Page 28 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Did you just say, “ain’t”?’ says Essie, her voice icy.

‘There’s a lot of work to do on the houses,’ says Janey quickly, figuring that the fastest way out of this conversation is changing the subject.

‘There is,’ says Dwight. ‘I’m not afraid of hard work.’ He jangles a set of keys in his hand. ‘Want a peek?’

‘No,’ says Essie sulkily, at the exact same moment as Janey, genetically incapable of not having a look around someone else’s house, says, ‘Yes, please!’

Essie nudges her hard.

‘What? Come on. I visited Mrs MacAleese there, you know. I want to see what you’re going to do. And how much it’s going to disrupt me, in particular.’

‘Sure,’ says Dwight equably.

‘Am I right in thinking,’ says Janey, catching him up, as Essie dawdles behind, furious with everything, ‘that Mrs MacAleese didn’t have indoor plumbing? That’s how it seemed back when I was here, but surely they sorted it out?’

‘They never did,’ says Dwight. ‘She didn’t like the thought of it, said it was unhygienic to go to the bathroom in the same place as you ate your meals.’

‘Ha,’ says Janey. ‘My grandad thought that. But won’t you need, like, en-suite bathrooms to every single room including the other bathrooms? If you’re going to let it out.’

‘They’re going to be holiday lets?’ says Essie icily.

‘Haven’t decided,’ says Dwight, unlocking the first door.

Janey pokes her head inside. The house smells very unpleasant – cold and unoccupied, with the suspicion of rats – and, as the door creaks open, a bird rises up to the rafters and disappears.

‘Well, it’s getting out somewhere,’ says Dwight, following her gaze upwards.

The floor is littered with old magazines and pieces of stained carpet, and there is a boarded-up fireplace. Wallpaper has been pulled off the wall, and the spray-painted signs on the far wall indicate that this place has seen some use, presumably by local teens.

‘Goodness,’ says Janey. ‘You’ve got your work cut out. This is worse than the state mine was in, and mine was bad.’

Dwight scratches his head. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘But there’s a load of lads doing two on, one off, yeah?’ He is talking about the men who go on the rigs; tough, hard grafters, the lot of them. They work two months on for every month they have back at home, with their families, or, sometimes, in the pub. ‘They can do with a project, aye?’

‘I know,’ says Janey. And she does; she sees them all the time. The constant roar of the drill is hard on the men’s ears. They’re issued with protectors but they won’t wear the damn things; they’re young, they think they’re untouchable. She sees them at fifty, when they can’t hear the TV, when the world feels like it is becoming unreachable. She tries, always, not to make a big deal out of how preventable it could have been. The money on the rigs is good, but she never wanted Alasdair to go.

‘Make them wear their ear protectors, okay?’

Dwight looks at her. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

Janey glances around. The house is laid out like hers, only the other way around.

‘Think how many generations lived here,’ she says. ‘It’s two hundred years easy, just like mine.’

‘Two hundred and thirty,’ says Dwight, not without pride. ‘Every stone put in by hand.’

Janey peered into the ancient fireplace, charred black. ‘I think she still cooked in a pot.’

Dwight smiled. ‘Aye, you’re probably right about that. Probably why she lived until she was ninety.’

‘Probably is.’

Essie is looking around, taking in the beautiful old walls, the rickety floor. Nothing has been changed or replaced here over the years. She shivers, thinking of the blur of humans who have been born, grown old and died here. She glances out of the filthy back window of the very basic kitchen. You can see the sunlight glinting off the waves, right from here, through a crack in the big houses on the front, which you can’t from her mum’s.

‘How are you doing the decor?’ she says.

Dwight shrugs. ‘Dunno,’ he says. ‘Just going to clean it up a bit, figure it out. Probably nip down to B&Q Inverness.’

Janey and Essie turn to look at him and at this moment they look extremely alike, both horrified.

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