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November, two years later
Lily passed a string of coloured Christmas lights through her hands and wondered whether, if she looped it several times, she could use it to gag her sister.
Zinnia, supposedly helping Lily decorate The Three Fishes, had so far done no more than fidget with a fistful of silver tinsel and give Lily earache. ‘We’re your family!’ Zinnia declared, shoving her fingers through her chestnut hair. ‘What you’re doing could hurt Patsie and Roma.’
Lily climbed on a stool and began to feed the string of lights through hooks above the bar. ‘They understand it’s my decision. You know this, Zin. Let’s not press “repeat” on the conversation.’
Zinnia bulldozed on. ‘Aren’t we enough for you? You and I grew up sharing a bedroom! We’re sisters—’
‘And you’re the loveliest sister in the world.’ Lily hoped popping in a positive note would distract Zinnia. She jumped down, scraped her stool towards the next few hooks, gave Zinnia a hug then clambered up again. ‘How about twisting that tinsel around the ivy swags along the mantelpiece?’
‘Lily!’ Zinnia tossed the tinsel onto the polished wooden bar. ‘I know you! I’m where you come from. I understand how it feels when people think we’re weird because we come from a single-sex family.’
‘I know,’ Lily agreed gently. ‘But there’s more to my life than that. It’s the part you don’t share that’s the problem, isn’t it?’ Plus the fact that a couple of years ago Lily had visited the village to find her half-brother and had ended up applying for a job in his pub, finding somewhere to live in Middledip – and here she still was. Zinnia was particularly upset by that.
Zinnia didn’t offer a direct reply to the question but her voice softened. ‘You’ve completed your mission and met him. You should either tell him the truth or leave the poor guy in peace.’
By ‘he’ Zinnia meant Harrison Tubb of course, almost universally known as Tubb from the pub, and her stomach clenched at the idea of him discovering the truth before Lily was ready. If she ever was. She left the Christmas lights dangling and slid off the stool to stroke Zinnia’s arm. ‘I’ve completed half my mission and I’ll complete the other half next month,’ she pointed out, with a little leap of excitement that there was a half-brother yet to meet. ‘I understand that you’re concerned I’m somehow trying to leave our family – which I’m not – but my relationship with our mums isn’t affected by where I’m living or who I mix with. If my relationship with you is suffering then it’s because you’re letting it.’
Zinnia tried another tack. ‘You’re worth so much more than working in a crappy village pub.’
‘It’s not crappy.’ Lily moved her stool along again.
‘In the two years since you came back from Spain you’ve been wasting your time in this village. You don’t seem to want to be near your family—’ Zinnia halted, as if realising she might be painting herself into a corner. ‘We’re your real family, Lily,’ she clarified.
‘Families have more than one branch.’ Lily hooked up the end of the string and got down to judge whether it was hanging evenly.
Zinnia’s dark eyes saddened. ‘Just get telling him over with so it’s not hanging over us all. I feel like telling him myself—’
‘That would affect our relationship. It’s up to me when, and if, I think the time’s right for me to spill the beans.’ Lily had to fight to keep anxiety from her voice, newly aware that Zinnia, through calling at the pub to see Lily, knew Tubb and could actually have blabbed Lily’s secret at any time. ‘You don’t agree with the way I’m doing things, but this is my business.’ Not yours hung unspoken in the air.
Before Zinnia could argue further, a calm voice came from behind the bar. ‘Sorry to interrupt.’
Both Lily and Zinnia swung around. Lily forced a laugh. ‘You made me jump, Isaac. This is my sister, Zinnia. She’s helping me with the Christmas decorations. Zin, this is Isaac O’Brien the relief manager Tubb appointed while he was away.’
Isaac, his eyes as brown as apple seeds, hair several shades darker, a single small gold ring in his ear, reached across the wooden countertop to shake Zinnia’s hand. His eyes returned to Lily. ‘I didn’t realise you were coming in this afternoon to do this.’
Lily flushed. She’d learned enough about Isaac in the past fortnight to know he was politely asking why she hadn’t cleared it with him. He’d come from a trendy venue where he’d managed dozens of staff and probably brought in an outside company to put up Christmas decorations. ‘Janice asked me if I’d do it as she’s in Switzerland. They’re normally up at the beginning of November and it’s the seventh already … I assumed she or Tubb had communicated with you.’ Janice had a pretty free hand at the village pub and becoming an item with Tubb last Christmas had only elevated her status.
‘We open in less than an hour,’ he pointed out.
