Page 8 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

Essie opens her laptop, takes a deep breath, and once again starts searching for a cheaper place to live.

At first, she had thought it would be easy. She had started two weeks ago, and at first, as she pushed the button, loads of properties had popped up all over the map, right in town.

Then she looked closer. These were ‘flats to rent’, alright – but they were only for a night. Or a week, at most. They were all on Airbnb or other rental sites, all short-term, all completely unsustainable. Some are as expensive as hotels.

That couldn’t be right, she’d thought, looking closer. It couldn’t possibly be . . . there were flats she could see that she had known were once rentals; had had friends staying in them, long term. But now, they were all there for one-night visitors; people coming into town for fun or a stag night or a brief trip, who didn’t mind paying a bit more.

Of course, she and Connor had . . . loads of times – gone on minibreaks and stayed in other people’s places, in Paris, or Prague; they were often lovely and they’d congratulated themselves on getting to stay somewhere so cool when travelling, cheaper than a hotel . . . but that had been then. She’d never really thought what it meant back in the place she actually wanted to live.

She had shut down that window; started again, looking for long-term rentals.

There was almost nothing in the city. Nothing at all. It was as if an entire sector had disappeared. Everything available was miles away. And so incredibly expensive, so much so that she’d realised she was practically getting a bargain in the lovely colonies place in Stockbridge. All the flatshares she looked at – she started off looking at studios, but ruled that out very quickly – were hundreds and hundreds of pounds, and every time she called one that had just come on, it was gone already. The couple she did manage to get to see were in scary old tumbledown buildings, miles from anywhere, filthy dirty and with creepy older men already ensconced there. And even then, they still cost a fortune. And, whoops, they’re gone.

Her college friends have scattered far and wide, many to much cheaper areas of the country where they have mortgages and, in some cases, babies on the way, and were mildly surprised to hear from her, which made Essie blush. Her new colleagues and work chums are acquaintances, either out of work themselves now or not in need of a flatmate. Plus, the whole thing is horrendously embarrassing.

Two weeks later, by the time she’s been turned down by both a temp agency and an utterly nondescript apartment in Bruntsfield where she would have had to share a bathroom with three posh nineteen-year-old student girls who on the evidence of the bathroom floor left their hair extensions everywhere, she is deeply and seriously worried.

Essie sits in the lovely Stockbridge back bedroom, watching the evening light die over the water of Leith, which is thronged with couples walking, happy dogs, and small children on ethically produced wooden scooters.

She can’t believe everything is crumbling so fast. She was meant to be going out to dinner with Connor, Tris and that lot tonight, but she already knew it would be a very expensive affair, and almost certainly end up with the rugby boys attempting to debag one another on the street or make themselves drink something that was already on fire, and it wasn’t quite as much fun as it had seemed a while ago.

And her landlady, now she is at home all the time looking at job ads and heating up tinned soup, has started to make loud sighs and ‘oh, you’re here again’ remarks whenever she is in the kitchen or the bathroom and reminding her that the rent is due and basically pass-agging the hell out of her.

The phone rings. It’s her mother – of course it is. She looks at it for a while. Then she answers. What choice does she have?

7

‘It’s about hair-smoother,’ says Janey quickly. ‘I’ve got this weird frizz at the front that’s appeared out of nowhere. It’s sticking out like TV aerials. TV aerials are, uh . . . things we used to have on TVs.’

Sitting in her tiny, beautiful bedroom, with its tasteful old wardrobe and glorious view, as the evening sun hits the window frames, Essie can’t believe the predicament she’s in. Saying it is going to make it real. Her landlady had said, very casually that evening, that in fact she was going to start doing short-term lets for the room, so she’d need it back.

Essie had known it was coming. And she supposes she shouldn’t blame the woman after all; she’s just getting by, like everybody else. Which doesn’t stop her hating her with the passion of a million fiery suns and wanting to spill red wine on her beautiful pale furniture, which wouldn’t help matters as she desperately needs the deposit back. The agony of looking at horrible rooms on the same websites she used to idly browse for country homes is not helping either.

Essie takes a deep breath. She had known her mum was proud of her, going to university – first in the family, she’d told everyone – fleeing far away to the big city, away from that small life, and the awful atmosphere in the house, and her parents getting divorced the second – thesecond– she was out the door,making it entirely clear that they had made their lives a living hell just because she was at home and wouldn’t be doing it for one minute longer. Leaving her adrift in a distant city with nothing underfoot to moor her; just years of her parents wrangling about the house and money and every bloody thing while she and Al just had to get on with it. It had been hard to forgive. Essie isn’t there yet. Janey knows it, and it cuts her to the bone, and Essie lets it. Dads . . . dads get away easier. And Colin is incredibly busy with his new family anyway.

‘Ess?’ says her mother’s voice, in a way that always makes her feel reassured and slightly furious at the same time.

‘Um . . . Mum, I was thinking . . .’

Essie finds herself, surprisingly quickly, on the brink of tears. She’s worked so hard, come so far. Her mum is so proud of her. How will she square this with all her friends; with everyone in the village from the Scot Nor supermarket, all the way to the GP surgery and the hospital; all of them will know that her fancy daughter who went all the way to the big city was crawling back with her tail between her legs. The humiliation is going to be unbearable.

She takes a deep breath.

‘Mum, I thought maybe I’d come home for a wee bit.’

*

Janey had stopped the car again to make the call. She knew theoretically she could just do it on the speaker, but she didn’t like driving and talking at the same time. The light was deep pink on the long side of Ben Leven. She glanced back at the lambs, whose mothers obviously wanted them away, but who continued to frolic in the muddy water. She couldn’t help smiling. She didn’t say anything down the phone, though. Didn’t want to jump in and get it wrong, as she always did.

But now she is trying to hide her delight as she parks outside her tiny house, the fading sun hitting the walls of the empty cottages on the corner.

She has got used to having the street to herself; it’s going to be weird. Please, please, she thinks. Please let it be someone local. But it might be too late. It’s too picturesque, has too much potential. They could whack it on the North 500 route, add camper van parking . . . oh, lord, please no. She likes tourists in the village, everyone does – you can’t deny the joy of toddlers picking up their first crabs, their parents relishing the freshest fish suppers or listening to Struan McGhie’s ceilidh band play in the pub, while lingering over a Badachro malt and staring at the bright, clear sky. It brings fun, and life, and colour. But she worries about a tipping point: the young ones vanishing off to the cities for opportunities, and nobody left to run the school or do the doctoring or clean the hotel rooms or work the farms. It’s a good life at the end of the world, it truly is. But it can be a tough one too.

But it would be so nice to have Essie home.

‘You’re in a cheery mood,’ comes a voice, and she starts and looks round. It’s Johnson, the postman. He’s married to Lish.

‘What are you doing down here?’ she says. ‘I thought you were meant to be finished at lunchtime and playing snooker or whatever it is posties do.’

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