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‘Shit.’ Charlie tried to right herself and the bus lurched again, this time sending up a thick spurt of mud from the front wheel onto Stuart’s jeans.
‘We’re sinking!’ Sally screamed. ‘Is it a sinkhole? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!’ She ran through the bus and flew down the steps.
Charlie tried again to pull herself up and Gertie lurched for a third time, the front left-hand wheel sinking further into the mud. Stuart’s latte cup was almost empty now, most of it dripping over Charlie’s hand, and she had dropped the scone after lurch number two. Stuart was standing back, looking at her as if she’d turned into a monster, and he wasn’t the only one.
A crowd had formed, and as Charlie scanned the faces of the people who were standing and staring, rather than helping, she saw that their expressions ranged between horror and glee.
After the third lurch the bus seemed to settle, and Charlie dragged herself to standing, which was difficult now that the ground below her was tilted.
‘Jesus Christ, Charlie,’ Stuart said, somewhat pompously, she thought. ‘This bus is a death trap! Anyone could have been standing at the front.’
‘The ground’s too soft, that’s all. And nobody would have got hurt even if they had been standing at the front. It hasn’t rolled. It’s just … sunk a bit.’ She peered out of the hatch and looked at her submerged wheel. Would she be able to drive it out? Would anyone help with planks?
Her ex took a step closer, his hands on his hips. This was classic Stuart: he would rescue her, fix her calamities and errors of judgement like the wonderful, patient human being that he was, and expect her to be eternally grateful. Charlie narrowed her eyes, preparing to do the opposite of whatever he suggested, when there was a flapping sound and the banner, which they had secured so tightly at the beginning of the morning, came free of its restraints and fell towards the ground. Except that Stuart was in the way, so it landed, quite expertly, on top of him, as if he was a fire that needed extinguishing.
‘For fuck’s sake, Charlie!’ came Stuart’s muffled voice from somewhere beneath the banner. Even though Charlie’s audience seemed less than approving of her, and poor Gertie was clearly wedged quite solidly in the mud, and this probably meant that her time running The Café on the Bus was already at an end – the shortest-lived career in history – Charlie started laughing. Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop, tears of mirth pouring down her cheeks as she surveyed the carnage from the hatch window, trying to keep her footing on the lopsided floor. As Stuart emerged, flustered and fuming, Charlie hid inside her bus, where scones and flapjacks were scattered like autumn leaves, and the coffee machine was beginning to leak.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Shitting hell.’ The sight was sobering, and her laughter left her as suddenly as it had started.
She heard footsteps and looked up, prepared to brace herself against her ex-boyfriend’s anger, and found another man standing in the doorway, his movements hesitant as he tried not to succumb to gravity and fall into her.
‘Hello,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘How can I help?’ In the circumstances, it was a ridiculous thing to say. She wasn’t in a position to help anyone.
‘Are you all right?’ He had dark blond hair crafted into some sort of quiff, and was wearing a denim jacket over dark cords and a black T-shirt with a green logo on it. His skin looked impossibly smooth above the designer stubble, and his hazel eyes were warm.
‘I’m OK,’ she said, raising her arms hopelessly.
‘I’ve had this happen before.’ He edged forward and held out his hand. ‘Oliver Chase. I run The Marauding Mojito.’ He gestured over his left shoulder. ‘I’ve got experience of sinking, leaking, wasp swarms – you think it up, I’ve had it happen. But this is your first time?’
‘First and last, I should think,’ Charlie said, shaking his hand.
He gave her a gentle smile. ‘No need to be so dramatic. First thing we need to do is get her upright. And I’d like to say I can help, but I’m a man, not a god. So … recovery?’
‘I have a number in my phone.’ Charlie walked hesitantly to the cab, holding onto anything she could, and took her phone out of the valuables box. She didn’t know Oliver or The Marauding Mojito, but she was grateful for his calmness. Of course she would have made this decision on her own, but it was as if he’d sucked all her panic away.
He was peering out of the hatch towards the site of the submergence. Some of the crowd was still there, and Stuart was tersely dusting himself down, his ego more bruised than anything else. Charlie took a deep breath. It was a hiccup, nothing more. She could still do this.
