An A To Z Of Love

‘Not enough.’ Charlie slammed the book shut. ‘I’ll have to go see Joe. Cut the order.’ He could phone, of course, or even email, but that would mean staying in the almost empty restaurant, watching his dreams continue to circle the drain.

‘Or we could open for breakfasts…’ Magda started, then trailed off when he glared at her. ‘I can look after things here.’

The early lunch crowd – all of two tables – had almost finished anyway. And as yet there was no sign of a later lunch crowd. Charlie supposed they might get a couple of stragglers, if they were very lucky, but otherwise he was shutting up shop at three and then he was free. Magda had the reins for the night, and Kevin had control of the kitchen. Charlie had plans – a tasting with Mia, meaning he’d be on the customers’ side of the restaurant that evening. Then a midnight showing of It Happened One Night at the Coliseum. There were worse ways to spend a Saturday night.

‘Thanks.’ He stored the book on the shelf under the front desk. ‘It won’t take me long.’

The fresh air as he walked along the front to Joe’s shop was a pleasant relief from the vanilla potpourri Magda had installed on the reception desk at the StarFish. Her theory was – people came to eat the fish, not smell it. Charlie felt people should really expect a little fish stink from a seafood restaurant.

Past the sea wall, the yellowy-grey sand stretched out to the currently distant sea, revealing shells and stranded jellyfish along the shoreline. The tide had turned, though. Only a matter of time before the detritus of the ocean washed away again. He smiled, remembering the blissful look on Mia’s face as she’d dug her bare toes into the sand that morning. He didn’t often manage to join Mia on her morning walks, but it was always worth it when he did. She never looked as happy as when she was walking along Aberarian beach in the early morning light.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he let himself imagine that he could make her look like that. But not too often. Mia would always snap him out of it with a comment about what a good friend he was, or how he’d be back in London where he belonged, any day now.

With one last glance at the sea, he cast Mia out of his mind and jogged up the stairs towards Joe’s.

Joe’s fishmonger and butcher shop was empty except for Joe himself, stacking cockle shells on the fish counter and staring balefully across at the abandoned butcher’s counter, his apron spotless.

‘Slow day?’ Charlie asked from the door, amused as always that Aberarian, realising it wasn’t big enough to support both a butcher and a fishmonger, had managed to combine the two so effectively.

‘Saturday.’ Joe’s voice was glum. ‘Used to be one of our busiest, when Dad ran the place. Everyone came in for a bit of something special for Sunday tea from the other side. Now they just go to the Tesco in Coed-y-Capel.’

‘Not everyone,’ Charlie said.

Joe’s face brightened. ‘That’s right. So, got a nice big order for me this week, have you?’

Charlie winced. ‘Actually…’

‘Might have guessed.’ Joe knocked over his cockle shell tower with two fingers. ‘Come on then. Give it to me.’

Sliding the amended order sheet across the counter, Charlie watched Joe’s eyebrows grow closer to his receding hairline as he read. ‘Business not much better for you either, then.’

‘It’ll pick up in the summer,’ Charlie said with a confidence he didn’t really feel. He wasn’t sure StarFish would make it to another winter if it didn’t.

‘It’s already June.’

‘When the school holidays start,’ Charlie clarified. That gave them another month to hope.

Joe tossed the order form into an empty filing tray. ‘You know what we need? A night off. A night of the blissful forgetfulness only supplied by drinking too many pints of ale at the Crooked Fox. Tonight. You in?’

‘Can’t,’ Charlie said with a shake of the head. ‘Mia’s coming over for a tasting session for the new menu. Then we’re heading over to the Coliseum.’

This prompted an impressive eyebrow waggle from Joe. ‘A date? A real one? A really real date?’

‘No. A standing arrangement where Mia tells me which of my dishes suck and what has too much chilli for the locals, then we go to the cinema to see something in black and white, pretty much every Saturday. You know this.’ Everyone knew this. Everyone knew that he and Mia were just friends. Mia made very sure of that.

‘Yeah, yeah. I know this.’ Joe leaned farther across the counter. ‘What I don’t know and what, to be honest, is the only interesting thing to speculate about here, is when you’re going to finally just snog the hell out of her.’

‘Joe…’

‘Hell, bring her to the pub tonight. Couple of rum and Cokes and she’ll be begging you to kiss her.’

