By the time the sun had slipped behind the lighthouse in a blaze of pink and orange, Poppy had compiled a wish list of more artists to contact. She whizzed off messages to them, introducing herself, telling them briefly of her plans to refurbish the gallery and that she’d be contacting them in person and inviting them all to see it once work was closer to completion.
Jake and Fen had left earlier, so she set to arranging her possessions into some kind of order. It was surprising how the addition of a few cushions and her own bits ’n’ bobs made the place feel homelier, if not yet like home. Once she’d found a place for the photos of her friends and her parents, she was feeling much better.
The next morning, she was in the studio early, clearing it out ready for the renovation work to start. After a thorough clean, the walls would need washing and the damaged plasterwork repairing. The woodwork would need rubbing down before it or the walls could even begin to be repainted. In the meantime, she’d also have to get word around that the launch would be happening over the late May bank holiday, all while convincing the sceptical artists and getting in some stock.
As she took a quick break for a latte from the Harbour Kiosk, just under a month didn’t seem anywhere near long enough. Jake had said he’d help, but for how long? Even with offers from Kelly, Fen and Lisa, the buck stopped with Poppy herself and it was clear she’d underestimated how much work would be involved.
She’d no choice though but to get on with it. She started by packing away all the paintings from the walls into boxes before dragging them into Archie’s work area. She hadn’t opened the drawer of the worktable, figuring whatever was in there was personal to Jake and should wait until he was ready to open it. She could have asked him but it seemed intrusive and, anyway, she hoped he’d tell her of his own accord when he arrived later that morning.
In the end, Jake and Fen turned up at almost the same time, so there was no prospect of opening the drawer while they were together – if Jake wanted to. In any case, they were all too busy. Fen had brought a vacuum cleaner and a couple of brooms and they started to clear out as much of the dust and grime from the gallery as they could. It was a fine, breezy day and with all the doors and windows open, the damp smell was lessening. The stone walls had been whitewashed several times over the years but would need some serious filling and repairs and then several fresh coats of white paint.
‘I don’t want to have too much clutter around. The studio should be a blank canvas in itself, with the art obviously attracting all the attention,’ she said as they all surveyed the now clutter-free space.
‘I agree,’ said Jake, then hastily added, ‘Not that it’s any of my business.’
Fen laughed. ‘Yes. Tell us to shut up and get lost if we’re interfering.’
Poppy laughed too. ‘I doubt I’m in a position to do that and you’re the ones who really know how to run a gallery.’
‘My experience is all second-hand,’ said Jake. ‘Some of my work is displayed in other people’s galleries, so I know what I want from them, as an artist, but Fen and Grandpa are the experts.’
‘Times change,’ said Fen. ‘Poppy will have fresh ideas and that’s exactly what’s required. That, and enthusiasm and a good way with the customers.’
Poppy nodded. ‘I know exactly what you mean. Some of the galleries I’ve checked out were welcoming, but others were so intimidating. In some of them, you felt you had to curtsey to the woman or man behind the desk.’
Fen winced. ‘Oh, I hope no one’s ever felt like that when they walked into the Starfish.’
‘Absolutely not. You were very warm and friendly. In fact, you reminded me of my nan.’
Jake burst out laughing at the remark. Poppy cringed when she realised what she’d said, but Fen grinned.
‘Well, I am old enough to be your grandma. I wish I had grandkids or kids of my own, but it never happened. Mind you, Jake’s always been like a grandson to me.’
Jake put his arm around Fen. ‘You’ve always treated me like one.’
Poppy thought she’d just about got away with her comment but resolved to try to engage her brain before her mouth more often.
‘I also picked up a tip from one gallery,’ she said, hoping Fen would approve. ‘I thought of having fresh flowers on the desk. Just a few local ones from the island to bring St Piran’s inside the gallery and to give customers an experience of the natural Scilly, as well as buying a “thing,”’ no matter how lovely the thing.’
Fen nodded. ‘That’s a good idea. Most visitors want to feel they’re sharing in a way of life when they buy something.’
‘That’s how I felt when I walked into the studio. I wanted to take a small part of this whole island lifestyle back home, so I could imagine myself being here. I never guessed I’d actually be back.’
‘But here you are.’ Jake smiled, as if to give her confidence.
‘Yes, and there’s no way back, so we’d better get to work.’
