Page 58 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

He nods, and heads to the right-hand wall. Fitted flush into the wall are practically hidden doors: one to a laundry, one to a small bathroom, then one small larder.

‘Oh, this is why you leave all your shoes in the porch,’ she says. ‘So you don’t have to bother with stuff.’

‘I don’t like stuff,’ he says. ‘I know, it’s a cliché.’

Janey doesn’t like thinking back to how hard it was to throw out all the stuff. All the endless bloody stuff, fighting, dividing, dwindling piles, impossible choices. Christmas decorations, school reports; holiday albums that now seemed to be laughing at them and the mythic happy family they represented. All of it, just . . . stuff.

She turns to him, frowning. ‘But architects . . . why do you live in this beautiful house but build horrible miserable blocks for people?’ she says, in a more accusatory tone than she’d intended.

‘I don’t, not really,’ he says. ‘But I think there’s a lot to be said for high-density. We just really must get it right, which we don’t always do, but when we do . . . people like it a lot.’

‘And making everything so plain and dull?’ says Janey. ‘Like the new wing at the hospital.’ The turrets and big clock of theold-fashioned hospital are now hidden behind a big, ugly, antiseptic block of metal and glass.

‘Well, all the fiddly things you may like – stairs, and fancy doors and handles and whatnot . . . they’re just not very helpful if you’re old, or in a wheelchair, or can’t climb stairs or are visually impaired. It really helps for access to make things as clear as possible. Think about the iPad . . . most people think that is beautiful, and it’s as empty and clean as possible.’

Janey folds her arms as she would really have preferred it if he didn’t have a point.

‘You didn’t do the new hospital wing, though?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen it. I know what you mean. Unfortunately beautiful buildings cost money, and it’s their responsibility to spend as little of our money as possible.’

‘Stop making good points,’ says Janey.

He leads her over to the drawing board and shows her what he’s working on. There are two large screens, one enormous, that show the project in three dimensions. A pair of round horn-rimmed glasses sit neatly at the top of the drawing board.

The screen shows a long line of tall, narrow houses with pointed grey roofs, which looked like Dutch houses lining a canal; they nestle near each other and have cubes of grey and white colour cut out of them in different places to individuate the houses, which have large glass windows that take up most of their first floor. The effect is soothing but surprising too, the rows of houses looking pretty in the same line, but also as if each is individual just to you. Janey can’t help but look longingly at the well-insulated glass, the heat pumps lined up, the solar panels on the roof. She bets those houses are always cosy and toasty.

As if reading her mind, he says, ‘A-rating.’

‘That’s not possible,’ she says. ‘I thought that was a myth.’

‘What are you?’

‘D,’ she says. ‘And that’s if I fill in all the cracks with freezer bags.’

He grins. ‘Well, then.’

The pups are getting restless and Smokey is making a clear bid for freedom.

‘Alright,’ he says, and opens one of the almost invisible doors on the side wall. Beyond is a laundry with a butler sink and the original flagstone paving.

‘Oh!’ says Janey, in recognition. ‘That was the . . . ’

She is about to say cloakroom, but as she does so she realises that in fact along the far wall are a line of old-fashioned hooks, on a long stout wooden rail, just as she remembers it, now holding tea towels. He has kept them.

‘Oh, my,’ she says. ‘This is really . . . this is where I used to hang my blazer.’

He smiles.

‘I had a sticker, though. You got a sticker in case you couldn’t read your own name.’ She pauses for a moment. ‘I don’t think Jamesie Carnyne ever did learn to read his own name.’

‘Wonder what happened to him?’

‘He’s on his dad’s farm, of course. Well, his farm now. Good man, Jamesie. Not much for the reading, but he’s a good man with the coos. One year the dairy truck couldn’t get through the snow, and his dad sent him down with fresh milk for all us weans.’

‘That sounds lovely.’

‘It was terrible! All warm, with, like, bits floating in it. It gave us all the boke and we pretended we were going to be sick . . . then I think Carmel Wilson really was sick. Oh, yeah, and Mrs Hegary gave us all a row and that was it, we were in big trouble.’ She laughs, remembering. ‘Jamesie wasfuming. His dadhad gone to all that trouble, given away a bit of his day’s takings too, and we just took the piss.’

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