15. A Little Matchmaking

15

A Little Matchmaking

She put Barney and Geoffrey together in Cabin Two, with Lindsay in Cabin Three. Both cabins needed a little cleaning and tidying, but working together they had them all ready by the afternoon of the day after the agreement. Geoffrey and Barney worked like men trying to claw their way out of a pit, and although Lindsay was a little more stand-offish, she did relent enough to take a cloth and wipe down some surfaces.

The shower and toilet block took a bit more effort. Barney, it turned out, had spent a year as a trainee plumber before dropping out to pursue a less admirable dream of making dubious money on the internet, and the knowledge he had learned was enough to get the pipes clear, the taps running with clean water, and the drains emptying. Of three shower cubicles, only one of the water heaters still worked, but everyone took turns to use it while Josie made a list of things needing to be fixed, the broken heaters at the top.

The jobs that needed to be done got done far quicker with four people working rather than one, and within a couple of weeks they had cut back most of the undergrowth, cleared out the camping pitches, and cleared the vegetation off the remaining cabins. With May bringing warmer weather and longer evenings, Josie began to dream that she might just get the campsite open after all.

‘I’m so pleased it’s going well,’ Hilda said, sipping coffee as they sat at a corner table in the Sunset Harbour Coffee and Fudge Company, a pleasant little café and confectionary shop on the main street that led down to the harbour. ‘I was worried you would give up.’

‘I can’t guarantee that I won’t,’ Josie said. ‘It’s still a work in progress. The guys are really helping me out. Well, two of them, at least. The other one….’

‘Lindsay, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. I mean, some days she’s with us; other days she’s not. I try to give them a routine, you know, start at nine every day, but some days Lindsay won’t come out of her cabin at all.’

Hilda looked down at the crumbs of a piece of fudge cake, and gently tapped the edge of her plate with a fingernail.

‘I wouldn’t press her too hard,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what she might have been through.’

‘That’s what I was thinking. I’m happy enough for her to not be disruptive.’

A young waitress came over to their table. ‘Are you guys okay over here? Anything else?’

Hilda looked up and smiled. ‘No, thank you, Rachel. We’re—’ Her fingernail tapped the plate again. ‘Actually, no. We’ll have two slices of treacle tart with cream and two more coffees.’

‘No problem.’

As the waitress went off to get their order, Josie gave Hilda a wide-eyed stare and a shake of the head. ‘Are you feeling all right? That much sugar will give us both a heart attack. I only just got through that fudge cake.’

Hilda grinned. ‘Go on, live a little. Don’t worry, we’ll burn it off walking back up that hill.’

Josie needed to stop in at Nat’s place to make a few requests regarding the campsite, so she left Hilda down in the town where her friend said she planned to do a little trinket shopping. With her legs now hardened to long periods of activity, Josie hiked up along the coast path, enjoying the dramatic scenery, passing the fork that led up to the campsite and continuing on to another that led back up to the road through Nat’s field.

The old man was outside, tinkering with his carvings, one of which had gained a couple more songbirds since Josie had last visited. All sunglasses and beard, Nat hummed quietly to himself as he hacked away at the driftwood with a chisel, seemingly navigating by feel alone. As she approached, Josie found herself looking around for Robinson, and feeling a twinge of disappointment that he was nowhere to be seen.

‘Campsite lass? That you?’ Nat called while Josie was still a dozen yards away. Nat grinned. ‘I can tell by you’s footsteps.’

‘It’s me,’ she said.

‘How you doing with the old girl down there?’

‘If you’re meaning the campsite, then it’s getting there. You know I managed to tame your treehouse people enough to get them to work for me. Well, with me.’

‘Ah, resourceful, I knew you was,’ Nat said. ‘Hil said as much. Not sure I’d have agreed if you’d been the townie slacker I’d expected.’

‘Um, that’s good to know. Anyway, I have this list of things that we need to do, and things that I need your permission to do, since it’s technically your campsite—’

Nat waved a hand. ‘As you wish, maid. Anything you need, just skim the cost off me cut of the profits.’

‘Ah, but I can’t do that because I don’t actually have any money to get these things in the first place.’

Nat chuckled. ‘Ah, maid. See the cabin over there, see the door, no hinge, all that? There’s me income. Can’t you ask old Hil to lend you a quid or two?’

Josie grimaced. While no doubt Hilda could afford to hire someone to repair the boiler or pay the website setup costs and newspaper advertising fees they would need just to let anyone know there was a campsite here, she hated to ask.

