Christmas Gifts at the Beach Cafe Read online

  This one’s for everyone who’s chatted to me on my Facebook page this year – the most fabulous bunch of readers an author could wish for. Mince pies all round.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  The Year of Taking Chances

  Chapter One

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Evie

  I couldn’t quite believe it was almost Christmas again. After a second gloriously hot and busy summer working in our Cornish beach café, I had been looking forward to a relaxing, unhurried autumn with my boyfriend Ed, but instead the weeks had been eaten up by panicked, tearful phone calls, sombre trips back and forth on the motorway, and black funeral clothes. And now, all of a sudden, the mellow autumn mornings had given way to glittering frosts icing the café steps as the village of Carrawen settled into wintry quiet. Last year I’d been so happy and excited about spending our first romantic Christmas here together. But this time around, everything had changed.

  On a sunny mid-October morning, Ed’s father Michael had died after a series of strokes. He was only sixty-five and a lovely, funny, kind man – one of those people who put you at your ease immediately. He had been an active, energetic dad, with almost all the family photos from Ed’s childhood showing Michael dangling Ed or his brother by their ankles, piggybacking them over sand dunes, or taking them on at football or cricket. Back in his day he’d been an excellent swimmer, too, an Olympic hopeful by all accounts, until an ankle injury ended that dream. But he never lost his love of the water, and whenever he and Victoria, Ed’s mum, came to stay with us, he’d throw himself into the sea within minutes of arriving and rocket across the bay with a still-impressive front crawl. ‘That’s better,’ he’d say, emerging with a grin half an hour later, while Victoria rolled her eyes and pretended to be cross.

  And now he was gone, so soon, so suddenly, and everybody who loved him was left reeling. Victoria was completely devastated; a pale, grief-stricken shadow of her former jolly self. Ed’s brother, Jake, out working in Melbourne, couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he’d never got to say goodbye to Michael one last time, his plane having landed at Heathrow two hours too late. As for Ed . . . he was hurting so badly, he was like an injured animal that just wanted to curl up alone and give up on everything.

  ‘Poor Ed,’ my mum said when I rang for a chat and confessed that I was struggling to comfort him. ‘Give him time. Be there for him, listen to him, put your arms around him and hug him. But don’t expect a miracle recovery overnight. You never really get over the pain of losing a parent.’

  I knew she was right, but it made me feel helpless, not being able to lift him out of his sadness. I couldn’t bear to see him so low.

  ‘The first year’s the worst,’ my sister Louise said, when she and her family came down for the autumn half-term break. We were sitting on the tumble of rocks across the beach, nursing mugs of coffee, while her children played Frisbee on the sand. Her husband Chris had lost his mum a few years ago, so she knew what she was talking about. ‘All those occasions when they really feel that person’s absence most painfully: birthdays, Christmas, family get-togethers.’ The wind snatched at strands of her long tawny hair as she spoke. ‘Mothering Sunday brought him to his knees the first time,’ she said, gazing out to sea. Then she reached over and patted my arm. ‘It’s awful, but it does get better. Slowly. Eventually.’

  ‘At least you’re not getting a divorce,’ Ruth, my other sister, sniffed a few weeks later, when we had our fortnightly phone catch-up and I told her how I was feeling. She and her husband had broken up in the summer and her whole world was now viewed through a filter of bitterness and ill-suppressed fury. Mind you, that was Ruth all over. Highly competitive, even when it came to suffering. My pain is greater than yours.

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, conceding as usual. ‘At least we’re not getting a divorce.’

  Notwithstanding the fact that we weren’t actually married and thus a divorce wasn’t even possible, splitting up with Ed was the last thing I wanted anyway. Since we’d been together, my life had taken a huge upturn for the better. He was my best friend first and foremost, the person I most wanted to hang out with, day and night. We’d already laughed about the ‘his-and-hers’ rocking chairs we planned to put on the Beach Café deck when we were older and greyer, so that we could sit there companionably and watch the sun set. Over the last eighteen months our relationship had weathered PMT, hangovers and the fridge conking out on the hottest day of summer, but this felt like the biggest test to date. I desperately wanted to support him through his grief, but he’d closed himself off recently, and was subdued and unreachable.

