Christmas at the Beach Cafe(15)

I confided in Amber about my worries, but she didn’t seem to take them seriously. ‘Ed? He’s mad about you, don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘Not every bloke is as evil as David.’ When I tried to moan to her about Jake, she couldn’t see the problem there either, as he’d always been nothing but charming to her, the creep. ‘Maybe you misunderstood,’ she said doubtfully after my rant. ‘He seems perfectly sweet to me, I can’t imagine him being rude to anyone.’

Sweet? Ha. I knew what I’d heard, and I hadn’t misunderstood anything. He might have pulled the wool over Amber’s eyes but he certainly wasn’t fooling me.

Still, silver linings and all that: while Jake and Amber were here, I might as well make the most of them, I decided. The next morning, therefore, saw me suggesting quite forcefully that Ed and Jake might like to go surfing. ‘You could make a day of it,’ I said. ‘Go to Trebarwith, take the wetsuits and a flask of soup . . .’

‘Sounds good,’ Amber said with a yawn. Her phone rang just then for the hundredth time and I snatched it up and switched it off.

‘Not you,’ I told her. ‘You’re staying here with me.’

As soon as I’d shooed the men out of the door, I told her my plan for Ed’s Christmas present. I might not be able to give him his favourite clifftop view wrapped up in red shiny paper, but I could give him a beautiful photo of it. Twelve beautiful photos, in fact, of all the things he liked most in the world. ‘I’m going to turn them into a calendar for him,’ I said. ‘ “A Year at the Beach Café.” What do you think?’

‘I think it’s a gorgeous idea,’ she replied. ‘Perfect!’

‘You don’t think giving him a home-made present is . . . lame?’ I asked, unable to rid my mind of Jake’s scornful face.

‘Of course not! It’s much nicer. More personal. More loving-girlfriend-ish.’

I still had my doubts. ‘I bet Melissa always gave him really flash presents,’ I said.

‘Yeah, right before she squirrelled away loads of their restaurant money to her secret lover and nearly got Ed sent to prison on a false assault charge,’ Amber reminded me tartly. ‘ Like he’s ever going to forgive her for that. Look, just forget Melissa, all right? She’s long gone.’

Jake obviously didn’t think so, I thought glumly, but decided not to harp on about it any more. Stuff Jake. Screw Melissa. We had a calendar to make, and it had to be epic.

Armed with seriously strong coffee, I opened the laptop, trying to banish my fears. ‘Right. Let’s do this.’

Amber and I sat on the sofa together and began sifting through photos in search of the best ones. The difficult part would be narrowing them down to just twelve, I soon realized. I’d been snap-happy ever since I’d moved down here, and had masses of shots to choose from: Ed surfing, looking as wild and free and happy as it was possible to look; him laughing open-mouthed with Florence as he flipped burgers at our end-of-summer beach barbecue; fireworks over the bay on Bonfire Night, bright sparkles against the black sky with the smudgy shape of the cliffs and the pale beach just visible below; a richly coloured sunset, the sky streaked cerise and apricot; a snap I’d taken without Ed realizing, of him crouched down with an arm around Lola the dog, both looking at one another as if in the middle of a very earnest discussion . . .

‘These are all lovely,’ Amber said, smiling as she scrolled through the pictures. ‘This one is perfect for a Valentine-y February image, look.’ She showed me one of Ed and I holding hands and beaming as we walked along the beach together, completely unaware of the photograph being taken.

‘Oh, Rachel took that,’ I told her. ‘She emailed me a load of images when she got back to Australia.’ I gazed at the picture, feeling nostalgic. ‘That was about a week after Ed and I got together.’

‘No wonder your hair’s so tangled,’ Amber teased. ‘You’d probably just had a kneetrembler in a beach hut.’

I swatted her with my notepad. ‘We’re not all dirty slappers like you,’ I told her primly, even though she actually wasn’t far off the truth. ‘Keep your mind on the job.’

‘A s the chef said to the – all right, all right, just kidding!’

It didn’t take us long at all to pull the calendar together once we got started. ‘The only thing that’s missing is a great Christmassy photo for December,’ I mused.

‘I could take one of you in front of the Christmas tree,’ Amber suggested with a wicked grin. ‘You’ve seen the film Calendar Girls, right? We could have you posing with a couple of artfully arranged mince pies.’ She gave a loud wolf-whistle. ‘Fruity!’