Page 110 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

Shelby touches his arm and smiles up at him with her huge spidery eyelashes. He turns to her, like a hypnotised man.

‘Quick!’ hisses Janey to Dwight. ‘Sign them! Sign them now.’

Dwight scribbles his name on the page, his hand shaking, and Janey whips them away. Shelby glances back, and Dwight takes a deep breath.

Janey fumbles the papers, drops them as she tries to stuff them in her bag and retreats towards her own car in confusion. Fortunately she looks like any other slightly overworked middle-aged woman who has lost her car keys, and everyone completely ignores her.

‘Mr McFlynn? shouts a voice across the car park.

Shelby stands back, satisfied.

‘Oh, God,’ says Essie. ‘Remember, don’t mention the houses. Just the money.’

‘Damn it all to hell,’ says Dwight, straightening up.

Then he grabs Essie, pulls her tightly towards him, kisses her full on the mouth with a force that leaves her limp and breathless, then strides off without a backwards glance to meet the policeman.

44

‘What are we going to do with them, though?’ says Essie, clambering, rather breathlessly into the car with her mother.

Janey stares at the deeds and the form, both of which she now has. She had, with exceptional but, she believes, forgivable sneakiness, dated it yesterday, and is hoping she might be able to blame the post, but will that be enough? They watch Morag and Gertie leave the terminal; there are no more flights today. It is four p.m. They are too late.

‘I can’t believe they won’t accept email,’ says Janey, as Essie morosely scrolls through the Land Registry web pages. Then she stops suddenly.

‘Huh,’ she says. It’s an old, cached page. She shows it to her mother.

‘No way.’

They look at each other, then Janey takes off at speed.

*

They gather reinforcements en route. Lish stands there with the expression on her face she employs when she is telling women to either push or not push and requires immediate obedience. Milton is carrying a Tupperware container of his famous chicken stew, a rare delicacy most people would give anything for. Essie smells it and realises she hasn’t eaten allday and Dwight nearly made her swoon and she could do with some to revive her, but her work isn’t done. Amsan turns up; she has Yasmin in tow, a round, soft, huge-eyed beauty, wearing her usual faintly truculent expression and dragging her heels. Daughters, thinks Janey, smiling faintly.

En masse, they descend into the basement. It is twenty to five.

*

Considering that the rest of them work out of Portakabins, or a dank porter’s lodge, Owen’s den is quite formidable. It is a windowless corner of the basement, very warm but incredibly spacious. He has two huge screens – how? what for? – which appear to be showing some kind of massive star-based computer game. Piles of tech litter the desk. His seat is a top-of-the-range black leather console chair. They look at each other in disbelief.

Owen spins around dramatically as if he’s been waiting for this moment.

‘Aha,’ he says, pointing his fingers underneath his chin. ‘My quizzers. We meet at last.’

‘We see you every second Thursday,’ points out Lish.

‘Ssh,’ says Janey, panicking while looking at her watch. ‘We need him on-side.’

Milton steps forward with his Tupperware and lays it quietly on Owen’s desk.

Owen frowns. ‘Has it got vegetables in it?’ he asks. ‘Because I’m allergic?’

Essie whips the tub away and stores it for later.

‘Owen,’ she says in her sweetest, most appealing voice. ‘Owen. Could we possibly use your fax machine?’

‘Is it for official hospital business?’ says Owen.

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