‘It’s not like that,’ Charlie said. ‘We’re friends.’

‘Only because you think she’s too screwed up for love. What with her dad, then Dan, and whatever the guy in London was called driving her crazy.’ Joe rolled his eyes as he said it. ‘And because you’re too hung up on Becky the Bitch.’

‘She’s not crazy. She’s just…’ Charlie searched for the right words to describe Mia. Beautiful, sensitive, insecure, utterly uninterested in him… ‘Wary. Wouldn’t you be?’

‘If it were me, I’d have emigrated to Australia. Only place people might not still be talking about what George Page did. Not to mention the whole Dan debacle.’

‘Besides, I don’t want another relationship. They only end badly.’ He’d much rather have Mia as his friend than as someone he’d once loved and now couldn’t bear to look at because she’d ripped his heart out and fed it to the fishes.

‘That we agree on, my friend,’ Joe said, nodding sagely. ‘Next week for the pub, then?’

‘It’s a date,’ Charlie promised with a grin.

Amazingly, Charlie thought while walking home along the front, he did feel better. Enough that he could go back into his kitchen and not want to attack the freezer with a chef’s knife. Maybe it would be okay. There’d be walk-ins on Saturday night. And it wasn’t even July yet. Things would pick up when the sun arrived, when the holidays started.

He just had to be patient, that was all.

Reaching the corner of Water Street, where the town met the coastline, he saw the StarFish sign hanging a few feet away. The scent of the sea and the sound of distant waves rolled up from the beach, and he remembered exactly why this had been the perfect place for his dream restaurant, with his dream girl. The place to raise a family and grow old.

Well. He still had the restaurant, anyway.

And maybe Mia was right. Maybe he would make it back to London one day. Even if he wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing. Aberarian, as Mia often told him, had many charms.

He paused at StarFish’s door as he saw Mia farther up the street, and it took him a full thirty seconds to realise that not only was she not alone, he also didn’t know the man she was with. Or why she was holding his arm. Or what he’d said to make her laugh so openly, her face shining and bright with the sort of relaxed joy Charlie had never yet managed to get her to show.

Charlie blinked. Mia hadn’t noticed him at all, and was already leading her friend farther along Main Street, towards the tiny rundown cinema. She’d tell him all about it later, he was sure. There was probably a perfectly innocent explanation.

Except it didn’t need to be innocent, did it? Because he had absolutely no claim on her anyway.

Depressed once again, Charlie pushed open the door and retreated into the dream restaurant that had become a nightmare.

Chapter Two

Becky waited until she saw Tony and Mia take the turning down Water Street, towards the Esplanade, before she ducked out of the newsagent’s doorway and over to the A to Z shop next door.

It had been a good idea, having Tony lure Mia away first; this was a family matter, after all. And Mia, for all they’d been friends as kids, before the thing with her dad, was never going to be family. She’d wondered how he’d managed it, but not for very long. Tony always seemed to manage to get what he wanted one way or another, often leaving the other party thinking it had been their idea in the first place. It was one of the reasons Champion Casinos were such a success.

The other reason, of course, was that Becky got what she wanted pretty much all the time, too. When they worked together, they were unstoppable.

The thought made Becky smile. Aberarian was going to roll over and beg for them to save it.

It was a good feeling, knowing she was just one deal away from ruling her old hometown. She hadn’t been ready last time she’d come back. They hadn’t taken her seriously. But this time, they weren’t going to have a choice.

Becky had always known that she would come back to Aberarian one day. It had a strange pull on a person, this place. Even as a teenager, when she’d longed to escape to university, to London, to real life, she’d always known she’d return. When it was time. When she was ready to settle down, start a family, grow up – there had never been any doubt in her mind that Aberarian was where she would do it.

Three years ago, she’d thought it was time. She’d seen her future stretching out before her, Charlie at her side. But when Tony had contacted her with a new business idea, a chance for her to really make her mark… how could she say no? She was still young, she still had time. This was her chance to truly shine, before she settled down.

So she’d taken it. Who wouldn’t?

Well, apart from Charlie, of course. Guilt throbbed in her middle as she remembered his sleeping face, the morning she left. He’d loved her, enough to move to Aberarian for her. And, more importantly, he’d stayed. He was still waiting for her.

And she was ready at last.