  Louise was right, I thought. The first Christmas without Michael around would be tough: the empty space at the table, and memories of all the Christmases gone by, playing like a flickering cine-film in Ed’s head. I pictured Michael, young and athletic with a shock of black hair, hoisting a gigantic Christmas tree over one shoulder, the boys cheering in his wake. I imagined him running alongside his sons, shouting encouragement as they pedalled their new Christmas bikes up and down the street; building the best and biggest snowmen in the garden. But not there this year. Not there ever again now. It was so bloody unfair.

  Now that I thought about it, this Christmas was going to be a struggle, full stop, with Ruth and her three children coming to stay for a whole week. It had seemed a good idea when I’d invited them, back in July. ‘A chance to get away from Oxford and unhappy times,’ I’d offered, when she was drowning in the first deluge of divorce woe. ‘We’ll take care of all the cooking, the kids can run wild on the beach and you can put your feet up with a bottle of gin and Elf on repeat.’

  Kind, thoughtful Evie! Sister-to-the-rescue Evie! And of course I didn’t want Ruth to be miserable over Christmas, tormented by memories of other, happier family Christmases spent in their perfect Summertown home, but I hadn’t expected her to take me up on the offer with quite such zeal. ‘Seriously? I won’t have to do any cooking? And you meant that bit about the wine and Elf?’

  I should have known better, but I felt sorry for her. Pretty much up until that moment Ruth had lived a gilded, perfect life, one that invoked feelings of envy and hopeless inferiority rather than pity. But I had just listened to her sobbing down the phone that she’d uncovered a two-year secret relationship between her chinless husband and her best friend, and her life was in utter shreds. So what else could I say, except, ‘Of course I meant it! We’d love to have you here’?

  Without wanting to sound like a horrible person, I had been regretting my impulse-offer ever since. Ruth might be my sister, but she could be hard work at times; judgemental and kind of humourless – not that she had much to laugh about these days, admittedly. She was the sort of person who’d come into your home and immediately notice that you hadn’t hoovered very well, or that your windows needed cleaning. Worse, she’d give you a look that let you know she’d noticed, too. After last year’s farcical Christmas when almost everything had gone wrong – a stream of surprise guests turning up, followed by heavy snow, meaning that none of the guests could leave – I had been left wondering if the perfect Christmas even existed. If it did, I was pretty sure it didn’t feature Ruth.

  All in all, what with Ed’s sadness and Ruth’s annoyingness, this Christmas wasn’t exactly shaping up to be brimming with festive joy. I had already factored in the vat of mulled wine plus the extensive
supply of roast potatoes that I would need to see me through. And then, ten days into December, Ed dropped the bombshell that made everything a hundred times trickier.

  We were out on the coastal path together, wrapped up in big coats and woolly hats. It had been a stormy week with incessant pouring rain and freezing easterly winds that had seen us either cooped up in the café or scuttling out to the car in order to drive to some other indoor location. Now at last the wind had eased and the clouds had given way to a bright, crisp winter’s day. Desperate for some fresh air, we togged up and headed out.

  The cliff path was one of my favourite places to walk. Throughout the spring and summer the grassland was always bright with colours: pink thrift and yellow trefoil and a star-shaped blue flower called spring squill. You could sometimes see seals in the bays, as well as cormorants and razorbills wheeling above in the sky. Today it was blustery and deserted, save for the occasional screeching kittiwake soaring across the horizon.

  Ed and I chatted about this and that – the inaugural village Christmas Bake-Off we were both meant to be judging, when to put up our tree, and the news I’d had that morning that my best friend Amber was on her way to New York in approximately three hours’ time as a surprise pre-Christmas treat from her new TV-star boyfriend. Lucky cow.

