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That was the final straw. Blood pumping furiously in her ears, Elsie spun round to face him. ‘Excuse me? I have money, actually. What part of “I have to go” do you not understand? I’m late for work and I’m soaked through from this stupid rain and, believe me, the very last thing I would like to do right now is go anywhere with you. I’ve paid you back so I don’t owe you anything.’
‘Is that the way you thank all your rescuers?’ The twinkle in his eye sent a second wave of fury pumping through Elsie.
‘Who do you think you are, Lancelot? And where do you get off interfering in other people’s business, anyway? I am entirely capable of looking after myself, you know. I am not a damsel in distress that needs rescuing by a big, strong bloke. I would have sorted the situation, without your help. I would have managed. So thank you very much for jumping in, but I really didn’t need you to.’
Torin was stopped in his tracks and Elsie felt the smallest glint of satisfaction as she walked away. Fair enough, he had helped to release her from the iron grip of the security guard, but he didn’t have to make a virtue of the fact. Or attempt to turn the situation into some kind of emotional blackmail to go with him for coffee, either. Honestly, the cheek!
‘Un-be-lievable!’ a voice shouted behind her.
Elsie groaned as she pressed on, dodging lunchtime shoppers hurrying through the insistent mid-March rain. Does this bloke ever give up?
‘I thought you looked like somebody in need of assistance,’ Torin continued, drawing level with Elsie as they stormed together down the street. ‘And all I did was try to save you from an embarrassing and potentially litigious situation. Well, more fool me!’
‘You said it,’ Elsie muttered, wishing with all her heart that he would get the message and leave her alone.
‘Talk about ungrateful! Some women would see what I did just now as chivalrous.’
‘And some women would think you were a pathetic male on an ego trip, making yourself appear superior. “Stay there, darling …” as if I was some dumb-nutted bimbo! Chauvinism is not chivalry, mate.’
‘Oh, so stopping a security guard from hauling you back into a shop in full view of half of Brighton was patronising, was it?’
Of course it wasn’t. But Elsie was tired, embarrassed, soaked to the skin and not likely to give in to the annoying man who still seemed impervious to rain. ‘I’m sorry, I really don’t have time for this.’
‘Time for what? For being told how unreasonable you are?’
Elsie gave a hollow laugh as she skirted round a café A-board placed unwisely in her path. ‘Oh right, I’m unreasonable …’
‘Yes, you are. May I remind you that there was every chance that security guard wouldn’t have let the situation go?’
‘How do you know that? You can’t possibly know that!’
He was matching her pace, step for step, his reddening face pulling closer to hers. ‘It was obvious to anybody! You only had to see the gleam in his eye to know that he intended to make an example of you. It could have involved the police, a magistrates court visit, a fine … a criminal record?’
Halting suddenly, Elsie faced him. ‘OK, enough! Believe it or not, I have more important things to think about today than whether or not I would have ended up with a criminal record if you hadn’t intervened. I’ve said thank you, I’ve paid you back, what more can you possibly want from me?’
Breathing heavily, Torin held up his hands. ‘Nothing. Obviously nothing.’ Then, to Elsie’s surprise, instead of hurling a clever comeback at her, he backed away, turned and disappeared into the crowd.
If she hadn’t seen the look of sincere disappointment in his eyes, Elsie would have just dismissed the whole thing. But the unexpected impact of it sent a whisper of conscience cutting like a scythe through her consternation. Blinking away the raindrops dripping from the edges of her fringe, she stood in the middle of milling shoppers, the events of the past ten minutes replaying over and over in her mind.
The insistent ringing of her mobile brought her sharply back to the present.
‘Hello? Oh hi, Dad. Yes, I have your things. I’ll bring them over after work.’
Taking one last glance up the street, Elsie shook the nagging doubt from her mind.
‘Weirdo,’ she told herself. ‘Clearly a weirdo.’
CHAPTER TWO
Moving on …
By the time Elsie parked her car outside her father’s three-storey townhouse later that day, thick grey clouds had laid siege to Brighton’s skies, emptying their weight of rain on the streets of the seaside city. Despite her best efforts to shield herself from the torrential downpour by holding her handbag above her head as she dashed from the car, she arrived at the purple wood and stained-glass front door soaked once more.
The tinkle of a small wind-chime over the door and heady smell of warming patchouli oil and Nag Champa incense sticks were immediately soothing as she walked into the hallway and headed towards the Indian bead curtain that covered the entrance to the kitchen. It had been many years since she had moved out of this place but it still always felt like home when she returned.
