye and Charlie closed the front door. She went upstairs to her sister’s bedroom and knocked gently.

  ‘Come in…’ Pippa’s voice, groggy with sleep, came from behind the door.

  Pippa was sitting up in bed. Her eyes were dark with smudged mascara, but colour had returned to her cheeks.

  ‘God, how long was I out for?’ she asked, rubbing her eyes. Without another word she held out her arms for Gracie, and Charlie passed the baby over.

  ‘Most of the day. You must have really needed it.’

  ‘I guess I did.’ She looked down at Gracie lovingly. ‘She looks happy.’

  Charlie smiled. ‘I did my best.’ She perched on the end of Pippa’s double bed. ‘Thankfully, I had some help.’

  Pippa was stroking her daughter’s hair gently, and Charlie noticed a single teardrop fall on to Gracie’s face.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

  Pippa looked up, shaking her head. ‘I feel such a fool.’

  ‘A fool? Well, tell me about it – I have quite a lot of experience in that area.’ She brought her legs up on to the bed, moving closer to her sister.

  Pippa smiled weakly. Slowly, she began to speak: ‘I’m lucky to be married to a man like Luke, I know that…’

  She paused, her brow creased with anxiety.

  ‘I can’t tell you why I don’t feel happy, Charlie. But each day when I wake up – if you can call it that; it feels as though, since Gracie was born, I’ve barely shut my eyes – anyway, the kids are clambering on me, demanding my attention. Luke goes off to work, and then I’m on my own. Getting everyone ready. Cleaning. Tidying. Trying to make everything seem as if it’s perfect. A lot of hard work goes into this illusion.’

  Charlie thought of the times she’d envied Pippa – the expensively decorated, tidy house, her happy marriage. It seemed such a thin façade now, Charlie couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen through it.

  ‘I love them, Charlie,’ Pippa said, her voice laden with guilt. ‘Don’t get me wrong. But I never thought it would be this hard.’

  ‘Have you told Luke how you feel?’

  ‘No. Even now. I’m a good actress, I suppose.’ She said the words numbly, as if she were stepping outside herself. ‘But Luke knows something’s wrong. He knows what he read.’

  ‘What he read?’

  ‘Emails I should never have sent.’ Her cheeks flushed with shame.

  ‘Oh God. Who to?’

  ‘Will.’

  ‘Will Mortimer?’ Charlie said, wrinkling her nose, surprised. She hadn’t heard her sister mention him since they were teenagers.

  ‘I know.’ The tears were running down her face now. ‘It’s ridiculous. The whole thing. I haven’t seen him since we were nineteen and I was still studying.’

  ‘What were you emailing him about?’

  ‘He emailed me, out of the blue, said he’d been thinking about me. I sent a reply, just chatting, you know. I thought, any day now, I’ll get a friend request on Facebook. That way I wouldn’t have to spell it out – he’d see the photos of me and Luke, our wedding day, he’d see the photos of Gracie, Flo and Jacob.’

  ‘So he knows now?’

  ‘No. The thing is, the friend request never came. Turns out he doesn’t even have a profile. So then I realised I didn’t have to tell him everything.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I started writing to him in the middle of the night, when Luke was asleep and I was feeding Gracie. That three in the morning stillness where you think there’s no one else in the world who’s awake. It turned out that Will was, though – and so we emailed back and forth. I told him about my job as a solicitor…’

  Charlie raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe how glamorous it is, Charlie. Media law. Very high-flying. A lot of posh lunches on expenses, and drinks in town after work.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Not here, of course. I’m in Manchester.’

  ‘OK,’ Charlie said, taking it all in. ‘So you got a little creative with the truth, and said you had a job that you don’t. That’s not the most awful thing in the world, is it?’

  ‘That was the start.’ Pippa rearranged Gracie on her chest. The baby’s breathing had deepened and she was snoring softly now. ‘I sent him photos of me – I guess they were about five or six years old.’

  ‘You didn’t mention Luke?’

  ‘No. Or the kids. I edited them right out of my life.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything?’

  ‘Nope. You see what I mean? I’m a pretty awful person. And you know what makes it worse? I felt better, Charlie. I felt better being that woman, the one I invented.’

  Charlie took a deep breath. ‘Did the two of you meet up?’