And then there were more footsteps. She and Oliver both turned to see who else had come to help, and were met with a face that was very familiar to Charlie, and yet stormier than she had ever seen it.
Bea Fishington gripped onto the walls of the bus as if it was a sinking boat, still rocking violently.
‘Oh Charlie,’ she said, her expression a mixture of pity and distress, ‘what on earth has happened here?’
Chapter Four
‘A sabbatical? But I—’
Bea held a hand up to shush her, picked one of the fallen sausage rolls off a seat, dusted it down and bit into it. Charlie glanced out of the window and was relieved to see that the crowd had mostly dispersed now the action seemed to be over. They were waiting for recovery to come and haul them out of the mud.
‘My niece, Nora, is coming to stay with me over the summer,’ Bea said. ‘I know that’s a way off, but I can train Sally up. She may be timid, but she’s got baking experience and a willing attitude.’
‘But you can’t do without me,’ Charlie replied, failing to keep the shock out of her voice.
‘Charlie,’ Bea sighed and lowered herself into a tilting seat, ‘you’re taking on too much. This would have been a good idea, I think, if you had been able to give more time and thought to its execution, but I’m just not sure you’re capable of that at the moment. Losing Hal, breaking up with Stuart and having the responsibility of the bus, too. You’re trying to run at a hundred miles an hour when, really, you should be slowing down.’
‘I don’t need to slow down,’ Charlie said. ‘I need to keep working, to stay busy and—’
‘Sometimes we have to let other people decide what’s best for us,’ Bea cut in, ‘and I am telling you to take a break. Come back to the café after the summer. Spend time looking for a new place to live, go and see Juliette or go and lie by a pool, somewhere hot. But stop thinking about work. Give yourself time to heal.’
Charlie opened her mouth to respond, but Bea’s warning look said it all. Instead, she slumped into a chair and surveyed the destruction around her.
Most of her stock had fallen onto the floor, the coffee machine was broken and the fridge was making a strange whirring noise. She could hear people outside, shouting for other stalls to be moved out of the way in anticipation of the rescue truck’s arrival.
She should be grateful that Bea was being so lenient, even if her appearance had made Oliver retreat so hastily that she could only offer a shouted ‘thank you’ as he hurried away. Stuart seemed to have stalked off to nurse his wounded pride, though she wasn’t about to check. She would be happy if she never saw him again.
In the quiet that followed, Charlie thought back to their final argument. She had found out from Andrew, one of Stuart’s friends, that her boyfriend had been cheating on her with Annalise, a sultry, dark-haired analyst who worked at the same bank as him in London. She hadn’t confronted him immediately. She hadn’t wanted to believe he’d been cheating.
She’d gone into Cheltenham and found a beautiful teapot shaped like a narwhal. In the midst of her worries, it had made her smile, so she’d bought it and taken it back to the flat. Stuart had told her it was hideous, and that she couldn’t have it out on display while he was there. She had flipped, and it had all come spilling out. He hadn’t seemed remotely sorry for betraying her, and he certainly hadn’t uttered the ‘s’ word. Stuart Morstein was the definition of unapologetic.
Charlie sighed. She felt weary all of a sudden. Maybe they were all right; Bea and her dad and Juliette. Some time away from it all would do her good. Forget the mistake, Hal had often said to her. Remember the lesson. Could that be what today’s disaster was telling her? Get away from it all, change your perspective. Don’t take on too much all at once.
She heard the beeps of the approaching tow truck, stood up as best she could on Gertie’s off-centre floor, and went to greet the poor person who was going to have to pull them out of the mud.
‘Oh goodness,’ Juliette squeaked down the phone once Charlie had recounted the whole sorry incident to her. ‘Please, please come. Stay for two weeks – four, six – whatever you want. We can go on boat tours and for fish and chips in Padstow, and take Marmite for long, character-building walks on the beach. You won’t regret it – Porthgolow is the perfect place. It’s so picturesque. And,’ she added, laughing, ‘it’s Cornwall, so, you know, full of tourists. You could even do a recce, see if it’s somewhere you think your café bus could work in the future.’
