Page 65 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Traffic lights are for pussiesis exactly what I’m going to have put on your tombstone. When I have to order it, next week.’

‘Would you be sad?’ he asks, looking at her with a challenging glance.

She returns it. ‘I would wear mourning colours,’ she says. ‘Purple and brown, together.’

He hitches an eyebrow at her and Essie suddenly realises she is twirling a ringlet on her finger in front of him, which is not like her, not at all.

Suddenly there’s a commotion at the door.

‘Coo-ee! Dwight, love, can you grab my bags . . . ’

A bustling, highly scented Shelby, hair coloured a bright, gleaming blonde, piled high on her head, comes in through the pub’s side door. She stops short on seeing Essie there, and Essie is conscious how close she and Dwight are sitting, and moves away, which, she realises belatedly, looks even more suspicious.

‘Hi,’ Shelby says in a pointed tone that is very much the opposite of friendly. Essie finds herself simultaneously a bit freaked out but also annoyed. Shelby used to bully her, for goodness’ sake. It should be Essie who gets to be snotty now.

‘Just leaving,’ she says quickly. ‘Dwight, I’m going to order some samples, have a look.’

‘You choose, eh?’ he says. ‘I don’t really care about all this stuff.’

Then why have we just wasted a morning? thinks Essie, then it comes to her that she might already know.

*

To her surprise, Shelby walks her out.

‘You’re hanging out a lot with my brother,’ she observes, icily.

‘I’m helping him on a work project,’ says Essie, cursing her need to try to connect rather than keeping an icy-pure Zendaya silence that would be much cooler.

Shelby snorts. ‘Yeah, whatever,’ she says. ‘You’re just playing about up here, laughing at the country bumpkins?’

‘I amnot,’ says Essie, exasperated. ‘I’m from here, I was born and raised here and I have every bit as much of a right to be here as you do!’

‘Except the second you can leave you’ll piss off back toEdinburgh.’

She says Edinburgh the way one might say ‘Sodom’. Essie doesn’t have anything to say to that.

‘I’m not remotely interested in your brother. I’ve got a boyfriend.’

‘Really? You certainly seem interested in gaining access to his bank account.’

Essie rolls her eyes. ‘Tohelp him, for God’s sake. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.’

‘No, how could he, coming from Carso? How could he, having saved up enough to buy three properties before his thirtieth birthday, which I’m sure you’re also doing. How could we, when I run this place single-handedly. How could we possibly know what the hell we’re doing? ThankGodMiss Essie Big Boots is here from the big city to show us all up for the idiots we are.’

‘You’reimpossible,’ says Essie, too upset and angry to speak. She wants – oh, how she wants – to think of something quickand witty to say off the top of her head, in the spur of the moment, but goodness, she just can’t. She marches down the street instead, her whole body shaking, terrified and filled with adrenaline. ‘AND YOUR HAIR LOOKS STUPID,’ she shouts back behind her.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ says Shelby. ‘It looks brilliant. You’re wrong, as usual. Just as you are about everything.’

And she slams the door.

27

‘Hmm,’ says Amsan at lunch. ‘Did you ever treat a Verity Thomas?’

Janey starts. Lowell has been in her thoughts. She is thinking of his handsome shaggy head, his worried smile; the pleasing heft of him. It is a good distraction from looking at the packet of Caramel Wafer bars someone left in Amsan’s staff room, which she has stolen to pass on to her daughter as Yasmin just had a date with a man who had seemed perfect until he told her he liked to spend most weekends dressed up as a unicorn and did she have a problem with that, and needed cheering up. Janey has spent the morning with another family who want their deaf child to sign and have turned down the operation, where she had to do the tricky balancing act of supporting their decision without having a point of view about it. By definition she is there to help people hear, but she understands the agony completely. And she agrees. There is nothing wrong with their beautiful, perfect baby. And life has a way of being very tricky.

She glances at Amsan, and, slightly, the Caramel Wafers.

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