Page 28 of Summer in Sunset Harbour
‘Are you trying to say that we smell?’ Lindsay snapped, a piece of hamburger falling out of the side of her mouth.
‘Um … in a word … yes?’
‘We do,’ Barney said, head lowered. ‘I get a whiff every time I go up that ladder. I mean, you get used to it, and when the wind’s blowing through, it’s not too bad.’
‘Well, the shower block, the one currently engulfed with vines and leaf litter, it still works. There’s water. There’s even hot water, according to Nat. How about I do you a deal? Help me clear back the weeds and clean it up, and you can use it anytime you like.’
Barney’s eyes lit up. ‘Deal.’
Geoffrey nodded. ‘To be honest, it would be nice to have something to do.’
‘Lindsay?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Look,’ Josie said, setting down her plate and leaning forward. ‘I can go even further. I’m trying to get this campsite up to a standard where it can be reopened. You might have noticed me cutting the grass. You know, before you kicked my strimmer over the cliff.’
‘That was Dennis,’ Barney said. ‘He had a bit of a temper.’
‘Well, there’s a lot of work to be done. And I really can’t do everything. I’d be long gone already if my best friend didn’t keep guilt-tripping me into staying.’ She stabbed a blackened sausage with her fork and dunked it into a bit of ketchup on the edge of her plate. ‘If you were willing to help me get it ready, I’d be willing to give you a couple of the cabins to use. And if we can ever get it tidy enough to open, I’d even be up for splitting whatever money we make.’
Geoffrey watched her over the top of his hamburger. Barney stared into his glass of wine. Lindsay glared at the embers of the barbeque as though trying to make them spit and flare.
‘Well?’
‘Miss, you don’t know how much a proper hot shower and a decent bed would mean right now,’ Geoffrey said.
‘That’s a yes?’
Geoffrey nodded. ‘Don’t worry about the money, though. It’s not important. Just enough to get by.’
‘Barney?’
‘Hell yes.’
‘Great. Lindsay?’
The other woman didn’t look up. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. However, there was just enough of a hinted smile on her lips to suggest she was thinking about it very strongly indeed.
15
A Little Matchmaking
She putBarney and Geoffrey together in Cabin Two, with Lindsay in Cabin Three. Both cabins needed a little cleaning and tidying, but working together they had them all ready by the afternoon of the day after the agreement. Geoffrey and Barney worked like men trying to claw their way out of a pit, and although Lindsay was a little more stand-offish, she did relent enough to take a cloth and wipe down some surfaces.
The shower and toilet block took a bit more effort. Barney, it turned out, had spent a year as a trainee plumber before dropping out to pursue a less admirable dream of making dubious money on the internet, and the knowledge he had learned was enough to get the pipes clear, the taps running with clean water, and the drains emptying. Of three shower cubicles, only one of the water heaters still worked, but everyone took turns to use it while Josie made a list of things needing to be fixed, the broken heaters at the top.
The jobs that needed to be done got done far quicker with four people working rather than one, and within a couple of weeks they had cut back most of the undergrowth, cleared out the camping pitches, and cleared the vegetation off the remaining cabins. With May bringing warmer weather and longer evenings, Josie began to dream that she might just get the campsite open after all.
‘I’m so pleased it’s going well,’ Hilda said, sipping coffee as they sat at a corner table in the Sunset Harbour Coffee and Fudge Company, a pleasant little café and confectionary shop on the main street that led down to the harbour. ‘I was worried you would give up.’
‘I can’t guarantee that I won’t,’ Josie said. ‘It’s still a work in progress. The guys are really helping me out. Well, two of them, at least. The other one….’
‘Lindsay, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. I mean, some days she’s with us; other days she’s not. I try to give them a routine, you know, start at nine every day, but some days Lindsay won’t come out of her cabin at all.’
Hilda looked down at the crumbs of a piece of fudge cake, and gently tapped the edge of her plate with a fingernail.
