Christmas at the Beach Café: A Novella Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Author’s Note

  Finishing writing a novel is always a bittersweet experience for me. There’s joy, of course (I did it!), relief (particularly if a deadline is looming), and the happy anticipation that a pay cheque should soon be on its way. Alongside all the celebration, though, I often have a feeling of sadness, too: that this particular journey with these particular characters has come to an end. All the loose threads of the story have been neatly pulled together, and everyone has the ending they deserve. Game over.

  But what about the characters themselves, once the words ‘The End’ have been typed? Is it really the end for them? Do they cease to exist? After all, give it a few weeks, and I’ll usually be starting work on a brand new book, with a whole new set of characters to meddle with. In fiction, as in real life, I have discovered that some people are harder to forget than others. You find yourself wondering about them from time to time. What are they up to now? Are they doing okay, are they happy?

  For me, the stories in The Beach Café are very much tied in with a sense of place, my imaginary beach in north Cornwall. And even though I finished writing the book back in 2010, I’ve been back to Cornwall every year since then – and each time, my mind would drift to Evie and the café. How was she getting on? What was it like when all the tourists had gone home? How was her first Christmas at the café? And then an idea took hold, of the café at Christmas, and before I knew it, I was typing ‘Chapter One’ . . .

  Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that my characters often pop up in later novels, but I have never written an actual sequel before. The prospect of writing a short, Christmassy follow-up to The Beach Café proved impossible to resist . . . and here is the result. I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting Carrawen Bay and writing the next episode in Evie’s life – I sincerely hope you enjoy reading it just as much.

  Chapter One

  It was snowing in Carrawen Bay. Thick, soft flakes dropped from the sky, coating the beach like icing sugar. The sea was grey and wild, bucking and foaming, the horizon a smudgy blur through the snowfall. The world felt quiet, muted by the ceaseless tumbling flakes as they swirled and spun.

  I couldn’t resist a moment longer. Seized by a burst of excited joy I rushed outside in my pyjamas and bare feet onto the wooden deck of the beach café, and ran down the steps to the sand, leaving footprints behind me. Snowflakes floated onto my hair and eyelashes, and I was dimly aware that perhaps I should have put some wellies on – or a dressing gown at least – but . . .

  ‘Pinch, punch . . .’

  ‘Ow!’ Somebody was assaulting me.

  ‘First of the month – and no returns!’

  My eyes snapped open, my snowy dream vanishing in an instant. I was in bed with my boyfriend Ed, not outside whirling about on the beach after all.

  ‘You woke me up,’ I grumbled. (I’ve never been much of a morning person to be honest.) ‘I was dancing in the snow.’ Then his words permeated my dream-tangled brain and I was suddenly wide awake. ‘Oh. It’s December!’

  He grinned. After five months of being together, I was yet to tire of that grin. Ed was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Friend, lover and business partner all rolled into one, he was funny, sexy and loyal. Oh, and did I mention that the man could cook? Like properly, seriously cook? (I’m telling you, ladies – a chef for a boyfriend is the way forward.) I was half a stone heavier already but had never been happier.

  ‘Dancing in the snow, eh?’ he teased. ‘Is that one of those Carrawen Bay Christmas traditions you keep telling me about, Evie?’

  I pulled a face at him. If you believed Ed, I had apparently been banging on about Christmas quite a lot recently. And yes, okay, I might have mentioned once or twice my plans to keep up the Christmassy rituals my aunt Jo had established over the years: the tinsel and crêpe paper bunting festooned around the café; the Christmas Eve bonfire and carol singing down on the beach, where all the villagers gathered and made merry with hot, spicy mulled wine; the Christmas Day post-lunch cliff-top walk, and of course the Christmas angels . . .

  That wasn’t all. I had been downloading Christmas hits to my iPod in preparation for today’s calendar-turn to December, as well as checking out the best place to buy a Christmas tree around here (Tregarrow Farm, ask for Mack). That was on top of planning our romantic Christmas breakfast (champagne cocktails were to be involved), compiling exhaustive lists of stocking-filler ideas (Ed would need a huuuuuge stocking at this rate) and leafing through every single ‘perfect Christmas’ magazine article I could get my mitts on.