Jake and Poppy washed down the walls, while Fen wiped the cabinets and plinths. They put the island radio station on and Poppy listened with secret amusement to this insight into island trivia that would be her life now.
Washing the walls was hard work and she was soon hot and a bit sweaty, working in a vest top and cropped jeans. Jake was in shorts and a T-shirt that showed off his muscular arms and calves. He must spend a lot of his time in rugged terrain lugging heavy camera equipment, so it was hardly surprising he was fit. It was pretty distracting, though, and it was all she could do not to sneak a peek as she returned her cloth to the bucket for a fresh batch of sugar soap.
Poppy might have been imagining the fact that Jake slowed right down towards the end of the afternoon, almost as if he was stretching out the second and final wall wash, but Fen didn’t budge from her post as builder’s mate. She’d made them endless cups of tea and cold drinks and seemed to have got through most of Fifty Shades Freed, once she’d finished cleaning the cabinets, tutting loudly that ‘it was a load of old rubbish’ and that ‘Christian Grey must have bloody good central heating in that apartment of his,’ while turning the pages at lightning speed.
Jake kept dropping hints that he needed to leave to speak to a photography expedition organiser, but Fen stayed put, so in the end, they both left just after five. Poppy had intended to carry on working, but as soon as her helpers had gone, the energy seemed to drain out of her. Her arms turned to spaghetti and her legs were shaky after a day climbing up and down stepladders and reaching into corners.
Her PR job had involved nothing more than sitting at the keyboard, racking her brain for fresh puns about drainpipes and shower grates, so her new active lifestyle was bound to be a shock to the system. She’d tried to keep fit by joining the health club with Dan but had hardly ever gone. Now she was on St Piran’s, she could save a fortune. Who needed the gym when you were renovating an art gallery?
She didn’t miss the stressful commute to work in her small car either, being constantly cut up by faster vehicles or wondering when a truck might pull out on her. What bliss it was to simply crawl up the spiral staircase and straight into the shower … A short while later, she’d washed the plaster dust out of her hair and was wearing a casual dress and a pair of flowery Vans. With a large glass of wine at her side, she sat at the small dining table and sent a few pictures of the work in progress to her family and Zoey over WhatsApp.
Thank God the island had decent Wi-Fi. It felt satisfying to be making progress and to have positive news after all the misery of the past few weeks. She hoped the messages would reassure those she’d left behind that she’d made the right decision to make a fresh start.
She opened up her laptop to browse a few of the artists’ sites and remind herself of the best features of some of the galleries she’d admired. Checking her emails, she noticed a couple of the local people had already responded.
She sighed. Both replies, from a painter and a fused glass-maker, were lukewarm, to say the least, and the former had said that ‘actually, she wanted to drop in ASAP and collect her remaining few pieces’ as they clearly ‘weren’t working in the current environment’. Poppy realised that she was going to have to try harder to convince the artists that the studio was the best place to showcase their work.
She hadn’t noticed Leo leap silently from floor to chair to table. He settled down next to her laptop and she ruffled his fur as she scrolled through her Facebook page. She’d have to start up Twitter and Instagram accounts for the Starfish Studio as soon as possible, but she was too tired to do it right now.
For all kinds of reasons, she’d tried to avoid the internet over the past few weeks, especially Facebook where the endless stream of married and settled friends posting smiley photos of themselves enjoying holidays and evenings out had driven her mad. The last thing she wanted was for any friend of hers to be unhappy, but since Dan had left, it seemed that her whole feed was filled with loved-up couples enjoying shared desserts in romantic hotspots or cuddled up with a jug of Pimm’s in the their local ’Spoons. It was all the same: smug snuggliness in public places.
She cringed and thought of the album she’d posted of her and Dan at the helm of a motorboat the previous year, in Ibiza.
‘Is no one single?’ she said to Leo, who’d decided to sit on the dining table next to her. ‘You wouldn’t be seen dead blobbing whipped cream on another cat’s snout, would you, Leo?’
A post appeared in her news feed that once seen was impossible to ignore. Poppy clicked on it and gasped out loud.
It couldn’t be.
As she stared in horror at the screen, Leo nudged her elbow and her finger slipped.
‘No!’
Poppy – actually, Leo – had Liked the post. Poppy bashed her keyboard in a panic, running through Love and Ha Ha until she finally managed to Unlike it.
She re-read the post and some of the comments, still not quite able to believe what she’d seen until her phone buzzed and broke her trance. It was a text from Zoey.
