Chapter Text
The strident voice permeated the air, loud and insistent even over the hum of the fridges, the jaunty flute and fiddle melody on the radio and the raucous nattering of customers, drawing not only her attention but the eye of everyone in the Co-op.
‘This is ridiculous!’ he exclaimed, because it was a male voice, posh and pretentious, ‘You're telling me there’s not a single vacancy on the entire island?’
‘Sir, as I’ve said, repeatedly, it’s Oyster Festival week and —and well, you don’t have a booking.’
Gilly was by nature the sweetest person, but her peevish tone just now said she was pissed-off and losing what Brienne had previously believed to be her indefatigable patience. Surreptitiously popping her head over the shelf loaded with tins of baked beans and spaghetti hoops, she sought out the cause of the kerfuffle, spying a broad back, a fine arse and a blond head.
‘I did have a booking! How was I to know ‘Silver Strands Resort’ was a bloody campground and I was expected to pop a squat in a godsdamned gorse-bush?’
A sardonic snort just kinda slipped out, and scowling, he glanced her way. She ducked, but her elbow sent two Pot Noodles cups scuttling across the aisle. Trying to be discreet, though that ship had sailed, she scrambled across the floor to retrieve them, absolutely not eavesdropping in the process.
‘Sir, they're composting, eco-toilets—'
‘Whatever!’ he blazed, ‘Do I look like someone who packs a tent?’
The fleeting glimpse she’d grabbed said he looked like a film star or a pin-up supermodel straight out of one of the glossy fashion magazines that she only bothered to flick through on the rare occasion she visited an actual hair salon on the mainland. Everything about him screamed millionaire playboy so, no, going by his appearance, plummy-voiced sarcasm and general disdain, environmentally-conscious, yurt glamping, bivvy-tented backpacker or wild camper he was not.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but as I’ve said—,’
‘You’re fully booked,’ he parroted sullenly. ‘Look lady, money is no object here.’
His attitude, so condescending, so arrogant, triggered something in her. She bristled and stomped closer to the desk, readying herself to wade in if he got any more obstreperous with her friend.
Gilly threw a hopeful eye at her, but she shook her head. Even if she had room, she wouldn’t be volunteering her hospitality to this city-slicker arsehole with his golden hair, honeyed tan and his metallic four-wheel Lucerys Velaryon suitcase with the gaudily monogrammed ‘JL’ embossed in what could be real gold.
‘Please, Miss...? Gilly— lovely name,’ he cajoled, reading her badge and addressing the now blushing accommodations-coordinator-stroke-tour-booker-stroke-community-midwife, somewhat politely, ‘I can’t get back on that boat, I’ve already puked up everything I’ve ever eaten since-since— infancy! I’ll take anything, anything!’ he enunciated each syllable, genuinely desperate.
The sea had been choppy today, nothing out of the ordinary, but mainland folks were often caught unawares by the rigours of the ocean crossing when the Tarth ferry was an ancient tub, not a cruise liner. Looking closer, he did seem more than a little green around the gills… pasty, with dark bags under his eyes. She almost felt sorry for him.
‘There must be somewhere available on this godforsaken rock!’ his momentary cool blown, ‘I saw loads of signposts for accommodation as I dragged my case the two miles down the sodding road to the ‘resort’, because apparently, there are no taxis on this primitive backwater atoll!’
Nope, no sympathy.
‘There might be…but it’s more of a lodging room than a guesthouse.’ Gilly told him hesitantly, ‘It’s a bit er…quaint, not tourist board accredited…’
‘Bed?’ he demanded with an air of the maniacal, ‘Roof?’
Gilly nodded uncertainly, pulling out the familiar dog-eared hardback contact book that listed spare room hosts going back years. She knew most were now retired or long moved away, selling their ‘charming’ cottages to avid mainlanders who snapped up and hoarded property, making homes unaffordable for young locals who then emigrated, and yet, having bought at ridiculous prices, the real estate sharks left them vacant, bar a few weekends or the odd summer stay.