Becky smiled, watching the A to Z shop sign creak in the wind. It might not be easy, but this was her chance to make everything right. She’d have her business, and she could win Charlie back, no problem. She could have the future she’d always dreamt of. She could run things in Aberarian, Tony would leave town and Charlie would never need to even know about her fling with her boss. And Tony…. he was a businessman. He’d understand the importance of shaping circumstances to get what you wanted.

She was his protégée, after all. He’d probably be proud of her, once he got over the part about not being able to sleep with her any more.

But first, she had a plan to put into action. Starting with Aunt Ditsy.

Becky paused at the window of the A to Z shop before going in. No customers, of course. She hadn’t seen a single tourist all the way in from the station. That’s why Aberarian needed her.

Ditsy sat behind the counter, pouring over something – either the accounts or the crossword, probably. You could never tell with Aunt Ditsy. Becky paused, hand on the door, remembering better times for the shop, when Uncle Henry was still alive and sneaking sweets to his favourite niece. When she was still the town’s sweetheart and her biggest responsibility was remembering to keep the jars of lemon drops on the L shelf filled.

With a deep breath, Becky pushed the door open, bracing herself for surprise and hugs and amazement. What she got instead, when Ditsy looked up from her papers, was a look of utter shock.

‘Hello, Aunt Ditsy,’ she said with a calculatedly nervous smile.

‘I thought…’ Ditsy still hadn’t moved from behind the counter. Becky felt a twinge of concern. Not the best start. ‘When you didn’t come home for your Aunt Hannah’s funeral, I thought we’d never see you in Aberarian again.’

Ah. Right. ‘I felt just terrible about that, Auntie. I just… It was too soon for me, so soon after everything.’ Ditsy nodded, the movement jerky, and Becky decided the best thing was probably just to steam ahead and hope Ditsy would forget, eventually, some of Becky’s failing as a niece. ‘But I’m back now. Things have been going really well for me in Manchester. And now I’ve got the opportunity to share some of my success…’

But before Becky could get into the revelation that had prompted her return, the shop door opened again, its brass bell jingling as Mrs Heather Jenkins entered and bustled straight up to the counter without acknowledging Becky’s presence at all. That wouldn’t last long. She was going to show them she mattered in this town.

‘Now, Ditsy, what’s all this about a letter from Mia’s father?’ Mrs Jenkins hadn’t become any less blunt over the years either, it seemed.

Ditsy gave a frustrated sigh. ‘Heather, since I don’t want to spend all afternoon repeating myself, and now Mia’s out of the way I’m sure you’re not going to be the last to ask, could you just get Jacques to amend his story when he’s telling people? He just needs to tell them I have no idea who the letter was from, what it said, or even if Mia’s got any plans to open the damn thing. She certainly hadn’t when she left here.’

Heather Jenkins gave an almost-snort of polite disbelief. ‘And I’m sure if she had you’d have told me all about it.’

‘Then why did you bother to ask?’ Ditsy said with raised eyebrows. Check and mate. Aunt Ditsy had obviously been practicing that comeback.

But even as Mrs Jenkins left, grumbling under her breath, Becky could see the vicar, Dafydd Davies, striding purposefully towards the shop. Ditsy dashed out from behind the counter with surprising speed and flipped the sign on the door over to Closed, smiling with false apology at Reverend Davies while he fumed outside the window.

‘Never known a man of God to gossip so much,’ Ditsy muttered, watching him turn and leave.

Becky decided to seize the opportunity. ‘Since you’re closed early for the day,’ she said, her mind already playing out the next part of her plan, ‘Why don’t we go and get lunch at StarFish? I’ve got a… business proposition I’d like to discuss with you.’

Ditsy snorted, but reached for her coat. ‘You just want to see Charlie again.’

Becky smiled. The plan was coming together just fine. Tony would be so proud.

* * * *

Mia led Tony along Main Street, towards the Esplanade, and stared at the town she’d lived in all her life with new eyes. It looked shabbier than she remembered, more rundown. And when had so many shops closed? One at a time, she supposed, and it was always sad when they did, but then two weeks later she’d forget about them. She always saw Aberarian as a picture in her head, a magical place that drew you back in, however far you strayed. Until she had to find a way to make the town interesting to an outsider, and realised the whole place looked abandoned.

Maybe she should tell him the tragic life of Mia Page, so he’d run screaming for the hills now, saving her the bother of scaring him off slowly, over time.

