Page 57 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘I assumed he got lowered on, like Tom Cruise inMission: Impossible.’

Lowell grins. ‘I wonder if that’s how Tom Cruise does it in real life.’

They both laugh.

‘Okay, fine. I submit. My life, which was already pretty grim, is now going to be made rather more . . . ’

Janey picks up one of the wee girl dogs. Lowell stops in his tracks as the tiny thing, grey and white, long eyelashes, tentatively wags her tiny nub of a tail and experimentally puts out her tongue to lick her hand.

‘Oh, lord,’ he says, his voice changing completely, and for the first time, it seems to Janey, he sees the dogs as dogs, rather than a problem for him to solve. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Which one is this one?’

‘Argyll,’ says Janey, examining her. ‘She’s going to be huge. Wolfhound body, and shrunken Westie head, like a cut and shunt.’

Lowell frowns. ‘I think she’s perfect.’

He holds the little pup gently in the palm of his large hand, while she carries on licking and making pleased noises.

‘Alright,’ he says, picking up another bucket with the other hand. Felicity bounds around his legs, wagging wholeheartedly, sniffing around the garden, relieving herself joyfully on a plant-pot and generally looking absolutely delighted after her many adventures in the big city.

Janey picks up her bucket full of dogs and follows him in, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

25

At first Janey reacts as though she’s just walked into the TARDIS. That, more or less, is what seems to have happened.

‘Hang on,’ she says, and walks back out and in again.

Nothing has changed outside. The blinds are still drawn. The brickwork is still chipped and the pointing needs done, and the window frames are peeling.

Lowell smiles rather awkwardly. ‘Ah, yeah,’ he says.

Janey puts the bucket of puppies down, to some disgruntlement.

‘Oh, my God.’ She shakes her head. ‘Nobody in town knows about this.’

‘I . . . I quite like it like that,’ says Lowell, looking at her.

‘But . . . how?’

The space inside has been hollowed out. Where once there were, as Janey well remembers, two classrooms, three sets of toilets – boys, girls, teachers – a staff room, a cloakroom and a gym/canteen/makeshift theatre – all of that is gone.

Instead, there is one, vast space, made almost entirely of wood – there are wooden ridges along the back wall – with the side completely made of glass. There is very little furniture: a large wooden dining table; a large fireplace glassed in; but then a full set of steps running into the eaves of the building, fromwhich is suspended a beautiful wire and wood mezzanine, lined with bookshelves, with a vast double bed. In the far corner on the right is an office space with a tilted desk and a large wooden storage unit for rolled-up plans. On the other side, by the glass, is an immaculate small kitchen with a wooden bar for sitting at and looking out on to the beautiful wild garden in the fading light. It is warm; the entire space is warm, no mean feat in a space this size in Scotland, particularly in a Victorian building that can’t be properly insulated. As she looks closer she sees that the windows have an inner pane that double- or triple-seals them; that there are few doors, but the ones there are are heavy and sealed.

‘I couldn’t imagine this was here,’ says Janey.

He smiles politely.

‘But why do you leave the outside such a mess?’

‘I don’t think it is a mess,’ he says. ‘I think it’s normal wear and tear; it’s exactly how the house should look. I’m happy to respect the exterior and all the lives its been through. I think it’s beautiful like that. Then . . . the interior is mine.’

Janey takes off her shoes without even thinking about it, apart from a brief check in case she’s got a hole in her sock. The floor is blissfully warm under her feet after the windy chill outside. Felicity has made her way over to the front of the fire and, with a happy, exhausted sigh, has collapsed in front of it. Janey feels rather like doing exactly the same thing. The puppies are meeping.

‘Well,’ says Janey. She was so proud of her own little place, she thinks now, just because she chose nice colours. She would like to pretend not to be so impressed, and that she walks into amazing, design magazine-type homes all the time, but it’s too late – she already did a mega-TARDIS reaction, so she’s lost the cool points. It strikes her, quite forcefully, that aman with a house this nice and all his own hair will probably be quite well-off for female company, but she squeezes the thought down. It’s pointless. He has a house this beautiful but still, whenever he sees her, deliberately puts on the same pair of trousers. Maybe it’s intentional, to stop her falling for him; he’s just being polite about it. That’s a very depressing thought.

‘Where were you thinking, for the wee guys?’ she says, regarding her bucket rather dolefully.

‘Iwasthinking outside, with the chicken wire,’ he says. ‘However . . . ’

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