Jim Maynard beamed when Elsie walked into the kitchen. He was out of his work clothes already, his respectable business suit replaced by his favourite Nepal striped patchwork shirt, baggy combat trousers and bright orange Doc Marten boots. Elsie smiled back. She always preferred the sight of her father in his relaxed attire, with his much-beloved gold earring back in his ear: it was a truer version of himself than his well-respected Brighton businessman persona that he had adopted since taking over his father’s classic furniture store business.
‘It’s my favourite youngest daughter!’ he exclaimed, wrapping her up in one of his famous Dad-hugs, which was even more welcome today than usual. ‘Good day?’
Elsie opened a brightly painted enamel tea caddy and popped two ginger and cinnamon teabags into a hand-painted kingfisher-blue teapot, a gift to Jim from his middle daughter Guin when she set up her pottery business in Shoreham-by-Sea four years ago. ‘Annoying day, actually.’ She smiled at her father. ‘But it’s better now I’m here.’
‘I’m glad, darling. I knew there was a reason we needed patchouli oil today. Sit down, take a deep breath and tell your old dad about it.’ Jim took the whistling kettle from the gas stove and made the tea. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, nothing, really. I just had a bit of an ordeal at lunchtime.’
Her father was about to enquire further when the kitchen door opened and a chorus of ‘Shoplifter!’ filled the kitchen, followed by loud shrieks of laughter.
Elsie groaned as her two older sisters piled onto her, shouting, laughing and ruffling her hair. Sometimes being so close to your sisters (and texting them as soon as anything happened in your day) was a bad thing …
‘Our little sister, the petty thief!’ Daisy Maynard laughed, flicking back her perfectly coiffed blonde hair and clapping slender hands at the sight of her sister’s chagrin. ‘I’m so proud!’
‘We were going to get you a swag bag and mask from the fancy dress shop on the way here but Junior decided to play up,’ Guin added, patting her burgeoning belly. ‘You seem to have this one on side already, Els.’
Elsie grinned despite her embarrassment and reached out to stroke her sister’s considerable baby bump. ‘You’ve got taste, kid. Just stick with your Auntie Elsie and you’ll stay relatively sane.’
‘Although she’ll have you signed up to the family crime business before you know it,’ Daisy added as she and Guin descended into hilarity.
‘What’s this about crime?’ Jim looked from one daughter to the others, trying to keep up. After their mother had removed herself from the family unit when all three girls were little. Jim had assumed the role of sole referee of the whirlwind known as the Maynard sisters and was often left bewildered by their endless energy and the breakneck speed of their conversations.
‘Our little sister was almost arrested for shoplifting today,’ Guin said, groaning as she lowered herself carefully onto a chair by the kitchen table. Her blue eyes flashed with mischief as she pulled a hairband from her wrist and wound her wavy blonde hair into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? Goody-Two-Shoes Elsie a criminal mastermind!’
‘It was a misunderstanding,’ Elsie protested. ‘I handled the situation.’
‘Really? You handled it?’ Daisy asked, eyebrows raised.
‘Yes,’ Elsie replied firmly, wishing again that she hadn’t informed them so comprehensively of the event in a string of texts that afternoon. ‘I had a lot on my mind and honestly thought I’d paid. It was obvious in the end that I had made a mistake.’
‘Oh.’ Jim handed out mugs of tea, not really sure how to respond to this revelation. ‘Well, we live and learn, eh?’
Filled with a rush of love for her father, Elsie squeezed his hand as she accepted a mug from him. ‘We do. So you see, Dad, everything’s good now.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Now, I did a bit of baking last night. Don’t suppose I can interest any of you girls in a slice of banana and walnut bread, can I?’
This was met by a chorus of appreciation and, delighted, Jim opened an old Roses tin to serve up his recent culinary triumph. As he and Guin began to chat, Daisy grabbed Elsie’s hand and pulled her into the small hallway at the back of the kitchen.
‘So?’ she demanded, folding her slender arms and giving Elsie a classic Older Sister Stare.
Elsie was having none of it. She had outfaced her eldest sister many times over the years and she wasn’t about to be intimidated by her today. ‘So what?’
‘You know what, Elsie Maynard. Why didn’t you mention the chap?’
Elsie shrugged. ‘Dad didn’t need to know.’
‘How do you figure that? That handsome stranger saved you from being arrested,for heaven’s sake!’
‘Shh! Keep your voice down … And I never said he was handsome.’
Dropping her voice to a harsh whisper, Daisy eyeballed her sister. ‘I beg to differ. Anyway, why are you so het up about this? It’s OK to admit you needed help, you know. It’s no reflection on you. It doesn’t mean you can’t cope or anything …’
Elsie had heard enough. ‘Drop it, Dais! Let’s just … talk about something else for a bit.’