  Oh, all right. Busted. When everything was listed like that, maybe it did rather look as though I had been just a teeny bit obsessive lately. But in my defence, I only wanted my first Christmas with Ed to be the most perfect and wonderful day ever in the history of all Christmases past. One that we’d look back on fondly in years to come, and say ‘Remember that first Christmas at the beach café? Wasn’t it the loveliest, most romantic day ever?’

  Nothing wrong with that, was there?

  Now that it was December, the countdown could properly begin. I had a chocolate Advent calendar that I had managed not to break into yet. I even had an Advent candle that we could burn down day by day. It was starting! At last, Christmas was starting!

  Fired up by a bolt of happy excitement, I rolled on top of Ed and kissed him. ‘You know, there’s one Carrawen Bay tradition I might not have mentioned,’ I said, enjoying his look of surprise, which was quickly followed by that familiar glint in his eye. ‘It’s the first of December stay-in-bed-all-morning tradition . . .’

  He wrapped his arms around me, warm and strong. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this tradition,’ he said.

  Later – quite a lot later, actually – once we had peeled ourselves out from under the duvet, Ed made us both scrambled eggs while I set about the coffees. (I knew my place and it was definitely away from the cooker.) We ate in one of the café booths, still in dressing gowns, with the ‘Closed’ sign hanging on the door, and I found myself glancing around, trying to remember how Jo used to position her Christmas decorations. She had always closed up the café over the winter, often taking herself off to warmer climes during January and February, but never missed a Cornish Christmas. Like me, she considered it the high point of the year. When it came to the big day, she’d always host lunch for friends and family in the café, pulling the tables together in the centre of the room and laying out a special red tablecloth. I could picture her now, carrying in the huge bronzed turkey on its platter, with the rest of us fidgety with anticipation, all eyes on the prize . . .

  ‘What are you frowning about?’ Ed asked. ‘Something wrong with the food?’

  Typical chef question. ‘The food’s great,’ I told him. ‘I was just trying to remember if Jo hung up her glittery ‘Merry Christmas’ sign above the counter there, or over the doorway.’

  Now it was his turn to frown. ‘Does it matter?’ he asked. ‘I mean, we don’t have to do everything just as your aunt did it, do we?’

  The question brought me up short. The beach café in Carrawen had been my aunt Jo’s home and business for years until she died unexpectedly in a car crash back in May. To everyone’s surprise, not least mine, she had left the business to me in her will. (You should have seen my sister’s faces.) Even more surprisingly, as far as the rest of the family were concerned, I quit my job in Oxford, split up with my boyfriend, and moved down here to tak
e up the reins full-time. And guess what? I was actually making a success of it. After years of aimless floundering, I had finally stumbled upon a job that I loved and was good at. I’d found a home here in Cornwall too – new friends, a place in the community and, of course, Ed. In the space of a few months, my whole life had been shaken up . . . only to settle down again in what felt like exactly the right pattern.

  We’d had a fantastically busy summer in the café, selling more pasties, ice creams and cream teas than I would have thought possible, followed by an enjoyably relaxed autumn once the tourists had gone home. Ed and I had big plans for the new year and the summer to come – and all the summers after that too, I hoped. Oh yes, Cornwall was in my blood now. I had no desire to live anywhere else.

  ‘I suppose we don’t have to keep everything the same,’ I replied after a moment, then felt rather an idiot, steeped in my traditionalist ways. ‘It’s just . . . Sorry. Everyone has their ideas about the perfect Christmas, don’t they? You know me, I’m a bit . . . sentimental.’ Okay, so that was the understatement of the year. Cut me in half and you’d see ‘SENTIMENTAL’ through and through. I guess I was still trying to prove something to myself, though – that I was capable of running the café since Jo had died; that I could uphold a certain standard.

