As he tackled his second coffee of the morning, Kit said, ‘Look, I’m not her keeper. I can’t help what Charlotte does.’
‘She’s being a total bitch,’ replied Hannah, clattering around the kitchen in Guillemot. ‘Apart from saying she wanted to smash a glass in my face that night in the pub, she’s now going round calling me a gold digger. Alison heard her mouthing off and told me.’
‘You don’t really care what people call you, do you?’
‘But it’s a thing, isn’t it? You’re rich. I’m not. People will think I’m after your money.’ She sighs. ‘Everything’s easier with money.’
‘Not everything, no.’
She and Kit had made up several times after that stupid fight in the pub, but Hannah has still not entirely let it go. Both of them had drunk too much on Oasis night and she’d lashed out at him rather than decking his mother and bloody Charlotte. 154She feels a bit stupid for that. Mind you, he’d questioned the truth of what she said had happened in the loos, she’d started hitting him, he pushed her away and Sam had to drag her off before she went for Kit again.
No one likes to be called a liar, even though he didn’t say that in so many words. But taking bloody Charlotte’s side!
She poured milk into her own coffee and softened a little. ‘I wanted our first Christmas together to be just the two of us.’
‘I know. But Mum didn’t tell me she and Charlotte were coming until the last minute. I didn’t think she’d want to be here without Dad. I thought she was going to be away with her friends. If I’d known we could have gone somewhere else.’
‘No, we couldn’t, Kit, because I’m working. I can’t take time off over Christmas – it’s too busy in the pub. It’s fine for you because you don’t have a job.’
‘That’s not fair.’ He looked so sad she felt a bit guilty. ‘I am looking,’ he said, coming over to hug her by the sink, nestling into her hair.
‘I know you are. But until you have something lined up, there’s no way I can risk my job.’
‘Always practical,’ he smiled.
‘Someone has to be,’ she replied.
It irritates Hannah that Kit has no idea of what it’s like in the real world, as she puts it. He might say he wants a job, but it isn’t essential for him in the same way as it is for her. There’s no real urgency for him to find work. And if they are to make a go of it together – and he swears he wants to be with her, to make a life with her – they need a proper plan. 155
When Kit tells her he loves her, she believes him, but she’s not willing to give up what she has here if there’s nothing for her workwise on the mainland. She doesn’t want to be a kept woman, his pet.
It has taken her by surprise, falling so hard for Kit. It has obviously shaken him too. It was immediately apparent to both of them that it was much more than sex. And while the sex is the best, after six months it’s never just sex, is it.
Fired up by the absences, she always wants him, and it’s obvious that he can’t get enough of her. The advantage of a long-distance romance is that there’s never enough time to get bored.
But she worries about the fantasy future together. He’s at a different stage in his life. Will the relationship burn itself out? She needs a safety net in case it doesn’t last; she needs to be sure she can support herself if it all goes tits up.
Sometimes they argue about this, but then they make up in the usual way.
After his caffeine fix, Kit left to go for a run and while he was out, Hannah read the tarot. She uses the cards to get clarity; she uses them as a crutch. She’s concerned that they no longer offer her comfort. They’ve been so gloomy recently. She does a spread for herself and another for Kit, in the same way that she reads their horoscopes every day. The cards keep turning up the Major Arcana: the Tower, never good news; the Moon, signifying dark powerful influences surrounding them both; and you don’t need much skill to divine that the Devil doesn’t mean a lottery win.
Hannah’s not one for running but perhaps she should go out 156for a walk. She needs to do something as she’s getting antsy. She’s working tonight and she and Alison are still at loggerheads due to her behaviour at the pub during the live music set. Kit now jokingly refers to their argument as Fight Night, but her boss was less amused.
She has to admit that things had got out of hand. Hannah can’t cope with alcohol like she used to. Always a disadvantage, the female liver. She was still evilly hungover when she popped into the pub to retrieve her purse the following morning.
‘Consider this a formal warning. I’ll be putting it in writing,’ said Alison.
‘I didn’t throw the bloody pint at Sam,’ Hannah protested.
‘But you’re always somewhere in the middle of it, aren’t you?’ challenged her boss. ‘A trouble-magnet. It’s bad for business, you know that.’
‘Did Queen Bea complain?’
‘If you mean Beatrice Wallace, no she didn’t. She didn’t have to because I saw what her face did when you started having a go at her precious son. What was that about? You can’t treat punters like that!’
‘It was my night off,’ replied Hannah, sulky. ‘Anyway, they started it.’
‘Beatrice and Kit? How did they start it?’
‘No, Beatrice and Charlotte. In the loos, they were slagging me off big time. Charlotte threatened to glass me – don’t look at me like that! That’s what she said! But sorry. It won’t happen again.’
‘No, it won’t!’ said Alison, giving Hannah a dressing-down 157for several more minutes before stomping away to sort out the cellar.