Daisy relented and wrapped an arm around Elsie’s shoulder. ‘Fair enough, lovely. I’m sorry. So, was he fit?’
‘Daisy!’
‘Oh come on, Elsie, humour me!’
‘I suppose he was, in an annoying, waterproof way. I wasn’t looking too closely at the time.’
An indeterminable look passed across Daisy’s face. ‘Good. That’s good.’
Later, when the Maynards were sitting around the dining room table in the large, first-floor living room eating vegetable tagine with tabouleh and pearl couscous (a particular favourite of Jim’s), Elsie decided to announce the decision that she had been distracted by when she inadvertently became a lunchtime shoplifter. It had been on her mind all week, ever since she had decided to finally open the small, chocolate satin-covered box by her bed after eighteen months of waiting. This morning, she had made her decision: the first part of moving on …
‘Right, everyone, I’m glad you’re all here – and sitting down – because I’ve something I want to say.’ She smiled at the apprehensive looks of her nearest and dearest. ‘Don’t panic, it’s good news, I think.’ She took a breath to steady herself. ‘I’ve decided to start dating again.’
‘Oh Els …’ Guin’s face reddened and she burst into tears, much to the amusement of her sisters. Since she had discovered she was pregnant, the normally pragmatic middle Maynard sister had become an emotional wreck, sobbing uncontrollably at everything from songs on her car radio to television adverts for pet food and sofas. Laughing at her own emotional state, she accepted the box of tissues her father always kept close for such occasions and wiped her eyes. ‘Man, I am such a wuss! I hope all this sobbing isn’t going to traumatise my baby. I’m just so – happy for you, honey.’
Jim reached across the table and took Elsie’s hand. ‘My brave girl. And you feel all right about it all?’
Elsie could feel herself shaking, but she knew she was. ‘I’m terrified – I mean I’ve no idea how to go about it, or even how it’s done now – but it feels right.’
‘We can help,’ Daisy said, nodding furiously – a suggestion which slightly alarmed Elsie. Daisy prided herself on being a bit of a matchmaker, even though several of her match-ups for friends had ended in dreadful dates and acrimonious splits. But then, as Elsie reasoned, when you were as effortlessly gorgeous as Daisy Maynard with a successful career and a wealthy property developer boyfriend, what would you really understand about the perils of dating?
‘Promise me one thing, darling: steer clear of those dreadful dating sites,’ Jim interjected, his assertion eliciting shock from his three daughters. ‘No, I’m serious. I signed up for two of them last year and they were most disappointing.’
The unexpected revelation of Jim’s secret online dating history temporarily hijacked the conversation, and Elsie allowed herself to relax a little as the incredulous reaction flowed around her. After this week’s apprehension of telling her family what she was planning, she now felt strangely peaceful. It was the right decision and it was an important one.
I love you because you’re brave and strong
and you always know what to do.
xx
It was the first message in the pile stacked neatly inside the former chocolate box the subject of Number 50 on The List:
50. Read the box messages – all of them.
It had taken Elsie eighteen months to bring herself to open it, the thought of its unread contents strangely comforting. When she made the decision last Monday to fulfil the last-but-one item on The List, it had felt like being reunited with an old friend. And as soon as she read the first message, Elsie knew it was the right time. The message made perfect sense – and instantly she knew what to do.
‘Wow,’ said Cher Pettinger, owner of Sundae & Cher, when Elsie told her the news a week after the shoplifting incident. ‘And you’re sure you’re ready to dive into the shark-infested dating waters again?’
Elsie pulled a face. ‘Well, when you put it like that, how can I resist?’
‘No, no, that’s not what I meant,’ Cher shook her head, the tall ebony beehive atop it shaking wildly. ‘It’s just, you know, when you’ve three divorces under your belt like me the whole dating scene becomes more of a moron-dodging exercise than anything else.’
Elsie smiled at her boss, noting again how at odds her lack of dating success was with the confident forty-something dressed head to toe in vintage Dior. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. How is the latest flame?’
Cher grimaced as she dropped a newly mixed tub of house speciality Apple, Cinnamon and Nutmeg ice cream into the glass-fronted display cabinet. ‘He was looking promising until I realised he still lived with his mother. Forty-two years old and still sleeping in a bedroom with He-Man wallpaper.’
‘Blimey.’
‘Believe it, sister. It’s a jungle out there. But you know me: ever the optimistic adventurer.’
Cher Pettinger’s relationship history read like a cautionary tale on the perils of dating. Married and divorced three times, she had since endured a string of hopeless beaus, from the owner of the local amusement arcade who had a strange penchant for life-sized dolls, and the toyboy estate agent who was convinced that he was being stalked by MI5, to the ageing lothario hotelier who turned out to be a serial bigamist. But Cher was nothing if not committed to her dating cause, gamely braving the ‘jungle of morons’ in pursuit of true love.
