The Beach Hut Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

popular.
    ‘He’s got an old ice-cream van for sale,’ Jenna told him. ‘He wants thirteen hundred quid for it. I was going to buy it and do it up. And sell ice cream. Obviously.’
    ‘Cool.’ Chris grinned at his lame attempt at a joke.
    ‘Ha ha.’ She started tearing the beer mat up, peeling the paper off in little strips. ‘There’s no way I can get the money. He wants it by the weekend. I just went to the bank and they pretty much laughed at me.’
    Her hot chocolate arrived. She spooned the cream off the top. Chris ordered another pint. She frowned.
    ‘You’ve only just finished that one.’
    Chris gave her a look. ‘Don’t start.’
    She shrugged. ‘Listen, it’s none of my business. But you know what? I know you’ve been through it, but you’re luckier than a lot of people in this town.’
    Before it happened, Chris had been totally together. A party animal, yes, but not a car crash. He and his brother Vince were the most eligible boys in town, working hard and playing hard. And then tragedy had struck.
    Jenna could remember the day clearly. It was the sort of day that brought a community together. She could remember the feeling it gave her: that horrible realization that fate could intervene just whenever it liked; a realization that drove an icy skewer of fear into your heart. Although there were people who said that it had been reckless for them to take the boat out when the forecast was so bad. That it wasn’t fate; it was foolhardiness.
    The Maskells had wanted to get the lobster pots in before the weather broke. If they left them out in the storms, the lines might break and get lost. And the conditions were set to be bad for nearly a week, so it was anyone’s guess when they would be able to get out again. They couldn’t afford to lose a catch.
    The storm had taken them unawares while they were out at sea, hurling itself in hours earlier than forecast. Huge swells had appeared from nowhere, combined with lashing rain and high winds. They were pulling the lines in when Vince and Chris’s dad was washed overboard. One moment he was there; the next he had been sucked into the sea, a tiny little figure tossed out into the maelstrom. By the time the lifeboat got out to them it was too late. The brothers couldn’t have done anything without risking their own lives. There was no point in going in after him.
    Jenna remembered everyone waiting at the harbour for the boat to be brought back in. Hunched figures waiting in the relentless downpour for news, hands shoved in pockets, heads bowed. Even now, she could feel them all willing the Maskells home to safety, a combination of prayer from the believers and hope from the non, but, it seemed, they didn’t have the power.
    The boys came back but their dad never did.
    As the news filtered through, people avoided each other’s eyes on the harbour front, shuffling their way into the pub to drink a farewell to John Maskell. The worst fear of a seaside town had been realized. They had lost one of their own. And then, over the next few months, they watched Chris drown himself, not in the sea but in drink, floundering helplessly from one day to the next, no one seemingly able to reach out a hand and help him, not his brother Vince or anyone else. It was as much of a waste as John Maskell’s death, only more painful to watch. Until it became normal, until everyone accepted that was just the way Chris was going to be, forever after.
    And here he was, lagered up at two o’clock in the afternoon, deadbeat and defiant, because at this time of year they didn’t take the boat out much, so there was nothing else for him to do.
    ‘Lucky?’ he said to Jenna, his eyes narrowed. ‘How so?’ He picked up the pint the barman had poured him and drank defiantly.
    Jenna sensed she had strayed into dangerous territory.
    ‘I just don’t know why you drink the way you do.’
    ‘I drink because it’s the only thing that stops me feeling guilty.’
    ‘But it was an