Snowflakes on Silver Cove: A festive, feel-good Christmas romance (White Cliff Bay Book 2) (14 page)

Libby had leapt out to see if the occupant of the car was OK, but when the six foot tall, oversized breast struggled to remove itself from the innards of the Mini, its nipple getting caught in the steering wheel, Libby had burst out laughing. It had taken a full five minutes for the breast to get out of the car, and Libby had been almost powerless to help, she had been so crippled with laughter.

Eventually, Amy had emerged, the nipple looking decidedly deflated, apologised profusely, and they had been best friends ever since.

It was, she supposed, her fault that Amy had now developed this inappropriate infatuation with Seb. The Bubble and Froth hadn’t even registered on Amy’s radar until she made friends with Libby as it was on the far reaches of the town. Amy had moved to White Cliff Bay with a previous boyfriend two years before Libby had moved there, and once they had become friends Libby had persuaded her to come to the Bubble and Froth. Since then Amy had been coming two or three times a week. She had started doing the odd shift there and that was when the crush had properly started, though perhaps the reason for her working in the pub was because of the crush.

They had laughed about it, when it first started. Amy would talk, out of Seb’s earshot, quite lewdly, of what she would like to do to him. But they both knew that it wasn’t going to lead anywhere, like having a crush on Chris Hemsworth. But as the months went by, the feelings Amy had for him had gone from being a silly little crush to being full-blown head over heels in love. Libby felt for Amy, because Seb just didn’t see her like that, not at all. He was, as far as Libby could tell, still in love with his dead wife, and always would be.

Suddenly, outside, Amy stumbled and, as the penis came crashing to the ground, she managed to knock the poor man she was chasing over as well.

Kat nearly choked on her ice cream as she spluttered with laughter and Libby would have found it funny as well, if she had been watching a comedy sketch on TV and not her best friend hitting the ground so hard.

Leaving Kat to chuckle into her ice cream, Libby ran outside.

‘Get off me,’ said the man, struggling to extricate himself from under the penis.

‘Ow, my hair,’ came Amy’s muffled voice, somewhere near his groin.

The head of the penis was smacking the man in the face.

‘Stop moving, please,’ Amy whined.

Libby barged through the crowd that was already starting to form and fell to her knees as the penis and the man struggled.

‘Stop, both of you,’ she ordered and to her surprise they both froze.

‘Are either of you hurt?’

‘No,’ mumbled Amy and the man shook his head.

‘My hair is caught in his belt,’ Amy mumbled again.

Crouching closer to the man’s hips, Libby bent her head to have a look. Amy’s face was resting on the man’s crotch, a large chunk of her fringe trapped in the belt buckle.

‘You alright kid?’ Libby asked softly.

Amy nodded, then winced when it was clearly painful to do so.

Sliding her hands under the large penis, Libby very slowly, very carefully undid the belt. It was awkward, and her hand was almost certainly brushing against the man’s groin as well. Eventually, after a few minutes, she managed to free Amy from her constraints.

Amy sat up, smacking the man in the face one last time with the head of the penis.

The crowd around them now was huge – clearly this was the most entertaining thing that had happened in White Cliff Bay for some time now.

Deeply humiliated, the man scrabbled to his feet, and shooting Amy a scathing look, he barged his way through the cheering throng and disappeared.

Libby looked back at her, biting down a smirk.

‘Libby Joseph…’

‘Come on, Amy, you’ve got to see the funny side.’

She scowled at her.

‘Would you like an ice cream to cheer you up?’

‘That would drive Marcus mad, me going into his ice cream shop dressed like this.’

‘Then all the more reason to do it.’

Amy smiled wickedly and Libby stood and hauled her to her feet.

Amy followed her into the shop and sure enough Marcus came running round the counter, waving his hands at Amy to stop her.

‘No, no, no, you can’t come in here,’ Marcus said trying to push the penis out of the shop.

Kat’s laughing in the corner went up an octave.

Marcus was a small, very round man with a moustache like a walrus, but he had some strength in him. With Amy planting her feet and refusing to leave and Marcus trying to shove the penis out through the door, the head of the penis kept banging the bell above the door, so even if the customers hadn’t noticed the arrival of the seven-foot penis, they certainly had now.

