When I arrived at the seafront, I found Charlie, my one and only employee, leaning on the back of the van, a vape pen hanging out of his mouth.
“Bit early for that, isn’t it?” I said.
“CBD oil, boss, great hangover cure,” he said, taking it from his lips and offering it to me. “Looks like you need it.”
It was so cold I couldn’t tell where the smoke ended and the condensation of my breath began. The smell of hemp turned my stomach.
“Ugh, no thanks,” I said. “I’ve already been sick once this morning.”
“Getting too old for partying, huh?” He laughed.
I kicked his shin and unlocked the van shutters. “I’ll open up then, shall I?”
“I was just about to!” Charlie said, sticking the vape in the top of his jeans.
“Just building up to it, huh?”
“Come on, boss, it’s not like we’re fighting off customers right now.” He gestured to the vast swaths of empty beach around us.
“Well, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make an effort,” I said as I pulled on an apron emblazoned with the café logo (a cartoon Al Pacino, in his famous wild-eyed Scarface pose, but holding a steaming cup of coffee instead of a grenade launcher).
If you liked coffee, a good-not-great selection of pastries, and intermittent Wi-Fi, then Cuppacino was the place for you. We catered to all your twenty-first-century coffee needs, from short ristrettos to long macchiatos, like every other coffee shop in Eastbourne. But we did have something they didn’t: while I’d given the old ice cream van a super-cool makeover, I had insisted on keeping the Mr. Whippy soft-serve machine. Me and Noah had painted over the garish, twisted fake Mickey Mouses and Pikachus adorning the sides of the van with duck-egg blue, and peeled off the stickers of Day-Glo ice lollies from the windows. Our pitch down by the seafront had three white circular tables decorated with little white flowerpots and surrounded by white wooden ladder-back chairs.
After the breakup, I became de facto manager, mostly because a) I was the only member of staff left, and b) I look great in an apron. I was free to run the place as I chose, and I chose to run it in a super-fun but generally haphazard way, turning up at 9 (ish) and leaving at 6 p.m. on. the. dot. Not because I didn’t care about my job, I just cared more about eating my dinner on time and getting drunk with my friends.
I had made one excellent managerial decision, which was to employ someone to do three very important tasks:
Charlie had started shortly after the New Year. A protégé of Richard’s, he had just quit his job at the mind-numbingly dull IT firm they both worked for. When I’d met him at the Brown Derby, he’d told me he wanted a stress-free job so he could “get back in touch with himself” or some such nonsense, and I had the feeling he was probably secretly writing a self-help manual or studying transcendental meditation or something. He’d started work a couple of weeks after Noah left, so we were instantly bonded by a mutual confusion over how to work the till and having no one else to go to lunch with.
And no, I couldn’t really afford to hire someone, especially in these winter months, but to be honest, I couldn’t stand another day by myself, staring out the van window into the rain. Some days, just for a laugh, I threatened to march him up and down the beach wearing a sandwich board, but mostly I just got him to sweep the pitch and replenish the packs of Splenda.
So that was it: me, Charlie, and Cuppacino’s mascot, Rocco the French bulldog, who was normally found nestled under the van, only looking out if someone ordered a cheese toastie. Rocco belonged to our one and only regular customer, Jamal, a sharply dressed Gen Z-er who had the unique ability to make a grande cappuccino last approximately one thousand years. I got the impression he was more interested in my free Wi-Fi than my excellent range of potato chips and sparkling customer service.
“Come on, then, what’s the goss from last night?” Charlie asked. “You look awful, so I’m assuming the hen went well?”
“Uh, just start setting up, will you? I’m still processing,” I said, climbing inside the van.
To be fair, I always spilled the tea to Charlie after a big night or a bad date, but this morning I had no idea where to begin. So while he set the tables out on the promenade, I curled up on the driver’s seat, rested my head against the cool glass of the window, and idly scrolled through Connector. Normally I’d be putting in a good solid hour of swiping right about now, but after everything, the thought of that made me feel sick.
I pulled up Parker’s profile and flicked through his photos again. I’d forgotten all about his message last night, and now that I thought about it, I wanted to know why he’d sent me the link about Rob. Did he know I’d been on a date with him, or was it just a coincidence? And how many coincidences need to happen before they’re not really coincidences anymore?
It was far more likely Parker was just being a dick, I told myself. And normally that sort of behavior would have earned him an instant block and report, but there was something about him that made me hesitate. Maybe I should just ask him outright? I tapped out a message.
Gwen: What was that link all about?
As I pressed Send, I was interrupted by the end of a broom tapping on the window. I looked up to see Charlie with a big dumb grin pasted on his face. I wound down the window and he peered inside. With tight brown curls that seemed to sprout out of the baseball cap that was forever jammed on his head and eyes that were too big for his face, he looked almost like a caricature of himself, like the ones of out-of-date movie stars that street artists drew for day-trippers on the seafront.
“Oooh, who’s that? One of your hot dates?” he asked, the slight northern lilt in his voice betraying his childhood in Manchester.
