“I’ve a way to go yet,” he replied. “Whether I’ll have any fingers left by the end of it remains to be seen.”
“Well, give your fingers a break and come in and have some food,” said Annie.
They discussed their game plan as they ate. Annie explained that her next job was to get her half sack of potatoes peeled, cubed, and sprinkled with garlic and rosemary, ready to go into the oven.
“And what about those pumpkin shells under the worktop?” asked John. “Were you thinking of making them into jack-o’-lanterns or are they a statement of minimalism?”
“Now who’s the smart-arse?” asked Annie. “As it happens, I was intending to carve them and have them outside on the promenade, but as you well know, I have been rather busy.”
“Nobody asked you to open a café.”
“Nobody asked me to cater Halloween for an entire village either. But here we are!”
“Here we are, indeed.”
Chapter 53
Checking out the competition?” John asked.
They were seated at the middle table in the warm café, carving pumpkins.
“No. I was checking the time on your watch.”
The corners of John’s mouth twitched as he repressed a smile. Annie looked up then and saw that it was fully dark outside.
“How long before they arrive?” she asked. She was excited and more than a little nervous. What if her Halloween was a letdown?
“We’ve probably got about twenty minutes,” John replied, adding the final additions to an impressive cat arching its back at a ghost rising up out of a cauldron. Shit, Annie thought. That’s really good. It made her scary pumpkin face seem rather ordinary by comparison. “That’s very good,” she told him, though it pained her to say it.
“Thanks,” said John, getting up to wash his hands. “The pumpkin carving was always a big deal with Aunty. I’ve passed the bug on to Celeste. You must have carved a fair few of these over the years with your boys?”
Annie pondered the strangeness of getting to know someone as herself; for so many years she had been defined by her children and her work and her husband. But John didn’t know about Annie the mother or Annie Max’s wife or Annie the chef at the Pomegranate—to him she was just Annie.
“Yes,” she said fondly. “Alex would always lose his temper because he was a perfectionist and wanted to create a perfect piece of pumpkin art, even at four; he’s a graphic designer now, no surprise really—he’s still always striving for design perfection. You’d probably get on well,” she added, eyeing his perfect feline carving.
“And Peter? It is Peter, isn’t it?”
“Peter was always more chilled out. I always felt secretly guilty that he might have had to be that way because Alex was so high-maintenance, but now, I think that was just his personality. While Alex was flinging bits of pumpkin around the kitchen in a fit of artistic rage, Peter would sit obliviously carving out his spooky face, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth; that was his concentration face.”
“And what does he do now?”
“He’s a landscape gardener. He loves the outdoors.”
“He’d probably get on well with Celeste,” said John.
Lord alive! thought Annie, I wouldn’t let Peter within ten feet of Celeste, he’d probably just try and get her into bed. But she smiled and said, “Yes, probably.”
“Right, let’s get this place lit up!” said John, drying his hands on a tea towel and grinning. There was a boyish excitement about him that Annie couldn’t help but smile back at.
Together they went outside—the cold was like a slap against Annie’s skin, the spiky chill finding its way beneath her tea dress and inside her Fair Isle cardigan. John made some final adjustments before darting back inside to flick the switch, and Saltwater Nook lit up with amber ghouls and pale skulls grinning out into the darkness. Annie gasped.
“It looks great!” she called out as she made her way back to him. “I think we should leave it like this permanently.”
“We?” John smiled; one eyebrow rose.
“I,” corrected Annie. “I should leave it up permanently.”
“It’s a bit macabre for Christmas, don’t you think?”
“All right, then. But I’ll leave them up till after bonfire night.”
“That sounds like a plan,” said John.
John switched on the inner Halloween lights, while Annie put tea lights inside the jack-o’-lanterns and set them outside on the patio tables, their spooky carvings glowing out toward the black sea. Annie looked along the promenade and saw lots of little lights bobbing along in the darkness as the procession made its way slowly toward Saltwater Nook. Annie’s heart leaped at the sight of it, and she ran inside.