A Fresh Start on Crumcarey (Crumcarey Island #5)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

MAGGIE

‘ J ust one more bite,’ Maggie wheedled, as though she was trying to convince a toddler to eat her breakfast.

It wasn’t a stroppy two-year-old she was having to persuade to scoff the slightly stale piece of toast, though – it was herself. Thirty-three years old, but admittedly still a little bit stroppy… and more than a bit nervous.

‘Nope,’ she muttered, shaking her head and tossing the barely touched toast back onto her chipped plate. There was no way she could force down any more of it… not with the mad whirl of butterflies going on in her stomach.

Straightening up from her slump at the rickety kitchen table that was little more than a piece of manky hardboard balancing on a couple of cardboard boxes, Maggie forced herself to take a deep breath. ‘Finish your drink at any rate!’

Grabbing the rainbow mug, she took a mouthful of gritty coffee and grimaced. Gross!

‘At least I’ll be able to get a decent coffee when I get to work!’

Work.

The squirming in Maggie’s stomach stepped up a notch, and she let out a groan. Today, she was going to be re-joining the world after playing hermit for well over a year… and she didn’t think she’d ever felt this nervous in her entire life.

Maggie glanced at her watch. She had about ten minutes before she had to leave for her first-ever shift at The Tallyaff – and she had to admit, she was dreading it.

‘Come on Mags, you’re being ridiculous,’ she sighed, rubbing her stomach and wishing it would calm down a bit. From what she knew of Olive Martinelli – owner of The Tallyaff and person in charge of pretty much everything that happened on the island – the woman was a sweetheart. She was bound to make an awesome boss too.

It wasn’t the job itself that was worrying her either. Maggie wasn’t afraid of hard work, and she’d done plenty of customer-facing jobs to see her through college – so this wasn’t her first rodeo. The work should be simple enough to wrap her head around. She was going to be helping Olive with everything from making up the guest bedrooms to serving behind the bar and restocking the little shop. There would be lots to learn, but she was sure she’d be able to pick things up fast enough.

No… the reason her stomach felt like it was trying to escape through her mouth was far less rational than that. What if she’d forgotten how to talk to other people while she’d been hiding away in the cottage? After all, it had been over a year since Russell had pulled his disappearing act. Since then, most of Maggie’s in-depth conversations had been with herself.

‘You’ll be fine, dumbass!’ she muttered forcing a smile onto her face – just for the practice. It felt… strange. Surely this whole “how to be human” thing would come back to her pretty quickly… wouldn’t it? After all, she’d had a tight group of friends down south before she’d relocated. Back then, she’d had no problem chatting away, making small talk… being “normal.”

A lot had happened since then, though.

Maggie took another deep breath. The last thing she needed today was to turn up at work doing a good impression of a gibbering wreck!

Maybe if she focussed on the positives, it would help…

For one thing, Olive wouldn’t have given her the job if she didn’t think she was up to it. For another, Maggie was good with faces. She knew most of the locals… though maybe not quite as well as she should, considering she’d lived on Crumcarey for more than a year and a half. Still, at least she’d be able to tell them apart from the ever-increasing number of tourists who were flocking to stay on the island!

Actually, that counted as another good thing, didn’t it? The recently released updated island guidebook had been a huge hit. Combined with the new runway at the airport, the replacement ferry that had taken over while the old boat was being re-fitted, and the wave of interest surrounding the standing stones near the castle, it felt like Crumcarey was on the up-and-up. The Tallyaff was busier than ever… which was the reason Olive had a job to offer her in the first place.

Yes, there were plenty of positives to be grateful for… so why was her idiot heart still trying to beat its way out of her ribcage?

Maggie swallowed. The answer to that was easy enough. The Tallyaff was at the heart of the community – a community she’d done very little to become a part of since moving to the island.

It wouldn’t be too bad though… would it? Hopefully, the locals would get used to having her around soon enough. It would be fine… and even if it wasn’t, she had to man-up anyway. She needed this job… and not just because of the very necessary cash injection.

At long last, Maggie had come to the realisation that if she wanted to stay in her cottage and make the place at least vaguely inhabitable before winter descended, she needed help. To get that help, she needed to break her self-imposed isolation. As much as she would love to be able to renovate her home single-handedly, it just wasn’t possible. Which meant it was time to crawl out from beneath her stone and find her place in the community at long last.

When Maggie had first arrived on the island with Russell, he’d been adamant that it would be better to keep themselves to themselves. Back then, she’d been happy enough to go along with it. After all, they’d been in the honeymoon period of their adventure – a new life together on a remote island doing up a tumbledown cottage and turning it into their dream home. There had been something quite romantic about the whole thing. It had been the pair of them against the world. Or… that’s what she’d thought, at least.

The move had been Russell’s idea – and he’d sold the dream of it to her hook, line and sinker. He’d convinced her to sell her flat and put all the money towards their new home on Crumcarey. They’d bought the little cottage without even visiting to view it first. On the journey north, they’d made each other a promise that they wouldn’t ask for any help. Whatever work was needed, they’d get stuck in and learn how to do it all themselves. Together.

‘Look how well that turned out!’ muttered Maggie, getting to her feet and shoving her chair backwards. The legs promptly caught on an uneven flagstone and it tipped over with a clatter.

Doing her best to hold in a growl, Maggie grabbed the chair and set it back on its feet. Thinking about Russell and all his broken promises always turned her into a bear with a sore head. She might be over him—just about, anyway—but she wasn’t over the sense of betrayal yet. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever get over that part.