  ‘Nothing wrong with being sentimental,’ he said mildly, topping up our coffees. ‘But surely there’s room for us to start a few traditions of our own, too. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Sure. Yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘Like . . . maybe we could just have sandwiches for Christmas dinner. And maybe we shouldn’t bother with presents or – I’m joking. I’m JOKING, Evie! No need to look at me like that!’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Like I believed for a second that you’d be happy with a mere sandwich for your Christmas dinner,’ I said. ‘Hello? I know you better than that, Ed Gray.’

  All the same, I thought, as I polished off my breakfast, there were some traditions I had no intention whatsoever of letting go – the glass angels being one of them. As a child, Christmas had only really felt like Christmas once we had made it to Cornwall and I was hanging my angel on Jo’s tree. I could hardly wait to unwrap her and let this year’s festivities begin in earnest.

  I have no idea when Jo bought the three glass angels but my sisters and I were definitely young enough that we were enchanted by how pretty and delicate they were. They were waiting for us on the mantelpiece when we arrived in Carrawen one Christmas Eve, dainty figurines with wings, long dresses and bare feet, each of them with a loop of golden thread attached. ‘They came all the way from France,’ Jo told us, ‘and when I saw them, I immediately thought of my three angelic nieces. Do you want to hang them on the tree?’

  ‘Carefully,’ Mum said quickly as Ruth, Louise and I all made a lunge for one.

  ‘Yes, you have to be gentle,’ Jo agreed. ‘They’re very fragile.’

  ‘Evie, be gentle,’ Ruth immediately said bossily. She and Louise are my older sisters – the saintly twins, who sailed through childhood, with shiny hair, piano certificates and prefect badges to show for themselves. Me, I was always the black sheep of the family – and not just because of my untamable curly black hair.

  Ignoring Ruth’s patronizing remark, (I had learned from an early age that this was the best policy) I reverently hung my glass angel on Jo’s tree. And there she swung, glinting with reflections from the colourful fairy lights that were strung from branch to branch. Beautiful.

  Over the years, the three angels saw plenty of action. For all her ‘Evie, be gentle’ comments, it was actually Goody Two-Shoes Ruth who broke the first one, playing with them under the tree one morning. From then on, the angel with the superglued, slightly wonky wing was known as ‘Ruth’ (ha ha).

  Then, at some point when we were teenagers, we were playing a very boisterous game of charades, and Louise managed to knock another angel off the tree during a particularly flamboyant mime. This angel came off much worse, with only her sweet little head left intact, and was thereafter known as ‘Louise’. Only one angel – ‘Evie’ – was left perfect and unblemished. Naturally.

  Sod it, I thought, as I stacked the breakfast things in the dishwasher. The first of December wasn’t too soon to start putting up a few decorations, was it? I wasn’t about to rush off to Tregarrow Farm and buy my tree or anything yet, but it wouldn’t hurt just to get a couple of things out of the attic. A bit of tinsel, maybe. A string of fairy lights to weave along the mantelpiece . . .

  I didn’t tell Ed what I was plotting as he disappeared off to shower. I’d surprise him, I decided, by hanging up one or two little Christmassy touches to celebrate the fact that December had arrived. And maybe – yes! This could be one of our new festive traditions: first of December, first few decorations. Evie Flynn, you are a festive goddess, I told myself with a grin.

  Once I could hear the shower running, I pulled down the loft ladder and clambered up the metal rungs into the cold darkness of the attic. Since moving into the flat above the café back in May, I’d only been up here a couple of times to store a few boxes of belongings and a suitcase full of ‘office clothes’ that I’d hopefully never need to wear again. I was pretty sure that somewhere in the depths of the cobwebby gloom, I’d noticed a box labelled CHRISTMAS. I flicked on a torch and shone the light around, shivering in my pyjamas as the white beam lit up the dark corners. Ahh – there it was.

  I crawled gingerly forwards and manoeuvred the box past a couple of old trunks, a broken Victorian hatstand and another box helpfully marked STUFF. Oof, it was heavier than I’d expected.

  I heaved the box all the way back towards the hatch, then lowered my legs down the ladder, fumbling to get a foothold on a rung. Then I braced myself, arms around the box’s cardboard sides. Okay. Got it. Now for a slow, careful descent . . .

