Page 22 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
‘Is that why you’re so determined this diary has to be real? You think it would… bring you closer to your parents?’
I reach inside the neck of my top and pull out Mum’s tiny gold mermaid tail necklace and show him. ‘She drowned when I was five, and afterwards, my dad told me that she’d turned into a mermaid and gone home to the sea, and even though Iknewthat wasn’t what happened, it was a nice thought – a comforting thought. I grew up feeling as though she was still out there in the ocean somewhere. Every time we went to the beach, we picked up those conch shells that you can put to your ear and hear the ocean, and we’d both speak into them and then throw them back into the sea, and it was like a way of communicating with her.’ I stop and take a deep, shaky breath. I’ve never shared that with anyone except Lissa, and my ex-boyfriend, before now and I don’t know why it’s suddenly popped out with this relative stranger who will definitely disapprove of something so whimsical. ‘I still do it even now, and I really don’t care if you think that’s childish or silly or?—’
‘I think that’s really nice,’ he interrupts me quickly. ‘Both my parents are gone too, so don’t think I don’t understand.’
I meet his eyes again, softer and kinder now than the usual suspicious apprehension that seems to cloud them, and I canfeelhow easy it would be to let my walls down and open up to him, and I blink and look away. Maybe thereissomething in this chocolate cake. I don’t intend to ever let a man in again, especially one who clearly has alotof baggage and past hurt. ‘This is the only thing I still have of my mum’s. I haven’t taken it off since the day my dad found it again. She loved mermaids and she was convinced they really existed. Her whole life, she felt a pull to the ocean and thought she’d been a mermaid in a previous life or something. The diary being real would make her so happy.’
‘Found it again?’
‘It’s how the shop came about…’ I hesitate. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this? You don’t need to be polite or pretend to be interested. I prefer blunt, unsugarcoated honesty and you’re good at that.’
He reaches out and covers my hand with his warm fingers, effectively ending my sentence. ‘I want to hear it. I’ve never met anyone like you. There has to be some kind of superhero origin story and right now, I’ve never wanted to hear anything more. Tell me, please.’
His voice is so quiet but full of gentle steel, his accent perfectly polished, polite and sophisticated, like he’s been taught how to speak properly, and it’s impossiblenotto tell him.
‘My mum died a hero. We were on holiday on the beach, it was the Easter holidays, right before lifeguard season began. There were these two little boys messing about on an inflatable dinghy, and there was a sudden… I don’t know, a riptide or a current or something, and they were swept out to sea. I don’t even know if I remember it or if I only remember what my dad told me and the newspaper cuttings my grandparents kept afterwards, but my mum was a strong swimmer, her childhood home was on the seafront and she’d swum in the ocean her whole life, and she went in after them. She thought… I don’t know, I guess she didn’tthinkat all, she just acted on instinct and tried to save them. And she did. She managed to get a rope to them so the others on the beach were able to pull them back in, but she didn’t… she couldn’t…’ My voice is breaking and I’m focusing on the cup of tea in front of me rather than looking at him.
I don’t realise how long it’s been since I told this story. I don’t meet many new people who Iwantto open up to, and everyone else in my life already knows what happened to my mum and don’t bring it up for fear of upsetting me.
‘The current was too strong. She disappeared. A kindly old man on the beach with his grandson offered to take me round the corner to get ice cream so I didn’t have to witness what was about to happen when the coastguard arrived and pulled her body from the water. All I can remember is it was the worst ice cream I’d ever eaten because Iknewsomething bad was happening and could hear all these sirens and the coastguard helicopter overhead, and this poor old man was trying to distract me by asking about school and things I liked, and we stayed there for hours, he got us chips and two more ice creams, and eventually my dad came, he had a policewoman with him, and we went back to the hotel we were staying at… and life was changed forever.’
There are tears streaming down my face, and when I realise, I swear under my breath, and grab a napkin from the table and turn away, trying to compose myself. I don’t dig up these old traumas very often, but even so many years later, that day and the difficult years that followed it are back in sharp focus and it’s impossible to pretend it hasn’t made me emotional.
Ren’s chair scrapes against the floor, and before I realise what’s happening, he’s crouched down beside my chair and leant up to put his arms around me. The hug is so unexpected, even more so because it’shimthat it’s enough of a shock to stop my tears in their tracks. Probably like when people say being startled can stop a case of hiccups. He’s quite possibly theleasttouchy-feely person I’ve ever met, and I didn’t expect him to squeeze my hand like he did just now, never mind a proper hug like this.
