Sue Moorcroft - A Summer to Remember

The salad proved to be a rainbow confection of leaves, tomatoes and peppers with cheese and thick-cut ham.

‘So, what’s brought you to Nelson’s Bar?’ Genevieve asked, as Clancy began her meal. ‘Did you decide you needed to be more on the spot to look after your cousin’s interests when Evelyn left?’

‘Not at all,’ said Clancy hastily, not wanting that version of events to get back to Aaron. ‘I really, really needed a change. In fact,’ she added honestly, ‘I needed somewhere to live and a job.’

Kaz popped out with two glasses of wine, both glowing with colour in the afternoon sun. Clancy gave her time to bustle off before she carried on. ‘Up until about ten weeks ago I thought I was getting married. To Will. He’s the sort of man everyone describes as “lovely” so it was a big shock when I found out that he’d met someone else. We worked together too.’

Genevieve paused, her wine poised just short of her lips. ‘Was working together still tenable? After?’

Clancy sighed. ‘We tried. Will managed OK, but I … didn’t. It became obvious one of us had to leave and it seemed as if everyone wanted it to be me.’

‘But that’s not fair!’ Genevieve exclaimed.

The warmth of sisterly solidarity stole over Clancy. ‘Agreed. And I could question the legality, if I wanted to.’ It had crossed her mind often, sitting alone in the Roundhouse and feeling betrayed. ‘But, anyway. Roundhouse Row needed a new caretaker, and filling the position got me out of two unpleasant situations in one go. Now I’m in Nelson’s Bar, while Will moves his new girlfriend into our apartment.’ She chose not to admit that Will was mainly moving Renée in because of the financial knot Clancy had tied him up in, which had pretty much bound him to the apartment, at least for now.

Genevieve’s eyes had been getting bigger and bigger. ‘I can see you’re Alice’s cousin.’

‘Really?’ Clancy turned to look at the other woman. ‘So you knew her well?’

‘We were friendly enough to go out for a drink together, until she … Well, neither of you are frightened of making big changes to your lives, are you? Your relationship ends and you just move on.’

Clancy polished off a couple of gulps of wine thinking there had been no ‘just’ about her moving on. ‘A woman doesn’t have to be defined by the love of a man, or the loss of a man. I do regret that I closed my eyes to warning signs, never challenged Will on why he was spending so much time elsewhere. I was complacent, which put my fate in his hands and set me up for a nasty fall. But I deserve better and I’m getting used to being single.’ She held aloft her wine to invite Genevieve to clink glasses.

Genevieve obliged. ‘Until you meet someone new?’ she queried with a grin.

Clancy batted the idea away. ‘I’m in no hurry for that, believe me.’

It had been good to get a full day’s work in, Aaron thought, as he drove into the village late on Tuesday afternoon. He’d just about finished planting out the terraces in Titchwell. A heatwave was predicted and he was already anticipating customers not watering their gardens and then blaming him for dead plants and lawns with gaping cracks.

He was due to pick his mum up to collect Aunt Norma from King’s Lynn hospital and wanted to be at the ward at seven when it opened. Then he was meeting Genevieve later.

A quick stop at home to shower and grab a sandwich, then he set out again for De Silva House. Yvonne was uncharacteristically quiet when she climbed into his truck.

On the journey, through Hunstanton and on to King’s Lynn, Aaron tried to get the conversation going but his mother replied only absently, even to his enquiries about Daisy. He settled for concentrating on the traffic and listening to Capital FM.

Aunt Norma was ready when they arrived, a plaster cast on her ankle and a livid bruise on her temple. The nurse who organised her discharge said she was being sent home with a walking frame. ‘Bloody thing,’ Aunt Norma called it. Aaron brought the truck up close and settled her into the front seat and she wasn’t much more talkative than Yvonne while Aaron negotiated the overcrowded traffic system out of King’s Lynn.

It was only as they were on the more open road that she shifted her plastered foot irritably and demanded, ‘Aaron, what are you doing allowing Awful Alice’s cousin to park herself in the village?’

Aaron glanced across at her. ‘Clancy? I couldn’t do much to stop it. She acts for Alice. And I don’t suppose she even gets paid for that,’ he added, realising he’d never before thought of it. He received an income stream from the rental but all Clancy saw was the profits vanish, half in his direction and half in her cousin’s. ‘I told her about Evelyn leaving and suddenly she was moving in.’

Aunt Norma sniffed. ‘But what about Lee? How does he feel?’

His great-aunt was old and just out of hospital so Aaron kept his own tone level. ‘You’ll have to ask Lee. I hope that now he’s moved on with his life he’ll be OK with Clancy. She didn’t ask Alice to—’

‘You seem to be on her side,’ Aunt Norma commented sadly. She was known for being pretty forthright in her views.

He glanced at the old lady again as he continued to trail the car in front, wishing the traffic would speed up. ‘I’m not taking sides,’ he said quietly. ‘Alice treated Lee shamefully and I was as worried about him as anyone. I tried to persuade Clancy the job wasn’t for her but I failed.’ Then, when neither his mother nor aunt replied, he added, ‘If Lee has an issue with the way I’ve handled things then he’s welcome to raise the subject but I’m not going on a witch hunt. Life’s been pretty crap to Clancy, from what she’s told me.’

Aunt Norma sniffed again. ‘There’s no need to say crap.’

Aaron swallowed his laughter. Was he thirty-six or thirteen?

It was turned nine when he’d eventually helped Aunt Norma into her annexe at his parents’ place, driving up the slope, walking beside her as she puffed her way up the ramp that delivered her to the first floor. ‘Thank you, Aaron,’ she said stiffly. ‘You get off now.’

Aaron kissed her soft cheek and said she could call him if she needed anything. His mother gave him a hug, then Aaron took Aunt Norma at her word and left.

Once home, he released Nelson from the confines of the kitchen, rubbing the hairy head as Nelson reared up on his hind legs and pawed the air with whimpers of joy. ‘Come on, you silly hound. Let’s give you a run.’ He walked a circuit of the clifftop, watching the scrubby trees waving, throwing the ball so Nelson covered plenty of ground, then whistled him so they could turn off to Genevieve’s home in Trader’s Place.

When he arrived at The Mimosas, a pretty name that seemed to him to be trying to compensate for the less-than-pretty brick-built cottage, it was to find Genevieve three-quarters of the way down a bottle of wine, sitting out in her garden in the twilight looking balefully at the corner of her home, propped up for safety until the builders began the necessary dismantling, underpinning and rebuilding.

‘Hey,’ he said, pulling up a mismatched garden chair to join her, leaning down to brush her lips with his. ‘Feeling down in the dumps about the cottage?’