‘Please leave,’ Marcus murmured, wrestling with one of the testicles as he tried to prise it back through the doorway.

Kat was now crying into her ice cream, finding it hard to draw breath she was laughing so hard.

‘Marcus, stop pushing, stop it,’ muttered Amy, ‘get your hands off me or I’ll sue you for sexual harassment.’

Marcus froze mid push, his face going pale.

Libby looked away so Marcus wouldn’t see her smirk. Amy had threatened Marcus with a lawsuit almost every week since she started work there. Every time they had a disagreement she threatened to sue him. Over the last six months she had accused him of sexism, ageism, racism on account of Amy being Welsh, heightism and weightism. She just had to mention the words solicitor or lawsuit and Marcus backed down.

‘I’m just going to sit over here with my friends, have an ice cream and a cup of coffee and then I’ll go, I promise,’ Amy said.

Suddenly an elderly lady bustled over. ‘It’s disgusting, you should be ashamed of yourself.’

‘Hey!’ Kat said, defensively, suddenly finding her voice and standing up with a great deal of effort. ‘She’s giving up her free time to raise awareness of cancer, she doesn’t get paid to dress up like that and be humiliated, she does it out of the kindness of her heart. So before you get on your moral soap box, consider what good she’s doing.’

The elderly lady gaped like a fish.

‘Does anybody else have a problem with Amy dressed like this?’ Kat said, defiantly. If anybody did, they certainly weren’t brave enough to voice it in front of the highly deranged pregnant lady.

Marcus sighed heavily. ‘Just be quick.’

Amy nodded and shuffled into the booth opposite Kat, knocking over three chairs and a menu stand en-route.

Libby stopped to tidy up the trail of devastation behind her friend, then noticing there was no room left in the booth now it had been taken over by the heavily pregnant lady and the penis, she pulled up a chair to sit at the table.

‘Thanks Kat,’ Amy said, picking up a menu.

Kat leaned over the table. ‘Amy Chadwick, I’ve laughed so hard today I nearly wet myself, so really I should be thanking you.’

I
t was
as Kat went to the toilet for the third time since their arrival in the ice cream shop that Amy, finishing the last mouthful of her ice cream, leaned across the table and fixed Libby with a stare.

‘How’s the dating going, fallen in love with George yet?’

Libby smirked. ‘No, of course not…’

Amy watched her for a moment. ‘You bloody have, haven’t you?’

‘No, I promise, I haven’t. I just enjoy spending time with him, he makes me smile, a lot.’

‘There’s a reason you haven’t dated anyone since you moved here and I think George is a huge part of that.’

‘No one has taken my fancy.’

‘Because you have everything you need with George.’

Libby sighed. ‘He is my favourite person in the whole world, I can’t deny that, but you can’t force something that isn’t there. He doesn’t want me in that way. He’s in love with Giselle.’

‘And if he did love you, would you stay?’

‘I don’t know, Amy. I’ve been thinking I might stay a bit longer, not for George, just because I like it here. I haven’t decided yet but maybe, if I stayed and George wasn’t with the beautiful woman upstairs, maybe we could date.’

Amy smiled hugely. ‘I would love it if you stayed, I love you, Libby Joseph. Even if George doesn’t love you, I do. So if you’re not going to stay for him, stay for me, because you seriously don’t want to see me cry, that’s a whole lot of tears and snot that no one wants to deal with.’

Libby stared at her across the table. ‘You love me?’

‘Yeah I do. Not in a gay, I want to marry you kind of way, just you’re my best friend and I love you … and stop staring at me like I’ve got three noses. Tell anyone I said that and I’ll shave your head.’

‘OK,’ Libby said, the smile erupting on her face.

‘Stop smiling too.’ Amy pretended to scowl at her.

Libby forced the smile off her face but a few seconds later it was back again. She was still smiling when Kat came back.

‘Do you know how hard it is to wipe your arse when you have a belly the size of small car?’ Kat said. ‘Even getting into the cubicle was a problem.’

‘We should sue Marcus for being anti-pregnant women,’ Amy said.

Marcus, who was passing with a tray of empties, nearly dropped them in horror.