DON’T look at Facebook. :(
Followed by a string of emojis showing disgust, crying, vomiting and finally, a big hug.
The phone buzzed again.
Will call you as soon as I get out of work. Z x
Poppy dropped the phone on the bed and returned again to the screen. Eve had tagged Dan in a post and, in the accompanying photo, Dan had his arms around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder and a soppy grin on his face. He appeared to have grown a hipster goatee and a twirly moustache that made him look as if he was off to a fancy-dress party as a ringmaster. Eve was wearing a skin-tight flesh-toned (unless you were Trump orange, that is) body-con dress and pointing to her stomach with nails that looked like they’d been dipped in correction fluid. There was another photo beside it, showing an ultrasound scan of the tiny Dan/Eve inside Eve’s ‘baby tummy’.
Eve is feeling: Blessed, said the post, which, mystifyingly, had been set on a Facebook background of tropical palms. It was accompanied by a gif of a chubby baby gurgling as it was tickled.
Can life get any better? Expecting a little miracle in October. We are Officially the Luckiest People in the World.
Poppy’s head swam and her stomach turned over with a sensation not unlike she’d felt on the Islander. Only this feeling wasn’t going to vanish once she stepped on dry land. Dan had once hinted he’d like to start a family; in fact, she recalled his words on that very subject the day they’d visited the Starfish Studio all those years before. He’d hinted that St Piran’s would be a good place for kids to grow up, with fresh air and a safe environment, and Poppy had agreed. She still did but, of course, it was never going to happen for her and Dan now.
Every time she took a step forward – moving to St Piran’s despite Dan’s betrayal and scorn; finding the Starfish in a mess but determining to do it up – she seemed to take another step back. She might laugh at the post’s cheesiness but the fact remained: Eve and Dan were having a baby together.
It took every ounce of her strength not to burst into tears.
She reached to shut down the laptop when Leo jumped onto the keyboard. He turned around and lifted his tail ready to spray the screen.
‘Argh! No!’
With a loud shriek, Poppy snatched the laptop out of the way before Leo did his worst.
‘Poppy! Are you OK?’ Thudding boots were followed by Jake dashing into the room.
She almost died of shame. ‘It’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s Leo. He was going to spray the laptop.’
‘Thank God for that. I mean, bloody cat. It’s disgusting, but thank goodness no one’s hurt.’
Poppy grabbed a handful of kitchen roll and wiped down the tabletop.
‘Would you like some Dettol?’ he asked earnestly.
Well, it was better than a couples’ cocktail, she thought, unable to hide a smile at Jake’s offer. ‘Thanks. It’s under the sink.’
Jake glared at Leo. ‘And don’t even think about giving me a shower, Catface,’ he said.
Leo turned his back and sauntered off.
‘He can’t help it. Fen says he’s been neutered, but some cats can still spray,’ she said as Leo pummelled her favourite hoodie with his claws.
‘Well, I hope he has been,’ said Jake, adding in a loud voice, ‘If not, it would do him good to have his bits removed.’
‘I can think of someone else who’d benefit from having his balls cut off,’ Poppy muttered while Jake fetched the Dettol.
‘What?’ Jake looked up sharply from the kitchen cupboard.
She groaned. ‘Not you. Absolutely not you.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He smiled and came over and squirted the table with Dettol. ‘Are you referring to your ex?’
‘How did you guess?’ Wrinkling her nose, Poppy wiped the table furiously. ‘Actually, I’d just heard that his new woman is pregnant when you came in.’
‘Oh. Shit.’
‘They posted it on Facebook. With pictures.’
Jake rolled his eyes. ‘He probably has no idea you’ve seen it.’
He had now, thought Poppy in dismay. He’d get a notification that she’d had Liked it, even though she’d now Unliked it. Too late. She should have unfriended him, she thought. Dan hadn’t unfriended her either though …
‘I don’t know,’ she said, not wanting to let Jake know about Leo’s blunder. She replaced the laptop on the table and Jake nodded at the screen.
‘He hasn’t been with this woman very long, has he?’
‘He moved in with Eve just over a month ago on the day he told me he’d been having an affair,’ said Poppy, still cringing. ‘He’d already moved out a lot of his stuff while I was at work because I think he was worried I might burn all his things or throw them at him … Now it turns out that Eve’s five months pregnant, so he must have been having the affair for a while before then. It could have been years for all I know.’