Elsie liked her boss immensely, despite Cher’s infamously dry sense of humour, which had earned her a fearsome reputation in North Laine. She was sassy and assured and undaunted by life – and in Elsie she had found a kindred spirit. Together, over the past three years, they had turned the once hippy vegan café in colourful Gardner Street that Cher inherited from her dotty aunt, Lucy ‘Skyflower’ Pettinger, into a retro-themed ice cream café that the great and good of Brighton flocked to, irrespective of the season.
Sundae & Cher was filled with 1950s and 1960s memorabilia, from the gold-framed Elvis and Frankie Valli photographs on the wall behind the green glass counter, to the black and white harlequin tiles on the floor, replica Wurlitzer jukebox, black and white checked tablecloths and red leather and chrome chairs. It had the air of being simultaneously retro and chic, and modern and cool – and Elsie loved to see people’s expressions when they walked in for the first time. Of course, the killer detail was that all the ice cream sold in the café was made onsite, in the basement kitchen with its large ice cream mixing machine and large freezer cabinet. This meant that Sundae & Cher could offer flavours nobody else in Brighton could match, changing them regularly to keep the ever-enthusiastic customers coming back for more. From Toasted Popcorn to Blue Cheese and Walnut, Maple Banana and even a Tomato, Basil and Olive combination, Sundae & Cher’s unique ice cream flavours had become a talking point in the famous seaside town. Add to this the effortlessly relaxed and fun atmosphere and it was easy to see why Sundae & Cher fitted into colourfully bohemian Gardner Street perfectly.
Cher was obsessed with 1950s and 1960s fashion, proudly wearing vintage finds from the retro clothing boutiques that lined the streets of Brighton’s famous shopping district. Her home, too, was a shrine to retro kitsch, her love of which was evident wherever she was.
As such, she looked every inch the part behind the glass counter of Sundae & Cher – as did Elsie in her black short-sleeved blouse with white collar and cuffs, turquoise satin circle skirt and white frilled apron. It was fun to dress up for work and even though the days were long and busy, Elsie adored being part of Cher’s throwback business vision. It was as if Cher’s trademark dynamism was infused into the very fixtures and fittings of the ice cream café – a sense of optimism and fun pervaded everything, something which had proved precious to Elsie during the last eighteen months.
Today, as she scooped colourful balls of handmade ice cream into deep blue sundae glasses, Elsie felt more positive about her decision than ever.
‘So, want me to set you up?’ Cher asked, popping Belgian chocolate-filled wafer sticks into the top of the sundaes. ‘Because I’m sure I know some suitable gents. Not that I’m saying you won’t find anyone under your own steam, you know, but every little helps and that.’
The door opened and a middle-aged man bounded across the harlequin-tiled floor towards them. ‘Morning, lovely ladies!’
‘And here’s one of them now,’ Cher winked. ‘Dennis, my lovely. How’s our favourite morning customer?’
Dennis’ ample cheeks flushed. ‘Always the better for seeing you, m’dear.’
Cher feigned coyness and batted her false eyelashes at him. ‘Such a charmer! So what can I tempt you with today?’
His eyes made a greedy survey of the generous swirling mounds of rainbow-hued ice creams before him (and, arguably, a wider reconnoitre of Cher’s generous chest in the process). ‘Ah, decisions, decisions. I think I will have one of your excellent breakfast pastries, considering the early hour.’
‘Good choice. Anything with that, Dennis?’
Elsie knew the script of this conversation by heart. Every Monday and Thursday morning, at nine o’clock precisely, Dennis Keith would visit Sundae & Cher on his way to the small accountancy office where he worked. His ultimate goal was to have three scoops of ice cream with his breakfast pain au chocolat, but his sense of British propriety and conscience would never allow him to ask for this outright. Instead, a well-practised bartering ensued, after which he could rest easy that he was not being greedy but, in fact, merely accommodating Cher’s culinary suggestion. It wouldn’t do to hurt her feelings by refusing ice cream, would it?
‘I wonder if I might have a scoop of your excellent gelato with my breakfast?’
‘Of course, lovely. Which one would you like?’
Dennis made a grand show of indecision, hopping left to right as he surveyed the selection. ‘Vanilla – no, wait – Mango and Ginger Swirl looks most inviting … But then there’s Chocolate Space Dust … oh, it’s so hard to choose!’
Cher leaned over the counter just low enough to momentarily lure his eyes away from the ice cream. ‘Dennis, you know I’ll be offended if you don’t try all three …’
