Page 96 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

It’s almost eight a.m. She heads off to her Portakabin. Lish goes up for another day in the Brand-New Life trenches. Owen descends to the basement somewhere nobody has ever been, where they think he has a small alcove next to the incinerator.

*

And Essie is so excited to be leaving. Packing for Edinburgh, reading up on the company she’s interviewing for – she is, she knows, behind, and she knows it’s her fault. She is trying nervously to figure out if she can afford to move back if she gets work with Tris’s firm. Her dad has not been much use but he has, at least, offered to stump up a deposit on a new room, so that’s something too. She’s learned a lot from Lowell, she tells Janey. Project management has been very interesting. Shedoesn’t mention Dwight quite so much now. But everyone can see the houses taking shape next door: the window frames going in, carefully; the wood floor laid that looks like parquet but isn’t really. It’s clever, Janey has to admit. Verity even comes down the day the sofa arrives – one of the houses is going to be dressed before it’s sold, which means they’ve rented furniture and Verity has chosen most of it. The sofa is orange and the rugs are burgundy. Essie was a little doubtful but in fact it turns out to have been a rather excellent choice.

‘This is my house,’ signs Verity, in a way that is crystal clear to everyone what she means.

*

In Janey’s surgery her first patient of the day is speaking slowly, but carefully. She doesn’t have any kind of an accent, but that might well come.

Janey smiles sympathetically.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘I forgot to mention in advance. It’s amazing how many people think it. It seems obvious now.’

Saanvi was a young woman who’d arrived in the UK to work, and gradually worked her way up the waiting list for a cochlear implant.

‘I just thought it would.’

‘I know.’

She is far from unusual. It was just not something that occurred to most hearing people: that she had expected the sun to make a noise.

‘Just the wind, I’m afraid. And the rain.’

‘Snow?’

‘No, that’s one of the things people like about it. It’s completely silent.’

Saanvi thinks this is funny and shakes her head. ‘Still. The sun, though,’ she adds.

‘What sound would it make?’ says Janey. ‘Humming maybe, or singing?’

‘Singing,’ says Saanvi decisively. ‘I love singing.’

Saanvi’s fresh joy in the glories of music has been a wonderful thing, although Janey hopes her music preferences – at the moment, Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf – aren’t a dreadful inconvenience to her neighbours.

Janey’s phone flashes. She had been showing a client who was losing their hearing how to get their phone to show notifications without making a noise, and had forgotten to change it back and just got used to it. She ignores it, and it goes again.

‘Someone’s trying to get in touch,’ says Saanvi, whose phone of course does the same thing. Janey can’t believe how improved her speech is.

‘They can wait,’ says Janey. But the flashing doesn’t stop.

‘I am going to listen to all the songs about the sun,’ says Saanvi, getting up.

‘Excellent idea,’ says Janey. ‘Start with George Harrison. The Beatles,’ she adds. ‘Ooh, and Katrina and the Waves. AndThe Mikado! And “Sun is Shining and So Are You’’ . . . Okay, I’m going to make you a playlist. It won’t be quite as good as the sun itself singing. But it’ll be something.’

She quickly glances at her phone before calling in her next client. And then her heart stops.

It can’t be true. It can’t be.

But it’s there in black and white: breaking news. The BBC. You can only really believe things when they’re on the BBC.

*

She has missed calls from everyone. Lish has been in touch. Milton too. Everyone who follows the news and knows her well.

But not Essie. Not Essie. Not again. Bloody financial news. What the hell is happening to this country?

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