Page 37 of Summer at Harbour View House
‘Does he do that all hours of the day and night? Honestly, if I thought the police could find Penkoe, I’d be tempted to call them.’
Hannah pulled out her phone. ‘Oh, I’d better go. I’m meeting Davey for lunch in that pretty little café by the harbour. You know, the one with the rose trellises outside?’
‘Have a nice time,’ Natasha said, trying to sound like she meant it, while mentally assessing other options for lunch now that the only sit down in the village other than the pub was a no-go zone. The pub would do, she supposed, although she didn’t know if it offered food. Perhaps the chip shop was open at lunchtime. Or she could stay home and cook something, along with next door’s musical accompaniment.
‘What are you going to do?’ Hannah said. ‘You know I’d invite you, but … well, I think Davey might have some important questions for me.’
What’s your favorite songbird? Have you ever eaten raw squid? How many times have you counted to a hundred while standing on your head? The potential list was endless. Natasha just smiled. ‘I was thinking of cutting the grass,’ she said. ‘I found a petrol strimmer in the shed and the sound should drown out that racket for a while.’
In fact, Natasha found that tidying the garden and fixing up someone else’s house were both a good distraction from everything else going on in life, and that it was easy to immerse herself. She had been on a self-imposed media blackout since their arrival, refusing to use her phone for anything other than telling the time. To prove she still existed, she had bought a couple of dogeared, sun-bleached postcards out of a rack in the shop and sent one each to Tina and her parents, although the one to her parents had been of nearby Gorran Haven, just in case they decided to show up for a free beach holiday. To Tina she just wrote that they were still alive and that everything was going okay.
Strong, independent woman.
It was starting to sound like an insult, like the kind of thing you threw at a career single in order to try to give them a gee-up. It wasn’t that long since her last boyfriend—at least, she could still count the time passed in years rather than decades—and she hadn’t exactly been trolling late night bars or dating apps in order to fill the huge man-sized void in her life. It was nice that she was considered pretty enough that people would wonder why she was single, but just because she was didn’t mean she particularly wanted to be, nor was in any way desperate. It was just the way things were. Her status might change sometime, or it might not, but she wasn’t going to go pushing the issue. Hannah might be young enough to bounce back, but Natasha didn’t think she could handle another failed relationship, or another boyfriend who eloped without warning, like the last one had.
In the meantime, she continued to cut the grass, mend the fence, and attempt to fix the damaged hinges on the front door.
By the time she realised she was hungry, it was nearly four o’clock. The music had stopped next door sometime while Natasha had been operating a hedge trimmer, but they had only a few tins and some cornflakes in the kitchen so she headed down to the village to find something to eat.
She didn’t dare go into the café in case Hannah and Davey were still in there being all loved up, and the Rusty Anchor was closed until six o’clock. In the shop, however, she bought a pasty and a bottle of juice, then, with little else to do, walked back up past their house and down the hill to Winter Vale Beach.
Wispy clouds had stripped the sun of its heat, but she saw evidence that the campers Davey had promised had begun to arrive, with a couple of families paddling by the shore, their legs bare even if they wore jackets and hats. On the far side of the beach a little hut had appeared, with a window at the front which faced the shore. She wandered over to it while eating her pasty, but a sign on a string hung from the door was turned to LIFEGUARD NOT ON DUTY.
Some small print underneath warned potential swimmers of dangerous rip tides and hidden currents, and informed that any swimming was at their own risk, but the sea was currently flat calm, and no one seemed interested in going out beyond their ankles. Natasha wandered past the hut, climbing up onto the rocks below the cliff, peering into rock pools to see if there were any fish. When a crumb of pasty crust fell into the water, a small fish darted out of the shadows, grabbed it, and retreated out of sight.
Natasha sat down on a warm, flat section of rock and took a deep breath. While it might not be some tropical beach in Barbados, with palm trees hanging over the shore and the sound of kettle drums and reggae music, in its grey, chilly way, Winter Vale had its appeal. The neighbour notwithstanding, Natasha could see why Tina’s sister might want to live here. It was certainly off the beaten track.
She was just climbing down from the rocks when a familiar voice hailed her.
‘Maid? You’s out fishing for dinner? ‘E won’t find much in there, but if you’s go round the cliff a ways and hang a line, you might snag a crab or two.’
Natasha looked up to see Lizzie clambering over the rocks, a basket in hand.
‘What were you doing out there?’
Lizzie shrugged. ‘A spot of beachcombing.’
‘Beachcombing?’
Lizzie tilted her basket for Natasha to look inside. A couple of palm-sized crabs moved among a collection of whelk shells. There were also a few flotsam items Lizzie had obviously scavenged, bits of rope, a couple of old glass bottoms, a handful of coins, and—to Natasha’s surprise—an iPhone, it’s casing scratched, but otherwise in working order. As one of the crabs walked across it, nudging the home button, a picture of a golden retriever appeared on the lock screen over today’s time and date.
‘Round there’s a bit of a cove without no access from land,’ Lizzie said. ‘Most people ain’t got the nerve to go round there twice. Quite the local treasure trove.’
‘What are you going to do with that?’ Natasha said, pointing at the iPhone.
‘I’ll hand ‘e in at the post office counter in the shop,’ Lizzie said. ‘Can’t’ve been there more’n a day or two, or battery would’ve been dead. As for the rest, they’s me little treasures. Some’ll go on tonight’s seafood menu, some I’ll make into arty things I can hopefully flog.’
Natasha couldn’t help but be impressed by Lizzie’s resourcefulness. ‘Is that like a hobby or something?’
Lizzie sighed. ‘Used to be. Became more’n that. Especially during high season, can’t leave money on the table. Not if you’s want to get through low season.’ She sighed again. ‘Longer and longer every year.’
Natasha was about to reply when Lizzie’s eyes suddenly narrowed. ‘Lord dash me on the rocks and be thankful for it. Is he everywhere now?’
Natasha turned. Up in the car park above the beach, Paul Stoat was walking back and forth, clipboard tucked under his arm. He appeared to be pacing in a deliberate manner, as though measuring distance. As they watched, he walked over to the corner, pulled out a tape measure and began waving it up and down.
‘Like a crow picking scraps off the road,’ Lizzie said. ‘He’s measuring it out for a ticket machine.’
‘Isn’t this beach and that car park owned by the local community?’
