Finding Home by Kate Field (read book .txt) 📗

enjoy her nights in the pub more than the shop work. The chef gave her a steaming bowl of tomato soup and a couple of slices of bread, and Mim took them through to the bar. It was fairly empty at this time, and she found a quiet table near the toilets from where she could look around at her new workplace.

The Boat was an old-fashioned pub which had apparently escaped any urge to modernise it. It felt friendlier inside than it had looked from the outside. The floor was stone-flagged and a defined groove had been worn from the front door to the bar. A huge fire blazed in a hearth on one side of the pub. Brass lights hung on the walls, which were otherwise covered in old photos of boats and fishermen, and with pieces of equipment that Mim guessed came from ships although she had no idea what they were. A banquette covered in red velvet ran along the main stretches of wall, and an assortment of mismatched tables and chairs filled the centre of the pub. Looking round, Mim wondered what sort of customers came here. It was the only pub in the village, as far as she had seen, and it certainly had a cosy warmth to it, but she couldn’t imagine that many young people would come in. The three customers in at the moment couldn’t have seen sixty for some time, but that suited Mim. Most of the visitors to Gordon’s hotel had been middle-aged and upwards. She was going to feel right at home here.

As soon as seven o’clock came, Mim joined Howie behind the bar and he quickly showed her where everything was. Thursday night was traditionally quiet, he explained, except for the book-club ladies who were due in half an hour; they met here every week, although they opened more bottles of wine than books. Friday and Saturday night were always packed, with even more customers visiting over the holiday season.

Mim was pleased to see a familiar face when the book club arrived. Heather was one of the dozen or so ladies who invaded the pub in a cloud of perfume and noise. She waved at Mim and approached the bar while her companions occupied the table that had been reserved for them by the fire.

‘Hello,’ Heather said, unwinding her scarf. ‘I didn’t expect to see you in here. When did you start?’

‘Tonight is my first shift. I work in the deli by day and the pub by night.’

‘It’s a shame you’re working. I was going to ask if you wanted to join the book club. It would help you to get to know more people.’

‘Thanks, but I’m not much of a reader,’ Mim said.

‘Really?’ Heather looked shocked. ‘You mustn’t have found the right book yet, that’s all. You need to keep trying.’

‘I’ve tried enough. The books were either too grim or too happy. I’ve seen enough grim, and I don’t believe in happily-ever-after.’

‘Well we’ll have to see what we can do about that. Have you met my brother Bobby yet?’

Mim laughed. She couldn’t accuse Heather of subtlety – although if her suspicions about Lia were correct, Heather wasn’t very observant.

‘I have,’ she said. ‘He seems nice. But please don’t even think about matchmaking. I’m not into all that love and romance stuff. It’s the last thing I’m looking for.’

Heather gave a resigned shrug and joined her friends. Mim was kept busy for the next hour or so serving their drinks and food, and dealing with the other customers who gradually wandered in over the course of the evening. By nine o’clock she thought the bar had reached its peak and Howie had just suggested she take a fifteen minute break when the door opened and another cluster of seven or eight people hurried in out of the cold, Corin, Bobby, and Dickens amongst them. They dragged a couple of tables together and settled down on the opposite side of the pub from the book club.

What were the chances? Almost half of Mim’s acquaintances in the village seemed to have descended on the pub tonight. She stared at Corin’s back as he shrugged off his coat and scarf and threw them on the banquette. Was it a coincidence? He knew she had started work here tonight. Was he checking up on her? His reputation was on the line, after all, as he had vouched for her with Janet.

He turned before she could avert her gaze and smiled at her. She looked away quickly and shuffled the beer mats along the bar, wishing she had taken that break when she’d had the chance.

‘How has your day been?’ Corin materialised in front of her at the bar. ‘I’m delighted to see that you survived your first day with Janet. Are you the best of friends now?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ Mim responded to his laughing smile with a reluctant grin. ‘But I haven’t been sacked yet so I’m taking that as a successful day.’

‘Very successful. Her record is thirty minutes, but that wasn’t so much a sacking as a mutual parting of the ways.’ He laughed. ‘It was Olly. He took it into his head to obtain work experience to enhance his university application. I don’t think he made it beyond the rule that he had to cover his carefully curated outfit with an apron.’

Corin’s easy laugh was infectious and it was impossible not to join in.

‘That was never going to be an issue for me,’ Mim said. ‘The apron was probably the most expensive thing I was wearing.’

Corin looked her up and down – or as much as was visible over the bar.

‘You look perfectly charming to me.’

‘What can I get you?’ Mim asked. ‘I assume you’re here to get the drinks, not to make cheesy comments.’

He reeled off a list of orders and Mim lined up the glasses on a tray.

‘And one for yourself,’ Corin said, as he held out his bank card to pay. Mim picked up the