Charlie peered out of her bedroom window. It was her old room in her mum and dad’s house, but it had been turned into a guest bedroom, with yellow-flocked wallpaper and a peacock blue vanity stand. Outside, her dad was walking slowly round the garden, on the phone to someone, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Marmite trailed behind him, racing back on himself whenever he got too close to the smoke. Vince had only started smoking again since Hal had died, and she wondered if she could use her dog as a reason to guilt him into stopping again.
‘Char?’ Juliette prompted. ‘What do you think?’
‘The café bus was a disaster.’
‘You were bound to have teething problems. Besides, they shouldn’t do any kind of event on that field. It used to flood all the time. Gertie didn’t stand a chance.’
‘But she will in Porth-whatsit?’
‘Porthgolow. We have all sorts of fairs and shows in Cornwall, and the variety of food trucks I’ve seen beats the Cotswolds hands down. But I’ve never seen a bus, so you’d be unique.’
‘Gertie needs a lot of work. The stuff Clive did would have been OK for today if it hadn’t been for the whole sinking issue, but if it’s going to be a proper café bus, with tables and an oven and storage and a serving hatch, then it needs a full makeover.’
Charlie heard a chirrup down the phone and wondered whether it was Ray or Benton. She had only met the cats once – Ray a Siamese, Benton a white Persian – when she’d made the trip down to Juliette’s old house in Newquay the previous year. She wondered if they’d mind a Yorkipoo invading their space.
‘We can talk about Gertie when you’re here,’ Juliette said. ‘How feasible, and expensive, all this conversion business is. Come and have a holiday. You’ve dealt with so much recently, Char. Losing Hal …’
‘Losing my boyfriend and my uncle in quick succession, and being forced into a break by my boss because I’m too calamitous to be trusted?’
‘You’ve also gained a bus,’ Juliette added enthusiastically. ‘But it can’t be easy at the moment, and I’m not sure you’ve taken time to process it all. Come and dip your toes in our beautiful blue waters, soak up the salt and the spray. Rejuvenate, revitalize.’
‘Do a whole load of yoga?’ Charlie asked.
‘The benefits are incredible,’ Juliette pressed. ‘You’ve never given it a chance.’
‘I promise I will. This time.’
She heard Juliette’s sharp breath. ‘So you’re coming, then? Soon?’
Charlie watched a couple of starlings wheeling in the grey sky. ‘Yes,’ she said, her stomach lurching at the suddenness of her decision. ‘I’m coming. How does next week sound?’
She wasn’t sure if the noise was one of the cats, or Juliette squeaking with delight.
‘Next week sounds perfect. God, Charlie. I can’t wait to introduce you to my beautiful village. You’re going to fall in love with it, just like we have.’
Charlie hugged her mum and dad goodbye the following Monday morning. She was expecting an outpouring of emotion, but their smiles were warm and, she thought, a little on the smug side.
‘Goodbye, darling.’ She was swept into her mum’s perfumed embrace.
‘Take care, my girl,’ her dad said, squeezing her shoulders. ‘Of you and that dog and that bus. Are you sure you want to take it?’
Charlie turned to look at Hal’s bus. Her bus. She had not survived her mud bath unscathed, and looked as bad as she had before Clive had worked his magic, if not worse. There was some scratching along the bumper where the tow truck had got hold of her, and the makeshift serving area had come away from the wall. Everything was dishevelled, splattered with dirt or coffee stains, broken or dented.
Charlie had vowed that she would fix her up, and do it properly this time. She had decided, at the last minute, that she would take her down to Cornwall instead of her old Golf. Juliette had told her that she needed time away from everything to think, but how could she make any decisions when she was in Cornwall and the bus was here, in the garage? If she had Gertie with her, then they could give it a second run, somewhere with beachside car parks and market squares with firm, unyielding concrete. She was sure there would be somewhere in Juliette’s village where she could park a vintage bus.
‘I’m going to take her,’ she said confidently. ‘I know it’s a long drive, but we’ll stop on the way. And it’ll be worth it once we get there.’
‘All right then, treasure. Be safe.’
‘I will, Dad. And you look after yourselves. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.’
