The House of New Beginnings Read online

  ‘Do you want a hand, there?’ A tall man with a round smiling face who was loading what appeared to be a small tree into his own boot, two cars along, took pity on her thankfully.

  ‘Um . . . Yes, please.’ Charlotte blushed, embarrassed by her own weediness. She would drive straight home and do twenty arm-trembling press-ups in her newly decorated living room so that this never happened again, she vowed. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said as he lugged everything off her trolley, even the plant pots and packets of seeds (she could manage to lift them up, fine! she wanted to exclaim), and slotted them all neatly into her boot. ‘That’s really kind.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ he said, wiping his hands on his jeans and smiling at her. ‘And you’ve got someone at home who can lift them all out again, I take it?’

  ‘Um . . .’ she said again, hesitating for a second. Of course there was nobody but her, unless she asked the rather grumpy guy from upstairs to help, she supposed. It was him or the athletic woman next door who was always coming back from a run when Charlotte left the house for work in the morning – she could probably heave up a bag on each shoulder, she seemed so fit. ‘Not really,’ she confessed. ‘I can get my dad to come over and help though, so it’s not a big deal.’

  ‘Or I could follow you back and unload them for you too?’ he asked. He had chestnut-brown hair and a boyish sort of face, she noticed; one of those men where you could see exactly how they must have looked as an eight-year-old, with freckles across the bridge of the nose and ears just verging on being a bit juggy. He was actually kind of cute, now that she thought about it. ‘I promise I’m not a weirdo or anything. And obviously if you live in Glasgow or some other faraway place then I realize that’s not exactly practical . . .’

  ‘I’m just round the corner,’ she told him, suddenly breathless. There was something so competent and . . . well, manly about him, she felt fluttery, as if she had been flung straight into her very own romance novel (even if it was only in the rather unsexy setting of the garden centre car park). ‘Would you mind? I could make you a coffee to say thank you . . .’

  ‘A coffee? Now you’re talking,’ he said and stuck out his lovely big manly hand. ‘I’m Jim.’

  ‘Charlotte,’ she said, blushing wildly.

  ‘Wagons roll!’ he said, with a grin.

  The news about Jim, his new girlfriend and their even newer baby had quite knocked Charlotte for six. She’d done her best to keep up appearances with her parents after their bombshell but the moment she’d been in her car, driving back to Brighton, she had cried and cried, hot anguished tears pouring down her face. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. She kept imagining Jim with his hand proudly on another woman’s tummy, the two of them going to ante-natal classes together and making plans. She remembered how, back in the day, she and Jim had transformed their spare room into the baby’s room one rainy weekend, how optimistic they had felt with their paint rollers and newspaper on the floor, how excited and joyful. For a wild moment, she had considered swinging the car around and heading back to Reading in order to stake out the happy couple, to park in front of their house to watch Jim with his new girlfriend, whilst digging her fingernails into her palm and crying. Then she imagined their pitying looks if they noticed her – Oh dear. Is that your ex, the one who went off the rails? Not taking it well, is she? Poor Charlotte. If only she could find someone and be happy, like us! – and her heart hardened. No. She would not wear her pain like a badge. Not in front of them anyway.

  Although, in hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have gone out and got paralytic, puking-in-the-street drunk, either. Nor had to be helped up the street by the woman from the flat downstairs for that matter.

  Poor Charlotte. She really is taking it hard, isn’t she?

  Taking it hard and still making a fool of herself, yep. One step forward, two steps back. She had ventured down to clear the air with the agonizingly kind woman from Flat 1 – Rosa – several times, but her downstairs neighbour always seemed to be out, and so she’d had to leave a bunch of apology flowers outside her door in the hope that it would do in the meantime. Perhaps she was avoiding her, peering through the spyhole and deliberately not answering. Or so Charlotte might have thought, had a dinner invitation not been slid under her door a few days later. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she read it. So now she had to face this woman across a dinner table and make polite conversation! Was Fate ever going to give her a break?