  ‘No, never. He wanted to – but I kept putting him off. I didn’t want to meet him. I just wanted to have that taste of freedom once in a while. But last night when Gracie wouldn’t stop c
rying, Luke went off to sleep in the spare room. He does that occasionally, when he has a big meeting the following morning and needs a good night’s sleep. The thing is, I didn’t realise I’d left my phone in there, still logged into my email. I suppose he must have suspected something was going on, because he checked my account.’

  Pippa stroked the back of her daughter’s head.

  ‘He waited until this morning to confront me. Over breakfast with the kids, he asked me who Will Mortimer was. I felt sick. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. He went upstairs, so calm, packed his bags. He said he needed some space to think, told the kids he had to go on a business trip, and walked out.’

  ‘Oh God. That’s awful.’

  Charlie thought back over the past week. How had she missed things being so wrong in the house? Sisters were meant to have some kind of special intuition, weren’t they? But she’d been too caught up in her own annoyance with Pippa to see through her behaviour to the underlying cause. Her marriage was in serious trouble, and what she needed wasn’t someone to pass judgement but a good friend and listener.

  ‘How do you feel now?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Bloody awful. Like everything’s been turned upside-down.’ Pippa started to sob again.

  ‘Do you still love him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pippa said, wiping her nose hurriedly with her hand. ‘I think so. Yes.’

  ‘Then we have to find a way to fix this,’ Charlie said, trying to focus her mind on a solution. ‘What about one of those counselling hotlines? Relate, maybe?’ She picked up her phone to find the website.

  ‘Don’t,’ Pippa said, putting a hand on her sister’s arm to stop her.

  Charlie paused and put down the phone.

  ‘You know what I actually need at the moment, most of all?’ Pippa said. ‘Time. To think. Get my energy back. Someone to help with the constant cycle of school runs and laundry and washing up. There’s so much to do, I never stop to give any thought to what’s wrong in my marriage, in my life. I need to work this out, but I can’t do it alone.’

  Charlie looked at her sister. Pippa’s forehead was creased with worry, and there were fine lines around her eyes. She wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t even trying to be any more.

  ‘I know I’ve been a cow,’ Pippa continued. ‘And I don’t deserve for you to do this. But would you stay with me? I could really do with your company.’

  Charlie saw the desperation in her sister’s eyes, then glanced down at Gracie, nestled in her mother’s arms. She wondered what would happen to them both if she left.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  16

  Tuesday 16 September

  ‘Charlie, you can’t just not turn up!’ Jess said, furious. ‘I told you we needed you here. Where the heck are you?’

  ‘I’m still in Scarborough. Something’s come up.’

  ‘Something that means you want to throw your career away? Because it looks as though that’s what you’re set on doing.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jess, but it’s unavoidable. I’ve got weeks of holiday stacked up and I’m going to have to take some of it. I’d be happy to do whatever I can by email —’

  ‘I need you in the office, Charlie. That’s why you’re employed to work in the office.’

  ‘I can’t leave right now. I’m sorry, but I have to stay another week at least.’

  Overnight, it seemed as if Pippa had got worse instead of better. She’d sat up sobbing for hours, barely saying a word. Luke had called a few times but she’d refused to speak to him; she was convinced that he was only calling to tell her it was all over, that she’d ruined things between them.

  ‘How am I supposed to trust you with the next edition? We’re due to go to print in a few weeks and we have no articles or reviews yet – you do realise that, don’t you?’ Jess said sternly.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Charlie said, lowering her voice so that Pippa and the children wouldn’t hear her. ‘And I’m working on it. But I’ll have to do it from here. I’m sorry, Jess, but this is a family emergency.’

  Jess sighed. ‘I took a leap of faith allowing you to guest-edit this issue, and now I’m having to make excuses for you. I thought you were serious about this.’

  ‘I am,’ Charlie said, trying to keep her voice calm despite the mounting sense of desperation. ‘I’ll do most of the reviews while I’m here and have them edited ready for when I get back.’

  ‘You’re going to do all that on your own, while dealing with your “family emergency”?’

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  ‘Fine…’ Jess paused. ‘OK, I hope I don’t end up regretting this, but let’s talk next Wednesday. You need to have most of the content ready for subbing by then, and the absolute outside date I can give you for the rest is Monday the twenty-ninth. And that’s it, Charlie. If you let me down, there is no way I will be able to recommend you to take over as my replacement.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have everything done. Thank you.’ Charlie felt a wave of relief wash over her. ‘I won’t let you down, Jess. I promise. This is going to be the best edition of the magazine yet.’