Hannah puts the tarot cards away in their special box and decides to go over to St Mary’s to get some shopping at the Co-op. She puts on her jacket and walks down to the quay, a crisp, breezy, blue-sky day helping to blow away her dark thoughts about bloody Charlotte and bloody Beatrice and stop her worrying about Alison’s foul mood.
She doesn’t have to wait long before the boat approaches and the engine chugs into reverse, churning water into foam. As it pulls alongside the stone steps, passengers prepare to disembark. Hannah notices that Mary-Jane, sitting alone, doesn’t make any attempt to move. She looks ashen. Ted the boatman jumps onto the quay and starts helping the day-trippers across. The steps at New Grimsby are steep and slippery, while the average age of the tourist knees alighting them is fifty-plus.
Hannah nods hello to a couple of returning visitors as they climb up.
When she gets on the boat she goes over to Mary-Jane to ask if she’s okay.
Mary-Jane flinches as Hannah approaches. She looks around as if she’s not sure where she is, and whispers, ‘Sorry.’
Hannah tries again: ‘Aren’t you feeling well? Shall I give you a hand?’
Mary-Jane nods. Hannah dumps her bag and helps the woman to her feet, gently guiding her off the boat.
‘Shall I come by later to check on you?’ asks Hannah. 158
Mary-Jane gives a watery smile. ‘No, it’s fine. John will be back at lunchtime. Thank you.’
Hannah smiles to see Bobby pedalling frantically towards the quay, his little legs going ten to the dozen. They won’t wait – tides wait for no man.
They’re about to cast off when Bobby abandons his bike by the wall. No one could mistake it – rainbow stripes and neon pink LEDs in the spokes which make it look like a fairground ride in the dark. He dashes down the steps and leaps across at the last second, making his way through to settle by Hannah. It’s the first time she’s seen him since the argument with Kit.
‘I hear you were providing some of the live entertainment in the pub the other night,’ he says, raising an eyebrow.
Of course he’s bloody heard. Hannah groans.
‘Alison’s on the warpath,’ he says.
‘When is she not?’
‘Look—’
Hannah interrupts, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t need another bad for business lecture, okay? It wasn’t me who threw a pint! All I did was shout at my boyfriend. There was a bit of pushing and shoving. That’s hardly a hanging offence, is it?’
Bobby leaves it a few seconds, then asks, ‘What’s the problem?’
The boat pulls away from the quay, heading over to Bryher before it returns to St Mary’s.
Hannah considers.
Some days she’s just a little irritated by Kit. For instance, he’s always there, whenever she finishes work, waiting for her. It’s a tiny thing that now grates, like a single grain of sand in your shoe – almost subliminal at the time, until, the next day, you’ve 159got a great bloody blister. His attention used to feel flattering …
She also envies his freedom to come and go as he pleases: that he might take a day in the garden reading or painting; that he can choose to eat or drink wherever, whatever, and not worry about the bill; that he can choose to buy a shirt, a painting, a flat, a home …
Then, like the tide rushing in, she loves him so much it hurts. But if he hugs bloody Charlotte one more time …
Her conflicting emotions are too hard to explain. Instead, she says, ‘They were bitching about me in the bogs, Beatrice and the goddaughter. She has the hots for Kit, if you haven’t noticed. I heard them slagging me off and I took it out on him. I know, I’m a numpty. Shouldn’t have. Are you going to lecture me like Alison?’
‘Is there any point?’
‘Not really. It’s done and dusted now.’
Bobby shakes his head.
Vlad comes out of the wheelhouse, where he’s been chatting to Ted the boatman, and sits by Hannah.
‘How’s it going, young sir?’ asks Bobby. Vlad looks a little wasted and more than a little glum. ‘Not so festive, hey?’
‘About right, mate. I want to be somewhere warm for Christmas; on a beach sipping a cocktail, not freezing my bollocks off with a batch of bloody pensioners – no offence.’
‘None taken,’ laughs Hannah.
She leans back and watches the gulls circling above as Vlad looks at his phone and Bobby starts eating his egg and cress breakfast sandwich. ‘Might be a relative, that egg,’ she jokes, nodding to the gulls.
Bobby doesn’t smile. 160
She asks, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Don’t get on the wrong side of Alison,’ he advises, taking another bite.
Hannah sighs. ‘I’ve already apologised.’
‘You know that pub is her life. She will not take kindly to anyone upsetting guests and risking profit margins.’
‘She spent about forty minutes telling me as much.’ Vlad rolls his eyes in sympathy. ‘But Kit’s forgiven me.’
‘I bet Alison hasn’t. I don’t think you’re taking it seriously enough,’ continues Bobby, removing a piece of cress from his teeth. ‘You know her background?’
‘I’ve heard, yeah.’ According to the rumours which circulated when she first arrived, Alison is related to a variety of East End gangsters, including, possibly, the Kray twins. But then everybody from the East End claims the same.
‘If you keep pushing it, she will kill you.’
Hannah laughs. An expression passes over Bobby’s face which suggests she shouldn’t have.