Page 61 of The Island in Bramble Bay
‘Hey, Maggie.’ Ben was behind her. ‘Are you okay?’ She felt his hand on her shoulder, put a bright smile on and turned around.
‘Hi! I was just looking at the fish, a shoal of mackerel I think…’
‘Right. Well, this is Nick. Nick, this is Maggie Cassidy, the park manager of Bramble Island.’
What should she do? Pretend it was the first time she’d met Nick? Ben had no idea that this was the man. How could he know? She tried to remember back to those difficult, emotionally charged conversations; had she mentioned Nick by name?
‘Nice to meet you, Maggie.’ Okay, so he was going down the road of pretending not to know each other. Had Ben told him that he was her ex? She supposed it may have come up fairly innocuously if they’d been talking about her.
‘Welcome to Bramble Island, Nick. Have you been here before?’ Maybe this was the way to go. Ignore the past and just start from now.
‘No, it’s my first visit. I did some work for the Trust a couple of years ago when they launched the Trust Treks but I don’t visit many properties otherwise.’ Amusement played in his eyes as he looked straight at her.
‘Maggie came up with the Trust Treks idea,’ said Ben, with what sounded like pride.
‘Wow, really? It was a great initiative. Are you running them here?’
‘Yes, the Squirrel Spotter Treks are the most popular, obviously, but we do quite a few different ones.’ She was leading them towards the office, dreading the moment that she might be alone with Nick or that he might refer to something that would make Ben realise who he was.
‘I hear you’ve managed to book us into a hotel this time,’ said Ben. ‘Last time Maggie didn’t know I was coming and I ended up having to stay in her cottage,’ he explained to Nick.
‘I wasn’t there,’ Maggie said, realising too late that she was over-explaining and noticing Ben raise his eyebrows in surprise. Why did she do that? Nick didn’t care whether she was there with Ben or not. ‘Anyway, here we are. Make yourselves at home. I don’t know what you want to do first, Nick?’ she asked.
‘I think it’d be wise to see the locations so I know what we’re talking about. Is now a good time?’
Before Maggie could suggest anything else, Ben piped up.
‘I’ve arranged to meet someone for lunch if you can manage without me for an hour or so.’ He looked shifty and Maggie could only imagine it was Alice he was meeting. Finally, someone had fallen for her charms.
‘No problem. Nick, let’s go.’ Maggie led the way towards the woodland, striding purposefully as if that would somehow mean they weren’t able to hold a conversation, but as soon as they were off the main path and into the woods, Nick stopped.
‘It’s good to see you again, Maggie, and great to be working together again, like old times.’ He smiled solicitously and it turned Maggie’s stomach to think that she had fallen for his charms the last time.
‘Well, I can’t say the feeling’s mutual, Nick.’
He looked surprised. Perhaps he’d thought the way he’d treated her last time was acceptable but she needed him to know that there was no chance of a repeat. ‘Just to be clear, it’s not going to be like old times. I’d appreciate it if we could keep it professional and say no more about what happened before.’ She turned away from him and carried on walking, feeling elated at finally having stood up for herself. This was how things should be. Take control of your own life and don’t let things get messed up by other people.
‘So, Ben’s your ex, I hear?’
Maggie said nothing, but her elation quietly slipped away as she realised that if Nick wasn’t going to get what he wanted, he was probably going to make her pay in some way.
‘That’s the guy you dumped for me?’
God, he was such a dick. How had she not realised that before?
‘I didn’t dump anyone for you. As I recall, we didn’t have a relationship, more a series of unfortunate one-night stands.’ It stung her to refer to their liaison in terms of how he might remember it when it had been more than that to her, at the time.
‘He doesn’t know that was with me though, does he?’ She could hear the smirk in his tone.
Now Maggie stopped and turned around to face him. ‘No, he doesn’t and if you feel he needs to know, fine. Go ahead. We’ve both moved on and neither of us is going to get upset about something that happened two years ago and meant nothing. Apart from to you, it seems.’
Nick looked taken aback and Maggie was relieved to see that her dismissal of him seemed to have taken the wind out of his sails.
He put his hands up in defeat. ‘Okay, fine. I’ll say nothing more about it,’ he said and began to trudge after her as she carried on walking.
‘So, this is where the lodges were going to be sited,’ explained Maggie as they passed through the woodland where it met the beach. ‘Right from that huge oak over there to that silver birch,’ she pointed. ‘And most of the trees in between would have needed felling from here to around ten metres inland.’ She turned around to face the water. ‘And this is where the new jetty will be which will lead to the water lodges.’
Nick had thankfully managed to adopt a more professional approach and asked a few pertinent questions which Maggie was happy to answer now that she was sure he knew where they stood. In fact, now that he wasn’t being a dick, she caught glimpses of why she’d fallen for him when they’d worked on the Trust Treks. He was incredibly clever about how you could play on certain elements of a project to make it appealing to either the media, customers or whoever you wanted to target, and it was that business-like side to him that she’d found most attractive. But not anymore.