T
hat afternoon Libby
was waiting in the lounge for her date to arrive. She was surprised to feel that her heart was beating nervously in her chest, which was silly. This was George, her best friend; they’d been out hundreds of times before.

There was a knock on the door and she went to answer it. George, she was pleased to note, was dressed as she was, in jeans, a hoodie and walking boots, his waterproof coat slung over his arm. But in his hand was the single yellow rose she had given him earlier. ‘It missed its friends.’

‘Thank you, that’s so sweet.’ She took the rose from him, put it in the vase with the others and kissed him on the cheek. ‘It’s lovely to see you again, George, I was so pleased you called after our date the other night.’

‘Well, I’m glad you agreed to see me again. I had such a great time the other night. And can I just say you’re looking very pretty today.’

‘Oh thank you.’

He took her hand as they walked to the door. ‘How am I doing so far?’ he asked in a whisper.

‘Very well,’ she whispered back.

‘What about the flowers? Too cheesy?’

‘No perfect, as was the compliment.’

‘Holding hands?’

‘A bit soon for a second date, but it’s OK, it’s very sweet, women like sweet.’

He led her down the steps and held the car door open for her. He eyed her hopefully, but she shook her head. ‘Too clichéd,’ she whispered.

He closed the door again. ‘Get your own bloody door then,’ he huffed as he went round to the other side. She giggled as she got in.

‘Do you want to do my seatbelt as well? You know as a little lady I might not be able to manage it.’

She saw him shake his head with a smile as he drove off.

They drove down the road that ran parallel to Silver Cove beach away from White Cliff Bay. It wasn’t long though before George parked up by the side of the road. Libby looked around, intrigued as to what they would be doing tonight. They were in the middle of nowhere, the sea was still on one side and large hills grew up like mushrooms on the other. So it was either hiking or maybe… she looked at the sea … fishing from that jetty over there. Fishing would be fun. George could help her to cast out, though her mum had already taught her that when she was little, but she wouldn’t tell him that. She could play the role of the helpless female today. He got out the car and removed a cool box from the back of the car. The cool box didn’t tell her anything; it could be for a picnic up on the hill, though it was a bit grey for that today. Or the cool box could be filled with wiggly maggots.

He came to her side, took her hand and headed out towards the jetty. Excellent, it was fishing. They could have a competition to see who caught the biggest one and later, if it stayed dry, they could light a fire on the beach and cook the fish and eat it. Very romantic.

But as they thudded onto the wooden jetty, she looked around and realised they didn’t have any fishing rods. Confused, she followed him until she noticed something at the end of the jetty that made her go cold. Oh no, not good, not good at all.

He led her to the end of the jetty and carefully lowered the cool box into the orange boat, then hopped down into it and turned back for her.

She looked out on the waves. It would be fine … it was slightly choppy but it’d be fine. Besides, she couldn’t spoil his carefully constructed plan now, he’d be crushed. She would just take deep breaths and keep her eyes on the horizon and pray really hard that the boat journey would be a very, very short one. It’d be fine, really.

It so wasn’t fine. Five minutes into the journey and she was already feeling violently sick. She always prided herself on trying anything once, on being brave and having a sense of adventure. She loved to do boys’ stuff like clay pigeon shooting, quad bike racing, potholing and abseiling. She didn’t get scared of the dark, heights, confined places, spiders or snakes. But her only weakness was seasickness. She had tried many things over the years to try to stop it, from elastic bands round her wrist, special drops of some ointment on her clothes and a multitude of anti-seasick tablets. Nothing had worked.

But today would be different. She was so not going to be sick. George was at the wheel, skilfully manoeuvring the speed boat through the waves. But the sea was choppy and the boat was bouncing hard over the water. In normal circumstances she might have found this ride exhilarating, which was obviously what he was hoping for as he gunned the boat to go faster, but with every wave came a surge of sickness in her belly. She drifted to the back of the boat, she’d heard that the back was the best place for sufferers of seasickness, but she had never found the back, middle or front of the boat to be any different. She wasn’t going to be sick. Definitely not. It was a case of mind over matter. She was not going to be sick. She was not going to be sick.

Oh God, she was being sick, her head was over the side, and everything she had ever eaten in her whole life was coming out of her mouth. In actual fact she was pretty sure she had just puked up a kidney, or maybe her appendix.