Instead, she guided him down Water Street, past the bright blue and gold sign of StarFish, and drew his attention to the beautiful holiday homes on the other side of the street, rather than the charity shop and the bucket and spade stall. She glanced into StarFish’s window, but it didn’t look like Charlie was there anyway, so there was no point stopping.

On the corner of the Esplanade, she directed him to the window of Treasures, Kim Williams’s tourist trap, selling overpriced slate objects and Celtic-designed jewellery made overseas. That was what people wanted from a seaside town these days, wasn’t it?

Although, if she was honest, Tony didn’t seem particularly interested in the town anyway.

‘So, you work in the A to Z shop?’ Tony asked, turning away from Kim’s overly sentimental window display to point at a plaque beside it declaring the smuggler A to Z Jones had once stayed there. ‘Named for the man himself, I assume?’

Mia shrugged. ‘Probably. Story goes he could get you anything from A to Z. A bit like an illegal Harrods. But it’s mainly because everything in the shop is arranged alphabetically.’

‘Really?’ Tony paused in the middle of the pavement. ‘How the hell does that work?’

‘Badly, most of the time,’ Mia admitted.

‘Huh.’ Tony smiled. ‘Well, you did say she was crazy.’

Mia didn’t reply, just took his arm and carried on in the direction of the beach. Maybe the sea views would win Tony over.

But somehow, with Tony beside her, even the beach had lost some of its appeal.

‘Are those… jellyfish?’ He stared, horrified, at the shoreline.

Mia winced. ‘Yeah. They… We tend to get a lot of them, this time of year. They wash up with the tide and wash out again later. Usually.’ Tony still looked horrified. ‘You’re not really seeing it at its best.’

‘What if you step on them?’

‘They sting,’ she replied. Perhaps it was time to take Tony away from the jellyfish.

‘Well, you wanted the coast,’ Mia said, leading him up to the Esplanade. Aberarian wasn’t the most exciting place on the planet, but it was her home and she loved it. And for some reason, it was important to her that Tony should like it too. ‘This is it.’

Tony turned to her and smiled again, and Mia felt some of her worries fade away. ‘It most certainly is.’

Not feeling she was making any progress, Mia started along the Esplanade, saying, ‘Well, there’s more to see, still.’

They passed the Grand Hotel, a hulking old-fashioned building that dominated the Esplanade and still served high tea for its guests every afternoon. Then up King Street, past the bakery and more holiday flats, describing everything they passed. ‘And this is Joe’s, and…’

But Tony was transfixed by Joe’s. ‘What is it?’

Mia glanced up at the sign. Seemed self-explanatory to her. ‘Well, this half’s a butcher’s shop and the other is a fishmonger’s. It’s just Joe runs them both. Saving people time when they’re shopping.’

‘Sort of a primitive supermarket, then?’ Tony asked, grinning.

‘Not exactly.’ She shrugged. ‘Aberarian’s not big enough to support both separate shops. So Joe’s father amalgamated them.’ She didn’t mention that at the rate the local housing was becoming holiday homes, occupied for just a few months a year, soon the town wouldn’t even be able to support Joe’s.

Tony shook his head. ‘Baffling. Only in Wales. What’s next?’

Something in Mia’s middle clenched at his tone, but she couldn’t think why. After all, it wasn’t anything Joe himself hadn’t said from time to time.

She looked around her, wondering what on earth to show him next, and spotted, past the A to Z shop, the old Coliseum cinema. Perfect. Surely Tony would appreciate the site of a proper old movie theatre, not one of those modern superplexes that charged more for popcorn than a ticket.

But Tony, apparently, was more of a modern cinema man than an appreciator of the classics.

‘But that came out months ago!’ He pointed at the poster jammed crookedly into the rusting frame on the front of the building. ‘And what’s a wet weather matinee?’

Mia shrugged. ‘Makes it cheaper if we wait a bit for the films. Helps Walt keep the place going, and it doesn’t make a lot of difference, really. And the wet weather matinees are just for the school holidays. Walt opens up earlier in the day when it’s raining. Gives the kids something to do.’ She smiled at the thought of the last one she’d attended, with Charlie the summer before. ‘It’s fun. He puts on some classic kids’ movies and hands out big bowls of popcorn, included in the ticket price.’