  *

  Before she could gear herself up for the dinner party on Friday night, there was her weekly afternoon call on Margot upstairs to catch up on, though. With a box of her neighbour’s favourite perfumed tea in her handbag as she climbed the stairs, Charlotte wondered if the older woman would have any chores lined up for her this afternoon. Another hotties’ tour around town, perhaps? Or tea and cakes, with Margot’s inimitable conversation swinging rapidly from the possibility of her death to Charlotte’s personal life. Only one way to find out, she thought, knocking at the door.

  Margot answered in a black silk dressing gown, rubbing her eyes and looking pale.

  ‘Oh gosh, are you not well? Can I do anything to help?’ Charlotte asked in concern.

  ‘It is just a migraine,’ Margot replied, wincing. ‘Stupid migraine. They come sometimes and pouf – then I must sleep. So I am sorry. No tea and talking today. No shores. But wait –’ She padded along the hall, her small white bare feet making her look surprisingly vulnerable. ‘I have actually one shore. One small shore.’ She returned with her old-fashioned clasp purse and opened it, her fingers struggling a little with the stiff fastening. ‘Here,’ she said, drawing out a five-pound note. ‘Today’s shore – you must go to the café, remember the nice café I like from last week? Go there and have a coffee. Ask for Ned.’

  Charlotte felt her shoulders sink. ‘Oh. But . . .’ she said, not taking the note. ‘I mean . . . That’s very nice of you, but I’m not sure—’

  ‘Because he has been asking about you. He say, who is that girl who came in for you? What is her name? I think he likes you. Do you like him?’

  Whoa. Even when she was in the midst of a paralysing migraine, Margot still managed to catch Charlotte off-guard with her rapid-fire line of questioning. ‘Well . . .’ she said, then sighed. Time to put this one firmly to bed, she decided, and not in the way Margot was hoping either. ‘I’m sure he’s very nice but, actually, I’m not sure he does like me. I made a bit of a fool of myself in front of him. Twice now. It was kind of awkward.’

  Margot raised a shoulder, shrugging off Charlotte’s feebleness. ‘He does like you,’ she insisted. ‘He had that look in his eye. And I know that look of a man.’

  Charlotte didn’t doubt the latter for a minute but was determined to set her neighbour straight on the former. ‘Look or no look, I think he might already be with someone anyway. He definitely has a couple of kids. He was probably just being polite.’

  Margot shook her head a fraction, wincing at the movement. ‘No. Not with someone. He tell me, very sad, his wife die three years ago. They ran the café together, you see. Now it is only him. So.’ She nodded meaningfully and placed the five-pound note into Charlotte’s hand, and then wrapped Charlotte’s fingers around it before she could protest. ‘You go. That is your shore. He is waiting for you. And have a very nice time.’

  Charlotte’s mouth dropped open. Her eighty-something-year-old neighbour was totally setting her up here, with the very man she wanted to avoid. What was the world coming to, when eighty-something-year-old neighbours set you up? ‘Right,’ she said weakly, wondering if there was any point in trying to get out of this. She was starting to wonder if Margot’s ‘migraine’ even existed, or if it was all part of some devious matchmaking plan.

  ‘And now, I must sleep. My poor head,’ Margot said, as if reading Charlotte’s suspicious thoughts. ‘I am sorry not to be going to the dinner tonight. And I am sorry not to chat today, darling. I enjoy our chats.’

  ‘Me too,’ Cha
rlotte said. Despite her misgivings at being manipulated into a potentially humiliating situation she found herself leaning forward impulsively and gave the other woman a hug. It was like hugging a small bird, one that you could break if you squeezed too hard. Then she handed over the packet of tea. ‘This is for you anyway. I hope you feel better soon. And just knock if you want anything.’

  So this was all horrifically awkward, she thought, trudging back down the stairs and wondering what she should do. She could just not go to the café, of course, make up some excuse to Margot next time she saw her – a sudden bout of food poisoning perhaps or a blinding headache of her own that rendered her incapable of leaving the building. But Margot wasn’t daft. And Charlotte was pretty sure she wasn’t the sort of person who would give up on a pet project either, once she’d got an idea in her head.

