Page 61 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Oh, there’s Verity!’ she says, jumping up and going over to examine the picture.

Verity is a very serious-looking child. She has her father’s dark eyes, but otherwise there isn’t a huge resemblance; she has a pointed chin whereas her father’s is round; russet hair and a petite build where her father is dark and sturdy.

‘She’s beautiful,’ says Janey.

‘She looks a lot like her mother,’ says Lowell, and his face is pained.

‘How is . . . ’

‘Oh, well,’ says Lowell, and takes another long swig of his wine.

It feels rather as if the evening is slightly hanging on a knife edge. It strikes Janey that a different, less bruised person than her might say,Oh, we’re not going to talk about ourfamilies tonight. We’re not going to talk about our pasts, or any of that, and stride across the lovely room and put his glass of wine aside (carefully), pull off his glasses and simply sit on his large, comfortable-looking lap. There is, in fact, quite a lot of Janey who would have liked to do that. To do exactly that, right now. So much. But she has never been confident in that way, not even when she was younger. What if she terrifies him? What if he goes,Christ, what the fuck?What if? What if?

So instead she gives him a warm, encouraging, pretty much professional smile, and doesn’t say anything, which is the way she encourages people to open up to her in clinic about their hearing loss; the way she’s been good at her job for years and years and . . . well. Lots of years. Being a good audiologist means being good at listening, in more ways than one.

She sits back down, still wearing the smile, and picks up her wine, physically holding it, as if it is a barrier to her marching across the room . . . his look of shock and horror as she disports herself like a hussy . . . no, she can’t bear to think of it. But she wants him so badly, it frightens her.

‘Oh, you don’t want to hear this,’ he says, interrupting her train of thought.

‘Of course I do,’ she says, looking around again to hide her pink face. Felicity is snoozing gently in her lovely bed; the puppies have settled, it appears. The fire is flickering, the room is warm, the wine is delicious, the lighting very flattering. It would have been such a nice evening for a seduction, truly. Is it too late?

‘Well, if you’re sure. I was married, working in Aberdeen . . . ’

She wistfully lets it go. And listens, which she has always been so good at.

They had been in Aberdeen, but his wife had had an affair with a colleague, so they had moved to the country to havea second chance, which was when they’d enrolled in Janey’s clinic. But Thalia had been increasingly unhappy – she was young, Lowell says. He’d married a lovely young woman but she’d had to leave all her friends behind, and – he winces – her social life. She was miserable. Started picking fights with him about everything.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ says Janey gently.

‘Itwas,’ he says forcefully. ‘It was entirely my fault. I married her, knowing there was an age gap, pretending it didn’t matter. I figured it would be fine, she wanted children, and we’d settle down together – but it was like, after Verity arrived, she immediately became terrified. About what she’d missed out on, what was going on without her. I had made her old before her time. She said that.’

‘She wasn’t a teenager, though,’ says Janey, frowning.

‘Oh, no, she was thirty-two when we met,’ says Lowell. ‘Christ, no. I was an idiot, but not a pervert. I hope.’

‘And you were . . .?’

‘Forty-four. It didn’t . . . I didn’t think that much of it. I mean, it was a bit of a gap, but I wasn’t old enough to be her dad or anything.’

Janey nods. ‘I get it.’

She does. If he were to date a forty-four-year-old woman now, nobody would bat an eyelid. It was unlikely anyone would even notice. Hell, he could date a thirty-two-year-old now and it would be completely fine. She, on the other hand, would be in theDaily Mail, next to the lady prison guards who kept copping off with armed robbers.

‘But no: I was the boring old fart tying her down, burying her . . . ’ He gestures around. ‘I know you think I’m some kind of crazy minimalist, but I’m not that weird, honestly. I just thought she’d fill it with paintings and pictures and cushionsand . . . stuff. But she never did. She never brought a thing in. She hated it so much. She was just online all the time . . . ’

‘Did Verity like it?’

‘She did,’ he says. ‘She loved getting a dog – they’d go for miles in the forest and Felicity was so gentle, but protective too. You have no idea: having a differently abled child, you worry about them so much – what if someone takes advantage, what if they don’t notice something or become aware of something . . . but here, she could roam for miles and we didn’t have to fret about her. And the school was great, and she made a friend, and we really were considering the surgery.’

‘I seem to remember her lip-reading being very good.’

He smiles in pride. ‘It is,’ he says. Then his face clouds again and he refills their glasses.

‘So what happened?’ asks Janey. ‘Did she move back?’

‘Well, first . . . ’ says Lowell. ‘And God knows I’m not blameless. I travel a lot with my work, you know. We build things all over. There’s a lot of meetings in London and Amsterdam and stuff.’

‘And you live in the middle of nowhere.’

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