Page 44 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Sometimes,’ says Essie. ‘That’s not the kind of bank I work in, though. Hang on, let me get my laptop from next door.’

‘Can I bring Smokey?’

‘No!’

*

When his car pulls up in front of the house, Essie is pondering whether to change. After all, it’s not a date; she is perfectly happily coupled up. It’s just her first chance to escape the village in weeks, but on the other hand she is in her scruffiest clothes. She knows for sure he’s the kind of person who will notice if she changes, and will probably make a remark about it. But she is so desperate to get out, to do something that isn’t just obsessing over her life and watching, terrified, as rents increase week on week.

Janey is back, admiring her new hair in the mirror, which Essie doesn’t notice and charges past. Janey tries to keep her face completely straight, as if the idea of Essie going out in the afternoon with Boot-Scooting Dwight McFlynn is a perfectly normal situation she had always expected her beloved daughter to be part of.

‘Stop that!’ she hollers from the doorstep, as Dwight honks the horn. Everyone is used to Dwight’s ridiculously shiny black Dodge Viper car that is his absolute pride and joy, bought as a shell and meticulously fixed up week by week.

Janey comes out and Dwight steps out of the car. He’s wearing black cowboy boots and supertight black jeans, ostensibly to go with the car.

‘How’s the roadster?’ she asks, smiling. ‘Still getting three miles to the gallon?’

Dwight smiles in his good-natured way. ‘Why yes, ma’am, yes I am.’ He looks at the little doll’s house, with its pretty palegreen front door and Crittall windows. ‘I like your house,’ he declares, as if surprised.

‘Glad to hear it,’ says Janey.

‘She says I have to think about things like windows and that.’

‘Who’s she, the cat’s mother?’

‘Essie. She knows her sh . . . her stuff.’

‘Does she?’ says Janey, genuinely pleased. ‘Oh good!’

Essie clatters down the narrow stairs, looking pretty and apprehensive, particularly, it seems, about what her mum might have been saying while she was getting changed. Then she sees the car.

‘Oh, my God,’ she says. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘It’s the “That Don’t Impress Me Much” car!’ says Janey, but neither of them is old enough to really remember Shania Twain, so it goes right over their heads and she finds herself muttering, ‘Okay, so you got a car’ to herself.

‘Does the horn play La Cucaracha?’

‘That’s a great idea,’ says Dwight. ‘I’ll get right on that.’

‘No!’ says Essie. She gets in. It’s incredibly low-slung and she has to basically dip and shimmy to manage it, even as Dwight holds the door open for her. The car is a left-hand drive.

‘You could have pointed that out before I crawled in,’ says Essie.

Dwight gives a slow look at Janey. ‘I figured you wanted to drive.’

Janey smiles at the pair of them. ‘Have fun,’ she says. ‘I’ll check on Felicity.’

Well, well, well, she thinks, heading back in as her phone starts to ring, feeling genuinely optimistic.

20

Aringing phone, Janey is to think later, used to be such a wonderful thing. So full of excitement and possibility. A boy, some gossip, just a friend for a chat.

Now it is almost certainly someone attempting to scam you out of your life savings, and nobody younger than her ever picked up the phone for anything. This definitely is not an improvement. Also, you’d think it would make public transport more pleasant, but it turns out the last guys on earth who still think having a mobile phone is magical and impressive are businessmen who like to bark things about paradigms into their phones in the middle of train carriages. On speaker.

But now, the phone is ringing and it’s Lish and she picks it up without thinking too much about it, even though Lish and she usually WhatsApp each other ‘worst patient of the week’ awards, while feverishly hoping the hospital will never have a reason to subpoena their WhatsApp messages and promising faithfully to one another that if this happens they will both throw their phones into the sea.

She is listening to the ridiculous roar of Dwight’s car tearing off down the sea road – and feeling slightly envious of her daughter, which isn’t a good look but even so, it isn’t every day a cowboy comes to whisk you out on a sunny afternoon, even ifit is to the Caithness Builder’s Merchants – and idly considering another cup of tea when she presses hello.

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