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
Pat looked out to sea again. ‘We’ve decided that we’re going to buy the Crovie Inn. All of us, I mean.’
Anna blinked. ‘What?’
‘We had some savings put by, Frank and me, and he would have thought it a fine idea. Obviously the offer’s low-ball, taking into account the current state of the village, and it’s dependent on a structural survey.’ Pat turned to Anna, her grey eyes tired but lit by a brightness that hadn’t been there since Frank’s death. ‘I’ve invited the rest of the Usual Suspects to be part owners in it, too, and they’ve all agreed. Phil and Marie, mainly – they’re the ones with the most to invest, besides me. But Terry and Susan, Rhona, David and Glynn, Old Robbie – when I suggested the idea, they all wanted to be part of it. And together, we can afford it.’
Anna was utterly stunned. ‘But… Pat, the rest of the village – the rental house – won’t you need any savings you have to deal with all of that?’
Pat shook her head. ‘I’ve seen the news footage, love. The rental house is done with. The most I can hope to get out of it is some insurance to pay off the last of what we owed on the place, and that some other party will want to take it on for a rebuild. Terry and Susan will need somewhere to live while they assess how to deal with their place, and possibly permanently if it can’t be saved. So will I, for the time being – I can’t live in the Weaver’s Nook right now, and I can’t impose on Old Robbie forever. If it turns out we can all go back home eventually – which is what we’re all hoping – we’ll run the Inn as a B&B. We can do it up ourselves while we live there, bit by bit. Together.’
Anna was silent, processing this information. She looked out at the bay, at the gentle blue-grey-green waves rolling into shore. When it was like this it was hard to imagine it being any other way – hard to conceive of the violence of the storm that had shattered their lives and yet also bound them all together even more closely than before.
‘There’ll be room for you and the baby,’ Pat said quietly. ‘If you decided you wanted to stay. And there’s the downstairs, of course.’
‘The downstairs?’
Pat smiled, but she was looking out to sea again. ‘The kitchen, love. The dining room. There’s a whole restaurant sitting there, waiting for someone to make use of it, just as Phil’s been saying since the night he first met you.’
Anna couldn’t speak.