Page 37 of Secrets of Starshine
“Want me to bring back some chicken nuggets?”
“Nah. Not very hungry – thanks for asking.”
He pauses, and stares at me with real concern. Me refusing chicken nuggets is usually cause for a phone call to the paramedics.
“You were great today, Mum,” he says out of the blue. “Looking after Miranda. Making all those women happy. I was really proud of you.”
I blink, and feel unexpectedly emotional – I mean, I know Sam loves me, but it’s not often us mums get to hear words like that from our teenagers. I hide my vulnerability by making a crack about this being the precursor to him asking me for money, and he plays along – I suspect he sees that I can’t take any more feelings right now.
Archie shouts the girls downstairs, and Sam makes suitably admiring noises about their hair-dos as they get wrapped up in coats and scarves, before all of us walk together around the green to drop them off. The snowmen are still going strong, and I admire their resilience.
Connie is elbow-deep in a sink peeling potatoes when we get there, and George is chopping carrots. I spot Dan and Sophie laying tables, and when they see the girls, they immediately give them the job of adding crackers to the settings. Sam asks what his job is, and is asked to distribute wine glasses.
It is quite the hive of activity, and I feel the edges of my blue mood fade away. I’ve not been inside the café before, and it is too pretty to allow a blue mood past its doorway, apparently. Must be some kind of force field in play.
There are floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides of the building, one looking out over the green and the other down to the bay, and I’m sure in summer it is flooded with sunlight. The décor is a quirky take on nautical, blonde wood furniture complemented by shades of white and pale blue. There are shelves decorated with seashells, framed photos and drawings all showing the cove in different seasons, and right now every table comes complete with a small poinsettia – Archie’s doing, I suspect.
Paper-chains of snowmen are draped around the ceiling, interspersed with strings of fairy lights in the shape of stars. Large glass vases are scattered around the room, bursting with displays of holly and mistletoe, bright red berries, creamy-white camellias and crimson roses. They are stunning, and again I assume that Archie must have produced them.
Connie seems to have moved on to her festive playlist, and is singing along to Wham! andLast Christmasas she works. For a moment, I am floored by the simple perfection of it all. It’s not the big things in life that add up to happiness, I’ve always thought; it’s the little things. The unexpected kindnesses, the casual chats with strangers on the bus, the sense of calm contentedness you can find in the most unlikely of tasks.
I am alive, and I am healthy, and I have a lot to be thankful for. No, I did not have the ideal childhood – but who did, really? There are always bumps along the road, and I need to try and move on from it all – or at least stop letting it get me down so much.
Archie tells the girls to be good, and drops a careful kiss on their majestic braided heads, and we leave. The cold of the night whacks me in the face as we stroll around behind the café and down the terraced steps onto the beach. It is only a short time ago that I first saw Archie sitting at the bottom of them, and accused him of wearing a wig and a fake beard. It feels impossible that I have been here for such a small amount of time, yet feel so woven into the place.
Our feet crunch against the frosted sand, and the moon is doing its usual show-off routine hanging over the sea. I glance back at the café, see it lit up against the night sky, and smile as we move away.
“So,” says Archie, as we amble along the shoreline, waves chasing our feet, “why are you so discombobulated? Has something happened at home?”
I pick up a stick and throw it, wishing I had a dog who would run after it for me. Dogs are, as was pointed out to me by Viola, a great distraction.
“Umm…kind of. It’s hard to explain. And it’s stupid anyway.”
“I’ll be the judge of that – come on, spill!”
I pull my scarf up to my chin, and finally say: “It’s daft, honestly. But you know how I told you about my dad, and our holiday here when I was little, and how it was one of my only happy family memories?”
“Yeah,” he replies, “it was why you came here, wasn’t it? To find out a bit more…”
“It was. And I think that might have been a mistake – because today I found out quite a bit more, and none of it was very nice. Ed and Viola basically told me my parents were on the verge of splitting up, that they spent the whole holiday arguing, with me caught in the middle. And they kind of had photographic evidence to back it up as well. I didn’t look happy on the photo they showed me. In fact, none of us did. Everything I thought I remembered about it, everything I’ve maybe comforted myself with, was a big fat lie…and now I feel both silly, and also sad. I don’t know why it’s hitting me so hard, and I’m annoyed with myself for over-reacting.”
Archie makes ahmmnoise as we amble, making our way around the curve of the sand in the direction of the caves. He is silent for a few moments, and a quick glance at his face shows me he is thinking before he speaks. A rare quality.
“I don’t think you’re over-reacting,” he says eventually. “And I think you’re also being really hard on yourself. From what you’ve told me, you don’t remember much about your dad, and you lost him when you were so young…I don’t think it’s silly to want to have one golden memory to cling on to, you know? It’s natural. It’s human. And now you feel like you’ve even had that snatched away from you. I can imagine that leaves you feeling raw, and maybe a bit cheated?”
I snort out loud at that – cheated? That’s a weird word. But, as we walk, as the cool air makes my eyes water, as my hands delve deeper into my pockets, I start to realise that he is right. That in fact it’s the perfect word. I do feel cheated – like something I thought I deserved has been taken away from me.
“Huh,” I say, smiling up at him, “actually, you might be right. Who’d have thought a man in a beanie hat could be so wise?”
“That’s beanie hat discrimination…and I don’t know about wise. It just makes sense to me. Is there any way you could talk to your mum about it? I mean, that might not have been the whole story…”
I nod, and turn that concept over. They were human beings, not super-heroes – and all couples have their ups and downs. Maybe that was just a bad week…that turned into a bad year.
“That sounds sensible,” I say, sighing, “but also more complicated than it appears on the surface. My dad was very ill after we came here – he had two heart attacks, and then we lost him. After that, my mum…well, she kind of had a breakdown. Up until very recently, when she had a complete personality transplant, I’d say she was still suffering from some significant problems. Depression, maybe, borderline agoraphobia – she basically never recovered from losing him. And I suppose I’ve always told myself that was because she loved him so much – that what they had was so very special that she couldn’t go on without him, you know?”
He pauses at a huge boulder just to the side of the caves, and sweeps it clean of snow with a big gloved hand.
“This is one of my thinking spots,” he says, gesturing for me to sit.