Jake pulled a face. ‘That’s tough. I’m so sorry.’
She shrugged, fighting back tears as she threw the dirty kitchen roll in the bin. She didn’t want Jake to see her face, but she had to get a grip. ‘It’s life. I’m here now and I’m determined to make a go of things.’
Jake winced and caught sight of the screen. He took a closer look at the offending post. ‘Expecting a little miracle? Immaculate conception, is it?’
He was so deadpan, she couldn’t help but burst out laughing. ‘Who knows with Dan. He always did think he was clever.’ A thought occurred that didn’t make her feel any better. ‘He might have wanted me to see that post, of course. I’m sure Eve would.’
‘From what you’ve told me, and what I’ve seen, I’d go with the “clueless” angle, rather than a cunning plan,’ said Jake.
Poppy laughed again.
‘At least you’re smiling. That’s progress.’
She caught her breath in surprise. ‘It is, I suppose.’
‘Because I’m guessing, where Dan is concerned, you’ve felt like crying far more often.’
Poppy looked at him. She was momentarily lost for words by his gentle tone and his insight into her feelings. But then … Jake must know more about loss than she could ever imagine.
‘It’s OK to be angry and hurt sometimes, you know. Most of the time, in fact.’ He smiled. ‘You don’t have to put on a front, Poppy. It’s exhausting.’
She couldn’t possibly have discussed such emotive issues with any other guy, or even her parents, but Jake had given her permission to be herself.
‘Thanks, and you’re right. Eve being pregnant is a nasty shock.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘Dan seemed keen on us having kids initially and I thought that was one of the main reasons he wanted to move here. I must admit that since Christmas, whenever it came up, he changed the subject. I just thought that once we’d got the stress of moving over, we’d think about it seriously again.’
‘And what about you?’
‘I’d like one – or two – one day, but my one day was probably sooner than Dan was planning. Or not, judging by that post.’ She couldn’t help thinking about the post again. How long had they actually been having an affair? How long had she been duped? If Eve was five months gone, Dan must have been sleeping with her for months before he told Poppy he was leaving. That thought cut deep, but she tried to put it aside.
‘It’s not easy, finding someone who shares the things that really matter, or loves you enough to set aside or change their dreams to help you have yours.’ Jake’s tone was soft as if he was treading on eggshells.
Leo appeared by his side, rubbing his fur along his legs, but Jake didn’t seem to have even noticed.
‘It’s a miracle that we even find one person, let alone that some people find two,’ she said.
‘Not a miracle. Impossible,’ said Jake.
She could tell he was struggling with memories. Should she ask him more about Harriet? Was it selfish to only focus on herself? Or was it best to wait for him to tell her about his fiancée if and when he wanted to?
Not that there was much time left for that kind of discussion. Once again, she felt a shiver of sadness that Jake would be leaving soon, even though she’d only known him a few days. Then again, she was probably relying on him too much already, like a baby bird needing feeding. Even as she thought about it, she had to stifle a giggle at the image.
‘Something funny?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Only Dan’s silly moustache. He looks like an extra from Ripper Street,’ she said, hoping her fib had fooled Jake and he didn’t think she’d been making light of his own worries.
He nodded and a smile crept onto his lips. ‘I must admit that ’tache is extremely sad. Now, enough of these gloomy thoughts. You might be wondering about the reason I came over. I need to ask you two favours. One, I was wondering if you fancied coming to the pub for dinner? I thought you might be knackered after all that work and not feel like cooking. You must have been up very early and, frankly, I’m so hungry, I could eat Leo. Which will make a change from him trying to eat me.’
She laughed again, while Leo let out a yawn. ‘I was up early, and you’re right, the pub sounds great.’ In fact, it sounded perfect. She was much too tired to cook and would probably have resorted to a bowl of cereal. Strangely, though, she had enough energy to walk to the pub.
‘I also thought it would be a good opportunity to meet some of the locals, if you can face it.’ He grinned. ‘It’s Darts Night. You should catch a bunch of them all at once. Call it a baptism of fire.’
‘That sounds nerve-racking, but I do want to get to know everyone. I can’t play darts, though.’
Jake nodded. ‘In that case, you’ll be a massive hit.’ He paused and his tone became more serious. ‘But, first, there’s something else I wanted to ask you.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you mind loaning me that key? I think I need to have a better look at what’s in Grandpa’s drawer. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need a pint after that.’