Meet Me at the Lighthouse: This summer’s best laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

Mum sighed. “So would I, Jessie.”

“Did you know her a long time, Mummy?” I asked. She always encouraged us to ask any question we liked, and gave a frank answer whenever she could.

Mum shook her head. “This is the first time we ever met. I used to know her husband.”

“Was he your friend?”

“Sort of. He’s your dad.”

“Oh.” I pondered this new information for a second. “Hey, can I have a Jaffa Cake?”

And that was that.

“But this isn’t like that, Bobs,” present-day Jess reminded me. “Ross is getting divorced.”

“So was James. That’s what the lying git told Mum, anyway.” I shook my head. “I know it’s not the same, but… well, I think the two of us know better than anyone that you don’t mess about with married men. People get hurt.”

“He’s only married on paper though. If he’s here and she’s in Sheffield, it has to be over, doesn’t it?”

“Still, it’s not right. You wouldn’t.”

“No. I’d want to wait till it was all signed and sealed, I think.” She examined me carefully. “You’re just friends then, are you?”

“We’re… partners.”

“And this lighthouse malarkey is nothing to do with you fancying him?”

“I do like his company,” I confessed. “He’s a good laugh, easy to be with. But that’s all there can be, at least until he’s actually divorced.”

She sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Better to wait till it’s simple.”

I summoned a smile. “Well, let’s cheer up. Go on, chuck us those Maltesers and I’ll play your manky doctor game.”

“All right. So. Parsnip.”

“Bum?”

“Correct. Butternut squash…?”

***

It was a spectre-grey Thursday afternoon when I met Ross outside his Uncle Charlie’s bungalow on the outskirts of town, ready to sign the deeds that would make the lighthouse ours.

The ivy-covered house looked the same as always. It never did change much except for an occasional addition to Charlie’s collection of lecherous-looking garden gnomes on the front lawn, the ones he’d been using for years to wind up his property-value-conscious neighbours.

I’d been a pretty frequent visitor once upon a time. When Jess and I were small our grandad, Charlie’s long-time drinking buddy, used to bring us round to be plied with Madeira cake and pineapple squash by Charlie’s wife Annie while the two men watched football. But Annie and Grandad were gone now, and Charlie was all on his own.

He and Annie had never had kids, so, at 83, he was left at the mercy of his brother’s children – a niece and nephew. That was Ross’s dad Keith, well-known tight bastard and all-round mardy arse. I wasn’t quite sure how the same genes had managed to produce someone like Ross.

“Ivy only grows for the wicked,” Ross muttered as we stood in front of the curling tendrils twining themselves around Charlie’s front door.

“Sorry?”

He smiled. “Oh, nothing. Something my aunty used to say to wind the old boy up when he was working out in the garden, a silly superstition. Just came back to me.”

I examined him with concern. He seemed vacant, purple rings bruising his eyes.

“You ok?”

“Just tired,” he said, flushing slightly. “Up late on a design job.”

“Hi, Uncle Charlie,” Ross said when the door eventually opened, pumping the old man’s hand heartily. “Good to see you, you old bugger.”

“You too, lad. Come on in.” Charlie ushered us into the dimly lit house that for some reason always made me think of soup – something in the musty smell – and closed the door behind us.

Charlie looked the same as ever – which was to say, a bit like one of his own gnomes. Short, stocky and weatherbeaten, with the large arms and broad chest that came from 40-plus years hauling things around on boats back when he was a trawlerman, decked out as always in jeans and silk smoking jacket like a smart-cas Hugh Hefner. His expression was the same combination of mischief, grumpiness and wry humour.

“How’ve you been, Roberta?” he asked in his pipe-roughened voice. “Your mam keeping well?”

“She’s fine, Charlie.” I gave him a hug. “Our Jess says hi too.”

“Well, you’re good girls. So.” He jerked a thumb at Ross. “This young idiot tells me you got him blotto and talked him into opening a pub in my Annie’s lighthouse.”

“Er… yeah, something like that. That ok by you?”

He shrugged. “No business of mine, not once you’ve signed on the dotted line. Come through, kids.”

“Charlie, you sure you want to do this?” I asked when Ross and I were seated on his uncle’s beige sofa with him in an armchair opposite. The lighthouse paperwork was all laid out on the coffee table, waiting for the solicitor Charlie had booked to witness the sale. “I mean, you haven’t got a few marbles missing or anything?”

“Only the same handful that’ve been rolling around upstairs for the last 20 years, flower,” he said with a shrug.

“You could get a good price for it, you know.”

“I could. And do what with the money?”

“I don’t know, get yourself new carpet slippers or something; you’re old. Or buy another pervy gnome, scare the kids on their way to school.”

“You’re a cheeky lass.” He grinned, a wide smile showing off his few remaining teeth. “Knew I liked you for something other than being Bertie Hannigan’s granddaughter.”

“She’s right though, Uncle Charlie,” Ross said. “We don’t want to take it off you unless you’re absolutely sure you want rid at that price.”

“Look, son, you and the rest of the family must’ve worked out by now I’m a miserable, cantankerous old bastard whose only joy in my old age is causing trouble for you all.”

“It has been noted, yeah.”

“Good, then you’ll know it’s easiest to shut up and let me have my way. I can’t be arsed faffing with estate agents and the like, it might well finish me off. You kids just sign the deeds, take the bloody lighthouse and bugger off.” He leaned over the coffee table for his pipe and started stuffing it with fresh tobacco from a tin on the arm of his chair.

I frowned. “There isn’t any more to this, is there?”