It was killing the community, irrevocably eroding the vitality of her home.
Once, that ledger had bulged, the island boasting a plethora of bed and breakfasts and guesthouses, back in the boom times when Tarth was a beloved family holiday destination, before the jet-set influencers sneered at modest, wholesome places in favour of five-star luxury and the exotic. Brienne had worked this desk during the summers of her teenage years, before the Weirnet and booking apps, when people relied on word of mouth and phone calls…a bygone age, she reminded herself, the world had moved on, even if she and Tarth had not.
‘I’ll take it,’ he replied imperiously, rapping his knuckles on the service desk.
‘Let me make a call.’
She found herself relieved almost as much as Gilly sounded. Her latent, guilt-tripped sense of hospitality and of doing the decent thing was assuaged, and she got on with the purpose of her visit to the hardware/ minimart/ post office/ tourist office/ tearoom that was the Evenfall Co-op.
Outside it was a pleasantly warm day, despite the bracing freshness of the prevailing sea breeze, but as always it was freezing in the shop, due in part to the backroom being used as the fish and lobster catch store, and the fact that Gilly, who hailed from the North, always left the ice room door open as she had still not acclimatised after almost a decade on the island. Even on the coldest day in the depths of winter, when everyone else was muffled up in multiple layers of oversized chunky-knit jumpers and duffle-coats, her friend sported tee-shirts and declared the frigid gusts that would peel the skin from your face ‘balmy’.
And anyway, even if her northern gal-pal wasn’t working, the archaic Co-op heating system was shit, spluttering daily and dying regularly.
Gilly surreptitiously tapped her chin and winked at her over the nob’s head while she spoke on the phone, the handset cradled between her shoulder and her ear as she scribbled notes, multitasking as ever. Gilly jabbed her pen urgently, her brow raised.
It was only then Brienne looked down at herself.
Sweltering from hauling kit at the lifeboat station, she’d peeled down her layers earlier but the sudden chill indoors had perked her modest ‘frontage’ under her too-thin, once-white tee. Added to the aged dullness of many washes was sweaty grubbiness, oily grime and skid-marks of green slime from the hull she’d been cleaning.
To avoid attention to her ‘girls’ brazenly saluting the general public, she awkwardly untied the top half of her orange boiler suit she’d earlier tied around her waist and shrugged it back on and only then noticed how dirty her hands were…and there was a bit of a pong from the suit— fishy, mouldy, damp?
She was a mess and desperately needed a shower but it didn’t matter at the Co-op, no one cared, it was a working shop, for working people, a dockside ‘all and everything’. Apart from the nameless, faceless hordes of day-tripping tourists that came over on the morning ferry and left on the 5.30, she knew everyone and everyone knew her but catching her dishevelled reflection in the polished door of the beer cooler, for no particular reason, she finger combed her hair into some semblance of order as she quickly grabbed what she needed, avoiding the pet food aisle nearest the tourist kiosk so that the godlike entity couldn’t cast a disparaging once-over over her.
Tampons, a share-sized bar of dark chocolate and an obscenely large tub of double-choc-chip and cookie-dough ice cream— the necessities. She paid Willow, the shy, acne-prone and extensively dental-braced teen who reminded her so much of herself — though significantly shorter— at that age at the grocery till and made to leave.
‘Oof!’ he grunted, his suitcase clipping her ankle bone and kneecap as he shouldered into her. She staggered back, while he impatiently side-stepped her with a huff. The eye-watering pain only registered belatedly.
She grimaced; he scowled.
She shifted to the left just as he matched her, and again to the other side—both blocked, both too stubborn to give in.
An impasse.
‘Dude, can you like move?’ he spat, obviously used to being pandered to.
Not today, she was in no mood!
She drew herself up to her full imposing height and leered down at him. She was a good couple of inches taller in her thick-soled, steel-capped-toe work boots and just for good measure, she jutted her jaw to add to her intimidating visage.
