Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
‘He hasn’t,’ Anna assured her. ‘Not really. I know my worth now. I know I could run my own kitchen. If I could do it at the Inn here, I would. But I can’t.’
‘I can’t believe Geoff Rowcliffe is the only person who would offer you a job if you went looking for one,’ Cathy said. ‘You’ve got a reputation now. A body of work that has nothing to do with him. That has to count for something. Doesn’t it?’
‘I’d hope so, yeah. It’s worth asking the question. There could be somewhere not too far away from here looking for a chef.’
‘Right,’ said Cathy. ‘If you could stay local and that would make it easier to keep living in the Fishergirl’s Luck, wouldn’t it?’
Anna lay back amid the cushions, staring up at her quirky bookshelves overhead, full of her own collection of colourful cookbooks. ‘It would.’
‘So promise me you’ll forget about Geoff’s offer.’
‘It’s already forgotten. I promise.’
‘All right,’ Cathy sighed, and then changed the subject. ‘Now tell me about Robert MacKenzie. How did he take the news?’
‘He was absolutely fine. To be honest, it’s kind of a relief that it came out the way it did. I… didn’t really know how to tell him myself.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
Anna shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It felt – awkward, somehow.’
‘Are you falling for him?’
Her heart leapt into her throat. Anna swallowed, hard. ‘No! Of course I’m not. He’s a friend, that’s all. A good friend.’
‘Would you miss him?’ her friend asked. ‘If you had to leave Crovie now?’
‘I’d miss everyone here,’ Anna told her, thinking of Robert standing on her doorstep in the wind. ‘Everyone.’
Selkie lass,
Sometimes I wonder if you’re still here. Whether all you did was go back to where you always belonged, back to the sea, but no further than that. Do you watch us from the waves, me and the wee lad? Was it you who took her up there on that cliff, got her to risk herself to climb down it to our boy? Or is that just who she is?
Do you laugh at the tangles we tie ourselves into?
The tangle I’ve tied myself into.
The wee lad seems fine. He’s still as much into dolphins as he ever was. There’s no dampening that spirit, thank the fishes. It’s me that feels… I don’t know.
I don’t know what I feel.