“I’m doing the accounts,” I said, returning to my phone. “Someone around here has to do some work.”
“If that’s your accountant, he suddenly got a lot better-looking.” He motioned to my phone screen with the end of his broom. “Come on, boss, you can tell me! You know I’m like a guru when it comes to matters of the heart.”
“Hmm, usually you just tell me to chuck my phone in the sea and get stoned,” I said. “Besides, looks like you’ve got more sweeping to do.”
“Yeah, but the sweeping goes so much faster if you regale me with your cringeworthy dating tales while I’m doing it.”
I looked up to see he’d threaded his broom across his shoulders and was letting his hands dangle over each end, like a scarecrow. Or a sort of hippie Jesus.
“Okay, fine,” I sighed dramatically, closing the app and shoving the phone in my pocket. “I’ll give you a hand.”
I opened the van door, swung my legs round, and hopped out onto the promenade. While Charlie swept, I went and wiped down the tables with an anti-bac wipe before setting each with a metal box of napkins.
“So, did you hook up last night after the hen?” Charlie asked after about five seconds.
I glared at him.
“Ohhh, something did happen, didn’t it!” Charlie smiled before miming something unspeakable with the broom handle and his mouth.
“Please don’t do that to company property,” I said flatly.
“What about this?” He turned the broom upside down, poked the handle down his jeans and through his open fly, and started wiggling it about.
Rolling my eyes, I took out my phone and quickly snapped a photo.
“How about you stop messing about, or I post this on the Cuppacino Twitter feed?”
“Okay, and how about I report you to HR?”
“Unfortunately for you,” I said, “I’m your HR rep, on-site therapist, and line manager all in one.”
Charlie stood to attention, using the broom as a makeshift rifle.
“So, basically, don’t mess with me,” I said.
“Is that an order?” He smiled.
I nodded sharply, and he made a mock salute and went back to sweeping. When he put his head down, his curls licked his eyebrows and threatened to cover those big brown eyes and he could’ve competed for the position of office dog himself. Well, office puppy, maybe. He certainly seemed to be below Rocco in the café hierarchy. While he was distracted, I sneaked a look at my phone screen to see if Parker had replied. Nothing. Normally I was super chill about guys taking hours to reply. So why was this guy making me feel so anxious?
“Oh, don’t tell me he’s ghosting you, is he?” Charlie asked, spotting me shove my phone back in my pocket.
I didn’t answer. To be honest, the term “ghosting” had taken on a whole new meaning after this morning’s events.
“I knew it!” he said. “He totally ghosted you!”
“Honestly, I am not in the mood for this today, okay?” I snapped, shoving a chair under a table so hard it knocked the little pot of wooden cutlery off. Charlie’s goofy grin slumped into a frown, and as I knelt to pick them up, he bent down next to me. When I picked up a spoon, he put his hand over mine.
“Gwen, is everything okay?” he said softly.
He looked straight at me, his brown curls flopping in front of his large, hopeful eyes. To be honest, his eyes always looked like that, like a docile cow waiting to be milked.
I sighed, shook off his hand, and stood up.
“The police came round this morning,” I blurted out.
“Whoa! Really?” he cried, dropping the broom. “What did they want?”
“Remember that guy I went for drinks with last week, Rob? Well, they found his body. His dead body. And you know the guy I went out with after that? Freddie? Well, he’s dead too. So yes, okay, I am hungover, but I am also freaking out just a little bit here.”
“What the hell, Gwen?” he said. “Two of your exes are dead?”
I glared at him. “Careful, I’m not sure they heard you in Brighton.”
Even though—as usual—there were no potential customers in a hundred-mile radius, I wasn’t wild about Charlie broadcasting the rocketing death rate of my dating history to the entire county.
“Okay, okay, sorry,” he said, almost in a whisper. “But what do you mean, dead?”
“I mean dead, as in not breathing, distinctly un-alive, and probably murdered.”
“Oh, shit,” Charlie said, his voice softening. He pulled out a chair and motioned for me to sit on it. “I’m sorry, Gwen.”
“Don’t be,” I said, flopping down. “I barely knew them.”
“So why did the police want to speak to you?” Charlie asked.
“Connector,” I said. “My messages were on both of their phones. So I guess maybe they were just checking on everyone who’d seen them recently?”
I left the question hanging, hoping he’d confirm to me that, yes, this was all just part of totally normal police work.
“Wow,” Charlie said after a moment, his previous concern for me replaced with an enthusiasm I found hard to share. “You could be on one of your nerdy true crime podcasts.”
“Charlie! This is serious!” I said, hitting him on the arm with a spoon. To be fair, the thought had crossed my mind. I’d spent many a bus journey imagining being gently probed by the treacly-voiced host of Danger Land. I liked to imagine that one day I’d witness a thrilling crime and they’d invite me on the show to recount the exact details to thousands of listeners, with a little added panache, of course.
“I know, I know,” he said. “But like you said, you barely knew them.”
