Page 37 of The Bookshop at the Cornish Cove

‘That’s so sad,’ Dennis said. ‘I wish my mum would have been more like you.’

It was the first real time he’d mentioned his mum and I was glad that he was speaking about her, even if it was to my mum and not me. By this time, I’d moved over to behind the counter but I could still hear him talking.

‘She was just not maternal. She was never around much. I used to have to come home from school and get myself something to eat. I couldn’t cook so it was normally a bowl of cereal or some toast, which I could just about manage to make. It’s why I used to love coming to Nan’s in the school holidays.’

‘So, did you never learn to cook then, Dennis? Can you cook?’

Typical that Mum picked up on that more than the emotional side of things and wondering why his mum was never there.

‘I’m a wizard with a microwave, Wendy. I have a very good cleaning lady who has been more of a mother to me than my own ever was. She makes me home-cooked meals while she’s doing them for her own family, and she loads up my freezer, so I just have to get them out in the morning before work and then I heat them up when I get home. I wish I could cook, to be honest. It’ssomething I’ve always said I’d learn but never seemed to find the time.’

‘You have more time on your hands now than ever, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘When do you go back to London?’

I nearly broke my neck at this point, craning to hear as best as I could.

‘I’m heading back at the weekend actually. Got some things I need to sort out.’

‘Will you be away for long?’

‘I don’t think I can stay away. Even if I wanted to.’ We both looked up at the same time and our eyes locked. ‘Driftwood Bay seems to have got right under my skin.’

He didn’t take his eyes off mine, and when I broke eye contact, Mum looked from one of us to the other, a sly smile appearing on her face.

‘Well, you let me know when you are back and have some time, young man. I think I have a wonderful idea that could help both you and Vi, and maybe some other people too.’

Intrigued as to what she was plotting, I stepped back over to where they were standing, but she didn’t elaborate any further, though she did wink at me as she gave me a little kiss on the cheek before she left.

‘He’s a good one, you know, kid,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘Not many of them around. You should snap him up before someone else does. Or before he goes back to London for good.’

This thought wouldn’t leave my mind that evening. I locked the shop door and Dennie and I agreed to meet later at the pub for quiz night. We were getting into a proper little routine and I think I’d been kidding myself into thinking that being friends was just fine, and that we’d just continue to plod along in the way that we were. But now all I could think about was the fact he might not be here for much longer and that thought gave a little twang on my heart. The thought of him not being in my lifeevery day was not filling me with joy. It wasn’t that long ago that we barely knew each other, but now, I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it.

21

Life just seemed a little less bright without Dennie. I sent him a text on the Saturday morning to say have a nice weekend and just got a thumbs up in return. It was all I could do to stop my thoughts running away with me. Wondering what he was doing and who he was doing it with. Worrying about whether he’d hook up with anyone while he was back in London or realise that life there was better than life here. I was scared that now he was back where he originally belonged, he wouldn’t want to return.

I tried to keep myself occupied. Saturday in the shop was a very busy day. It was nice that people came from further afield. In the downtime that I did have, I set up social media profiles and started taking what Dad called ‘arty-farty’ photos of the books along with the other items that I was now branching out into. And my pièce de résistance of course were my painted shells. Inspired by Dennis’s idea of making the shells book related, I started to copy the covers of the books. So far, I had doneWuthering HeightsandLittle Women. They just needed to be varnished and photographed before I could put them on sale.

To stop thoughts of Dennis filling my head all the time, I made sure that every minute of every day was accounted for. Ihad to distract myself to stop me from thinking. Thinking about Dennie and how much I missed him.

More than what seemed like at least a hundred times, I resisted the urge to message him, to tell him the most ridiculous of things which I knew would either make him laugh or make him think, make him smack his head at my commercial ignorance or shake his head at me. It felt like a part of me was missing. Like something I’d always worn, a piece of jewellery for instance, was lost from my life and I kept reaching out for it. A ring that I might spin on my finger, or a necklace that I constantly touched, which had been there once upon a time and now wasn’t any more.

My day off was the worst. It was simple – I missed him. We’d got into a little routine on my days off and Dennie and I had spent them going on bike rides around the surrounding areas and we’d had such fun. Me pointing out places of interest along the way, telling him a little of my history and my youth, and him very nearly a few times opening up to me. On a couple of occasions, I even thought we were on the brink of a breakthrough. Vi had told Mum he wasn’t a person who shared things easily but I felt that he did open up to me. This made me feel like I was special to him. He made me feel like we were the best of friends. He made me feel like we could be a whole lot more if we had more time together.

And when Mum came into my bedroom that night to check that I was OK, I pretended that I had the start of a cold and was feeling a bit rotten, when, to be honest, I think a little bit of my heart had gone back to London with Dennie. When she told me that she’d popped in to see Vi that day, to check that she was OK, and that Vi said Dennie was having to stay in London for the next couple of weeks, I felt physically sick. This was the exact reason why I didn’t want to be in love with someone. People said that it was better to have loved and lost but I didn’t think it was.I’d seen the state that my brother had been in when his girlfriend dumped him. He was literally a broken man. Then how grateful he was to her when she deigned to take him back after he begged her to. I’d never been fond of her, and after that performance, I was even less so, even though I had to be nice to her for his sake. That’s what love does to a person. And it wasn’t something that I wanted to be part of. Not a feeling that I wanted to have.

Not that I was in love with Dennie of course. Absolutely not. Of course.

22

It was two weeks later when life changed again for me. On a quiet Monday morning, while the rain pattered against my window and I was having a lie-in, there was a knock at the front door. Mum and Dad were both out at work already and I’d been reading in bed.

I muttered all the way downstairs, while pulling on my fleecy dressing gown and tying the belt around me. I flung open the door ready to give Karl the postman a mouthful for spoiling my peace and quiet. He was the only person I’d seen wandering around the harbour when I’d looked out of the bedroom window, taking in the moody grey sky which was full of rain.

‘Dennie. What the?—’

‘Hello, stranger!’ He was leaning up against the wall outside of the front porch and I honestly couldn’t have been more surprised, delighted yet horrified all at the same time.

My hands immediately flew to my head where I tried to smooth down my wayward hair. I knew there were coffee stains all over my dressing gown and I hadn’t brushed my teeth since yesterday morning, because I just couldn’t be bothered to dothem before I went to bed last night and I was pretty sure that, in a competition, my ogre breath would have won against Shrek.

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