  ‘I certainly hope so.’

  17

  Wednesday 17 September

  Charlie had had it all planned out – she’d pick Jacob up from nursery, then Flo up from school and they’d all go to the playground together. That would keep them occupied for at least an hour, giving Pippa some relative peace at home with Gracie.

  ‘It’s raining!’ Flo protested, covering her head with her hands theatrically. ‘We can’t play. The swings are all wet.’

  ‘It’s raining,’ Jacob said, echoing his sister’s whine. ‘We can’t play.’

  For once, Charlie had to admit that her niece and nephew had a point. Storm clouds were thick in the sky, and the current drizzle looked like it was only going to get worse. She looked around for other options, and with delight and relief, caught sight of the Seafront.

  Inside, at Letty’s stool by the till, there was a man about Charlie’s age. Broad-shouldered with dark-blond hair – the kind of guy Charlie might look twice at if she didn’t have other things to think about right now.

  Flo rammed her scooter into the glass cabinet, shaking the cake stands. A couple of customers looked over and Charlie cringed.

  ‘Flo, Jacob – see that table by the window? Let’s see who can get there fastest, shall we?’

  Her niece and nephew skidded across the floorboards, and then clambered on to chairs.

  ‘Sorry about them,’ she said to the man. ‘I promised them we’d go and play but then the heavens opened.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Is Letty not here today?’

  ‘She’s had to go out, but she’ll be back later this afternoon.’

  ‘And you are…’

  ‘Euan,’ he said, holding out his hand for her to shake.

  ‘Letty’s son?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Has my reputation preceded me?’

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘It’s just… You look like her. Your eyes.’ They were a striking light blue.

  He smiled. ‘Yep, people sometimes say that.’

  ‘She mentioned you to me. Said you were the real self-starter in the family.’

  ‘I keep myself busy, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Although I kind of enjoy it when Mum asks me to help out here. Time seems to go slowly. And the Seafront is my second home – I practically grew up in these four walls, after all.’

  ‘You’re lucky.’

  ‘So, what can I get you?’

  ‘Could I have a cup of…’ She looked at the jars on the wall, recalled the distinct aroma of each one when the lid was opened. ‘I think I’ll go for the jasmine tea today, please.’

  ‘And for the kids?’

  ‘Two of your finest gingerbread men, please.’ She pointed at them in the glass cabinet.

  ‘Three, did you say?’ Euan said, a glint in his eye as he b
rought the plate out.

  ‘Three would be even better. Rainy-day rules, right?’

  ‘Absolutely. These are freshly made, too. Busy day?’

  ‘You could say that. Up at six, and yet I still didn’t have time to eat anything.’

  Euan arranged the gingerbread men on a tray.

  ‘And could you do a couple of babyccinos?’

  ‘Baby whats?’ Euan wrinkled his nose and laughed.

  ‘You know. Mini cappuccinos, for kids. Frothy milk, chocolate sprinkles?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, getting some cups down. ‘Babyccinos, eh? And I thought I’d heard it all.’

  When Charlie went up to pay, Euan was serving a middle-aged couple. He chatted easily with them. Laughter-lines formed at the corner of his eyes as he smiled. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow, revealing strong, tanned forearms and hands, as if he worked outside. He glanced over at Charlie fleetingly and caught her eye.

  As she waited, she noticed a scrapbook lying on the counter. On the front were the words: The Seafront: 1913 to the present day.

  She opened it – inside were newspaper cuttings dating back to the early days of the tea rooms. The first photo showed men and women constructing the building.

  ‘Sorry to keep you,’ he said. ‘Is it the bill you’re after?’

  She nodded. ‘This is fascinating stuff,’ she said, pointing to the scrapbook.

  ‘Oh yeah. The whole history’s in there,’ Euan said. ‘This place has stood through two world wars.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes. The year after my grandparents opened the tea rooms, the town was bombarded by German warships. Nineteen people died, the lighthouse was destroyed – but the tea rooms survived.’

  ‘Impressive,’ Charlie said, continuing to browse through the pictures.

  She turned the page, and saw a photo of Letty when she was young, in a pair of flares and a flowery blouse, a man with a moustache by her side.

  ‘He’s handsome,’ Charlie said, pointing at the man.

  ‘That’s my dad, John.’