Still staring at the faded and peeling yellow paint on the brickwork, Tony didn’t look convinced. Mia didn’t bother telling him about Walt’s Festive Film Festival, running from October to December, showing all his favourite Christmas movies. ‘Come on,’ she said instead. ‘Come in and meet Walt. He’s brilliant. You’ll see.’ Upsetting Walt might have been her number one regret about breaking things off with Dan, except her almost father-in-law had made it very clear that he still counted her as part of the family, even if she wasn’t going to marry his son.

Inside the Coliseum, the lights were dimmed and the popcorn machine turned off. ‘Walt?’ Mia called out, watching Tony taking a tour of the small lobby, fingering the grubby red and white ropes set up to keep non-existent queues in order.

Walt Hamilton stuck his head out from behind the box office door, and Mia could see Tony taking in his balding head, and butter-stained red and white shirt. ‘Mia? There’s no film this afternoon. Not until…’ His voice trailed off as he eyed up Tony. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Walt, this is Tony.’ Mia took Tony’s hand again and led him to the box office. ‘He’s in town on business, and I’m giving him a bit of a tour.’

‘Right.’ Walt stuck out a hand. ‘Well, hello, then.’

Tony took the proffered hand, and Mia saw Walt wince at the force of his handshake. ‘Interesting place you’ve got here,’ Tony said, running a hand down the dusty frame of a black and white forties starlet’s photo.

Walt shrugged. ‘I like it.’

Obviously Walt wasn’t going to help her sell the Coliseum as a reason to love Aberarian. ‘We all love it,’ she said with more enthusiasm. ‘Always packed out on a Saturday night, and the kids think it’s the best thing in town!’

Tony’s face was full of disbelief, and Walt cringed at the lie, so Mia decided it might be time to call it quits and move onto the pub instead. Surely Tony would have to like the pub.

‘What are you doing here?’ Susan Hamilton’s voice behind her made Mia more determined to make a run for it. Dan’s mother’s reaction to their break up had been far less understanding. In fact, Mia was pretty sure that Susan blamed her completely for her beloved son marrying a holidaying student and moving three hundred miles away to start a family with her. ‘Walt?’

‘Just leaving, Susan,’ Mia assured her and, grabbing hold of Tony’s sleeve, dragged him to the door. ‘Bye, Walt.

Outside, she dropped Tony’s arm and made her way down the cinema steps towards Main Street, and the pub.

‘So, what’s next on this magical mystery tour?’ Tony asked.

‘The Crooked Fox,’ Mia said. ‘You’ll like that at least, I bet.’

Tony took her arm again, and they started in the direction of the lower end of town. ‘Crooked Fox?’

She smiled. ‘You think only the cities have pubs? What do you think we do out here, all winter?’

Tony laughed, a bright, honest, surprised chuckle, and squeezed her arm as she led him to the pub.

‘But enough about the town,’ he said, once they were settled at a rickety corner table by the old fireplace. Tony put down his pint and focused solely on Mia; it was quite disconcerting, she found. ‘Tell me about you. All I know so far is that you like a rundown cinema.’

Mia shrugged. ‘Walt has always been very kind to me. He gave me a job there when I was in sixth form.’ Back when the cinema actually made some money, every now and then, she didn’t add. That was how she’d got close to Dan, who’d always been far too cool to give her the time of day at school, before then. It had been the best job in the world, and Walt had almost cried when he’d had to let her go. ‘I figure catching a movie a couple of times a week is a small way to make it up to him.’

‘Have you always lived here?’ Tony asked.

Mia nodded. ‘Always. Well, except for when I was at uni in Manchester. My father was a teacher at the secondary school for most of my childhood, actually. Then, well, he left when I was sixteen. I got my A Levels and ran off to university two years later. But after I graduated… I wanted to come home.’ Mia remembered how she had missed the sound of the sea at night, the salt in the air, so much it felt like a physical ache. Not that she regretted it; if she’d never left, she would never have known how much Aberarian meant to her.

‘Really? I’d have thought…’ Tony said, a tinge of disbelief in his voice. Apparently realising he might have offended her, he covered by asking, ‘What did you study?’

‘History.’ Mia took another gulp of wine. ‘I’ve always been fascinated by how we got here. I mean, history can explain pretty much everything to ever happen in the world, if you look at it right. That’s important.’ Her own past might not be a fairy tale, but it did at least help her remember how she ended up here.