Page 3 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

She had nipped up to the huge bathroom with the vast claw-footed bath on the black and white tiles to make herself look nice before he woke up. They had both taken a day off, after the ball the night before, and thank goodness. She felt ropey but not too awful. The boys – Connor andhis flatmates, Tris and Trumpet – had drunk a lot more. It was some finance-sponsored shindig, everyone in kilts. She’d worn a pretty red cocktail dress from Mulberry Walk – ithad been far too much money, and she’d justified to herself that she’d wear it again but in the ceilidh it had got ripped and, well. That was what credit cards were for.

She had pulled the silk scarf out of her long dark curly hair and let it drop to her shoulders. It still retained the glossiness of the blowdry, more or less, and was still mostly ringlets. And getting the eyelash extensions had more than paid for itself; they made her blue eyes pop, even though her mother and her brother Alasdair both teased her about them. They were wrong – her mother was basically wrong about everything, so it was useful to listen to what she said, to give her a view from Opposite World – and she was right. She’d taken some tinted moisturiser out of her handbag – it would be very nice to have a drawer, frankly, but Connor gets a very haunted look if she mentions it, so she keeps all the essentials in travel size in her handbag so she can slip back to bed and pretend she wakes up gleaming.

Essie had admired the cornices as she put on a touch of under-eye concealer. This flat was so gorgeous. She is obsessed with property; her own flat is an overpriced shoe cupboard in an Instagram-gorgeous cottage in Stockbridge, the city’s boho area, full of vintage shops and independent bakeries, where she tries not to get in the way of the owner, Persephone, who does quite a lot of performative yoga.

She can’t envisage a place of her own. Everything in the city is crazy-making expensive, totally out of reach. Instead Essie often finds herself scrolling modern glass boxes with clean lines and no cupboards, with floating staircases and cathedral ceilings. Or she’ll explore perfect little mews, cobbled and hiddenbehind the great terraces of Edinburgh, with planters outside and pastel doors. She looks at huge grand apartments with vast kitchens in dark blue; winding stone staircases; porticos in the sky; sunny balconies; private gardens which promise mysterious beauties and riches in the heart of the city. Despite the fact that her room at Persephone’s has a tiny basement window that looks out over a pavement, she already has a view on whether a swimming pool in a home is too much trouble or not.

Of course house prices are astronomical, daydreams, but she so loves to have a sticky beak. Her mum has even said Carso prices were going up massively, and that’s completely mad; who could possibly want to live all the way up there?

Early spring sun dappled the bathroom; they were higher than the trees in Moray Place park, the private gardens that only allowed entry to Feuars: local residents who held a treasured key. They had spent happy picnics there, long weekend lunchtimes with prosecco and expensive and delicious treats from Valvona & Crolla. She has liked Connor, his easy ways and his blond hair and rugby player’s shoulders, ever since they’d met at some Young Financiers get-together at his office. And she fancied him rather a lot, she reminded herself, even before she’d seen his gorgeous apartment. Although he might have mentioned he lived in the New Town. Men who wanted to impress women normally did.

The first time they’d got together was one of the most romantic times in her life. On their third date, Connor had taken her back to his swanky West End offices, late at night.

‘Come here,’ he’d said. ‘I want to show you something.’

And he had taken her to the back of the offices, behind the fancy flowers and polished dark wooden tables, to the old warren of servants’ quarters, along the corridors and down a flight of ancient, forgotten worn stone steps.

‘Look at this,’ he’d whispered, and pulled open a back door she hadn’t even known existed – and she’d gasped.

The door opened out of the back of the building, into the tiny cobbled mews behind. An old lantern glowed in the autumn dusk; there was not a soul in sight, nor a sound in the air, and the effect was akin to stepping out of the twenty-first century and into the seventeenth. He hadn’t even known about her obsession with property; he’d got it right completely by accident.

‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Connor had said as she nodded furiously. He’d opened another door just next to it – the original door had a code, but this was just an old wooden door you could walk past a thousand times and not notice it – and they’d found themselves, with the help of the torches on their phones, inside an old coaching loft.

Every other one of the buildings had, long ago, been converted into mews cottages and sold. This had to be the last one, so much money swilling about that it had never even been necessary; it had, in all likelihood, been completely forgotten about. There was a dusty earth floor, with, amazingly, an old carriage wheel, bolts and chains for the horses set in the walls and, up a very old rickety wooden flight of stairs, a hayloft.

‘You are kidding me,’ Essie had said, in shock.

‘Roll in the hay?’ Connor had said, his blue eyes sparkling, and she’d laughed, couldn’t help it. For once, she’d found herself thinking less about potential and whether or not the property had good bones, and more about his big blue eyes, and obvious excitement. He had moved towards her and she’d pushed his blond hair off his face, and he’d kissed her strongly with his wide passionate mouth, and when they finally broke apart she had looked at him, flushed and full of lust, and said, ‘Are you serious right now?’ and he had hummed the tune of an old, old song, ‘Little Red Corvette’ at her, and his eyes had flicked upwards.

‘How many women have you taken up to the hayloft?’ she’d giggled.

‘None!’ he’d insisted. ‘I’m just hoping the ladder holds!’

And he was so adorable that she’d decided that she would believe him. They had crept down later, covered in dust, giggling their heads off.

*

Connor works for a boutique firm for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, very closed and exclusive, which his friend Tris had set up. Her dad thinks it is a smart venture, and that matters a lot to Essie. Originally Essie had thought Connor’s living and working with his old schoolfriend was very cute. That was before she’d spent much time with Tris. Connor is a sweetie-pie, everyone agrees. She likes his gentle manner, the way he puts up with teasing, his kindness. And what he stands for: money, security. After her dad left, her mum made such a hash of everything. Losing the family home; so many of their things had had to go. Essie wants something solid to come back to. Or she’ll be like her mum: left with absolutely nothing.

Tris is another story. The fly in the ointment.

‘Morning, Yoko,’ he’d said this morning. It was meant to be an affectionate nickname but she hated it. He’d nodded over to the coffee machine at least.

‘Would you like one?’ she’d offered.

‘Flat white,’ he says, as if he’s at Black Sheep. ‘How’s Sleeping Beauty?’

‘Still sleeping.’

Tris had shaken his head. ‘No stamina, that boy. I’m guessing you’ve seen the papers?’ He’d smirked in a way she didn’t like and turned his iPad towards her, and she had read thefinancial news headline, first in confusion, then in shock and disbelief.

And now, three hours later, here she is. Connor, she realises, hasn’t contacted her. She can’t call her dad as he’s away with the new family. And soon her mother will hear the news and Essie realises she just doesn’t know what to do.

4

‘Okay, it’s MOJO TIME,’ says Lish, Janey’s best friend at the hospital, shoving over the dating app. She has filled in most of it already. The problem is, Lish is a midwife, and a superb one, which means she has developed over the decades a certain way of telling you how to do stuff that you just obey without question. It’s in the tone of voice. Mind you, as Essie is always telling her, and not as a compliment, she herself has been known to talk incredibly slowly and distinctly in order to make a point.

‘I don’t know how it happens,’ says Janey, shaking her head and diverting her attention to the laptop and the app that is absolutely guaranteed to find her missing mojo, although she’s not a hundred per cent sure she didn’t pack it off to the charity shop when she moved. She got rid of alotof stuff. ‘But every time I have to write down my age, I think I’m thirty-five. I can’t help it. Inside I am absolutely thirty-five.’

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