All Russell’s promises of tackling this adventure together had disappeared the minute he’d been offered a job back on the mainland. A huge salary, first-class travel, and an obscene expenses account - that’s all it had taken for him to leave her behind. They’d barely been on Crumcarey six months when he’d disappeared off to make the most of “the opportunity of a lifetime”. The irony hadn’t been lost on Maggie – they were the exact same words he’d used when he’d been busy talking her into buying this very cottage.

And then… he was just gone.

Russell hadn’t even bothered to officially split up with her – he’d just upped and left. Postcards still arrived now and then from the exotic locations his new job took him to… but he never came back, not even to visit.

Maggie didn’t really understand the point of the cards. Perhaps they made him feel better about abandoning her at the edge of the world in a house with very little roof. Or maybe he really did mean to come back one day. She shuddered. He was most definitely not welcome.

Of course, Maggie knew she could have sold up and moved back down south. It would have probably been the sensible thing to do. In fact, the minute she’d admitted to her friends what had happened, they’d practically demanded she got on with it pronto. If she’d been any closer, she had a feeling they might have turned up en mass and physically dragged her back to her old stomping grounds.

As much as she was grateful for their staunch support from a distance - Maggie was glad they hadn’t. She’d already fallen in love with the island and its big skies, lolling seals and cheeky puffins. She even loved its mad weather – when it wasn’t ripping the tarpaulins off the roof. Maggie wasn’t sure of much – but she did know that she didn’t want to live anywhere else.

That said… she didn’t want to live like this anymore, either.

Letting out a long sigh, Maggie checked her watch again.

‘Shoes. Shoes would be good right now,’ she muttered, mooching through the cottage and doing her best not to look too closely at her surroundings as she went. Her dream home was fast deteriorating into a nightmare, and she could do without the sight of it causing any more flutterings of anxiety right now.

It had been a long time since she’d looked at her early drawings of the place – outlining a cute, cosy cottage full of light and charm. She’d shut her grand plans in a plastic box long before Russell had left, and by this point, Maggie could barely remember the sense of hope she’d felt when she’d sketched them.

Now, her sad cottage was little more than a ruin. It was at least eighty per cent tarpaulin, and the remaining twenty per cent was made up of expanding spray foam and bits of hardboard tacked to the walls in an attempt to stop the outside from feeling quite so… inside.

Every time she made a grocery run, Maggie grabbed another can or two of foam. It didn’t help much, and she was under no illusions… the cottage was slowly crumbling around her ears. One thing was for sure, there was no way it would make it through another winter in one piece. Not without help.

Clambering across her mattress that lay directly in front of the door to her bedroom – the only spot where she could guarantee she wouldn’t get dripped on while she slept - Maggie started hunting around for a semi-decent pair of shoes that weren’t covered in paint, silicon sealant or expanding foam.

Olive had told her not to worry too much about what to wear to work – but Maggie wanted to look at least halfway presentable. Even that was going to be a challenge considering she lived in a cross between a barn and a construction site! She’d already had to pull on a ridiculous pair of black skinny jeans that hadn’t seen the light of day since she’d moved to the island… but clean shoes were going to be even trickier to find.

Sure enough, the only pairs hiding in the corner of her bedroom with the spiders were her wellies and her safety boots— and there was no way she was going to turn up to work wearing either! They were both grubby, grotty and splattered in paint.

Maggie was sure she had a pair of lightweight black pumps around somewhere. They were so unbelievably impractical against Crumcarey’s less-than-clement weather conditions that she hadn’t worn them since the move… which meant there was a slim chance they might still be vaguely presentable.

‘What did I do with them?’ she muttered, heaving herself back to her feet and swiping at the dust on her knees. Maybe she’d binned them. She certainly hadn’t seen them for a long time…

‘Ah ha!’

Dashing through to the bathroom, Maggie grabbed the giant plastic clip-lock tub where she stashed her towels, washcloths and bedding to keep them from getting damp. Hoisting it out of the way, she uncovered a second, identical tub underneath. It was full to the brim with random bits and bobs she’d wanted to save from the less-than-loving attention of the leaky roof.

‘Bingo!’ she cheered, popping off the lid and dragging the pair of pumps out from beneath an ancient teddy bear onesie. They were mercifully clear of paint splatters, and even better – they were dry.

‘Hmm… speaking of dry…’

Grabbing a stack of buckets from beside the sink, Maggie eyeballed the exposed underside of the roof slates, hunting for the tell-tale patch of sky visible through the cracks. As soon as she spotted the sliver of grumpy-looking clouds overhead, she popped one of the buckets directly beneath it. There was a good chance it might rain while she was at work, and she didn’t fancy the idea of having to grab a mop the minute she got home.

Heading back through to the open plan kitchen and living room, Maggie quickly deployed the rest of the buckets in the usual spots - just in case. She had tarpaulins covering the worst of the leaks, but the way the rain came down some days, they simply didn’t stand a chance. Besides, a couple of the tarps needed replacing - again. It was yet another job she needed to add to her ever-expanding list that resembled more of a scroll by this point. In fact, she needed to remember to ask Olive if she’d order some more for her.

‘Tarpaulin Girl strikes again,’ she sighed, flopping down onto the beaten-up old sofa to pull on her pumps. She knew that was the locals’ pet name for her…

Maggie breathed out a slow sigh of relief as the butterflies finally eased up a bit. It was possibly the weirdest thing in the world to offer any kind of comfort… but surely the fact that she’d been given a nickname must mean she’d been accepted by the locals… at least a little bit?

Maggie shrugged. Either way, there were definitely worst things to be called.