“Still,” I said, “they had families, people who cared about them.”
“Hey, how do you know? Maybe they were orphans with no friends.”
“No, Rob told me on the date. He said he had… two brothers, I think?” I thought for a second. “Actually, maybe three. I don’t remember.”
“Wow, sounds like you were really paying attention as usual,” Charlie said. “Or were you just calculating the number of drinks you had to finish before you could escape?”
I folded my arms and scowled at him. “Don’t you have some oat milk to restock or something?”
“All right, sorry,” he sighed, holding his hands up. “But seriously, you okay, boss?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just a weird coincidence, you know?”
He looked at me slack-jawed as the gears turned in his clockwork brain, and I waited patiently for his thoughts to make their way to his mouth.
Eventually he leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “So who’s next?” he asked dramatically.
“What do you mean, ‘who’s next?’ ”
“Well, so far the first two guys you dated on Connector have been found dead,” Charlie pointed out. “So, who did you meet next?”
I froze. I hadn’t even thought of that. “Wait, you think someone else is going to get hurt?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said, pulling out his vape pen again and taking a slow draw.
“Shit.” I thought back over the last week. “I don’t know, who was it after Freddie?”
“You don’t remember? Jesus, Gwen, were there that many? Wasn’t it the one who looked a bit like Chris Hemsworth?”
“No,” I said, trying to think. “He came later. And FYI, he looked nothing like Chris Hemsworth in the flesh.”
“Hmm, okay, was it that bloke with the tiny hands?”
“Josh? Yeah, I think it was,” I said. “We went to play crazy golf and he tried to convince me that immigrants were going to start mooring their dinghies off Eastbourne Pier.”
“Oh yeah, that clown. Whatever happened with him anyway? Did you ever hear from him again?”
“No,” I snapped, a little too quickly. “Never.”
Charlie looked at me and cocked his head to one side.
“Did something bad happen on that date, Gwen? I remember you said it was in your top ten worst evenings of all time.”
“No,” I said, avoiding his gaze and staring very intently at the back of the spoon I was holding. “I just really, really don’t like losing at crazy golf.”
I thought back to that night and felt sick. What if Charlie was right, and someone was going to come after Josh? What if he was already dead?
“I should at least check on him, right?” I said.
“And what are you going to tell him? A psychopath is coming after all your exes, and he’s next? He’s gonna love that.”
“They are not my exes!” I snapped. “I went on one date with each of these guys, one!”
“Then stay out of it, Gwen,” Charlie advised. “Like you said, you barely knew them. Let the police worry about Josh. And all of these losers. Besides, chasing after them is only going to make you look suspicious.”
“What do you mean?” I cried.
“Hey, I’m just saying, if this was a true crime podcast, you’d be the prime suspect!” He began imitating a clichéd podcaster voice: “Rejected by every man in Eastbourne, beautiful twentysomething Gwen Turner finally snapped and took her bloody revenge….”
“You’re about two sentences away from being fired,” I warned him.
He was being a complete knob-end, but maybe Charlie had a point. Besides, even if I wanted to warn Josh, I’d never taken his number, and after our date I had immediately blocked him on the app. Even if I hadn’t, there was no way in hell either of us was going to contact the other again, not after what really went down at the crazy golf course.
“I mean, you’ve got enough problems, right?” Charlie continued. “If you don’t find a new flatmate, you’re going to be sleeping in the van. And if we have another month selling one cappuccino and a cheese toastie a day to Jamal, you’re gonna have to sell the van. So then you’re gonna be sleeping on the beach, and trust me, that is not as fun as it sounds in the middle of February.”
“Wow, thanks, Charlie,” I sighed. “You should pop some of these motivational quotes on Instagram over a nice sunset backdrop, they’re so inspiring.”
“I’m just saying—” he began.
“Shush now,” I said, pointing down the promenade. “Customer.”
Jamal was striding toward us, laptop under one arm and Rocco clutched in the other.
“Grande cappuccino and a toastie, please.” He smiled as he rummaged around in his pockets for change.
I climbed into the van, fired up the coffee machine, and slammed my fist on our ancient till, the only way to get the drawer to spring open. Despite his designer labels and fashionable thick-black-rimmed glasses (which I suspected had no lenses), Jamal always paid in cash, usually in fresh notes and shiny pound coins and fifty-pence pieces.
“Thanks,” he said as I cupped the coins into my hand and dropped them individually into their corresponding compartments in the till.
“Here you go, boy,” I said, scraping the crispy cheese from the edge of the toastie machine and placing it on my open palm for Rocco to lick up appreciatively. “Most loyal man I know.”
I watched them amble back down the beach while I considered testing the resilience of my stomach with a lunchtime Mr. Whippy. As I reached for the lever, I saw my phone flashing at me from the counter.
New message from Parker.
Oh, now he wanted to chat. Finally I could find out why he sent that stupid link and relax. I swiped the screen to see the message.
Parker: Two down.
And I swear my heart stopped beating.