Sue Moorcroft - A Summer to Remember

Her gaze didn’t waver, though she made a tiny movement, as if somewhere deep inside she flinched. ‘You’re mixing up opinion with fact. Anyway, I can’t go back. Lee’s not the only one things have gone wrong for. My fiancé – ex, now – has got someone else, Renée, who I suspect he’s moving into our apartment pretty much as we speak. I’m being shoved out of the business I worked long and hard to help build so, as well as having nowhere to live, I have no job. I represent Alice’s interests and therefore I appoint myself as caretaker.’

Her voice softened. ‘I think Alice will want me to have the job. She and I – there’s a special relationship. I haven’t seen her for a while, but that doesn’t matter. That’s how it’s always been because my parents towed me around the world or they put me in boarding school or left me with Alice and Aunt Sally, when, despite your assessment of her character, she shared her home, her life, her friends and even her mother with me without hesitation. Now I’m based in the UK and she’s the one travelling I’m pretty certain she’d support my wish to come to Nelson’s Bar. But we can ask her, if you like.’ Her expression clouded. ‘I’m genuinely sorry you don’t want me here, and I can see you might think that with my history I should be inured to just cheerfully packing up and shoving off somewhere where I’m less of an inconvenience. But I need a new home, at least for now. And this is it.’ Her voice wavered and she clamped her lips shut on the end of the sentence.

In the silence, the blackbird began to sing beautifully fluting notes. Nelson lifted his head as if searching for the source of the sound with his one eye.

Aaron stared at Clancy, shaken to his plummeting core. He should have recognised the trouble he’d seen in her eyes yesterday. He’d watched Lee battling similar heart-wrenching grief. Now he understood why she had arrived looking so ill, why abandoning her in an empty house hadn’t made her turn tail. Clancy was in a mess. And, judging from the way her fingers were folded around each other so hard that her knuckles were white, her composure was only a very thin skin deep.

Aaron had never been able to kick people while they were down and rarely refused to give help where it was needed – leaving aside the current uncomfortable situation with Genevieve. Nelson was only one in a succession of badly off animals he’d adopted at one time or another. He dragged up a breath from the pit of his lungs and let it out in a gusty sigh. ‘OK. I’ll get my truck. We’ll fetch the furniture.’

A noisy swallow, then she replied, simply, ‘Thank you. May I walk along with you?’

‘Of course,’ he muttered.

She locked up the Roundhouse with city-dweller punctiliousness. They began up Long Lane through the dappled sunlight created by laburnum trees, the last of their yellow blossoms floating down around them. They headed into the village before swinging towards the north side of the headland. May was mild this year and the sunshine stroked Aaron’s skin with warm hands. ‘I live further up the lane in Potato Hall Row,’ he volunteered. Having made the decision not to hurl further impediments in Clancy’s way – though he wasn’t particularly looking forward to the little chat he’d soon need to have with his family – he went on: ‘Long Lane loops right around this side of the village as far as the B&B and The Green, towards the furthest point of the headland. Then Marshview Road takes over and comes back round.’ He swept his arm in a long U-shape.

Clancy’s hair blew in a sudden gust of wind and she smiled faintly, as if enjoying the freshness of the air. ‘Alice took me around the village a couple of times when I was here before but I don’t remember much. Do your parents live somewhere near here?’

‘Frenchmen’s Way. This turning we’re coming up to.’

Neither of them said anything about the shared kiss in his parents’ garden one night, a long time ago, as they passed the opening to Frenchmen’s Way. Long Lane continued to bear right and slope upwards. Clancy strode out beside him. ‘Are your parents going to mind me being with you to pick up the furniture? Or Lee? Perhaps, to follow the alliterative style of Awful Alice,’ she went on ruminatively, ‘they’ll call me Crappy Clancy.’

‘They won’t be there,’ he admitted frankly, at the same time wishing he hadn’t told her about the Awful Alice thing. ‘Dad’s at work and Lee’s taken Mum shopping before my great-aunt comes home. Aunt Norma lives in an annexe at De Silva House.’

‘That’s nice.’ Clancy sounded genuinely touched at this sign of family love. ‘Oh, look! Those flint cottages are so pretty.’

‘That’s Potato Hall Row,’ he answered. ‘Mine’s the furthest one, the one with the workshop attached.’

She nodded absently. ‘How have you and I emailed so regularly if there’s no internet in the village?’

He was thrown by the sudden question and was sure, from the way she watched him out of the corner of her eye, that he was meant to be. ‘I have satellite broadband.’

‘Ah,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. ‘So the thing about no internet was fake news. How about no pub, no shop …?’

‘There is no pub or shop,’ he said defensively, though he wasn’t sure whether she was teasing him or was actually annoyed. ‘There are a few places in the village with satellite broadband, but you can’t get it everywhere because of the conservation area, listed buildings, and even preservation orders on trees that block the signal.’

‘Oh. I see the issue.’ She frowned. ‘As one of the owners of Roundhouse Row, couldn’t you share your internet access with the caretaker?’

‘I could,’ he admitted. ‘Evelyn wasn’t keen on learning to do things online so it didn’t come up. So many people ask to hook up with it that I suppose I’ve become wary of reaching my data limit before the end of the month. People are always asking to “just borrow” my connection. I change my password a lot.

‘Here’s the truck,’ he added unnecessarily as he stopped beside the big silver pickup with De Silva Landscaping on the side. He beeped it open.

‘But,’ Clancy began again. She was interrupted by Genevieve suddenly rounding the side of his house, waving energetically, the breeze making her long blonde hair wave too. Nelson yanked at his lead so Aaron let him bound over to fling himself at her, not sure how he felt about Gen’s unscheduled appearance. It was new and not particularly welcome for her to hang around him so much. Before she’d tried to solve her housing issue by moving their relationship up a level, she’d been a warm, fun, independent girlfriend who’d seemed as content as Aaron to include a relationship in her life but not make it the be-all and end-all.

‘There you are!’ Genevieve fussed Nelson but looked at Aaron as she spoke, as if she was talking to a little boy who’d wandered off. ‘You’re out early. I heard about your aunt and came to see if I could help.’ Then she looked at Clancy with a half-smile of enquiry.

‘The village grapevine hasn’t taken long with the news about Aunt Norma’s ankle,’ he said drily. ‘She’ll be OK. This is Clancy Moss. She’s going to move into the Roundhouse and take Evelyn’s job.’

Genevieve’s smile broadened. ‘Oh, the Clancy who’s Alice’s cousin? Maybe we met when you were here for … anyway, welcome to Nelson’s Bar. Are you moving from very far away?’

Clancy sent Aaron a glance, as if divining that Genevieve had been going to say for Lee’s wedding and noting that she’d thought better of it. ‘From London. We’re just going to pick up the furniture from Aaron’s parents’ house.’ Clancy smiled pleasantly and didn’t remark on Genevieve knowing Alice. Everyone knew everyone in Nelson’s Bar.