  ‘He sounds a bit of a keeper,’ I said, tramping along the path, my breath puffing out in little clouds. ‘She said she’s heading straight to Tiffany’s in the hope that his generosity knows no bounds.’ Ed didn’t reply, and then I worried that he thought I was making unfavourable comparisons with him. ‘Not that I’m bothered about that sort of thing,’ I said hurriedly, hoping I hadn’t put my foot in it. ‘I mean, Tiffany’s Schmiffany’s, if you ask me. But you know Amber – she loves a bit of star quality. Loves it. Not me, though. No.’ I paused, feeling as if I was digging myself even deeper into a hole. ‘Not that I’m saying you’re not “star quality” – because you so, so are – I just mean that people have different ideas about—’

  ‘Evie,’ he said abruptly and I thought at first he was going to tell me to shut up and stop wittering. But then I saw the strange expression on his face, and my legs went instantly shaky. Oh God. His mouth was a stiff, unbending line; his eyes unhappily apologetic. I remembered in an instant Ruth’s terrible discovery about her husband and best friend, and for a crazy split-second I thought he was going to confess to being in love with Amber.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Listen, there’s something I need to talk to you about,’ he said. We had got as far as the wooden bench on Bluff Point, the best viewing spot for miles, and he gestured to it mutely. We sat down, the view completely wasted on me. All I could see was that sad, serious look on his face, and I feared for what he was about to say.

  ‘What?’ I said again.

  ‘It’s about Christmas.’ He stared out at the wild, rollicking waves for a moment, then turned back towards me. ‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve decided to go to London for Christmas. I can’t leave my mum on her own.’

  ‘But . . .’ The beginnings of a protest popped out immediately. But you can’t go to London for Christmas! We’ve got Ruth coming to stay, remember? I pressed my lips together, before I went any further. ‘Oh,’ I said instead. ‘Right. The thing is . . .’

  ‘I know you’ve already promised Ruth,’ he said over me, ‘it’s just that Mum’s finding it really hard. And with Jake on the other side of the planet, I can’t bear for her to be on her own. Not for the first Christmas without Dad.’

  ‘No,’ I said. Only a monster would argue with that. ‘Of course you have to go. But . . .’ I scuffed my boots through the sandy soil under the bench, wondering how on earth I was going to break the news to Ruth. She was such a control freak that she’d completely flip her wig if I withdrew the invitation to stay now, a mere fortnight before Christmas Eve, when she wouldn’t have ordered so much as her turkey. I shuddered, imagining the volley of fury that would come roaring down the phone line, followed by the most Siberian of silences. Knowing Ruth, she would take it very personally. She was so paranoid right now, she was sure to interpret this as a deliberate slight – the whole world against her, even her own sister.

  An idea occurred to me. ‘Can’t we just invite your mum to come here, too? She might enjoy spending Christmas with Ruth’s children – it could be really fun and distracting for her.’ We’d had a fairly sizeable extension built back in February, increasing the size of the café, as well as extending our flat above. With a bit of juggling around, we could easily accommodate Victoria plus Ruth and her brood.

  ‘I’m not sure Mum would be up to a big, noisy Christmas this year,’ he said doubtfully. There was a moment’s silence. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added, ‘I’m not expecting you to change your plans for me.’

  He wasn’t? Oh. I wrapped my arms around myself as a cool sea breeze swept in, flattening the coarse grass and whistling around our ankles. ‘So, you mean . . .’ I swallowed, feeling like the most selfish person in the world. ‘We won’t be together at Christmas?’

  He sighed, a deep, tired, miserable sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Evie. I can’t think of a way round it.’

  He was right. Of course he was right. And yet I was so gutted at the thought of being apart from Ed over Christmas that I felt like crying there and then.

  I knew I couldn’t show that, though. I had to stop being the most selfish person in the world and think about how awful it was for him: losing his dad, and trying to pick himself and his mum up again. ‘I understand,’ I said, taking his hand and squeezing it. ‘That’s absolutely fine.’

  It wasn’t fine at all, it wasn’t even within sniffing distance of ‘fine’, but I was determined to be mature and compassionate about this.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, squeezing back.