‘The most pressing thing is probably the hot water and the rewiring for the shop cabin and the play barn. If you could just—’

‘Aha,’ Nat said, clicking two crusty sunbaked fingers with a dull thud. ‘The lad knows his way around a spanner. I’ll send him over when he gets back.’

‘Robinson? He’s not here?’

‘Nope. Gone back up to the smoke. Visit his ma, do a few odd jobs.’

‘Right.’ Josie nodded. ‘Well, thanks for letting me know. If you could send him over—’

‘Maid’s divorced, ain’t ’e?’ Nat said abruptly, still peering skyward as though talking to someone hovering above him.

‘Um, yes.’

‘Nice lad, is me boy. Level headed, can fix anything.’ Nat grinned. ‘I mean, I can’t see what kind of state you’re in, but Hil reckons you’re a decent catch. You’s have a nice voice, soothing, like.’

‘Um, I need to go—’

‘And a bit of gumption, some meat on you’s bones, judging by all that strimming Hil says you’ve been getting into. Reckon I should have a word with the lad, see if we can’t get a bit of a date on the go.’

Nat began to chuckle to himself. Josie, certain there was little more to be gained from her visit, began to retrace her steps.

‘Had a bit of a habit of wandering off,’ Nat said, just as Josie was preparing to make a break for freedom. The tone in his voice made her pause. ‘Couldn’t help meself, see?’ Nat continued. ‘Was born in the bow of me old man’s fishing boat, so they say, born with motion in me bones.’ He sighed. ‘The lad’s ma deserved a little better.’

‘I suppose things are how they are,’ Josie said, trying to be diplomatic.

‘When you ain’t got much catchment area, you’s tends to pick the plot of land that looks prime at the time,’ Nat continued, ‘thinking them harvest gonna be sweet for donkey’s years, then he goes and dries up after a couple.’

‘I—’

‘’Twas the lad’s ma,’ Nat said with a gentle, remorseful sigh. ‘Country girl like her should have done better than an old plot of land like me. Weren’t much use tilling after the first couple of years. I gave her the lad and the lass, but otherwise, didn’t give her jack but strife.’

‘I need to get back,’ Josie said. ‘Those weeds won’t pull themselves.’

‘Lad ain’t a bit like me,’ Nat said. ‘I mean, he goes wandering off up to the smoke from time to time, but he always comes back.’

After saying goodbye to Nat, then leaving him to continue lamenting the failures of his life, Josie headed back to the campsite. While Robinson seemed nice, and she had to admit to having been disappointed by his absence, the brutal divorce, her ex-husband’s ruthlessness, and even worse, the betrayal of her daughter, were wounds still too open for Josie to consider papering them over with a new relationship. Even if Robinson was interested—and if he saw the same person that she saw in the mirror every morning then she doubted it—they surely wouldn’t fit. He was an odd job man, up and down the country, and she was a—what was she even? The manager of a closed, abandoned campsite?

She had no money other than a few scraps left in her bank account. She had three de facto employees to which she had given empty promises, and no real idea of how she was going to pay them anything once the novelty of not having to sleep rough in a treehouse had worn off.

Her boots felt suddenly heavy, as though she were trying to walk through quicksand. When she closed her eyes, all she saw was a black tunnel with no light at the end.

Intending to stop in on Hilda before returning to the campsite, Josie walked up to the main road. She also wanted to check her phone for any messages, since the harbour, the campsite, and Nat’s place were all blackspots. Just as she exited the gate onto the road, however, her phone not only began to beep with missed notifications, but to buzz with an incoming call.

Josie pulled it out of her pocket and looked at the display. ‘Huh. Well I … hello?’

‘Mum? Mum, is that you?’ came a familiar and welcome but all too rarely heard voice. ‘I’ve been trying to call you for ages. That floozy old mare Evangeline, she fired me. Said I wasn’t fit for call centre work, let alone tour promotion. Mum, I—’

‘Tiffany, dear, it’s all right.’

‘I don’t know what to do, Mum. I just kind of ran out. I’m sleeping in the bus station waiting room. Can I come up to Bristol and stay with you?’

‘Ah, I’m not in Bristol anymore.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Um, kind of down on the coast. Porth Melynos.’

‘Did you get a holiday cottage?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I’m coming, Mum. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. I’ll give you a call when I get there. Thanks, Mum. I knew I could count on you.’

The call ended before Josie could say goodbye. Tiffany’s words rang in her ears. Count on you. Count on you. Count on you….

‘She’s my daughter,’ she said aloud, slamming the door on any kind of resentment. You took his side on everything. You quit the medical school I paid for to support him. You haven’t once asked me how I feel about everything. ‘She’s my daughter.’