‘Right.’ Lily covered up a flash of alarm that so much of the interval between closing after lunch and reopening in the evening had been eaten up. ‘We only have little trees on the bar rather than a great big thing so the rest won’t take long.’
‘Thanks.’ He gave them a smile then turned and headed in the direction of what was usually referred to as ‘the back’, the area of the ground floor that encompassed a place to hang coats, the cleaning supplies cupboard and the mixers store, along with doors into the beer cellar, kitchen, car park, upstairs accommodation and staff loos. There was also a desk in an alcove where Isaac’s laptop often rested.
‘Wow,’ Zinnia breathed, eyebrows waggling as the sound of his footsteps died away. ‘He’s easy on the eye. Tubb will never look quite the same.’
Lily pictured Tubb’s wiggle of hair at the front and his smile that turned down instead of up. ‘Yes, Isaac’s hot,’ she agreed in a low voice as she dragged one of the small Christmas trees out of its box. She now had less than sixty minutes to get the bar to a presentable state and if Isaac’s appearance had diverted Zinnia from her crusade to reshape Lily’s life it might be a good thing. ‘His last job was in a hipster lounge in Peterborough. He’s reserved, but he has a way of getting people to do things.’
Zinnia gave an exaggerated wink. ‘He could get me to do all kinds of things—’
‘Shh!’ Lily hissed, hoping devoutly that Isaac wouldn’t overhear. ‘That’s my boss! And what about George? Remember him? Your boyfriend?’
Grinning, her earlier mood obviously forgotten, Zinnia shrugged. ‘I was just … noticing.’
Lily grabbed Zinnia’s jacket and bundled it into her arms. ‘Come on, I’ll show you out of the back door. I’m not sure Isaac appreciated you being here out of hours.’
‘I haven’t done the tinsel,’ Zinnia protested as Lily opened the counter flap and waved her through.
‘I’ll do it.’
Zinnia paused for one last time. ‘How’s Tubb doing, by the way? Heart failure’s no joke.’
Lily softened. ‘OK, Janice says, but still a worry. Getting lots of rest, like the doctor ordered, omitting alcohol and fat and stuff from his diet.’ Tubb had shocked the village last summer with breathless turns and alarming swelling to his legs and stomach. Janice had got him into hospital and he’d come out with a daily regime of drugs.
For a while they’d managed with him in the background and Janice at the helm but after he’d received a stern warning from the doctor that he needed a complete break from the seventy-hour weeks and heavy lifting involved in running a pub, he’d agreed to take sick leave. The pregnancy of Janice’s daughter-in-law in Switzerland had run into trouble about the same time that Isaac was brought in, so the couple flew off to move into Max’s spare room, Janice to help look after the other two children in the family and Tubb to rest for a few months. Lily had had a year and a half to get to know and like Tubb by then, to value the man who grumbled and griped a bit but loved his pub and the village. She’d seen the little acts of kindness behind his gruff exterior and been delighted for him when he’d found love with Janice. She missed him but phones and computers made it easy to keep in touch. She missed cheerful, unflappable Janice too.
Zinnia hugged Lily goodbye and allowed herself to be ushered off the premises, then Lily returned to the decorations. Swiftly, she hung baubles on the mini trees.
Isaac reappeared. ‘Vita should have been in by now but she’s just rung. Her husband’s been held up coming home to take over childcare so I’ll bottle up.’ Isaac began rearranging mixers as he restocked the shelves. ‘Kind of you – and your sister – to take on the decorations. I should have asked what usually happened.’
Lily paused in her clearing up, arms full of boxes and a roll of tape like a bracelet around her wrist. ‘Last year I did it with Janice.’
He gave one of his slow nods, dark eyes hard to read. ‘Should I pay you additional hours? What would Mr Tubb expect?’
Lily felt laughter bubbling. ‘He’s not big on paying additional hours,’ she admitted frankly. ‘A few things happen around here on a voluntary basis over the festive season, like the decorations, Christmas lunch and running the raffle. He pitches in himself so nobody minds.’
He raked his fingers through his hair and it fell back into the same gleaming layers. ‘But you have your own business too, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m an exhibition designer. But I like Christmas so putting up the trees and stuff was fun.’
‘OK, thanks.’ With customers and staff alike Isaac was warm, articulate and cheerful but his resting expression was often serious with hints of thoughtfulness. It was, as Zinnia had indicated, hot.
