Patrick smiled. ‘Now, that,’ he said, ‘is the question I’ve been asking myself for the past ten minutes.’
‘I’m not going to answer it for you,’ she said with a smile.
‘You don’t have to. Until half an hour ago, I was going back to Melbourne. Although that’s not strictly true. I’ve had a mind to stay on here ever since I set foot on the isles. I came over to London a week ago with the intention of having a working holiday.’
‘Funny time to come here, the end of October.’
‘A mate told me there would be a lot of seasonal bar work going, with the festive season coming up. I believe it starts at Easter over here.’ He grinned.
‘It’s crazy,’ said Maisie. ‘Christmas cards in the shops in August …’ She realised she was agreeing with him too readily. No matter what had gone on between them before, this was meant to be an interview. ‘I can see why you’d want some work in London, where there are tons of jobs at Christmas, and I can even possibly understand why you’d want to be here when the weather’s crap, but why would you want to stay on Gull Island itself?’
He sighed. ‘I’ll be honest with you. I could have got a job in London just like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And earned a lot more money, but it’ll be a nice change to get out of the city, even a city like Melbourne.’
‘Why did you leave your last bar in Melbourne?’ she asked, still unconvinced. ‘Did they let you go?’
He smiled. ‘They didn’t let me go as in sack me. I’m on a sabbatical as you’ll find out if you take up my references.’
‘When,’ she said. ‘I will be taking them up, I can promise you. If I take you on. How many busy city bars can afford to let their managers have a sabbatical?’
He nodded. ‘It does sound fishy, I agree. I can see I’m going to have to be straight with you.’
Maisie’s hackles rose at his flippant reference to telling the truth. ‘I won’t stand for an ounce of bullshit, let’s get that straight from the start.’
‘Well, it’s a long and boring story …’
Maisie folded her arms and firmed up her tone. ‘Why don’t you try me?’
Patrick held her gaze, but she refused to flinch. He could try it on all he liked but she had to show him who was boss from the start and she wouldn’t be fazed by any diversion tactics, however much they might make long-dead feelings stir, deliciously, low in her belly.
‘There was this bloke … let’s call him a special mate …’
The penny dropped in Maisie’s brain with a loud ‘kerching’. Damn it, how had she not realised before? A bloke, a ‘special mate’. Patrick was gay and running away to Gull from a wrecked relationship, just like herself. That relationship just happened to be with a man.
Argh. Maisie kicked herself for her naivety in assuming that he was straight and fancied her. She smiled encouragingly at him, rueing her presumption.
‘I see,’ she said.
Patrick frowned as if he couldn’t see why or what Maisie ‘saw’ at all. ‘Do you?’
‘Yes, I mean, no. Sorry to interrupt you. Please carry on.’
‘This bloke, Greg is – was – a good friend of mine. A very good friend, you could say …’
Maisie arranged her face into sympathetic-good-listener mode. She felt sorry for him, having to explain himself, and perhaps she should tell him now that his personal life was none of her business unless it related directly to his work.
‘Greg was like a father to me,’ said Patrick.
‘Father?’ Her voice was almost a squeak. Maisie had to make a physical effort to wipe the grin of relief from her face. Not gay then. But … what other surprises were coming from left field? Plenty, if her hunches about Patrick McKinnon were right.
‘Yes, or a father figure, though he would have laughed at me for saying anything so schmaltzy. He thought of himself more as a good mate, which he was. Sorry, I’m not making much sense, am I?’
‘Greg was also my boss at my last place of work in Melbourne. The Fingle Bar, which of course you’ll know all about when you google it and email or phone to talk to them.’
‘Will Greg vouch for you?’ she said, noting his name on the pad.
‘I’m sure he would if he could …’
Maisie glanced up.
‘He’s been dead for six months.’
‘Oh God. I’m so sorry.’
‘So am I. Sorrier than I can tell you, but there’s nothing he or I can do about it. Greg had cancer, and he was only fifty-one. He’d taken me on at the Fingle as a pot washer and by the time he passed away, I was managing the place. It’s a big bar overlooking the Yarra River in the heart of the city. You’d like it.’
He hesitated. She smiled encouragingly. ‘Sounds great. Go on.’
‘Cutting a long story short, Greg was my mentor and friend. He helped me out at a time in my life when I was going way off the rails. Without him I’d have ended up in a bad place – I already had, to be honest – and finding out that he was sick made me and him rethink a few things. Greg told me his cancer was terminal late last year and that I should use his bad luck as a wake-up call for my own life.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Maisie, surprised but pleased by his honesty. Losing Keegan – and losing their unborn baby at the same time – had turned her own world upside-down. For the first few weeks after her miscarriage and Keegan walking out on her, she’d felt like someone had picked her up, shaken her until she didn’t know night from day, or anything at all. When she’d slowly emerged from a cocoon of grief and loss, the world had looked completely different.
‘Maisie?’
‘Sorry. You were saying? Greg’s illness made you re-evaluate your priorities.’
He smiled at her. It wasn’t like her to use language like that but she’d been reminded of what she’d written in her resignation letter to her line manager at the pub. She’d used cold and formal words then to describe the raw pain and anger she’d been feeling over her double loss.
‘Greg asked me if I was really happy running the Fingle; he told me to get out and see the world while I was young and fit. He told me he regretted staying so long in one place and now it was too late for him. He wished he’d taken his wife and kids to live in and experience other places when he’d been younger. I stayed on to help Judy but now I’ve decided to take a break and made my plans to see the world.’
‘So you came to Britain first?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any particular reason?’
He ran his fingertip over the table top, a smile creeping over his lips. ‘Ah, that’s simple. I am British.’
OK. He was full of surprises.
‘My parents emigrated from London when I was a baby so I think of myself as Aussie. I have dual citizenship and two passports, so there shouldn’t be any problem with my right to work. Crazy, really, when I’d never set foot in the motherland before last week.’
‘OK, but why Scilly? Why not Stratford, or Scotland or Yorkshire? Cornwall even?’
‘Because Greg’s great-grandparents on his mum’s side used