Bye Bye Love

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got some,’ Jonathan assured her, jingling some change in his pocket.

‘But I—’

‘Look, I’ll get them this time and you can next, all right?’

She hesitated a moment, then agreed. He couldn’t believe how smoothly it was going. In the past when he’d tried to talk to girls, they’d either go all giggly and silly or look at him as if he were some lower form of life. But Scarlett talked to him like…well, not quite like a friend, because there was more to it than that. He didn’t know what, couldn’t put a name to it, but it was there all the same.

Walking with her along the sea front, Jonathan felt ten feet tall. They could all see him with this pretty girl, all the people he knew. He glowed as the funfair attendants called out to him, the girl behind the ice cream stand waved, the elderly Italian lady winding pink candyfloss round a stick blew him a kiss. When they got to the chip shop, he was greeted like a long lost son by the big motherly woman behind the till whom he always called Aunty Marge, although she wasn’t any sort of relation.

‘Ah, here’s our Jonno! Talk about return of the wanderer. You been avoiding us or something? Look at you, you’re fading away. You need a good feed-up, you do. Douggie!’ she called to the equally large man sweating over one of the fryers. ‘Nice big bag of chips for our Jonno. And stick a pickled egg in while you’re about it.’

Jonathan grinned. ‘Thanks, Aunty Marge. And my friend Scarlett here’d like some chips as well.’

Scarlett stood up well to being scrutinised.

‘Scarlett, eh? And where’ve you sprung from?’

‘My dad’s just started work at the Trafalgar.’

‘Oh, so you’re going to be living down here, are you? Going to be one of us. What do you think of it so far?’

Scarlett shrugged. ‘It’s all right,’ she said.

Jonathan winced inwardly. Aunty Marge was not going to take kindly to such a lukewarm reaction.

‘All right? All right? You’ve come to live in London’s playground and that’s all you can say for it? Shame on you! You’ve not been trying hard enough, Jonno. Go and show her all the sights. Give her a ride on the speedway.’

‘I’m going to, Aunty Marge,’ he assured her.

‘Right.’ Aunty Marge gave Scarlett one more up-and-down look. ‘Pretty girl. Needs more flesh on her bones, though. Better stick an egg in hers as well, Douggie.’

To the annoyance of the queue of hungry customers, Jonathan and Scarlett’s bags were handed over ahead of everyone else’s. They shook on lots of salt and vinegar, Jonathan paid and they both promised to come back soon.

Outside seemed pleasantly cool after the steaming heat and overwhelming smell of boiling fat in the chip shop. He watched as Scarlett tried a chip. It was so fresh out of the fryer that she could hardly hold it. Crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside, Aunty Marge’s chips practically melted in the mouth.

‘Cor, lovely!’ Scarlett mumbled, breathing air in to stop her mouth from burning.

‘Best chips on the Golden Mile,’ Jonathan claimed. ‘Come on.’

He led the way across the wide road, past seafood stalls and ice cream kiosks to lean on the rails overlooking the beach. He loved this view, loved it in the winter when it was empty and windswept, and in a different way now in the summer, when it was crowded with day-trippers. Families were packed together on the pebbly sand, the mothers and fathers sitting in deckchairs with their knitting and their newspapers, the children digging sandcastles, paddling and filling pails of water. At the water’s edge, a big open sailing boat was waiting for passengers to come aboard for a ride out on the sea. Beyond that, cockle boats bobbed at their moorings and, as a backdrop to it all, marching out into the sea was the pier.

‘So where do you come from?’ Jonathan asked in between chips.

‘A village the other side of Rochford.’

‘And what brought you here?’

‘My dad needed a job.’

‘It’s just the two of you, is it?’

‘Yes.’

It was obvious that she was uncomfortable, that she didn’t want to talk about it. He recalled what his mother had said about the new cellar man. ‘Bit of a loser, if you ask me. But what can you do? It’s high season and we need someone.’ He tried a different tack.

‘It was nice, your village?’

‘Oh, yes—’ Scarlett started to tell him about it, a faraway look on her face. It all sounded pretty ordinary to him. She went on to describe the pub where she had lived, the Red Lion.

‘It was such a nice little place.’ She sighed, licking her finger and dabbing up the last pieces of crispy potato round the bottom of the bag. ‘It had lovely old beams, and lots of horse brasses, and benches against the wall outside. My mum and me kept it all spick and span. And in the summer I always kept a nice jug of wild flowers on the bar. Just to make it look homely, like. And at Christmas we really went to town, holly and ivy and paper chains and everything. It looked really lovely. And people used to cycle out from Rochford, and even from Southend just to have a pint with us. My dad kept the best pint for miles around. Everybody said so.’

‘Sounds wonderful,’ Jonathan said politely. ‘A proper village pub. Very different from the Trafalgar.’

He gazed out to sea, to where huge cargo ships were making their way up the Thames to the London Docks, deliberately avoiding looking at Scarlett as he asked the obvious question.

‘So why did you move here?’

‘Oh…well…you know…like you said, it’s different. A new start.’

She tried to make out it was a good thing, but it didn’t quite sound convincing.

‘Right,’ Jonathan said. He knew just what was going on. He gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Parents, eh? What can you do with them? They say it’s all for the best and they’ve got your best interests at heart and all that sort of rot, but when it comes down to it, they never listen to you.’

Scarlett hesitated, then said, ‘Too true.’

In front of them, the beach was beginning to clear. Mums were packing up picnic baskets and cleaning sand off tired children’s feet, dads were folding away the deckchairs and searching for lost buckets and balls. Jonathan glanced at his wrist, realised he wasn’t wearing a watch and stretched across to take Scarlett’s arm, turned it slightly and looked at the time. The living warmth of her arm beneath his hand sent a hot thrill through him.

‘Thanks,’ he said, as casually as he could. ‘I left mine at home. No good wearing one on the boat, it might get ruined in the water. It’s gone half past six; shall we go back and get something proper to eat? The chips made a nice amuse bouche but I’m dying for a proper meal.’

He could have kicked himself. It sounded so pretentious.

‘Amuse bouche?’ Scarlett questioned, her forehead creasing in thought. ‘Mouth amusement?’

Jonathan laughed with relief. She hadn’t thought he was trying to get one over on her.

‘Well done. That’s more than most people know. It’s a French restaurant term. It means a little twiddly tasty bit before the real starter, or in between courses. Something to keep the appetite interested before the next main event.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Scarlett said airily.

Jonathan screwed up his chip paper and lobbed it into the nearest litter bin.

‘Come on, the kitchen’ll be all ours now.’

As they made their way back through the raucous crowds and close-packed heat of the Golden Mile, he tried to decide just where to take her. What was she going to think if they stayed in the staff kitchen? It was going to look really unfriendly, as if he thought she wasn’t good enough to be invited upstairs. But his mother was so adamant about not letting staff into their private quarters. Not that Scarlett was staff, of course, but that was stretching the point a bit. He tried to assess the odds against his mother coming in and finding them there. It was high season, and it was Friday evening, the second busiest night of the week. She should be run off her feet in the bar all night. But if she was to pop up for something…no, it just wasn’t worth the risk.

By the time they arrived at the dark rear of the Trafalgar, Jonathan had made his mind up. He led the way to the staff kitchen, which looked out over the yard.

‘I’ll just run upstairs and get some stuff,’ he said. ‘You won’t have had time to do any shopping, will you, what with moving and all that?’