Page 55 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘I thought I was meant to be the moody one,’ Essie says to the empty kitchen as she goes.

24

Lowell is waiting outside by his big old estate car. The boot has almost nothing in it at all.

Janey’s boot contains her unused yoga mat, her unused gym kit, her unused swimming costume – basically anything she might need if she felt a fit of emergency exercise come on, which it hasn’t yet – a torch, a first-aid kit despite the fact that the car spends nine hours a day parked outside a hospital, some cereal she keeps forgetting to take out, four pens, three charging cables, two of which aren’t working but she can never figure out which ones, and a bulk-buy of loo roll that she keeps there because there genuinely isn’t enough room to store it in the tiny house, particularly as Essie has filled the bathroom full of her incredibly expensive La Roche-Posay products. Inside the car are either a hundred and seventy-five pairs of cheap sunglasses, or zero pairs. There is no in-between.

‘You ready?’ says Lowell. He is, she notices suddenly, wearing his gardening trousers.

‘Are those your only trousers?’ she asks, before cursing the fact that a side-effect of the menopause appears to be blurting out the first thing in her head. She can’t avoid the fact, though, that’s she a bit disappointed. She’s gone to an awful lot of effort.

Sure enough, he looks completely nonplussed.

‘No,’ he says mildly. ‘But I thought to pick up puppies, perhaps I wouldn’t wear my best trousers.’

‘It’s just, those are the only trousers I’ve ever seen you wear,’ says Janey, trying to make things better but not necessarily succeeding.

‘Well, yes. One night I was cycling, one day I was gardening, and now I’m picking up...’

He looks down. The old cords were once bottle-green but are now wearing through with softness and age.

‘You’re right,’ he says, sounding surprised. ‘I live in a muddy country. I probably need more than one pair of working trousers.’

Janey smiles. ‘Is everything else in your house, like, morning suits and stuff? Fancy architect clothes? Strangely shaped metal glasses?’

He smiles. ‘No, I don’t really like having too much stuff.’

‘Except in your garden.’

‘Oh, gardens are different,’ he says, warmth in his voice.

‘Is this why you don’t own your own bicycle?’

‘ . . . or a second pair of trousers. Yes, I think we can agree I’ve taken it too far.’

Janey wonders what is in his house.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘you’re about to very much maximalise on dogs.’

He nods. ‘I am. Shall we?’

‘We should probably take something to cart the dogs in – have you got a bucket?’

‘A dog bucket?? Is that a thing?’

‘I think any kind of bucket will do.’

*

The cottages are deserted – Essie and Dwight are choosing bathroom fixtures. Janey briefly wonders if there is anythinggoing on – they seem to be spending a lot of time together – but dismisses it immediately. Connor has such lovely manners and is just so perfect for Essie; they make a lovely couple. Unsophisticated roughneck Dwight is not her type at all.

Wee Jim is outside, and grunts at them and continues what he is doing, which appears to be something with a hammer and a sink. Janey cannot imagine the circumstances under which it makes sense to take a hammer to a sink, but doesn’t mention it. Once they open the door, however, it’s a different matter. Instantly there is a paddle of excited paws rampaging on the floor above them, and an excited woof from Felicity. By the time they climb up the stairs, having found a bucket in an unplumbed bathroom downstairs, one of the pups has already managed to squirm its way around the barrier and is tentatively making its way down.

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ says Janey, at once. ‘Into the bucket with you.’

She can’t believe how much they’ve all grown. Every day they seem to leap ahead. No wonder Felicity looks utterly exhausted. Their hair is getting long and straggly already. About half have Felicity’s pointed floppy wolfhound ears, flat against their tiny heads, and about half have proper Jock Westie ears, perfect triangles popping out of their skulls. They’re all a combination of grey and white but already it is becoming obvious that they are going to be the most curious mixture of shape and sizes: there are sturdy bodies with long giraffe legs, and Bute has a long furry torso with tiny legs and a big arse which makes her look like a hairy sausage dog. Freuchie is pretty, a perfect white Westie that has been blown up like an air bed, but Argyll also has an underbite, as her huge wolfhound snoot doesn’t quite match her small Westie skull.

Janey loves them all.

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