‘Um,’ she said. ‘Nobody calls him Mr Tubb, by the way. He’s just Tubb from the pub. Or you can call him Harrison, like Janice does. A few of the older customers call him Harry.’ When he merely produced another nod Lily edged through the counter flap to dump the boxes then wheeled the vacuum cleaner out of its nook ready to slurp up the threads of tinsel from the carpet. Seven minutes to opening time. Just right.
The bar was almost ready for the six o’clock session and Isaac could hear the chefs clattering in the kitchen as Lily returned from stowing the vacuum cleaner. He was still getting to know the staff but already had Lily down as one of the easiest to deal with: punctual, reliable and with a sunny nature, though that hadn’t stopped her standing up for herself with her sister, judging from the snatches of spirited discussion he’d overheard.
He made a mental note to find a way of acknowledging her giving up her time unasked. Or unasked by him, he corrected himself. Apparently Janice, who he didn’t know well as she’d been preparing to leave for Switzerland when he’d arrived, had felt comfortable casually suggesting Lily give up her time. Almost two weeks he’d been here but he felt like the new boy at school putting on a show of fitting in, covering up how hard he was trying to process the ways his life had changed in a few short months.
He went to the safe to gather up an armload of coin bags as Vita rushed in, apologising breathlessly as she dragged off her coat. He reassured her and made an adjustment to her hours worked, then went into the bar he considered dated with its open fire and dark wheelback chairs, signed into the till and began to count in the float as he had on innumerable other occasions in other jobs, latterly at Juno Lounge.
‘The Juno’, where he’d been licensee and leaseholder, had been an edge-of-the-city pub in Peterborough that hadn’t closed on weekday afternoons as The Three Fishes did. Opening for breakfast, it had gone through until closing time with extensions at weekends for the busy function room. As it had once been a chapel he’d kept some of its original pews, adding sofas, an eclectic collection of dining chairs and oversized glass light fittings hanging from the Victorian cast-iron beams with their ornate tracery. Its style was quirky, semi-industrial chic.
Had been, he reminded himself, feeling the familiar swell of unhappiness that, through pure bad luck, Juno Lounge was no more. The furnishings and equipment had been auctioned off. The red-brick building was ornamented with the brewery’s ‘lease available’ sign and awaiting a new leaseholder when it could be reopened in a few months’ time to bring it back to life with chattering diners and laughing drinkers as it had been …
… before it failed.
It was no comfort that he hadn’t been at fault. Once a venue had no customers, it had no value. Juno Lounge had limped then staggered and, as a leaseholder, Isaac’s work had been cut out to wind it up fast enough to hang on to some of the money he’d made in the preceding six years.
He hadn’t hung on to Hayley but he wasn’t sure why he’d expected it. Hayley wasn’t into failure. Kindly but unequivocally she’d ended their relationship and he’d made no attempt to change her mind. When you were in trouble you saw people’s true colours and he hadn’t cared for hers.
She’d actually been the one to hear through the grapevine that a fill-in manager was needed at The Three Fishes and, apart from irritation that it had been her who found the temporary job for him and that it was at such a brass-and-beams pub, Isaac had been filled with relief. It was good to have money coming in and refreshing to be back in the countryside. His dad had been a tenant farmer and Isaac had loved his childhood spent on the fenland farm half an hour north of here between Cambridge and Spalding.
‘What do you think?’ The voice jolted him from his thoughts and back into the cosily traditional bar of The Three Fishes, where, he realised, Lily Cortez was on the other side of the counter smiling, palms upturned in a gesture that welcomed him to admire the fruits of her labour.
He closed the till and joined her to gaze at the strings of coloured lanterns looped jauntily along the beam above the bar, reflecting in every glass in the rack below. Tinsel spiralled around the thick wooden posts and the bar-top Christmas trees twinkled with a rainbow of baubles and lights. Santa ornaments dragged their toy sacks along wooden beams towards silver stars and golden bells and a thick swag of greenery twisted with tinsel festooned the mantelpiece above the open fire.
‘Great,’ he said. Last year, Juno Lounge had been artistically decorated with silver twigs and golden wire with red origami stars but that had been his place. This wasn’t. When you went in somewhere as relief manager you kept everything as the publican wanted. The homely decorations exactly suited The Three Fishes. He gave her a smile. ‘Very jolly and welcoming. Thanks for all your efforts.’ Her eyes were a clear blue, he noticed, like the reflection of the sky in a lake he’d once camped beside with Hayley in New Zealand – if you could count living in an upscale motorhome camping. Hayley liked the outdoor life only if she could also look after her nails, skin and hair.
