‘Doesn’t it just,’ I say, placing bowls of roast potatoes and green beans in the middle of the table.
He opens a bottle of wine and grabs glasses, setting them down alongside the knives and forks.
‘Looks like Cleo’s Bistro is open for business,’ he says. ‘Want me to carve?’
We busy ourselves; the clink of plates as we load them up, the satisfying glug of wine into glasses, the scrape of our chairs when we sit.
‘Yorkshire pudding?’ I say, adding one to my plate. My mum makes the best Yorkshire pudding in the world, a skill she’s ensured all of her children have mastered to a satisfactory degree too. Mack looks sceptical.
‘You’ve never tried it?’ I say. ‘Oh, Mack Sullivan, where have you been?’
He places one at the very edge of his plate as if he’s hoping it might fall on the floor.
‘Tastes kind of like a pancake?’ he offers, after his first bite.
‘What do you think?’
He drinks a little wine, nodding slowly. ‘I think it’s … good,’ he says, going in again to double-check.
‘Good.’ I flush with quiet pride. ‘I’m not sure I could spend time under the same roof as someone who said no to my mum’s Yorkshire pudding.’
He pauses, then adds another one to his plate.
‘Actually, I need to talk to you about that,’ I say, following my own clumsy lead-in. ‘About you and me spending time under the same roof, I mean.’
Neither of us have mentioned the fact that the boat comes in a couple of days because I honestly don’t think either of us knows what to say. ‘I spoke to my editor today and she made it pretty clear that I have to stay here until my birthday, at the very least. It’d be unprofessional to bail on our readers.’
He doesn’t meet my eye as he eats. ‘Remind me when that is?’
‘October twenty-fourth,’ I say. ‘Ten days away.’
‘Okay.’
I pick up my wine. ‘Okay?’
He lays his cutlery down. ‘You know I’m not going anywhere. This chalk-line thing –’ he nods towards it – ‘it’s working well. I can handle it if you can.’
It’s not just that Ali has told me I should stay. My own intuition is telling me that Salvation is the right place for me just now, and isn’t part of my mission to try to trust myself more, to believe in my gut feelings and go with them?
‘Okay, then,’ I say, a little disconcerted to have the obstacle between us so easily taken away. I swallow a mouthful of wine, trying to work out how I feel. Relieved, I think? In spite of Mack or because of him? A question that sidles into the very back of my head and hides itself away.
‘Thirty’s only a big thing if you make it one,’ Mack tells me.
It’s a clear, crisp night, so we’ve taken what’s left of the wine outside to finish on the front steps, blankets slung around our shoulders. Nights like this are an absolute gift here. The stars are all up there doing their thing; I’ve spent countless hours trying to capture them in my memory bank for when I’m back in starless London. It isn’t always starless in London, of course, but here, it’s different. It’s effortless, an astral theatre of light against endless dark. It reminds me of a concert when everyone holds up their mobiles, millions of pinprick torches. The low, full moon throws a mellow silver glow across the rippled water out near the horizon; I can hear the waves rushing over the pebbles down on the shore.
I think about what Mack just said and I get that he’s trying to be helpful.
‘I wasn’t planning to make a thing of it, really,’ I say, reflective. ‘It’s just …’ I break off, rolling the stem of my glass. Most people would interrupt at this point, guess at what I’m about to say and offer a platitude. Or suggest I’m worried about being single, mention that I’ve a good few childbearing years left in me, if I decide I want kids. Mack doesn’t interrupt; he just sits alongside me, watching the beach, and waits until I’m ready. I appreciate his silence and drink a little more wine because some things are harder to say than others.
‘My dad didn’t make it to thirty. He was twenty-nine when he died.’
Beside me, Mack sighs heavily and places his wine glass down. ‘Oh man, Cleo. That’s so young.’
I nod, dully aware that this is the deeply embedded crux of everything going on inside me, the driver behind my need for change, and exposing it hurts like pulling a scab. ‘I don’t have any precious memories of him to look back on and I don’t know the sound of his voice to conjure him in my head when I need his advice,’ I say. ‘He was the great big love of my mum’s life. They were so young when they met, little more than kids really, but it was the real deal. Tom was born just before Mum’s twenty-first birthday, my sisters not long after.’ I can’t fathom three babies in three years at any age, let alone back in my early twenties when I could barely take care of myself, never mind anyone else. ‘They just hit the love jackpot early, I guess. Mum always calls it her magical decade. And then she lost him, twenty-eight and on her own with four kids.’ I have boundless admiration for my mum. I was just turned one when it happened, all of us too young to appreciate the burden she carried. ‘Dad was killed in an accident on the way to work. Left as usual one Wednesday morning with the lunch Mum had made for him in his bag and never came home again. I know it probably sounds crazy, but being thirty, being older than my dad, kind of breaks my heart.’