The Beach Hut Next Door Read Online Free PDF

left in the water over winter were wedged into the grey sludge. In a few hours the scene would change completely as the harbour filled up again. It was compelling. One of the reasons people were so drawn to Tawcombe. It was a never-ending story.
    She turned along the back of the George and Dragon, which looked out over the sea. In the height of summer, you couldn’t move on the terrace for heaving bodies. Now, it was empty and desolate, the furniture stacked away. She decided she’d go in for a drink and see who was about. She didn’t want to go home yet. She couldn’t think at home. There was always too much going on, the telly thundering and the dogs wanting attention.
    Inside, there were only three customers. One interacting with the fruit machine, one doing the Sun crossword and one sitting at the bar.
    ‘Hey, Chris.’ Jenna perched onto the stool next to his.
    A pair of bloodshot eyes slid round to her, peering out from under a shaggy fringe. His hand was curled around a pint of lager. Jenna knew it would probably be his sixth or seventh, and he wouldn’t stop until gone midnight. He was part of the furniture in the George, although he might move on to another pub further down the pier later if he got bored.
    She liked Chris. Everyone did. But there was nothing anyone could do about the way he was living his life. There was something broken inside him and no one knew what to do about it. It had been terrible to watch, his descent into self-destruction over the past twelve months, but it was starting to become part of the rhythm of Tawcombe; a given. People had stopped commenting and just accepted that was how he was and that he wasn’t going to change.
    Chris gave her one of his sleepy smiles and raised a finger to the barman to get Jenna whatever she wanted to drink. He was infinitely generous. His slate was the biggest in town and he always settled it, every Friday, not seeming to care that he was subsidizing the drinking habits of most of the slackers in Tawcombe. It was easy to take advantage of him, but he didn’t care. ‘What else am I going to spend it on?’ he would ask.
    Jenna got out her purse. ‘I’m good, thanks,’ she told him. She was going to pay her own way. She asked for a hot chocolate. She wanted the comfort of sugar, not alcohol.
    ‘So what’s going on?’ Chris leaned his head in one hand and rested his elbow on the bar, looking at her. He hadn’t shaved, and his hair was wildly overgrown, but he was still compellingly attractive – the boozing hadn’t raddled his fine features and his killer smile; the dark-blue eyes with the black rings round the iris might be bloodshot, but they still drew you in. He was always interested in people and what they were doing. He would help you weave your dream until four o’clock in the morning. He just wasn’t very good at weaving his own.
    Hordes of women had tried to help him. He’d had no shortage of them queuing up at the beginning, thinking they could save the handsome fisherman with the tragic past from himself. But, in the end, none of them could cope with the car crash that was Chris after about seven o’clock in the evening. A shambling, incoherent wreck who slid from charming to obnoxious in the melting of an ice cube; who would get himself mixed up in fights with bellicose out-of-towners who didn’t know not to antagonize him and thought he was an easy target; who would turn over tables and then stumble home, veering from one side of the road to the other like the ball in a pinball machine. If it weren’t for the fact that Chris kept the tills ringing over the winter months, he would be banned from every pub in town.
    Jenna fiddled with a beer mat. ‘Weasel has just shown me the future. I’m trying to get my head round it.’
    ‘Weasel?’ Chris made a face. ‘I don’t want any part of a future with Weasel in it. I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.’
    Weasel was a necessary evil in Tawcombe, but he wasn’t