Summer at Blue Sands Cove

2. Temptations

2

Temptations

It didn’t bode well that Gavin suggested a neutral location for their evening meeting, a park which happened to be a couple of miles closer to his place than to hers. She got off the bus, walked up the street and through the park gate, only to be confronted with Gavin standing by a fountain in his running gear, already warming up.

‘Hi,’ Grace said, approaching him. ‘Should I have come prepared? I dressed for something a little more casual.’

Gavin shook his head. ‘You look fine.’

Fine. Just fine. It was what her mother would have said before a job interview.

He was all thick shoulders, lyrca running trousers, and an expensive Mont Bell running jacket, his breath puffing out in little gasps as he pumped his legs up and down.

‘Did you want me to hold your stopwatch or something?’ Grace asked, the sinking feeling that had left her unable to eat anything after lunch making way for something just a little more hopeful, that her sports-mad new boyfriend wanted something other than what she had been suspecting all day. Perhaps he was planning to run around the world or something. Only five people had supposedly done it, and while it might mean they were apart for most of the next two years, at least it was something she could—in a superficial way, at least—support.

‘I wanted to talk. About us.’

Nope. It was heading in the same direction that her other relationships had gone.

‘Look, just get it over with. I like you, Gavin, but it’s only been a couple of months. I can handle it. You don’t think we fit well enough. That’s okay.’

It wouldn’t matter that it was the fourth guy in three years who would duck out before the three-month mark had passed. Grace would get over it; she would drink and message-Joan her way through it, like she had the previous three. The world wouldn’t end, even if it felt like it might for a while.

Gavin gave her a pained smile. ‘You’re kind, Grace,’ he said. ‘And there’s a lot to like about you. I mean it. It’s just … there are a couple of things.’

Which I don’t need to hear.

‘Like what?’

Gavin grimaced again and Grace hoped he would save her the humiliation of a list. But when he cleared his throat, she knew it was coming. Perhaps that was why he had worn his running gear: so he could get away.

‘You get up too late,’ he said. ‘I mean, you’re not going to get anywhere in life getting up at seven, are you? The day’s half done. And you have no ambition. You’re what, thirty-five and you work in a café.’

‘I’m twenty-eight.’

Gavin sighed. ‘Well, you look thirty-five. Okay, maybe that’s harsh. Thirty-two at least. It must be the way you do your hair. I mean, can’t you go somewhere a little more upmarket?’

Instead of ripping off one of her shoes and hitting him around the head with it, Grace just felt an easy sense of resignation. Best to let him have his moment and be done with it.

‘I have a mortgage to pay,’ she said. ‘I don’t live with my parents, Gavin.’

He scowled. ‘That was cheap. It’s temporary.’

‘You’re calling me cheap?’

He obviously misunderstood. ‘Look, I appreciate that you always contribute to dinner when we go out, picking up the odd.’

‘I always pay half! It’s you who “picks up the odd”.’

Gavin ignored her. ‘It’s very modern of you. But your money doesn’t impress me.’

Grace sighed. ‘You’d have low standards if it did.’

‘I’m just not a materialistic guy.’

Grace could have picked five labels off his current attire which suggested otherwise, but she was too tired to prolong this t*****e any longer than necessary.

‘Goodbye, Gavin. It was nice, for a while.’

She started to turn away, but he danced around her like some kind of exercise fairy, doing little sidesteps, puffing out his breath in short, sharp gasps.

‘But the worst is the snoring,’ he said. ‘Honestly, you should have someone check that. It gave me night terrors. I thought I’d got over my childhood traumas, but since I met you, the nightmares I’ve had … they’ve been strong. I’ll say that. Strong.’

‘I’m sorry that your childhood sucked.’

Gavin shook his head. ‘I opened the car door and fell out on my parents’ drive when I was just five years old,’ he said. ‘A lorry was passing on the other side of the street, and the sound left me crying for a week. So my mother said. And your snoring brought that sound back. I’m going to a therapist tomorrow. I don’t like to say this, but I think you could have ruined my life.’

Grace smiled. ‘Nothing that a bit of exercise won’t fix.’

‘Are you trying to be funny? Is that all you thought of our relationship? Like it was a big joke? Or did you just get together with me out of some s******c need to make a person suffer?’

‘I—’

‘If that’s your attitude, then I think I’m better off without you.’

Grace just stared. Gavin’s cheeks puffed out like a frog about to croak. She wondered if he was hyperventilating.

‘Do you want me to pat you on the back? Will it help?’

Gavin shook his head. ‘Words fail me,’ he said. ‘Was this a set up from the start?’

Quite unsure how being dumped had twisted around to her ruining Gavin’s life, Grace shrugged. ‘I think I’ll be going home now,’ she said.

Before Gavin could respond, she started walking away.

‘I’ve changed spinning classes!’ he shouted. ‘If I see you again I’ll have flashbacks!’

Grace sighed, pulled her bag up over her shoulder, and ran to catch a bus which was just pulling into the bus stop outside the park gates.

It didn’t matter where it was going.

Chipping Sodbury, so it turned out.

Grace bought a kebab in a Turkish takeaway across the street from the little bus station, and sat on the one chair by the window to eat while she waited for a return bus, her phone beside her.

Prickprickprickprick, was Joan’s first message. You just dodged a bullet.

Another one, Grace answered.

We’ve got a lovely sunset tonight. You should visit. Can’t you jack in your job? I can find hours for you at the café.

Grace paused before replying. Her teens had been good years, working alongside Joan in the Blue Sands Café, owned by Joan’s parents, but she was twenty-eight now and didn’t need a backwards step. Plus, it would only be for the summer. At least her job now—bankers, be damned—was year-round, even if a future in the catering industry was hardly turning out like she had hoped.

Her phone buzzed again; Joan had sent a picture. Grace opened it up and smiled: a miserable scene of rain teeming down the window with the vague outline of a sandy cove in the background.

You lied.

Just like the tourist brochures. Doesn’t it make you feel at home? Remember all those summers we spent drinking cider in the chalets because it rained so hard even the sea got annoyed? Come on, Graceful. Give me one more. It’s so boring here without you.

A throwback summer. It was very tempting.

I’ll think about it, she messaged back.

Come on. And with all those spinning classes, you can finally take on the Hill of Suffering. You could be the first official local to cycle faster than walking pace. Come on, Graceful. You know you want to.

I’ll think about it, Grace messaged again, then closed her messaging app before Joan had enough time to convince her.

And anyway, the bus was coming. If she was lucky, she’d still be back in time for spinning class. Gavin be damned. He was nothing on Mike Anderson anyway.