Lily’s smile flashed, making those eyes sparkle. ‘It was fun.’
‘Thank your sister too,’ he remembered to tack on, though the sister had done little but give Lily a hard time about something, from what he’d heard. The alarm on his phone pinged to inform him it was six o’clock and he sent one last glance around the bar. ‘Perfect timing. I’ll open the doors.’
Lily and Vita were on duty with Isaac that evening. They worked together well, chatting to punters, drawing drinks, tapping orders into the now tinsel-bedecked till, smiling, moving around each other easily. Vita, large glasses glinting in the lights and brown hair in a poker-straight ponytail, had a few years on Lily who, he knew from her staff file, was thirty-six.
The bar was doing OK for a Thursday night, partly due to the darts team having a home match. Stools surrounded the dartboard area and the spectators cheered, groaned and exchanged banter. Isaac was returning to the bar after a foray to the beer cellar to check temperatures when he heard a male voice exclaim, ‘You gay girls get everywhere!’ followed by a cackle of laughter.
Turning, Isaac saw a red-faced late-thirties guy smirking at Lily, his over-bright eyes unfocused. Then, when he copped a freezing glance in return, he laughed. ‘C’mon, darlin’, it’s just a bit of fun.’
Coolly, Lily finished pulling a pint of bitter. ‘What’s funny? Lesbians in general? Or that I might be one?’
The red-faced man’s grin faded. ‘Don’t hop on your high horse. It’s only banter.’ He pronounced ‘banter’ as ‘ban-urr’.
Lily added the pint to the three already ranged on the bar before the man. ‘That’s £15.44, please.’ Unsmiling, she took his twenty-pound note.
Isaac watched the man ogling the curves beneath Lily’s black polo shirt as she tapped at the till. He could step in and suggest to the punter that he go easy on the bar staff or find somewhere else to drink but his rule was to allow his team to handle irksome customers themselves first. Unpleasant behaviour had occurred frequently at Juno Lounge but it was the first he’d witnessed at The Three Fishes.
The cluster around the dartboard cheered a good score as Lily dropped the change in the man’s hand as if reluctant to touch him. She turned to the next customer with a contrastingly warm smile. ‘Hiya, Gabe! How’s the menagerie?’
Gabe was an older man, easily recognisable by his silver ponytail and the smile that creased his face. Isaac already knew him as a regular with a smallholding that apparently provided a home for old and stray animals. ‘Eating me out of house and home,’ he complained with a broad grin that hinted he wasn’t really complaining. ‘Have you heard how Tubb is?’ Just about the whole village was worried about Tubb and shook their heads over how odd it was not to see him behind the bar at The Three Fishes.
While Lily chatted to him about Tubb apparently enjoying his sojourn in Switzerland, the red-faced customer gurned in her direction and – clutching the four pints – stumped back towards the zoo around the dartboard. Isaac watched as he said something to his cronies, leered at Lily and burst into a huge guffaw. His friends joined in the mirth.
Apart from a tinge of extra colour, Lily did nothing to acknowledge the guy acting like a dick.
Isaac decided to cover the dining area himself so neither Lily nor Vita had to run the gauntlet past the increasingly rowdy darts players. The red-faced guy soon became puce, his raucous laughter ringing around the room and grating on other customers, judging by how many were casting the oaf disenchanted looks before finishing up their drinks and pulling on their coats.
The next time the man broached the bar again he was positively weaving and the darts players were almost the only customers. Vita went to serve him but he waved her away. ‘I want Little Miss Lezzy to pull it for me.’ He burst into lewd, suggestive laughter.
Isaac, who’d been clearing plates, turned and headed for the bar. Lily, however, stepped fearlessly up to the man, only the bar counter between them. ‘I’m afraid I can’t serve you further alcohol this evening.’ She held his gaze for a moment, then turned away.
The man reached between the beer taps and grasped her arm. ‘Oy! Don’ you friggin’ walk away from me—’
Isaac was there in two strides but Lily had already broken the man’s grip. ‘You need to leave, sir,’ she snapped.
The man sneered. ‘I’ll leave when I’m good an’ ready.’
Lily seemed effortlessly composed. ‘My option is to call the police, sir. Two seconds to decide. One—’
‘Stop bein’ so up yourself.’ Red-faced man was looking decidedly ugly.
‘Two.’ Lily reached for the phone on the wall.
Standing behind the drunk and watching Lily handle it, Isaac saw the man’s friends pulling on their coats and scowling. ‘C’mon,’ one of them called. ‘Not worth it. Crappy little pub in the arse-end of nowhere. They’re welcome to it.’
