The Briny Café Read Free

nowadays. No, not her life. You have to be pretty damn dumb to hate life. Or crook in ways she doesn’t want to think about. It’s just that she can’t work out why she finds herself with so very little to show for her fifty-five years.
    There had been a husband once. Tick that box. One of those blue-eyed charmers with an easy way, who loved women. All women. “So why did you marry me?” Ettie had asked after she’d caught him in the pool house with a woman pressed up against the wall with her eyes closed and her skirt hoisted to her waist.
    â€œI love flesh. I really do,” he’d told her matter-of-factly. “If you’re married, they don’t see commitment as an option.”
    â€œSo you can screw your brains out and still come home to a clean house and a hot dinner?”
    â€œYeah,” he said, amazed she’d understood, as though there was nothing obscene about it.
    A year after her divorce, when the marital assets had beendivided and Ettie was marking time in a city flat until she figured out what she wanted to do next, she’d stumbled upon a tiny advert in the back of her local paper: “For Rent: Cosy house in picturesque offshore location.” She didn’t fully understand the concept of offshore but it sounded exotic. When she called the agent and learned it meant living on an island, she packed her bags – and her paints – and rocked up at Cook’s Basin, ready for a new start in life.
    She’d been so young and full of dreams. First, she planned to ditch her old good wife persona and morph into a wild young hippie in streaming rainbow-coloured clothes, with hair down to her waist, who only wore shoes when she travelled to town. Second, she’d sit in her Island eyrie and paint inspired pictures that would be snapped up by art collectors around the world and eventually lead to wealth and fame. Or a decent living at least. Well, she got the hippie part down pat, anyway.
    God, was it really thirty years ago now? She reaches for her glass. It’s empty.
    Damp creeps through her pyjamas, her backside begins to ache with cold. One more glass to warm up before going to bed, she thinks.
    The moon breaks through the clouds at the same moment that she realises it is very late and she is seriously drunk. Old and drunk. Does it get much uglier? She leans on the rail and stares into darkness. Moonlight bounces off treetops. Way down in the bay, yachts hang still and silent on their moorings. The night air has turned sweet. Stars are out. It is utterly beautiful.

    Sam follows the rowboat to a jetty next to Triangle Wharf on Cutter Island where it’s been tied so close to shore it will be stranded at low tide. So it’s a blow-in, he thinks, knowing that no self-respecting local would risk a rock through the hull of such a sweet little timber boat.
    He swings away from shore. The clouds have scurried off. The sky is clear and laced with stars. Silver light plays on the water like tinsel. It feels as if the open waterway belongs to him alone and the corners of his mouth lift in a smile of contentment. Give him the sea every time, he thinks, where there are no boundaries to hold a man back.
    The less he has to do with terra firma, the better. More like terreur fermé (according to the beautiful Frenchwoman with liquid brown eyes who’d worked on his accent for two years). The terror of being closed in, yeah. It said it all. When his feet hit the ground, he feels nailed in place, like some funny bugger has poured cement in his workboots.
    Ten minutes later, he nuzzles the Mary Kay into the seawall in Oyster Bay with water under the hull to spare. Despite the time – just after 3 a.m. – the house is ablaze with lights. He toys with the idea of knocking on the door to introduce himself and maybe bot a cup of coffee. What’s her name again? He fumbles on the dash, searching for the order form. Kate Jackson . He reconsiders. If