As Charlie put Marmite in his crate, then lifted herself into the driver’s seat, she wondered if her parents would be OK without her. Her dad was still so upset about Hal, and her mum did such a good job of appearing capable and brusque, she was worried they would circumnavigate their large house entirely separately, dealing with problems in their own ways. And, aside from everything else, without her to make tray bakes and muffins and Scotch eggs, what would they actually eat?
Charlie found the drive to Cornwall cathartic. She knew all Gertie’s quirks, the slight catch of the gearbox and the way the left indicator stuck occasionally. The heater blew alternate hot and cold air for the first hour, and Marmite yowled plaintively about not being allowed to sit on her lap, but as she drove south the sun rose higher in the sky, white clouds puffed in attractive streaks across a pure, fresh day, and she began to relax.
The roads were busy with weekday traffic, salespeople’s hatchbacks and trucks ferrying goods to destinations across the country. Gertie got several hoots, as she always did, and Charlie waved back, touched that people still took time to delight in the vintage bus and weren’t entirely distracted by the miles of tarmac they were eating through.
They took a rest-stop at a farmhouse-style restaurant with benches outside, warped and dusty from years of soaking up the elements, and Charlie demolished a cheese toastie while Marmite ran in ever-decreasing circles and then fell asleep at her feet. Her senses were alive, as if anticipating all the new sights, sounds and feelings that would wash over her in the coming weeks; her brain had switched to holiday mode. But, she reminded herself, she was also hoping to give Gertie a second run. The café bus wasn’t dead in the water just yet.
Porthgolow was on Cornwall’s north coast, between Padstow and Newquay, where the most spectacular, wild coastline was. She’d never heard of the village until Juliette had moved there, and wondered if it had anything to set it apart, like the artists and culture in St Ives, the fish restaurants of Padstow or the surfing and nightlife in Newquay. She turned off the main road and wended her way carefully down narrow, hedge-lined lanes with fields and dotted farmhouses beyond. She could see the point where the world ended, a deep blue strip of sea cutting through the pale grey-blue of the hazy spring sky.
She reached a T-junction, peered at the road signs, and turned left when she realized the faded, weather-beaten sign read: Porthgolow, half a mile.
She drove slowly, the sea to her right, beyond only a few metres of cliff top. And then, suddenly, the village appeared below her, cut into a typical Cornish cove, houses rising steeply up the cliff that faced a sandy, crescent-moon beach. There was a stone jetty at the far side of the sand with buildings beyond, including a single, primrose-yellow house out on a jutting lower promontory. Charlie could imagine a large wave sweeping it off the cliff in a single, devastating moment. How did anyone survive out there?
A sleek black BMW shot out of a driveway on her right, and Charlie slammed on the brakes. As it disappeared down the steep incline ahead of her, without a honk or wave of thanks, she peered at the gap through which the car had come.
The walls were high and smart, made out of sandy brick, and an understated brass sign read: The Crystal Waters Spa Hotel. The building beyond had a glass-fronted entrance; two bay-tree lollipops with twisted stems stood either side of the doors. She could see all the way through to the glass walls at the back of what must be the reception area, the glint of water beyond. It was a perfect sea-view haven, built on top of the cliff. It looked exclusive and unattainable.
A horn sounded behind her and Charlie raised her foot off the brake, taking the steep road into Porthgolow at a snail’s pace, her insides light with excitement at the thought of seeing her best friend. As she got closer to the heart of the village, she noticed that some of the buildings had considerable sea damage, their stone and paintwork battered and warped. She passed a small convenience store, the windows crammed with beach balls and nets for rock pooling. A local newspaper board advertised a Ten-page spring events pull-out inside! One of the houses on the front had a B&B sign swinging outside it, black lettering against a dirty-white background. A wooden board in one of the blind-covered windows announced they had vacancies.
At the bottom of the cliff, below the luxurious glass hotel, between the road and the sand, there was a patch of concrete with a couple of cars parked facing the beach. Charlie swung the bus onto it and brought it to a halt. Leaving Marmite sleeping in his crate, she went out to look at the charges. She had to read it twice before she realized that parking was free out of season. That was a bonus: she had anticipated paying a fortune to park Gertie until she found somewhere more permanent.
She stood, hand on hips, and surveyed her surroundings.