His arms wrap around me and pull me close, his chin hooks over my shoulder, and my senses are instantly filled by the softness of his sensible shirt, the strength of the arms that hold me so tightly, and the scent of his hair product. The feeling of being held and the sense that he cared enough to push himself so far outside of his comfort zone just to console me makes me bite my lip and slip my arms around his shoulders and squeeze him back just as tight. I press my chin into his shoulder and turn my head slightly, so my cheek brushes against his dark hair, and I feel him let out a long exhale that makes his shoulders sag and his spine curve towards me, and we hold each other tightly for a few long minutes, oblivious to any potential looks from other diners. Between us, we’ve given them quite a spectacle today.
Eventually Ren grunts and pulls away. ‘Sorry, pins and needles.’ He gets up and stamps his feet a few times to get feeling back into his legs and then shuffles back to his chair and slumps down in it.
I watch him for a few moments, but he’s focused intently on the pattern of the tablecloth rather than meeting my eyes.
‘Sorry,’ I say eventually. ‘This is why no one should ever ask me about myself. I’m an embarrassment who should never be allowed out in public.’
‘That’s the first time I’ve hugged someone in years.’
‘What?’ I blink in surprise. ‘Seriously? Not even Ava?’
‘Ava’s “too old” for hugs now. Hugs are “forbabies” and if I try, she pushes me away with a “Don’t be so embarrassing, Daa-ad!”’ He mimics her young voice perfectly and I see a hint of someone who was once much more smiley and less uptight than he is now. ‘And other than that, do I strike you as someone who welcomes hugs?’
Considering he’s more bristly than a pincushion modelled after a porcupine… ‘No, you don’t.’
‘No, I don’t.’
It was probably intended to be a joke, but his voice takes on a downbeat tone that suggests it isn’t something he’s happy about.
This has got unexpectedly intense, and I try to use a lighter-hearted tone when I respond. ‘Well, thank you for giving me your hug revirginity.’
‘Hug revirginity,’ he repeats, shaking his head in a bemused way as he looks at me, his smile getting significantly bigger with every passing second. ‘I don’t think you can use a phrase like that without chocolate. This calls for that second slice, yes?’
I nod because I’m never going to say no to cake, and he grins in response. ‘Be right back.’
I let out a sigh as he goes back to the counter, like he knew I needed a minute to compose myself. I blow my nose and scrub a napkin over my face, and try not to think about how good that hug felt or what happens to make someone go for years without a hug. No wonder he’s so grouchy.
I’m still lost in thought when another slice of chocolate cake is placed on the table in front of me, and Ren sits back down in the chair opposite. ‘Okay, riddle me this. I don’t understand how that led to the shop opening… but if you want to leave it there for today, rest assured that Iwillquestion you mercilessly about it on another day.’
It makes me smile again, and I realise I never got as far as the part about the shop’s origins. ‘Afterwards, my dad wassoangry at my mum. He thought she’d done it unnecessarily. Yeah, she’d rescued those boys, but she didn’t need to. They were screaming, panicking, but they were safe-ish, you know? They were on a dinghy, notinthe water. The coastguard had been called. A lifeboat had been launched. They would likely have been okay, and he was so angry that she’d dived into dangerous water without thinking about the consequences. He thought she should have put her own safety and her own family first. She’d helped someone else’s kids at the cost of ripping a hole throughourfamily. He always said that you have to be selfish when you have kids. You have to do everything you can to ensure you’re okayforthem, and he was distraught, and grieving, and so, so, so angry at her for doing something so dangerous and impulsive, and paying the worst price. I stayed with my grandparents for about a week, and when I went home, he’d taken his frustration out on her belongings. It was like he’d tried to erase every hint of her from our lives. Photographs were torn up, wallpaper she’d chosen was ripped down, and he’d gathered up all her things and dumped them at charity shops.’
Ren looks horrified and I quickly defend my dad. ‘He was lost in a haze of grief. He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t think about me, or her parents, wanting things to remember her by, he just acted out his rage when he didn’t know what else to do with it. A couple of months later, he realised what he’d done, and he tried to get everything he’d thrown away back. He trawled the charity shops looking for things that hadn’t been sold yet. He begged them for info about the customers who’d bought things, but nothing was traceable. No one at the shops knew there was anything different aboutthatdonation, and everything had been put out and sold as normal. He could barely remember the shops he’d taken boxes to, so he trawled every charity shop and second-hand shop in the area. He managed to find a few bits of clothing that he knew were hers, and this necklace.’ I’m still holding the tiny gold mermaid’s tail in my fingers and I show it to him again. ‘By some miracle, it had fallen down the side of a workbench in the sorting room and only been found and put out that morning. He knew it was hers because it has this line where she bent it with her fingernail while she was sitting on the beachfront years earlier, waiting while he paced up and down, trying to build himself up to proposing, and after she’d bent her necklace, she got so annoyed at his dithering that she got up and proposed to him instead.’
