Page 48 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Stalking?’

‘No! I want to hang out in the nice hotel and have a big deep bath. My mum’s house is stifling me.’

‘Well, I would like it if you did that,’ he says, and they both smile down the phone.

*

‘I just wish it wasn’t deer-killing,’ says Essie to Al on the phone later, taking a walk so her mum doesn’t overhear every word then give her that pained expression and head-tilt when asking for further details of her bolloxed life. Temporarily bolloxed life, she tries to tell herself.

‘Painlessly destroying an old or malformed animal that needs to be culled,’ says Alasdair. ‘Essie, I’ve explained this a million times. They will eat every leaf in the forest. They will eat every crop in every field. They will eat every sapling – that’s a baby tree, Ess. They’ll eat every baby tree. Do you know what happens next? They starve to death. Want to watch Bambi starve to death, Essie? Because it takes a long time, so you can go and watch it crying.’

‘No!’ says Essie, crossly.

‘Well, then,’ says Al. ‘Stop being a bloody hypocrite. Deer have no natural predators.’

‘Except us.’

‘That’s right, except us. To make the ecosystem workable.’

‘Deer are like us,’ says Essie. ‘Just growing and overrunning and ruining everything. But occasionally cute.’

‘That’s exactly right,’ says Al.

‘We have no natural predators either.’

‘Yes, that’s why we’ve invented AI. Can I get off the phone now?’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘What?’ he says.

‘Will you go stalking with Connor?’

There’s a groaning noise.

‘What? Don’t you like him?’

‘I don’t know him. I just . . . gangs of posh young guys are, it will amaze you to hear, not my favourite clients.’

‘He’s very sweet.’

‘What’s he doing with you, then?’

‘Ha ha ha.’

‘How’s Mum?’

‘Blah blah blah laundry blah blah blah money doesn’t grow on trees blah blah blah I’m a million years old it’s terrible.’

‘Essie! That’s cruel. Go and stay with Dad if it’s that bad.’

‘Oh, God, Lori is always on a diet and Logan’s a thug and Dad works all the time and looks haunted and sad every time she gives him more kale salad. At least at Mum’s I know how to use the coffee machine.’

‘Lucky old Mum.’

‘It’s alright for you! She thinks the sun shines out of your behind!’

‘It does,’ says Al seriously.

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