Page 64 of The Bookshop at the Cornish Cove

I laughed.

‘Yeah, exciting times ahead for him. Finally seeing sense, thank God.’

He mouthed ‘fuck off’ at me behind her back, at which we both laughed.

‘Right, I’d best be off now I know both of my children are perfectly fine.’

‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion,’ I replied as I bobbed my tongue out at my brother.

It was her turn to laugh.

I thanked her, gave her a kiss and she left.

This time, I headed straight back into my room and opened the box. Inside was a beautiful, huge, tumbled rose quartz crystal, the classic crystal that symbolises love. My face broke into a full smile and I ripped open the envelope, trying not to damage the beautiful paper in my haste.

Nancy,

Please excuse my terrible attempt at shell painting. I have learned something else about myself this week and that’s that creativity is not my strongest suit. Give me a spreadsheet and I’m your man (I wish!) but give me some paints and a shell and I’m probably worse than most of the kids that you used to teach. However, if you can find your way to even decipher what the image is, it’s you and me being beach angels. I thought you might like to look at it from time to time and smile at the fact that I will go through the rest of my life recycling all my rubbish and encouraging people to do the same and also to use less plastic. I’ve already spoken to the HR department at work about how there needs to be more bins around. God, woman! What have you done to me?

Anyhow, we’re finally getting to the end of the story so I won’t leave you hanging. You might have actually given up on my story already and marked it up as a ‘do not finish’. I do hope not, though, because we’re just getting to the good bit.

So here goes!

Newly qualified Dennis felt like he’d won the lottery when he secured an internship at a finance company in London. He gave everything he’d got and worked his way up from an assistant to an executive (posh, eh?) and then he was promoted to become a fully-fledged business analyst. There was only one job going and it was Dennis who got it, much to the displeasure of colleague – and friend – Craig, who hadstarted at the same time as Dennis, and up until that point had mirrored his career progression. To make matters even worse, Craig ended up working for Dennis. He hated this fact and tried to trip Dennis up at every opportunity, making it look as if Dennis wasn’t doing his job properly. Yet Dennis tried hard to cover things up. Whilst Craig wasn’t the best friend in the world, he was the only friend Dennis had and he didn’t want to go back to being all alone again.

Dennis met a young lady at this point. She was a nice girl, and ticked all the boxes – tall, slim, pretty – and she batted her eyelashes at Dennis and he was flattered. What Dennis didn’t realise was that she was batting her eyelashes at Craig too and when he caught them ‘in flagrante’ one evening on his office desk, he was gutted. Once more, people who he’d put his trust into had let him down. He’d done all he could to be kind to Craig and while he didn’t exactly think that they had major chemistry, they had had a nice time and he enjoyed her company.

Eventually, and due to all the bickering at work, things reached a head. Craig and Dennis were hauled into their boss’s office and asked if what all the staff were talking about was true. Craig confessed all and asked to be moved to another team. Dennis got a bollocking for covering up for Craig, but, worse still, he was told that they’d been planning on making him a director of the company, but in the light of what had happened, they didn’t feel it would now be appropriate. When Dennis asked if this decision might ever be reversed, he was told there was a possibility dependent upon how he performed from that moment on.

So Dennis worked even harder on his accounts, made sure he kept his nose clean, and made millions for both the companies he worked on behalf of, as well as the one who employed him.

To be continued…

I hope you haven’t nodded off reading this story. It might not be a gripping thriller, an unputdownable page-turner, or one of those romantic uplifting stories that you normally read, but there’s not much left now, I promise.

Even the weather has changed in the few days that you’ve been gone, Nance. The sea is a murky grey and the beach is full of washed-up seaweed and there is literally no sunshine, in all ways!

I’d still have loved to have told you all this in person. The front doorstep of your shop is getting colder and colder each day. Nan keeps telling me I’ll get piles and insists that I bring a cushion to sit on. She still says I’m a fuckwit. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me, although she doesn’t seem to slap me round the head quite as much now.

I miss you, Nancy.

Dennie

xxx

The last part made me laugh. I didn’t think I’d laugh again at one point, but life goes on. Things felt a little easier than they did before. Spending time with Dan had helped enormously. It had been so nice getting to know him and to plan his future. He said that he felt he’d be strong enough soon to go and get his things from his house, face Sabrina and put the past behind him. The distance from her had made him stronger each day he was away and he was finally ready to get back into the real world. He said that he was excited about what the future held for him and his business, for which we’d done a plan, the way Dennie had taught me. If only Dennie could see what I’d done, I knew he’d be super proud of me. I’d listened and I’d learned from him. He was wrong when he said I’d been the only one teaching him things. We’d taught each other. That was what partnerships were about and we, for a very short while, had made a really good one.

I still couldn’t imagine anything that he could say that could shine a light on why he had accepted a bet from Craig. And why Craig thought it was necessary to come all the way to Driftwood Bay to drop Dennie in it. He must really hate him.

Maybe I should message him, I thought. See if he was OK and find out the rest of the story for myself. I still wasn’t sure if I could face him. I wanted to. More than anything. But I needed to make sure that I was strong enough to listen rationally and then deal with what he was going to say. My head was still all over the place. Being away in the lodge was supposed to help me get my mind clear and then either go back or move on, but I was as confused as ever.

41

Our walk that day was helpful. Dan gave me some great intel into how stupid he thought men were. It was interesting to say the least. He felt that men had to have things pointed out to them. He laughed when he remembered that Sabrina used to shout at him when he would walk over the washing basket she’d left on the stairs rather than take it upstairs with him. His argument was always that if she had asked him to take it, he would have, but his brain didn’t register what she wanted, so he didn’t bother. He also remembered another instance where it was his job to sort out the bins. Way too messy a job for Sabrina. She might break a nail. When the kitchen bin was full, she expected him to take it out. Rather than asking, she would start to pile rubbish on top of the full bin. He remembered the night that she hinted that the kitchen was starting to smell because of all the rubbish, but instead of taking it out, his brain told him that the probably needed a bigger bin and then he spent hours googling bin storage, which led to a huge argument where she yelled at him and told him he was absolutely useless.

These were the small things, that she got at every single day. There were other huge things that I’d discovered recently. Thefrequent times when she’d shut him out in the garden late at night because she didn’t like the way he’d spoken to her. The times when she’d ridiculed him in front of her friends, making him feel completely stupid when he didn’t know the answer to something or when he didn’t give her constant adoration and she sent him back to Mum and Dad’s telling him that he could come back when he’d learned how to treat his woman much better. He’d even admitted to me recently that he’d always made sure his car keys were in his pocket, so that when she did kick him out, he could sleep in his car, as on several occasions when she didn’t feel that he’d spent the right amount of money on her for Christmas and birthdays.

Years of someone telling him that he was absolutely useless had convinced him that that was exactly what he was. He couldn’t see what we could all see. The wonderful, kind, clever, creative man before me today. He had become a shadow of his former self and it was lovely to now see him take back his control and look forward to a life he loved.

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