Page 84 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

She shrugs. ‘It’s your money.’

‘But if I give him the money and the deeds . . . He makes money for folk?’

‘He does,’ says Essie. Everyone, it seems, except for her.

Dwight looks at her squarely. ‘Wanna do that again?’

She does. More than anything. Anything in the world.

Her life is an unbelievable mess, and this is only going to make it worse.

Her life is an unbelievable mess, but for a very, very short time just past, it felt as if it made sense.

Wee Jim and the plumber can be heard approaching the door and having a loud argument about doughnuts. The spell breaks; Dwight leaps up and pulls back on his jeans at lightning speed – practically professional, thinks Essie briefly – and she turns.

‘Just dropping the latest project deadlines,’ she says loudly as the men come in. ‘Oh, no, I forgot them . . . ’

They grunt at her. ‘Jam or fudge?’

Dwight looks her straight in the eye.

‘Honey,’ he says.

She finds herself looking straight back at him.

‘Cream,’ she says. Then leaves before she can make things even worse.

32

Janey curses her teen excitement that her crush is phoning her.

On the other hand, after the awful morning she’s had, it’s nice to have something nice. Clinic hadn’t been much better; one of her lovely clients, Bettina Murray, had been brought in by her distraught daughter. She kept pulling out her hearing aid, claiming it was aliens controlling her. Hearing aids were brilliant for slowing the path of dementia. But she could tell from the slumped shoulders of Bettina’s middle-aged daughter that they had got there too late.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she had said.

‘We’ll manage, won’t we, Mum?’ the woman had said.

‘I need to get to work,’ the old woman had muttered. ‘I’m late, I think. I don’t want to be late. Do I work here? Where are the children? I should be at work.’

‘She was a teacher,’ says her daughter. ‘A great one.’

‘Conscientious,’ says Janey, and they share a look. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Do you want them back?’ says the woman.

‘Keep trying,’ says Janey. ‘I promise, it can really help.’

‘I’m LATE FOR WORK,’ shouts Bettina, terrifyingly loud suddenly. She stamps a tiny foot, smart in court shoes.

‘It’s okay, Mum,’ says the woman, at full volume, gradually standing up and tenderly putting Bettina’s coat on her. ‘It’s an inset day. Come on, I’m going to take you to the Costa and get you a wee cup of tea.’

‘AND A WEE BISCUIT.’

‘Always a wee biscuit,’ says the woman, leading her out, and Janey doesn’t want to ask herself if Essie would, could, ever be like that for her.

*

‘I’m so sorry,’ Lowell apologises immediately. Even just hearing his deep burring tones, the soft East Coast tinge, somehow makes her feel better. ‘I know you’re working.’

---