Page 117 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Let’s pretend we’re not in,’ says Lowell, and he grabs her hand and pulls her round to the back garden, entering through the back door. They put Felicity, Argyll and Bute in the laundry together, where the puppies curl up and go to sleep, circling and clearly a bit confused as to where the others have gone. Janey nearly tears up again, but reminds herself they’ll be seeing their siblings around town all the time, and Smokey is with Dwight.

She gets Lowell to give her a pencil and paper and writes ‘ALL DOGS GONE. SORRY’ and sticks it out of the letterbox just in time to hear some disappointed noises from outside. She winces, but Lowell looks at her and she finds that in fact she can’t stop giggling.

Lowell on the other hand is walking around as if he can’t believe it.

‘I’ve got my house back,’ he says. Then he frowns. ‘Well, when I’ve tidied it up.’

The previously immaculate empty property is no more; on every surface are pictures, friendship bracelets, bottles of nail polish. Janey knows better. She knows him. His innate orderly instincts have been overwhelmed by how much more he enjoys life with his daughter around.

‘Don’t tell me you gave her your iPad,’ says Janey.

‘I’m expecting the angry phone call in three, two—’

His phone actually rings and they both jump, and burst out laughing. Then Janey’s starts ringing too. They have some very annoyed, frustrated dog-lovers out there. It appears somebody has been crocheting dog jackets, from Janey’s messages.

Al calls. ‘Did you get a dog for Essie and not for me?’

‘I’ll call you back,’ says Janey, and turns her phone off.

Lowell comes towards her. ‘I just wanted to explain . . . what it was. With . . . marrying a younger woman.’

‘You don’t have to,’ says Janey.

‘No, I do . . . Janey, it’s the optimism. The hope. That everything might be alright. And I am so sad and battered by the wars of love, and midlife, and getting older and everything that means, and I wanted someone who still believes in happy ever after, and the future. And older women can be just so sad. And that makes me sad. Because they’ve been let down by horrible men. Men just like me. And it makes me feel ashamed and shabby. That’s why.’

Janey takes this in for a moment and looks out of the window. A moment of quiet sadness settles on the bonny garden, teasing them in all its brightly coloured young beauty: the first blush of the slowly ripening strawberries; the straggling, laughing daisies; the tentative, unfurling rosebuds, the poppies gradually standing higher, waiting to puff out intotheir full summer crimson beauty – then fade, then die, like everything else, as everything must. Janey looks around the garden for a long time, and at the hangdog shape of the large man in front of her. She doesn’t know how to answer what he’s just said. Because it is true. And she doesn’t want to be sad any longer.

‘Even if they know all the lyrics to that song by Sharpe and Numan?’ she asks, finally, tentatively.

At first, he looks confused. Then he glances up and there is a twitch, just the tiniest twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

‘Change Your Mind?’ he says.

‘Well, it’s not an instruction,’ says Janey. ‘I just really love that song.’

‘I really love that song too,’ he says. ‘I thought nobody else remembered that song.’

‘Not if they were born in the year they made that song.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

He looks at her and pulls one of the roses out of the simple vase he keeps on the table. ‘Here,’ he says quietly.

‘Oh, goodness,’ says Janey, looking at its perfection and beauty.

‘I’m sorry I hurt the rose bush.’

She strokes the velvety soft petals and holds it to her nose. It smells so fresh and sweet and new. She closes her eyes.

‘I feel like the Queen Mother,’ she says. ‘I shall put it on a hat and be eccentric.’

‘No, you shouldn’t,’ he says. ‘You don’t understand what I’m saying. I’m saying what I used to feel like. Before I met you and realised that was rubbish. And I’ll be away a bit but not all the time, and oh, for God’s sake, Janey, let’s just pretend that getting older doesn’t matter.’

And, gently but firmly, he cups her face with his large hand, and kisses her hard on the mouth.

And Janey, who has feared and worried in her deepest, most solitary moments that she might never be kissed again, feels an extraordinary wave of happiness; relief and joy crash over all at once; gives herself a moment to just feel it. And then another, to realise, with joy anew, that the person kissing her is Lowell and that there is no one in the world she’d rather be kissing.

He towers over her, cradling her face with his large hand and, suddenly, he stops.

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