Page 8 of One Golden Summer
“If you split seven years ago, that means you’re 49?” Ginger’s eyes widened.
“So the calendar tells me.” Fifty next year. She had no idea how it had happened.
“You look incredible.” She gestured to Kirsty with her hand. “Smooth skin, and you’re in fabulous shape.” She peered closer. “Not a grey hair in sight! I would have said you’re younger than me, and I’m 42.” Ginger slumped, leaning her hip on the counter. “What is it about getting divorced at 42?” She didn’t wait for an answer, pointing a finger in Kirsty’s direction. “You’re my role model from now on. You’ve come through it, and you seem happy.” She stared at Kirsty. “Are you happy?” Panic danced around her eyes.
Kirsty recalled asking something similar in the early days when she never thought that would be possible again. This answer was crucial for Ginger. She wasn’t going to lie.
“I am. It’s taken me a while, but now I can talk about it like it happened to someone else. Like Anna was just somebody I used to know.”
Ginger nodded. “Have you met someone since?”
Kirsty stalled, then shook her head. “Nobody who counts. But then, maybe I wasn’t ready. I’m open to meeting someone now. Give it time, and you will be, too.”
Ginger scrunched up her face and put her wallet in her handbag. “I’m not looking to meet a man anytime soon. I want to enjoy being single for a while and settle in here. Starting with a banger of a party.” She held out her hand, and Kirsty shook it. “Lovely to meet you, and thanks for the coffee and the wine. I’ll be in touch.”
The shop door closed, and Kirsty allowed herself a smile.
Her first possible divorce party booking and website help.
Business might be looking up.
Chapter 4
Saffron killed the car’s engine in the assigned parking space of her new home. For the month, at least, although she’d booked the place for two, ever the optimist. But the thought of crossing the threshold of yet another temporary residence filled her with loneliness. The soul-sucking type that made her wonder what was the point to anything. She could have stayed with her sister, but Saffron had opted not to so she could have some alone time to figure out her life. Had she made a mistake?
Not the best start to her holiday, and Saffron was fully aware it’d been her idea to take time off in Sandy Cove. It’d sounded like the perfect solution to snap her out of her blasé attitude of late. Now that her plan was in motion, she couldn’t ditch the sensation of drowning in angst, unwilling to dig deep to yank herself out.
She reached for the script on the passenger seat, not to give the movie a chance, but to appraise the sketch she’d drawn on the back at lunch. A woman gazing out over the sea, done like the retro ads of the twenties when people were giddy about the end of the war, not knowing the depression and WWII were right around the corner. In the sketch, the woman on the page stood forlornly, yet Saffron remembered a whimsical lightness as her pencil flew over the paper, not a thought going through her head. Just the action and a sense of purpose.
Saffron tossed the script into her shoulder bag and got out of the car, not wanting to haul her luggage inside. Maybe a walk along the beach would knock the cobwebs out. As soon as she was in motion, her brain whipped into hyper speed. The rest and relaxation explanation she’d given Pearl was only part of the reason she’d chosen Sandy Cove.
On the promenade, she kept the water on her right-hand side, focusing on the water’s edge, a few white sailboats bobbing on the surface. At the periphery of her vision, there was a red and white striped lighthouse. A slight breeze wrapped around her flesh and ushered goosebumps to life, despite the sultriness in the air.
Her mind flitted to her sister, who was going through a trying time after divorcing a man Saffron had liked. No. Saffron loved him like the brother she’d never had and couldn’t process the two of them splitting up. The majority of Saffron’s relationships hadn’t lasted beyond theshiny new objectphase, but it had given her hope that her sister had found her Prince Charming. Surely that meant Saffron could find her princess. But had the possibility evaporated in a puff of smoke the moment she pursued acting when she was fifteen? And, if love wasn’t enough to bind her sister and husband, what chance did Saffron have for a happy ever after?
She spied an artist standing outside one of the front row pastel-coloured beach huts on a grassy slope leading up from the water. The woman had a paintbrush behind her ear while she gripped another with her hand, making sweeping strokes on the canvas. From her angle, Saffron only spied blue and black paint, and it was easy to guess the artist was under a creative spell. There was much to capture. The rolling waves of the sea lapping against the pebbled beach. Two yellow labs sprinting after a tennis ball. A toddler wobbling between mother and father, exploring the shore. Everyone existing independently of each other, all the while providing the painter a cohesive scene.
Saffron studied the woman, the way her hand moved, how she squinted with one eye to soak in the details, and then dove back to work. Saffron admired the artist’s easy-going vibe and the ghost of a smile on her lips, and instinctively understood the painter knew this was what she’d been born to do. What would it be like to do what one loved every day, creating art for others to admire? Not such commercial projects likeGirl Racer.
Her buzzing phone zapped Saffron out of her daze, and when she read the name of her agent on her device, she clicked the decline button and pocketed it, cursing the swirling sensation of bile rising in the back of her throat.
After taking one last sweeping look at the beach, Saffron headed towards the High Street to locate the café for her meet-up. Wading through the people strolling here and there with not much purpose aside from window shopping, Saffron entered The Perfect Cup, pleasantly surprised it was also part bookshop. She’d been meaning to pick up something to read. Anything as long as it wasn’t that bloody script.
“Can I help you?” There was a spark of recognition on the woman’s face.
Saffron lowered her gaze to the menu on the counter and picked the first drink on the list. “Cinnamon dolce frozen coffee.”
“Your name?” The woman’s hand shook as she held a pen to the plastic cup.
Saffron’s mind went blank, unable to conjure up her usual plausible fake name, so she blurted the blandest name she could think of. “Pam.”
“Pam?” the woman parroted, her eyes wandering to the magazine rack with Saffron’s image blazing on three of the covers.
“Yep.”
“Okay.” The woman scrawled the three letters, set it to the side for her co-worker, and finalised the transaction.
Saffron tapped her card, her head tucked down.
