Summer at 23 the Strand: A gorgeously feel-good holiday read!

Oh! Another surprise because there were full-length windows on three sides, the ceiling was very high with Raffles-style fans, and the whole place was filled with light. Outside there was a small balcony along two sides. Tables and chairs were set up outside but Martha decided it wasn’t quite warm enough to sit out, although a few people were.

She chose a table for two, by the window facing the sea. The restaurant was built over the road, closed for the summer to traffic, and with the tide high it was as though she was sitting in the prow of a ship. She hadn’t expected that – it was almost like being on a cruise in the Mediterranean if she allowed her imagination to run away with her. She picked up the menu. Lots to choose from. Was Hugh going to offer to pay or should she suggest they go Dutch. If they went Dutch it would be easier to say, ‘Well, that was nice, but I don’t think we have a future together.’

Red snapper or crab? Quinoa salad or pesto pasta?

‘Penny for them,’ Hugh said.

‘They might cost a little bit more than that.’ Martha laughed, looking up into his smiling face.

Hugh laid a hand of greeting, briefly, on Martha’s shoulder and sat down opposite. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘I’m glad to be here and, seeing as I had my first ever run this morning after I left you, I’m rather hungry.’

‘Really? The first? Ever?’

‘Yep. Although I’ve been guilty of being a bit of a gym bunny in my time, and daily dance lessons when I was at stage school.’

Talking about this now, it was starting to feel as though it was all in the past for her. Was it? Could it be?

‘Did you like it? The run, I mean.’

‘I’ll let you know tomorrow what opinion my calves have on that,’ she said, laughing.

‘It gets easier,’ Hugh said. ‘As most things do.’

And the smile on his face seemed to freeze, and although he was looking at Martha it was as though he was also looking inside himself.

‘Do you want to talk about Harris before we eat? You said earlier you used to come here with him so it can’t be easy being here with someone who isn’t your brother. We could just order a drink and talk? I’m not going to die of hunger if we postpone lunch for a while.’

‘I didn’t have you down as a mind-reader,’ Hugh said. ‘But yes, I was thinking about Harris. I imagined for a moment that he was going to come marching in, tell me it was my turn to buy the drinks – he always said that, even though I bought far more rounds than he ever did.’

‘And you wish you could be buying that round now?’

A waiter arrived at their table. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked.

‘Just a drink for the moment for me,’ Martha said. ‘We’ll eat later. Okay with that, Hugh?’

‘Fine, fine,’ Hugh said. ‘I’ll have a pint of local ale. And you, Martha?’

‘Prosecco if you have it,’ Martha said.

‘We sure do. Won’t be a moment.’

‘That was inordinately kind,’ Hugh said. ‘To realise I was struggling a bit there. I seemed to have lost all power of thought and speech for a second.’

‘We all need a bit of help and understanding sometimes,’ Martha said. ‘Tell me about Harris.’

‘It’ll be easier if I show you.’ He took out his phone from his jeans pocket. ‘I’ve got hundreds on here. I’ll spare you the baby brother photos.’ He looked up from scrolling through and smiled at Martha.

‘I can probably live without seeing those,’ she said, doing her utmost to lighten what was, to Hugh, a difficult moment. ‘What did he do?’

‘Sports teacher. With a bit of English on the side. Rugby was his game, although he was pretty good at just about everything he tried – tennis, cricket, water sports of every description. Here. That’s a good one.’

Hugh handed the phone to Martha, and a good-looking chap, with hair fairer than Hugh’s and a big, rugby player’s frame, smiled out at her. Despite the physical differences, she could see the likeness between the brothers.

‘How did he die?’ Martha asked, handing back the phone.

‘Leukaemia,’ Hugh said. ‘He responded to treatment at first and we all held our breath with hope, but then it just stopped working for him and he shrunk before our eyes. It was swift in the end.’

The waiter came back with their drinks then.

‘Can you come back in about half an hour, mate?’ Hugh said.

‘Sure can. Enjoy your drinks.’

‘Nice bloke,’ Hugh said. ‘But I think it’s plainer than day that we’re not enjoying much at the moment.’

‘It can’t be easy for you,’ Martha said. ‘But I’m not sad I’m here. How long ago did Harris die?’

‘Just over two years. It’s still a bit raw. It’s why I try to go to as many of those fêtes as I can and help them raise a bit of money so others can get the care Harris did. Although what I’m going to do with yet another teddy bear won on the tombola I don’t know!’

‘Offload it to a charity shop?’ She was feeling guilty now that she hadn’t gone along with Hugh, but there was no point saying so. Hugh just needed to talk. About himself. About Harris.

‘I could. But a stupid part of me thinks Harris wants me to have the stupid things. They’re tactile. Look… sorry, Martha, I know I’m being less than a thrilling lunch companion. I can be a right miserable sod at times. It’s why I’ve been known to drink myself stupid more often than was good for my liver, although I’m over that bit now. It’s why I turned into a bit of a recluse, turned down commissions. And it’s why my long-term relationship broke down. Violins time, eh?’

Martha had a feeling that, with this remark, he was subtly letting her know he was unattached at the moment.

‘What was she called? Your long-term girlfriend? If you don’t mind telling me?’

‘No. I don’t mind. Abby. Abigail. Losing her was like losing Harris all over again but time has healed me more quickly there. And I realise now she could have been more understanding. Harris had only been gone three months when she walked out. And so, here I am, trying to put all the pieces of my life back together, along with my broken leg. Doing my best to live again. But I’m being a right bloke, aren’t I, talking about me all the time?’

‘I did ask you to,’ Martha said. ‘And besides, you must know a fair bit about me if you’ve ever watched TV or been to the cinema. Or read the newspapers.’

‘Yeah, that must suck at times, too, having every bit of your private life splashed across the media.’

‘It does. But I don’t have to take it any more.’ The restaurant was beginning to fill up now and people had come to sit at tables either side of Martha and Hugh. She couldn’t risk anyone overhearing what she was saying. ‘Shall we order now?’

‘Good idea,’ Hugh said.

‘And then we can think, perhaps, of something we can do that will put our respective lives back on track.’

Running, it seemed, was the activity that suited them both. Hugh ran on the beach at least three times a day, while Martha preferred to run along the promenade, but only twice a day. If they saw one another in the distance they waved, but Hugh hadn’t issued another invite to lunch, or dinner. And Martha wasn’t entirely sure she wanted another invite because she still wasn’t entirely convinced Hugh wouldn’t suddenly send photos of her to some agency. She’d told her parents she was staying with a friend until the hullabaloo had died down, and that she was fine, and would call them soon. Friends texted her and left voicemails but she didn’t reply to them either, having told anyone who needed to know the same story she’d told her parents. Sometimes she saw Hugh on the beach, bending to photograph something lying in the sand, or focusing on something out at sea. A couple of times she’d got that feeling a person gets when someone is looking at them and she’d turned to look up at the headland above the chalets, and Hugh had been there. There was a wonderfully panoramic view of the bay from up there and he’d probably been taking landscape, or seascape, shots. He’d obviously seen her, because he’d waved to her as she turned.

But here was Hugh now, walking towards Martha’s chalet where she was sitting on the deck, hat on to shield the low light from her eyes, reading in the late-afternoon sunshine.

He had a bottle of wine in one hand, and two glasses hanging from the fingers of the other.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Hugh said, walking up the steps of Number 23. ‘But my motto these days is never to drink alone, and I fancied a drink, so I hope I can persuade you to join me.’