  ‘We’ll have an amazing January together,’ I babbled, trying to be positive. ‘Get away from it all, maybe go somewhere sunny . . .’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said without much enthusiasm. Then he put his arm around me. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I’m being such a miserable sod.’

  ‘You’re not a miserable sod,’ I told him. ‘And Christmas is only one little day anyway. Who cares about stupid old Christmas?’

  I cared. We both knew I cared. Christmas was my favourite day of the whole year; I’d argue loudly and passionately with anyone else who dared call it ‘stupid old Christmas’. Except that this year I was going to spend it away from my beloved Ed, and with my bitter, bad-tempered sister instead. Bollocks.

  Chapter Two

  Ruth

  Ruth was not, in general, a woman given to impetuous acts of violence. Working as a teacher in a secondary school, you had to be able to keep your cool and at least pretend you were in control, despite your hands twitching to strangle the next gobby teenager who kicked off in your lesson. She might glower when somebody cut her up at the traffic lights, but she didn’t lean on her horn cursing and yelling, like some did. Even as a child, when her younger sister Evie had ‘accidentally’ let Ruth’s hamster out of the cage, never to be seen again, Ruth had not resorted to fisticuffs or screaming, preferring instead to freeze her out for a full, icy week and then guilt-trip her about it for . . . well, ever since, pretty much. (Poor Mr Woffles. Gone but not forgotten.)

  Lately, though, things had changed. She felt angry all the time. So bloody angry. She had recently shrieked, ‘Careful!’ at an elderly lady in Waitrose for short-sightedly ramming her with her trolley. At school, the slightest thing sent her into a detention-giving rage: late homework, bad attitude, and even, once, when Florrie Malcolm kept sniffing, despite being told to blow her nose (was there anything more irritating than a sniffing child?). At home, she found herself slamming doors and muttering under her breath and drinking far too much red wine in the evenings. Sometimes there might also be a few hate-texts to Tim and/or Amanda, if she’d had a particularly bad day, and a glass too many.

  Tim. How she hated treacherous, lying, spineless ratbag Tim. She lay in be
d at night fantasizing about ways she could torture or injure him, scenarios where he begged for her forgiveness, weeping frightened tears of guilt and anguish. ‘Please, Ruth, please,’ he would sob, reaching out to her imploringly. ‘I’ll do anything.’

  ‘No chance,’ she always replied in these fantasies, her voice dripping with contempt. ‘You blew it, Tim. And I’ll never forgive you. Never!’

  How ugly an imploding marriage was, seen close-up, its innards revealed in all their mess and bitterness. And what a knife in the guts it was to realize that the man with whom you had walked down the aisle – the man with whom you’d made vows and promises and children, for heaven’s sake – was a complete and utter bastard deep down. An incompetent bastard at that. Given that he was an academic at the university, his brain bursting with philosophical conundrums, his entire existence taking place on a higher plane than most of the population, Tim had turned out to be remarkably stupid when it came to covering his bastardly tracks. Higher plane, my butt, as her students might say. At the end of the day, Tim was a pathetic excuse of a man, led by his dick, who’d been dumb enough to leave an incriminating receipt in his trouser pocket; an incriminating receipt that Ruth had duly found when she sorted the dirty washing for the machine.

  Of course, if Tim had had the slightest shred of decency, the merest hint of loyalty, the faintest idea about the meaning of ‘Till death do us part’, he would not have had the receipt in the first place, would he? None of this would have happened. He and Ruth would have continued in their successful shared bubble of sterling careers, a tasteful home, clever children and nice holidays twice a year in the South of France and Cornwall. Was it too much to ask for a husband to consider that such a carefully constructed life, such visible symbols of achievement, might be enough? It had been enough for her, after all.

  As she stared at the crumpled piece of paper that fateful day, the itemized list danced tauntingly before her eyes: Luxury suite, champagne, one steak dinner, one goat’s cheese tart, room-service breakfast x 2. As each word reverberated around her head, the world lurched and tilted like a fairground waltzer, and Ruth sank breathlessly to her knees on the kitchen floor, a sea of school shirts and muddy football kit around her.