Page 25 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

Again he looks awkward and she doesn’t want to intrude, and anyway Owen is getting up and putting on his anorak that he zips right up to his neck, still complaining about Hector’s mispronunciation of Eastern European capitals, and Essie is looking at her mother in an accusatory way that Janey is sure has something to do with her re-introducing her to Dwight, and she really ought to call it a night.

‘How are you getting home?’ she finds herself saying, again feeling stupid. She is sure she used to be charming. When did she forget how; when did it all become so difficult?

‘Oh, I have my bicycle,’ he said.

‘I didn’t have you down for a MAMIL,’ she says. He looks confused, and then she doesn’t want to say ‘Middle-Aged Man in Lycra’ because it will sound so weird. ‘I meant, what kind of bike do you have?’ she gabbles.

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I think it belongs to the gardener. I just borrowed it.’

‘That’s my favourite type of bike,’ she gushes, going red – is it very hot in this bar? – and Lowell looks confused.

‘Okay, Janey,’ says Al, coming up behind her. ‘You’re all flushed. Better get you home!’

15

Janey has the next day off and hooray, she thinks, pulling back her curtains: it is a pretty one. She cranes round to see the dilapidated windows of the other houses in the close. Goodness, Dwight will have his work cut out. She immediately jumps on a property website to see what they are asking for them, but they haven’t appeared.

Al had gone to Aberdeen first shout to discuss a new tannery. Sometimes Janey does not like to think too deeply about what her eldest actually does in his highly successful job; the day she’d asked to pop in to see him at work and he’d been getting everyone in the office to test out new electric fences sprang to mind.

It is a lovely spring morning, just coming into bluebell season, when the astonishing heavy scent of the flowers coats the woods, so lovely it is almost impossible to believe they are real. Certainly it doesn’t matter how up-to-date your camera is; you won’t manage to catch their loveliness or the way they appear to hover just above their green stems, like a carpet. You can put lots of filters on it before you post it on Instagram, but you know it’s not the same, not really, as drifting in that soft blue cloud, feeling privileged to be inside it, scowling if you see anyone dare to pick one, even though you know they only want the same thing as you do: to hold on to that sweetscent a little longer, bring it with them wherever they go, as a talisman. Janey has bought every type of bluebell scent ever since, from very expensive candles to basic room plug-ins, but none of them, none of them even gets close. At best it’s a harsh reminder, outside of that precious three weeks when they bloom so briefly.

As she gets older Janey feels these things are more important, more special for being transient. If the bluebell cloud settled over the world permanently, it would lose all of its magic. Likewise Christmas, even though that seems to come round every fifteen seconds these days. Whereas, the young, of course, have so many years ahead to appreciate it . . .

But she isn’t old, she reminds herself. She is middle-aged. She has absolutely yonkingtons.

‘Hey,’ she says up the stairs at nine-thirty, as she feels the day slipping away from her; her precious day off and she really doesn’t want to spend it scrolling or catching up on housework or trying to work out which of the nine thousand new shows to watch on television and ending up withSex and the Cityagain, astounded anew at Carrie constantly lighting up cigarettes indoors and nobody even mentioning it.

There’s no reply. She had felt the quiz night had marked something of a thawing in general relations with her most beloved, gorgeous, wonderful, utterly infuriating daughter, but it was possible Alasdair was being a buffer, and so it proves.

‘What?’ comes a voice, finally, and it sounds so like Essie at fifteen on a school morning that Janey has to check herself.

‘Well,’ she says, clearing her throat and telling herself it is ridiculous to be slightly scared of your own daughter, ‘it’s a glorious day and I was going to go and walk through the bluebell wood and thought you might like to come.’

‘Neh, I’m working on my CV,’ comes the default response, as it always does these days.

‘You aren’t,’ says Janey, feeling slightly shaky. But this can’t go on. ‘You’re lying in bed staring at your phone.’

She goes up the stairs, knocks on the door and goes in.

‘Mu-um!’

The bedroom is in a right state. Clothes are strewn everywhere, along with dirty coffee cups. The suitcase is a floordrobe.

To her credit Essie does look shamefaced at the state of it; she knows Janey has worked very hard to get the cottage into shape. The dusky pink walls might not be to everyone’s taste, but Janey thinks they are soft and lovely and suit the evening light, and she chose the colour with care and painted the room herself. And now it’s just a scrap heap.

‘I’ve got stuff to do,’ says Essie, angry and defensive. ‘You don’t even care.’

‘Of course I do,’ says Janey.

‘But you don’t understand what it’s like out there. You think it’s me not doing it properly, not doing the “get a job, get a place” thing. But everything’s changed! It’s not like that now! You don’t just walk down the road and get a job! You’re up against everyone in the world! And everyone else can do internships . . . ’

Essie’s voice trails off. She knows this is unfair. Her family have never had the money for her to undertake unpaid internships in big banks, but that’s not her mum’s fault.

‘You don’t just get a job, then get a house. Everything . . . everything is different.’

‘You’re right,’ says Janey. ‘I don’t understand. The whole world seems mad to me.’

Essie harrumphs.

---