Page 28 of Summer at Harbour View House
She took a step forward, tripped over her feet and ended up sprawled across the pub floor. She had just managed to crawl back to her chair when Lizzie reappeared, setting two glasses down in front of them.
Natasha stared, waiting for the liquid to clear. It looked like a grey raincloud trapped behind glass.
‘Local remedy,’ Lizzie said. ‘Drink that and you’re truly one of us. Ready? Down the hatch.’
Natasha reached for her glass. She would have missed it, but Lizzie steered it into her fingers. Hannah lifted hers, hiccupped, then clinked it against Natasha’s glass.
Natasha drank. The first thing that struck her was that the drink was warm. It also had none of the discernible sharpness of alcohol, but instead a sweet, sugary taste over something was that bitter and … wrong. Granular. Astringent, as though it wanted to stick to the back of her throat and stay there for the rest of eternity. Like a bitter tasting peanut butter made of crushed sea shells.
‘Aha, ain’t you’s feeling much better?’ Lizzie said. ‘Told ‘e I’d sort ‘e out. Fresh as a pair of daisies in the morn.’
Natasha, still struggling to deal with the aftertaste, realised her vision was already starting to clear, perhaps the shock to the system of something so unpleasant. Her stomach grumbled with dissatisfaction.
‘What … was that?’
‘Broth of local crab brain with a dash of last year’s crab apple,’ Lizzie said, puffing her chest out with pride. ‘Me own special recipe.’
Hannah put a hand over her mouth. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said.
10
A Meeting with a Heartthrob and a Spot of Fishing
‘I’d really rather spendthe day in bed,’ Natasha said, peering bleary eyed at an already dressed and ready Hannah as she stood in the doorway, looking none the worse for wear after their evening in the pub which Natasha could feel through every particle of her being. ‘You go. I’ll stay here. Maybe later I’ll get up or eat or something.’
‘But I can’t go alone! What if he kidnaps me?’
‘At least I’ll know what to tell the police.’
‘Come on, Nat. I need a mate here. Please?’
Nat. A mate. Their relationship was going places Natasha hadn’t imagined. Even though Hannah was an airhead who could seemingly drink for England and then wake up looking like she’d just stepped out of a health farm, it did feel nice to have someone climbing the ladder from casual acquaintance to friend. It certainly made a change.
‘Can you go and fetch a stick or something?’
‘Uh, why?’
‘To lever me out of bed.’
Hannah actually jumped up and down. ‘So you’ll come?’
‘Of course I’m coming. I can’t let you end up as fish food, can I? And if that is what Matt’s got planned for us, at least I won’t feel too bad about it.’
‘Awesome!’
Natasha stumbled downstairs and got ready. While she stuffed down a bowl of slightly soft cornflakes from a packet they’d found in the cupboard, Hannah fed Charlie, who seemed more than happy with his breakfast.
‘Look!’ Hannah said, pulling something out of a pile of blankets she had arranged in the corner of the kitchen to serve as the chicken’s bed. ‘He laid an egg!’
‘Huh. I think Charlie just graduated to Charlotte,’ Natasha said.
‘Huh? Oh.’ Hannah laughed. ‘Shall we go halves?’
‘Put it in the fridge. Perhaps we can celebrate our survival tonight with a very small omelette.’
Natasha’s memory of their arrangement with Matt was as vague as Hannah’s. All she could remember was that they had to meet him at the harbour at six o’clock, and bring their swimsuits.
‘I think he just wants a perve,’ Hannah said. ‘I’m wearing my grandma, not my bikini.’
