Nina Harrington - The Boy is Back in Town

He carried on walking and it took a second for her brain to process what he was doing.

He didn’t know. Ethan had no clue that they had lost their home when her father left the family. But she was not going to tell him the whole bitter saga. He would soon find out for himself if he stayed around—and preferably when she had gone back to work. Rosa would tell him.

Oh, Ethan. There have been a lot of changes since the last time we spoke.

Instinctively Mari took one step forward, then stopped and called out in a loud voice, ‘Sorry, Ethan, you’re going the wrong way. Rosa lives in the town these days. And I hear the harbour café does a great range of snacks.’

He stopped and turned back to face her, the wind ruffling his hair into a set designer’s dream of rugged and his eyebrows came together in a puzzled look. ‘You sold the house? I thought your mother loved that place?’

Her breath caught in her throat as it tightened in pain. Get it over with, she told herself. Just tell him and you won’t have to explain yourself again.

She looked up at Ethan, who was standing, tall and proud and so bursting with life and vitality and all she could think about was that Kit should be standing there. Her lovely, wild, adventurous brother who loved to break the rules. She had lived her early life in Kit’s shadow, but she would have given anything to see him smiling back at her at that moment. Alive and well and so full of energy and potential.

Instead of which, she saw Ethan Chandler. Kit’s best friend. The boy who was sailing the boat on the morning Kit went over the side and died. And it broke her heart. Worse. It broke through the veneer of suppressed anger which she had kept hidden.

‘Yes, she did. Don’t you know? We lost the house when my dad had his breakdown and his building firm closed down owing thousands of pounds. We haven’t lived there since the summer you left. The summer Kit died. The summer we lost everything. Goodbye for now, Ethan. See you later.’

And she turned away from this god-handsome man who she had idolised as a girl and walked as fast as she could in the biting wind, back to Swanhaven and the world she had created for herself when everything around her was crumbled and destroyed.

‘HOW about this one?’ Mari asked as she tapped Rosa on the arm, then pointed at the laptop screen. ‘“Looking for a grumpy old man to nag? Try Hire a Haggard . Smart men aged sixty-plus. Guaranteed to last a good couple of hours if fed and watered. Dancing and friskiness at your own risk.”’

Rosa put down her knitting and peered at the head and shoulders photos of older men displayed on the screen. Her face lit up with a stunned grin. ‘That. Is totally perfect. I hadn’t thought about renting a wrinkly. We can tell Aunt Alice that we’ve organised a male escort for the evening. She’ll be thrilled! And at seventy-nine a man of sixty-plus has to count as a toy boy. Valentine or no Valentine.’

Mari grinned back and winked. ‘I live to serve. A toy boy! I like the sound of that. Although the idea of a male escort might come as a bit of a shock to the more snooty members of the Swanhaven Yacht Club.’

‘They’ll survive,’ Rosa sniffed. ‘Besides, we only have the Valentine’s Day party once a year and Aunt Alice does manage the clubhouse. It’s only right and proper that she sets a fine example to the younger generation with a dapper date. Especially when my big sister has flown all the way back to Dorset especially for the big day. This calls for posh frocks. Shoes. Bags. Plastic baubles. The full works.’

She rubbed her hands together in delight, then looked hard at Mari over the top of her spectacles. ‘Unless of course you have a love slave hidden in the attic of your tiny flat, but there hasn’t been much evidence of that lately. Has there?’

‘Guilty as charged,’ Mari replied as she shut down her laptop, ‘but I have been a tad busy. As well you know.’

There was a snort before her sister answered. ‘Work, work. Travel, travel. What a pitiful excuse. Anyone would think that you actually preferred living in California to coming home to Swanhaven now and again.’

Mari stared back at her open-mouthed, then tutted several times before answering her baby sister. ‘Perish the thought. Why do you think I booked time out for the Valentine party this weekend?’ She smiled warmly before going on but her mouth closed slightly as she murmured in a lower voice, ‘I do feel guilty about leaving you here on your own to clear Mum’s things after the funeral. Thank you again for helping me out this last year. It hasn’t been easy.’

Rosa reached across and squeezed Mari’s hand before unfolding herself from her old squishy sofa and walking the few steps across to the picture window of her terraced cottage and the view down the cobbled lane towards Swanhaven harbour.

‘Aunt Alice has been making an effort to persuade me to spend more time with her at the club but things haven’t been the same, have they?’

Mari shuffled off the sofa and came to stare out of the window, her arm wrapped around her sister’s shoulders. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Not the same at all.’ And they stood in silence, both gazing down towards the sea and the cliff path.

Directly across the lane was the parallel row of white-painted two-storey terraced houses which stretched down from the church and small primary school to the harbour and the yacht club, which served as the village meeting place. This was the temporary house which she had moved into with Rosa and their mother when they had to sell the home they adored. And here they still were, stuck.

‘Do you know, it’s almost ten years since we moved here? I still feel that I let her down, you know. About the house.’

Rosa turned and shook her head. ‘That’s ridiculous. Don’t do that to yourself. She was so proud of your success and how hard you were working to make it happen. I have no doubt about that whatsoever and I was here with her every day. You did the right thing.’

‘But I promised her, Rosa. I promised her that I would do whatever it took to get the house back for us. And she never lived to see that happen. And now our old house is finally up for sale when she’s not here to enjoy it.’

‘I know. But we tried. We really tried.’ Pain flashed across Rosa’s lovely face for a split second before she beamed across at Mari. ‘Of course there is one small news item that I have been keeping from you all day and the suspense is killing me. I can’t hold it in a minute longer.’

There was a groan and Mari’s shoulders dropped petulantly. ‘Please, not another walk around the harbour looking for dogs without coats so you can sell your wares,’ she whimpered. ‘It’s freezing out there! Jet lag. That’s it. I still have jet lag.’

‘Protest all you like, but I am determined to show off my talented computer guru of a sister to all and sundry.’ Rosa moved closer to Mari. ‘As far as this town goes, you are officially one of the local celebrities who have actually made good in the outside world.’

‘Me? A celebrity?’ Mari clutched the back of the nearest chair and pretended to faint at the idea. ‘I mend company servers and design tailor-made software systems, and design websites in my spare time,’ she finally managed to squeak. ‘That does not make me a celebrity. Believe me, the company head office is in California and the celebrity culture is alive and well.’

‘What can I say? Standards here have slipped. But not for much longer. Because there is something I have to tell you.’ A cunning smirk lifted one side of Rosa’s mouth and she waggled her eyebrows a couple of times before taking a breath and speaking so fast that her words all ran together. ‘Ethan Chandler is back in town and I really wanted you to meet him on your own at the harbour but you haven’t and he is probably going to be at the club tonight so you should know about it before you get there.’