A woman and a young boy stood close to the waves, as if they hadn’t quite committed to paddling. Otherwise, the beach was empty. Charlie did a slow circle, taking in the stone jetty glistening under the weak sun, the houses rising in layers of small, neat roads up the cliff. Juliette had said to her. ‘We’re one road back from the beach, a two-minute walk. We can see the sea from one corner of the garden.’ The road she had driven in on passed along the sea front and then rose, equally steeply, on the other side of the cove, travelling out of the village again and, no doubt, joining the main coastal route once more. A second road cut up the middle of the cliff, at right angles to the beach, straight through the houses. Charlie assumed it was this one that would take her to Juliette’s place.
She leaned back to look up at The Crystal Waters Spa Hotel, but from her position could only see the very edge of the building, a hint of space-aged glass contrasting with the dark grey rock below it. She snapped a couple of photos on her phone, catching the glint of sun on the water, the spray as it hit the edge of the jetty. She would post them on her Instagram page, but what would the caption be? Time for a new start. Was that what this was?
She sighed, feeling unsettled. It was beautiful, as Juliette had told her it would be. It was quaint and picturesque; it had all the elements of a perfect seaside village. And it was still early in the year – of course it wouldn’t be busy right now. She let Marmite out of his crate and took his lead, pulled out the handle of her wheelie suitcase and made sure that Gertie was secure, locking the door Hal had added so that the back of the bus wasn’t permanently open.
As she followed the directions Juliette had given her to their terraced house, a seagull wheeled in the sky above her, letting out a plaintive, haunting cry, and Charlie landed on the word she’d been searching for. It was a word that took her back to that moment, in Hal’s garage, when she’d first seen Gertie after her uncle’s death. Forgotten.
Porthgolow looked forgotten.
Chapter Five
Charlie knocked on the navy front door of Juliette and Lawrence’s terraced house and waited, inhaling the salty freshness of the sea air, feeling it whisper at her neck. It took only a few moments and then Lawrence was standing there, his eyes and smile widening at the same time. He flung his arms around her.
‘Charlie, awesome to see you! We’ve been so looking forward to having you to stay.’ It sounded over the top, even with Lawrence’s soft, Scottish accent, but Charlie knew he wasn’t being false – he was incapable of it. ‘Come in, both of you.’ He glanced at Marmite, asleep in Charlie’s arms, then took her suitcase.
‘Thanks so much for having me, L.’ She followed him down a narrow hallway towards the back of the house, which opened up into an airy but modest kitchen and dining room. It was modern, with white walls and cupboards, and accents in lime green. A back door with a glass partition looked out onto a neat garden with a patio and a lawn edged with flowerbeds. Charlie wondered which corner the sea was visible from.
Lawrence put the kettle on. He was a compact man, with muscular arms and a slightly ruddy complexion, his hair a mess of dirty blond. His eyes were blue, and he was rarely without a smile. Charlie had thought, the moment Juliette introduced him to her, that they complemented each other perfectly: Juliette petite and dark, often reserved, and Lawrence happily chaotic.
‘Tea or coffee? I know it’s getting on for four, but we don’t stand on ceremony in this house, so you can even have a glass of wine if you’d like.’
Charlie laughed. ‘Coffee would be great, thanks. It’s been a long drive.’
‘I’ll bet. Jules has nipped to the supermarket to get some stuff in, but I thought we could go to the pub tonight, anyway. Give you the Porthgolow tour. You can pop Marmite on a chair, by the way. Ray and Benton are in the front room, and I doubt they’ll give him much trouble.’
‘Thanks, but it’s not them I’m worried about.’
‘He’s a mischief, is he? Looks like butter wouldn’t melt.’
‘That’s because he’s asleep,’ Charlie said. She put Marmite gently on one of the dining-room chairs and gratefully accepted a mug of coffee. ‘How’s business going?’
Lawrence worked for a marquee company, Got it Covered, loaning out and putting up tents and marquees for events across Cornwall. He loved being outside, working with his hands, and had the physique to spend days wrestling temporary buildings into place.
‘Ah, it’s great,’ he said. ‘Every day there’s something new to see, someone else to chat to, and it’s a small company but we’re doing pretty well, regardless. I can’t think—’