‘I think ‘excuse me’ is the phrase you are searching for,’ she snipped, biting back a wince as she flexed her knee and rolled her ankle against the leather in her boot to test for injury, knowing either way she’d bruise like a peach.
‘Yeah, whatever man, just—,’ He went to push by her again, and the dangling initialled strap of his tacky gold case caught her carrier bag, ripping the plastic and dumping her purchases on the worn linoleum floor.
‘Oh please, do go first,’ she bowed, flinging her arm out theatrically, entreating him to pass by with as much scorn as she could load up on.
That got to him.
With a much-put-upon click of his tongue, he bent down to pick up the nearest item to hand back to her, and of course, it was the tampons—Super, for heavy flow, 50% extra-free, bulk-buy-bargain.
Reading the label, his eyes flicked to her face, and he did a double-take. ‘Oh, er, fuck you’re a—'
‘A woman, yes, but please do go ahead. Why stand on common courtesy?’ she snorted as she snatched the lurid pink pack from his stalled hand and shoved the box of ‘lady items’ as her dad used to call them, into the Velcro side pocket of her whiffy coverall.
‘I didn’t know you were a woman,’ he mumbled, his perfect cheekbones further accentuated with an artistic dab of colour.
‘It shouldn’t matter, manners cost nothing.’ It was a bit sanctimonious, but fuck it, arsehole!
‘Oh, hark at you!’ he snarked, rolling his eyes ‘I said I’m sorry!’
‘You didn’t actually—,’ She held up her hand just as his mouth moved to say something no doubt rude or asinine. ‘But don’t bother, an insincere apology is neither wanted nor accepted. Enjoy your stay.’
That last bit was purely for her island; the flagging tourism industry was the only thing that kept the economy viable, and that meant putting up with rich knob-heads from the mainland.
‘Ok then, not sorry!’ he huffed petulantly.
‘Charming,’
‘Look lady—'
‘No thanks’ she sniffed, ‘not interested,’
‘Feeling’s mutual,’ he groused, locking eyes with her. Rudely, he pointed a manicured finger at her while making an icky face. She had to restrain herself from punching his perfectly straight nose.
‘What?’ she snapped, years of fielding insults had prepared her but still, her innate self-consciousness kicked in and she felt her throat heat with a rising scald.
He pointed again, twirling his finger around. ‘Your face…’
‘Yes, my face?’ she prodded him, daring him to put into words what he was thinking, offense the best defence and all that.
‘You have a….’
‘A…?’
She was goading him now, egging him on to just say it. She’d heard it all before. Ugly, horsey-, unfortunately-featured… she could take it, she was ready, braced for impact, snappy retort prepared and ready to fire back—
She arched both brows and waited, patient as a predator waiting to pounce on her prey.
He tilted his head, pursed his lips as his throat bobbed in her peripheral vision. She pinned him and his sharp, emerald-green eyes with a belligerent glare, throwing down the gauntlet—
‘You have poo on your cheek.’
The air left her lungs with a whoosh.
‘It could be oil,’ he continued nonchalantly, though the smirk was undeniable, ‘but considering the foul miasma surrounding your person, I’m going with some kind of excrem—’
She didn’t hear the rest busy as she was using the bottom hem of her already grubby t-shirt to hastily wipe her face then inspecting the suspicious gloop with a cautious sniff.
Sea sludge. She sagged in relief recognising the greenish-brown mush of decomposing seaweed and briny silt.
He had thankfully stopped talking. His eyes wide like he was somehow shocked into mute horror.
She primly tucked her shirt back into the boiler suit, belatedly realising she had probably drawn his attention to either her flat-chested but perky nipples or to her general state of workday filth.
He spluttered something but she was in no humour to entertain him further.
Her face flaming with temper, embarrassment, and some other unnamed tetchy feeling, she picked up the chocolate bar and the dented ice cream container and, with a hobbled step, dodged around him, making a completely undignified escape even as he called something after her. She resisted the urge to flip him the bird—barely.
‘Arsehole, smug, arrogant, rude, arsehole!’ she comforted herself with the alternating varieties of invective diatribe all the way home.