  Sod it, she was just going to have to go and cringe her way through a coffee with Ned of the café and two daughters, wasn’t she? And then she would most definitely have to make it abundantly clear to Margot that such a ‘shore’ was a one-off, never to be repeated, and, moreover, that Charlotte’s definition of chores for her befriendee did not include going on blind coffee dates with the men of her choosing, thank you very much. (Although even as she decided this, she knew already that Margot wouldn’t take any notice of this kind of foot-putting-down.)

  Pausing to dab on some confidence-boosting perfume in her own flat, Charlotte practised smiling again in the mirror. At least she could apologize to him for the scene on the pier, she thought. Clear the air. Maybe the two of them would even laugh about the awkwardness of the situation, of being set up by the elegant, mischief-making Margot and what a terrible old stirrer she was. Then Charlotte would drink her coffee, apologize for wasting the man’s time, and leave, never to set foot in the café again. Whatever her neighbour might be hoping.

  ‘Right then,’ she said to her nervous-looking reflection. ‘Let’s get this the hell over with then.’

  He was serving behind the counter when she went in, a pencil tucked behind one ear, his glasses slightly lopsided on his nose. As before, he was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans underneath a navy blue serving apron, and even though Charlotte was braced for the humiliation of seeing him again, she hadn’t anticipated quite what a hot blush would come to her face as Ned looked up from his blue-rinsed customer and smiled at her. He likes you, Margot had insisted. I know that look.

  Yeah, well. Charlotte would be the judge of that. For all Cupid upstairs knew, he might have got her here under false pretences, to complain about her terrible behaviour. Any minute now he could hand her a restraining order, or call the police.

  ‘Hi,’ she said apprehensively, once the woman in front of her had paid and was making a slow careful walk away with her full cup of coffee.

  ‘Hi,’ he replied, straightening his glasses with the end of his forefinger. He had nice eyes, she thought distractedly. Chocolate-brown and properly twinkly. ‘Good to see you again.’

  Was it? She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. ‘Listen,’ she said, wanting to pre-empt him, ‘I need to apologize. For that day. For what I said. I totally over-reacted, I was so out of order. And I’m sorry. I promise I’m not always a maniac.’

  He waved a hand as if to say Oh, that. ‘God, don’t worry. I’d forgotten all about it until you came in the other week. And anyway I was so grateful that you’d found Lily in the first place that you could have said anything and I wouldn’t have minded,’ he told her, which was both very gallant of him and almost certainly untrue. She distinctly remembered how he’d flinched when she’d gone on the attack and called him negligent or whatever awful fishwife-esque thing she’d come out with.

  She bowed her head. ‘That’s very nice of you,’ she said cautiously and then there was a small excruciating pause which they both rushed to fill.

  ‘I’m also sorry if Margot—’ she began, the words tripping over themselves to get out, just as he started with, ‘I hope you didn’t mind me—’

  They both stopped and looked at each other, then laughed. ‘Go on, you first,’ he said.

  ‘I just wanted to say, I’m sorry if Margot put you up to this,’ she repeated, biting her lip. Honesty was the best policy, she decided. ‘She seems to have made it her mission to reinvigorate my love life by introducing me to every eligible man around the city, and quite a few others besides. Which, while well-meaning, I’m sure, can make things a bit embarrassing at times. Especially if the men in question are not even interested.’

  There – the perfect get-out clause for him, if he wanted it. The chance right there on a plate for him to admit that, yes, okay, Margot had twisted his arm, persuading him in that charming-bulldozer way of hers to go along with this ridiculous whim out of pity for poor lonely old maid Charlotte.

  But instead, he was shaking his head, his shaggy hair bouncing. ‘God, no, there’s no need to apologize. In fact, I was going to say I hope you didn’t mind me asking about you. I didn’t want to come across as pushy or creepy, only – well . . . when I saw you again and you mentioned knowing Margot, I was interested. Curious. I couldn’t resist asking her about you.’ He hesitated as if worried he might have revealed too much of himself. ‘But she didn’t “put me up” to anything, honestly. It was the other way round.’

