Page 63 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

Janey has absolutely no idea how her daughter will respond to the suggestion, but she’ll figure that out as they go. She likes the pups anyway; they make her happier than she has been in a long time.

‘Yeah, okay,’ says Lowell. He looks at the bottle, which is empty.

‘Phew,’ he says, and they stand up.

Janey rises with the strong sense of stepping away – from one way of being a woman into another: of being a woman, alone with a man, and a bottle of wine, and the old possibilities and dreams and titillations and chances. But tonight she didn’t get to feel like that. Tonight she was a sympathetic ear, nothing more, and it troubles her more than she would have ever thought or could have admitted; as if she is shedding the skin of her fundamental adult self, even when inside she feels exactly the same as she ever did. And always will. For years and years and years stretching ahead. Even as she stands to meet him, his bulk looming above her, she feels it: a quick spurt of attraction, an almost overwhelming desire to touch his jumper, to see him smile that gentle rumpled smile at her; his comfortable size, his slightly distracted air, as if he’s building houses in his head all the time; the hair that he runs his hands through, a gesture which immediately makes him look younger in a way she can’t quite put her finger on.

For a second, as they are facing each other, she catches something, or thinks she does: something in his eye. As if, for the first time, he sees her. Woman her. The person she thought she was. She can see it. It’s like a tiny hole in the universe, a pause that stretches longer than it should do. He’s confused; blinks, looks nervous. Then he returns to himself, and she thinks he is thinking how horrified she would be, a comfortable middle-aged lady, after all, in sensible trainers, with a Boots Advantage card.

Oh, and he had a twelve-years-younger wife, of course.

‘Thank you, sorry,’ he says, both things at once.

‘What for?’ she says, meaning both.

‘For . . . for monopolising your time. But for letting me . . . I don’t talk about it to many people,’ he says, rumpling his face.

‘You haven’t thought about a real therapist?’ Janey asks delicately.

‘I don’t . . . I mean, honestly, I don’t think I’m that interesting. And I think . . . I think I’m not feeling bad for any mysterious reason, you know what I mean? My wife left me because I’m a boring old fart – what is there to say about that? People wanging on about themselves for hours on end doesn’t make them any less boring either, in my experience. So, again, my apologies.’

‘None needed,’ she says, smiling at him.

*

The puppies are scrabbling in the laundry and they go to check on them. They are playing a game which appears to involve tearing their tiny claws up and down on the expensive towels, pulling loops out of them. Little puddles of pee are starting to form. Felicity is showing absolutely no interest in coming over to see how they’re doing, even though they are absolutely desperate to bolt over to her. But they are tumbling around happily enough; it’s a warm, cosy spot for them.

‘Do you think puppies have existential problems?’ Lowell says.

Janey bends down and picks up Bute, the little girl with the big bum, whose hairy tail stub wags furiously when she recognises a familiar scent.

‘I think,’ says Janey, ‘that puppies might be theanswerto existential problems.’

And she goes out into the chilly evening, walks – despite his gallant offer to accompany her – by herself back across town. The last thing she needs is to be spotted by people who know her, given that that is practically everyone, or for people to start to gossip. Particularly, these days, when there is absolutely nothing to gossip about; nothing at all.

26

‘Burnt Otter.’

‘That’s not what it says, stop being ridiculous,’ says Essie, grabbing the paint chart off the table in front of Dwight. ‘Oh. It is. They should add a health and safety line that says “no otters were burnt in the making of this paint”.’

Dwight throws his hands up. ‘This is all nuts. I don’t want Rabbit’s Arse colour.’

‘Well, maybe you do.’

They are technically having a planning meeting in the End of the World bar when it is shut, on a Friday morning, and Shelby is – Essie has checked carefully – off in Inverness doing some shopping and getting her roots done, as Jean in the village is not up to snuff, apparently. Jean has a lot to say about this, little of which is repeatable, and, unusually for Carso, nobody has repeated it, because everyone is completely terrified Shelby will get the huff and leave the village and close the bar and then they’ll be stuffed because absolutely nobody is moving to open any hospitality venues – there’s no staff; all the seasonal young Europeans have disappeared.

They also technically asked Wee Jim to the meeting but he was not being much use, just sitting there looking so much like he didn’t understand why nobody wanted him to hit anything with a hammer that Dwight ended up sending him round the backof the Seagate cottages, where they’re putting the stuff they’ve pulled out that Essie has decided they can’t sell on, which is almost everything: cheap little falling-apart MDF cabinets and the type of old, heavy furniture riddled with woodworm that weighs an absolute ton and nobody wants in their house any more, even if houses need sideboards for wedding crockery. Essie saves all the old wood for the wood-burner, and Dwight is astonished that they don’t have central heating and that anyone could conceivably prefer a stove with real wood they have to light and use kindling for rather than something you can just turn on with the touch of a button, much in the same way as he was astounded that Essie thinks wooden floors will be more popular than patterned carpet.

‘I’m just telling you what people like,’ Essie is saying.

‘Yeah, by people you meansnots,’ he says. ‘Christ, I can’t tell you the difference it would make if there was carpet in the rig.’

‘Is it cold?’

He shook his head. ‘Outside is fucking nightmarish, but inside is just about alright. Twenty-five degrees.’

‘They heat it to twenty-five? Aren’t you all stifling?’

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