Lily put the phone to her ear and her finger on the first button.
The red-faced guy shoved abruptly away from the bar. ‘Your beer’s piss anyway.’
The men clattered chairs over and harrumphed a few more insults but they did blunder out of the front door. In the silence left behind, Lily replaced the phone.
It was ten past ten and the bar was empty. Fantastic. At least the men had put plenty into the till before their behaviour cleared the place. ‘Vita, perhaps you could start collecting glasses?’ Isaac suggested, to give him a quiet moment with Lily. As Vita moved off, he turned to Lily, intending to check she was OK.
‘Sorry,’ she jumped in before he could speak. ‘I should have handled that without antagonising him. I let him get to me because I hate it when a woman turns down a date and the man says she must therefore be gay, especially when “gay” sounds like an insult.’ Her blue eyes were stormy. ‘It always touches me on the raw because Zinnia and I are from the kind of family with two mums and no dads. I thought I’d tell you because I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s easiest all round when people know.’ She tilted her head and waited for him to react.
Chapter Two (#ucbc7bb72-630b-5f53-950c-3e667a567a89)
It was obvious Lily was at least half-expecting something negative from him. Isaac wondered how many people had hurt her on this subject over the years. ‘The whiff of homophobia is always unacceptable and I can see why the awkward customer wound you up particularly.’ He smiled. What she’d outlined wasn’t precisely a situation he’d encountered before but he didn’t see why he should treat this differently to any other personal topic a member of staff had chosen to bring up. ‘Are you OK? I thought you dealt with the offensive customer well.’
She shrugged. ‘He was nothing compared to drunken stags in Barcelona. My ex-husband’s family ran a bar just off Las Ramblas. Bar Barcelona was a big place, firmly on the map so far as stags and hens were concerned. It got rowdy and I learned to ignore most bad behaviour … but tonight I let that guy get to me.’
‘He was offensive,’ he repeated. ‘Your husband was Spanish?’ It explained her surname of Cortez.
‘Yes. We met when he was in the UK gaining some experience of hotels because his family was thinking about opening one. He tried to live here and pined for Spain, so I tried to live there.’ She gave a tiny quirk to her eyebrows. ‘I think I could have lived in a different part of Spain, or in a different way. But I never settled into the family business.’
‘Because your main job’s as a …’ He paused, groping for the title she’d given him before but unable to get past ‘exhibitionist’, which was a distracting thought and definitely not what she’d told him.
‘An exhibition designer,’ she completed for him. ‘I design stands for things like trade shows – functionality of the space, branding, display, that kind of stuff. But that wasn’t seen as more important than working in Bar Barcelona. Sergio’s brother Nando and his wife seemed happy to muck in and my wanting to pursue my own career caused friction.’
Isaac stepped to one side to allow Vita through with a stack of glasses. ‘And here you are working in a village pub so I guess you like bar work.’
She hesitated, glancing around at the brass and beams and the winking Christmas decorations. ‘It’s more that it’s where I seem to end up.’ As if that reminded her that she was supposed to be working she gave him a brief smile and swung off to the dining area to collect salt and pepper cellars to refill.
Vita bustled past for more glasses and soon as many closing jobs had been accomplished as practicable without them actually closing. Isaac sighed at the sight of the empty bar. ‘It’s not going to take three of us to finish up. One of you can take an early night.’
‘Vita can,’ Lily said, looking up from sorting sauce sachets into caddies. ‘Her kids get up at the break of dawn.’
Vita couldn’t hide a flash of relief though she said fairly, ‘Or we could flip a coin.’
Lily waved the idea away. ‘We can even things up another time.’
The other woman needed no further cajoling. She vanished into the back and soon came the sound of the outside door closing. Isaac checked the time. Ten thirty. He could easily have sent Lily off as well but this wasn’t his pub and he wanted to improve his feel for things. ‘Is it often as quiet as this?’
‘Never in all the time I’ve worked here.’ Lily rolled her eyes. ‘It was that obnoxious guy and his obnoxious mates. We almost never have aggro in The Three Fishes and it sent everyone home.’
He puffed out his cheeks in relief. ‘Good. I’d hate Mr Tubb to think I’m running his business into the ground.’ Though he wasn’t serious, saying the words out loud made his stomach give an unexpected lurch.
She stepped closer, frowning. ‘We must have taken enough in the early part of the evening to make up for the last hour being quiet.’