  ‘Oh.’ Charlotte’s cheeks flamed. He was curious about her, she repeated to herself, feeling startled – and flattered too. She had never seen herself as the sort of person that other people – particularly men – thought twice about. Blend into the wallpaper, that was her. Quiet and plain and ordinary, just getting on with her life as best she could. Apart from the mad-lady screaming on the pier incident, obviously. (She hoped that wasn’t what he’d found so ‘interesting’ about her. This wasn’t all an elaborate stunt to get her committed to the nearest psychiatric ward, was it?)

  ‘So, anyway . . . have you got time for a coffee? It’s quiet in here so I could slip out for a bit,’ he said, oblivious to her sudden internal panic. ‘We could go down to the beach, maybe, have a chat?’

  Gosh. This was all kind of unexpected. He does like you said Margot in her head again, and then the next thing she knew, a prickle of nervous excitement was skittering through her. ‘That sounds nice,’ she said. ‘Yes, please.’

  The sun had been shining all day, a hot yellow stud in the pale denim sky, and the pebbles had soaked up the heat, feeling pleasantly warm through Charlotte’s linen skirt as she and Ned found a place to sit on the beach a few minutes later. She had taken off her flats so as best to navigate down there and wiggled her toes through her nude opaques, wishing she had the nerve to whip them off too and free her bare legs. ‘Do you know, I’ve never actually sat here on the beach,’ she confessed, shifting into a more comfortable position as he set down the cardboard tray of drinks between them. ‘I’ve lived here four months, just around the corner from your café, and it’s taken me this long to come and actually –’ She gestured at the undulating pebbly expanse around them. ‘You know. Hang out.’

  Ugh, she thought, in the next moment, ‘hang out’ made her sound really old and uncool. And why had she even said that anyway, about not coming to the beach, when that made her sound like some weird hermit? ‘I mean,’ she went on, as he extracted her cappuccino from where it was wedged into the moulded cardboard tray and handed it over, ‘it’s not that I don’t like the beach, it’s more that I would feel self-conscious sitting here on my own. When everyone else in Brighton seems to be part of this massive posse, you know, with a whole gang of really cool and beautiful mates.’

  Worse and worse. Why was she saying all of these things? Now she sounded even more of a loser. To her great relief, he was nodding, though.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘But it’s one of the things I love most about this place, that people don’t judge you if you want to sit on the beach alone, or . . . I don’t know, go skinny-dipping, or chain yourself to a railing for some cause or other. Nobody would bat an ey
elid, honestly. Far more outrageous things go on for anyone to care.’

  ‘There is that,’ Charlotte admitted.

  ‘Seriously, don’t worry about it. I come out to have my lunch break here all alone most days and nobody’s ever looked twice.’ Then he looked thoughtful for a moment, raising one eyebrow comically. ‘Unless I’ve got it wrong, of course, and the whole city has been pitying me all this time, but I’ve been too thick to notice.’

  She smiled shyly. ‘Well, I didn’t like to say . . .’ she joked, ‘but there has been a fundraising campaign for you.’

  He pantomimed shock. ‘No!’

  ‘Yeah, and this . . . this petition. Solidarity with the Solo Luncher. It was on the news and everything; mournful footage of you here alone with your sandwich with wistful music in the background.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Did you seriously not know?’ She was warming up now. She was actually making a joke. ‘There’s this whole support group trying to find you some friends to have lunch with . . . There are posters, T-shirts with your face on . . .’

  He threw his head back in laughter and the sound was so infectious that she joined in. And of course, what he’d said earlier was true: no way was this a place with small-town attitudes and small-town judgements, where people would gossip about what you got up to. It was a place where you could go roller skating in tiny hot pants and nobody gave a damn, after all. Why would anyone turn a hair at a woman enjoying the sea-view on her own? ‘Anyway, you’re right, I should be a bit braver about these things,’ she said. ‘Stop caring so much. You wait, I’ll be here all the time from now on, brazenly not giving a damn. I’ll become part of the Brighton scenery.’

  ‘You’ll be appearing on all the postcards,’ he agreed. ‘People will avoid sitting here because they’ll know it’s your spot.’ He ripped open the paper bag of pastries he’d brought down as he spoke and spread it out between them. ‘Here, help yourself. Better watch out for the seagulls, though.’