Page 33 of The Winter of Second Chances
‘Unless you decide to open again beforehand!’ called Raye over her shoulder. Annie saw Aiden give Raye an admonishing nudge and Raye raise her hand in an expression ofWhat?!
Annie had six more customers during the following hour and a half it took her to finish cleaning and familiarising herself with the kiosk and its contents. She found a mobile card machine beneath the counter and a plastic cash tray. Every single customer asked whether she was planning to open through winter and Annie deftly avoided giving a straight answer.
‘Maybe on sunny days,’ she said non-committally to a man with an impressive King Edward moustache.
‘It’s the wet days we could do with it,’ he grumbled.
By the time Annie was finished the little tea room was pine fresh and aglow with bleachy newness. Annie treated herself to a double-shot mocha before closing the place up again and heading back up to the flat. She sat in the armchair gazing out of the window at the clouds waltzing across the sun, their shadows dancing light and dark on the ocean below. She sipped her coffee and understood why Mari had never left. Annie felt she would never be bored of this view. The restaurant seemed very far away, both in distance and in time. She wondered if, with hindsight, she had mentally withdrawn from the restaurant as she had from her marriage. She thought about Max and realised that she wasn’t even that angry with him anymore about the cheating – well, at least not enough to want to set fire to him.
Something woke her. Annie rolled over and checked her phone: 3 a.m. The storm was wild enough to be heard even through Mari’s triple glazing but the sound which woke her hadn’t come from outside. Annie lay very still, straining her ears. There it was again. A clatter. It wasn’t in the flat but it was in the building. Maybe one of the shutters had come loose in the wind. She lay there wondering what to do.What if it isn’t a loose shutter? What if it’s an intruder? Damn!she thought.I’m going to have to go down there and check it out.
Annie pulled her dressing gown around her and slipped her phone into the pocket. She scouted silently through the flat for a weapon – just in case – but there was none.What kind of woman lives alone without at least a baseball bat for defence?she wondered. Annie settled for an umbrella with a reasonable spike on its end, and a rolling pin. She opened the door to the flat and pulled it closed as quietly as she could, leaving it on the latch in case she needed to scoot back inside in a hurry. The narrow staircase was cold. The wind whistled through every crack and beneath door frames and blew chill around her naked ankles. The rain pelted against every part of the building as though demanding to be let in.
At the bottom of the stairs, Annie listened again. She turned her head first towards the kiosk, then the tea room and then the cellar. To her relief the cellar was quiet. A shuffling sound drew her gaze sharply to the tea room door. What was that? A fox? A rat? A person? The key was poking out of the lock, just as Annie had left it. Her arms had gone stiff with tension. She shook them out, stowed the rolling pin under the arm which held the umbrella – spike forward – and turned the key as quietly as she could.
There was a ruckus behind the door, like a chair being dragged across the floor.How big is that rat?she asked herself. In one swift movement, Annie pushed open the door and slammed on the light.
‘Who goes there?’ Annie yelled. She wasn’t sure where this came from; she blamed it on reading too many classic crime novels.
There was a scream and what looked like a pile of dirty laundry and blankets flew into the air. Annie shrieked and hurled the umbrella harpoon at the blankets, followed by the rolling pin which made a thud as it hit its mark. There was a yelp and a man’s voice cried, ‘I surrender! Please don’t hurt me!’
Annie’s heart pounded. She’d used all her weapons so she grabbed a large Kilner jar from the shelf and brandished it towards the voice.
‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘What do you want? I know kung fu!’ This was a lie.
‘It’s Alfred,’ came the voice from beneath a brown army blanket. ‘I only came in here to sleep.’
‘Where’s the other one?’ asked Annie.
‘What other one?’ asked Alfred.
‘The one who screamed,’ said Annie.
‘That was me,’ said Alfred, still speaking from beneath the blanket.
‘It sounded like a woman,’ said Annie.
‘Well,’ said Alfred gruffly, ‘you took me by surprise.’
‘Come out from under there,’ said Annie.
‘Don’t throw anything else at me,’ said Alfred.
Annie lowered the Kilner jar.
A dirty hand reached around and pulled the blanket down to reveal a scowling man in his sixties. His hair was too long to be tidy and his black beard needed a trim, but the hook nose unmistakably belonged to the man she had seen stomping up the beach after she had accidentally stumbled upon his hiding place in the cave.
‘What are you doing in here?’ asked Annie. She put the jar back on the shelf. ‘You frightened the life out of me!’
‘I told you,’ said Alfred. ‘I came in here to sleep. The weather’s bad and the tide’s too high for me to stay in the cave. I’m sorry if I scared you.’
‘That’s okay, I think my heart rate is returning to normal,’ she smiled. ‘Do you often sleep here?’
‘Only when the weather’s bad, like tonight,’ said Alfred.
He was well spoken; a Northern twang clung to the ends and beginnings of his words. Despite the fright he’d given her, Annie felt sorry for him: she wouldn’t want to be outside in this storm.
‘Mari knows,’ said Alfred.
