Michelle Vernal - Sweet Home Summer - A heartwarming romcom perfect for curling up with

Bridget sympathized; she couldn’t be doing with all that fandangled food the cafés served in Christchurch and Greymouth for that matter either. As far as she was concerned those pumpkin seed thing-a-me-bobs that were sprinkled on the top of everything these days were for the birds and cream cheese gave her indigestion. She was with Noeline when it came to a good old ham and egg sarnie, although she was partial to cheese and onion herself. Cheese made from cow’s milk, thank you very much. And as for all these new so-called food intolerances, well … she shook her head. In her day if you had a square meal put in front of you once a day then you were grateful.

Bridget looked out at the lifeless street and sighed; the town had been like a tyre with a slow puncture in the years since the Barker’s Ridge mine had closed down. On one side of the tearoom across the street was Bibury Arts & Crafts, where local people could display and sell their wares. In competition with Noeline on the other side of her business, but with enough breathing space between the two thanks to a grassy Council owned strip of land, was everybody’s favourite Friday night takeaway, the fish & chippy. The Cutting Room hair salon was next to that.

The corner block was taken up by the Four Square’s brick building and gave the town’s kids the opportunity of an after school job. It was where Isla had worked as a teenager. Bridget could still see her in her blue zip-up smock sitting behind the till when she closed her eyes. Oh, how she’d moaned about wearing that uniform. It was ugly, she’d cried. Her granddaughter was nothing if not determined though and Bridget had nearly dropped her eggs in the aisle spying her one Saturday afternoon in a blue zip up mini. Isla had taken it upon herself to fold the hem up several inches before loosely stitching it. The memory made her smile as her gaze travelled on towards the butcher’s. It was owned by the Stewart brothers and competed with the supermarket for business. A narrow side street separated it from Mitchell’s Pharmacy.

The Valentine’s Day window display in the pharmacy urged the romantics of Bibury to pop on in and treat their sweetheart to something special. It was where Bridget’s daughter Mary worked as a Revlon Consultant, and the pharmacy’s only floor staff. Next to Mitchell’s was the two-pump Shell garage. The Robson family had owned it under one conglomerate’s umbrella or another for as long as Bridget could remember. From her front room vantage point, she could see Ben Robson’s broad, overall-clad back bent over the engine of a Ute. She’d been at school with his grandfather. Poor old Raymond had gone a bit dotty in the last few years and was now in permanent residence at a care facility over in Greymouth. The garage’s tow truck that Ben took out now and again was parked off to the side of the forecourt with a beaten up looking farm truck still hooked to its boom.

Ben had recently taken over the family business and his parents, Bridget knew, had swanned off last Friday on a month-long cruise to celebrate their newfound freedom. ‘Not everybody’s on struggle street in Bibury then,’ she’d said, pursing her lips when her friend Margaret had relayed the news.

Ben had been at school with her grandson Ryan. They were great mates, the two of them, and still kept in touch. He was a lovely lad, and she’d been pleased when Isla had begun to step out with him. She’d glowed with her first love and in her, Bridget had seen herself as a young girl once more. She’d never understood why Isla had given him the heave-ho the way she had. He’d moped around the town for months after she moved to Christchurch. He’d kept asking her and Mary when Isla was coming home for a weekend, but the times she had, she’d kept him dangling by keeping her distance. The pair of them had been so smitten with each other too, or that was the way it had seemed from the outside looking in. Then out of the blue Isla had broken things off with Ben by saying their long-distance relationship wasn’t working.

There was more to it, Bridget was sure, and she’d been hurt when Isla hadn’t confided in her. She’d always had a special relationship with her granddaughter. Right from when she was a little girl who’d pop in on her way home from school for one of her gran’s freshly baked scones or, if it was a special occasion, Isla’s favourite, a custard square. Bridget could still see the pigtailed girl she’d been, perched up at the kitchen table earnestly telling her about her day.

Bridget understood her granddaughter’s need to broaden her mind, and she knew it was all the fashion to put your career first and stay single well into your thirties these days. Women should have a career if that was what they wanted. Of course they should, and nobody could say Isla hadn’t done that. The thing that seemed to have been forgotten along the way though was that being a wife and mother was a worthwhile career too.

When had staying home to raise your children become a foreign concept? You didn’t need a flat screen television and a new car for heaven’s sake! But your children needed you, and they grew up so very fast. Bridget had to listen to Margaret prattle on about how the grandchildren were coming to stay for the holidays. ‘Melanie works you know,’ she’d state self-righteously. ‘She has to with the cost of living these days.’ Bridget would bite back the retort, ‘and did she have to have a ridiculously big house in a posh suburb too?’

Times had changed and not for the better in her opinion. People didn’t want to save for anything anymore or make do until they could afford to buy it. She remembered how she and Tom had eaten mince for a month back in the day, to buy their lounge suite. They’d bought it in Greymouth and had kept the plastic wrapping on the cushions for weeks after they got it home for fear of Mary or Jack putting their dirty feet on it.

She watched now as Ben straightened, missing smacking his head on the Ute’s bonnet with the practised manoeuvring of a seasoned mechanic. He disappeared from her line of sight into the garage’s workshop. She’d heard that he was seeing the pretty blonde girl who had taken over from Violet McDougall as the school’s new secretary. From what her hairdresser, Marie, had been saying as she snipped at Bridget’s hair last week at The Cutting Room, things were getting serious between them too.

Isla had made a mistake in breaking things off with Ben in Bridget’s opinion. Yes, she knew it was all over years ago, but her granddaughter had not met anyone else worthwhile in the ensuing years. Certainly not the unmanly Tim she’d been shacked up with over in London – Mary had told her he used moisturiser for heaven’s sake and that he had gotten very excited when he’d thought she might be able to ship him Revlon products over at cost. She’d seen the light, thank goodness, and called that relationship a day. But while Ben’s life was moving forward, it seemed to Bridget that Isla’s was floundering once more. It was all well and good having a high-powered job, but it would not keep a woman warm at night.

Bridget became aware that the postman was at the letterbox waving at her. He must think her a right old Nosy Nelly, she thought, giving him a nod of acknowledgement. She let the net curtain fall back into place but not before she saw him slotting an envelope into the box.

Her heart began to thud alarmingly as she left the front room and moved to the hallway with its long reaching shadows. She stood there twiddling her thumbs and telling herself to calm down. If she hadn’t known that this sudden agitation was down to the possible contents of her letterbox, she might have taken herself off to the Medical Centre. A visit there was enough to induce a cardiac arrest in itself. It was another anomaly about getting older that a person was expected to discuss one’s intimate body ailments with a chap who looked as if he had only just waved goodbye to puberty. She waited for a few beats longer to ensure the postman would have cycled further on up the street before stepping outside her front door. She wasn’t in the mood to exchange banal pleasantries.