Page 74 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

They’re larping, she thought. Live-action role-playing as posh, rich people from a world that no longer exists. Larping a world likeBridgertonorDownton Abbey, faking their way all the way to the top. Pretending Britain, the world, doesn’t look the way it really is.

‘So, you shoot?’ Tris had asked, exactly as a character would in a film. She’d looked at him and realised that in her back yard – on her territory, not his – she didn’t care quite so much what she said to him.

‘Of course not,’ she’d retorted. ‘Where would I learn to shoot?’

‘You’re from the Highlands!’

‘I’m not – you’re far higher than the Highlands up here,’ she’d said. And Tris had turned and walked off.

*

‘You look good,’ says Connor now as they follow Al in the car to the place where they’re all starting out. ‘Country life agrees with you.’

Essie realises she hasn’t put smoother on her hair – she ran out and can’t afford to buy more, even if you could buy it in the Carso semi-chem, which you can’t – and she hasn’t used her straighteners in yonks. There’s absolutely no point, when the wind will blow your hair every which way two seconds after you step out the door, plus you need to wear a bunnet every day because, well, you just do, it’s generally freezing at some point very late into the spring. There is a girl in town who makes beautiful cashmereones – Janey managed to snaffle one from her hairdresser and now Essie wears it every day without really noticing. Connor notices, though; there is colour in her cheeks, and freckles from the early spring sunshine, and her face isn’t looking quite so pinched. She’s put on weight – he decides not to mention it, but it suits her, takes away that hungry look. She looks softer.

‘It’s good to see you.’

‘How’s work?’

‘Hectic,’ he says. ‘Nuts.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ she says. ‘At least you won’t get outsourced to Switzerland.’

‘Put the willies up everyone, that did, your lot closing,’ he says. ‘I think that’s why we’re working harder, just to stand still.’

She’d crammed them into her mum’s car, reluctantly lent. They had made some reasonably predictable jokes about Noddy and Essie found herself uncharacteristically annoyed on her mum’s behalf. She was allowed to slag off her mum’s beloved car, but nobody else was. Also they didn’t – apart from Connor – know how hard her mother had saved to buy it, and how intensely proud of it she was.

To her surprise, when she parks up beside Al’s battered old Land Rover on Lochouire Fell – obviously this is a much more acceptable vehicle – there’s someone else in the car with him, who soon reveals himself to be Dwight.

The lads get out of the car and stare at him, in his black hat and boots. He’s notably shorter than all of them. Dwight is completely oblivious and hails her.

‘Oi! Essie! I got those wallpaper samples, hon!’

At this the boys start to giggle.

‘The only gay cowboy in the village,’ says Trumpet quietly. Essie wishes, for possibly the only time in her life, that Shelby had been here, to hear him say that.

‘Shut up,’ she says, meaning it to sound jokey, but it doesn’t, it sounds as if she means it, because she does.

Dwight hasn’t noticed a thing and strides over. ‘Hey, darlin’,’ he says, and Essie can feel Connor stiffen.

‘This is Dwight,’ she says. ‘He’s developing a row of cottages.’

‘And Essie is helping me,’ says Dwight, cheerfully. He passes over the wallpaper samples. ‘But I leave the girls’ stuff to her.’

‘Oi,’ says Essie. ‘Honestly, Dwight.’

She looks through them anyway before throwing them in the car. Tris narrows his eyes. ‘You’re doing a housing development?’

Dwight shrugs.

‘I mean, with the new planning laws . . . how did you get round it?’

‘Well, it’s local,’ he says. ‘Local houses. I’m local.’

‘You’re the codicil guy,’ says Connor suddenly.

‘Interesting,’ says Tris. ‘How many houses?’

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