  The slow, careful descent didn’t turn out quite how I’d hoped. Halfway down, my big toe became hooked in one leg of my slightly-too-long pyjama bottoms and I stumbled, losing my footing. The box fell with an ominous-sounding thump, and I tumbled down after it, barking my shin on the last rung as I landed.

  ‘Ow! Bollocks!’

  Ed emerged from the bathroom with just a towel around his waist to find me hopping around in pain, clutching my scraped leg.

  ‘What the hell . . . ? Are you all right? What are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘I just – ’ I began, then broke off as I saw, to my horror, that the box of precious Christmas decorations had fallen heavily on its side, the cardboard buckling at one corner. I stopped hopping and rushed over to right it, then pulled open the cardboard flaps, and plunged my hands in amongst the reams of tinsel, faded paper chains, baubles . . . Where was my angel? Please let her be okay.

  ‘Oh no.’ I slumped against the box as my fingers found her. Scarlet beads of blood appeared on my fingertips where the broken glass had pierced my skin. ‘Oh shit. Look, Ed. She’s ruined. The last angel – I just smashed her.’

  ‘We might be able to glue her back togeth . . .’ Ed started saying, but his voice trailed off as he saw just how beaten-up the angel looked. She was now in at least four pieces, with a crack splitting her beautiful head and both wings missing. It was obvious that even a squad of professional supergluers would be shaking their heads apologetically at the prospect of any kind of mending attempt.

  I could feel my bottom lip quivering – delayed shock and pain from the fall along with a pang of terrible guilt that I’d let Jo down. It wasn’t as if I had all that many links to her left . . . and now I’d just broken a really special one. It felt as if Christmas was spoiled before it had even begun.

  Before I could stop myself, I’d dissolved into tears. ‘I’m such an idiot,’ I wailed, sobbing into Ed’s shoulder. ‘I’ve ruined everything!’

  Chapter Two

  Three emergency Advent-calendar chocolates later, as well as an enormous nose-blow and quite a lot of deep, hiccupping breaths, I managed to pull myself together. I swept up the shards of glass
and dumped them in the bin with a heavy heart. No use crying over smashed angels, I told myself sternly.

  ‘Fancy cracking on with the recipe book today?’ Ed asked, once the box of Christmas decorations had been pushed into the spare room safely out of sight.

  ‘Good idea. How about mince pies? Now that it’s December and all.’ I felt a glimmer of a good mood returning at the thought. The first mince pie of the year was always a moment to celebrate, wasn’t it? And if ever one was needed, it was now.

  The book had been one of my so-called brainwaves a few weeks ago: a way of thanking all my customers and new friends in Carrawen Bay by giving them a compilation of Jo’s best recipes. Ed, of course, was doing the honours in the kitchen (I was a woman who couldn’t boil an egg, after all), while I took photographs of each finished dish to go alongside the instructions. Recipes From The Beach Café was going to be sheer class.

  Back when the idea first popped into my head, I thought I was on to a total winner, already imagining the smiles of gratitude and cries of delight from the recipients as I pressed beautiful little books into their hands. I had allowed myself to get carried away with visions of a display in the windows of the local bookshops. I might even be asked to sign copies for interested tourists, I had daydreamed. It could happen, couldn’t it?

  The only problem was, when it actually came to making this happen, it wasn’t quite as easy as I’d hoped. Originally I had (rather ambitiously, admittedly) envisaged us pulling the whole thing together over a weekend, but it was turning out to involve way more work than that. Ed – of course – was acting like a total perfectionist, fussing about every dish he produced and rejecting anything that had even the titchiest flaw. Secretly, it was starting to drive me nuts. Secretly, my patience had become stretched extremely thin.

  Take the apple tart, for instance, the week before. He’d baked a mouth-watering, golden-pastry delight which looked absolutely perfect to my eyes – but no, he’d said it wasn’t good enough to be photographed for the book because there was a scorch mark on the crust. A scorch mark, let me make clear, that was so small you practically needed a microscope to see it. ‘I’ll just turn it round so it’s not obvious in the photo,’ I assured him. ‘Or use some Photoshop magic to even out the colour. No one will notice.’