Page 10 of Summer at Harbour View House
‘I’ve heard it does. Are you considering the cream to be a butter substitute, or a dessert topping?’
‘Hannah….’
The younger girl prattled on. Natasha continued to pack while Hannah floated around in the background, making excuses, predictions, and promises. Natasha tried to concentrate on squeezing the few clothes the police had salvaged from her flat that she had washed free of the stench of smoke into the single small suitcase she had bought. Hannah, on the other hand, in an act of breakup defiance, had gone on a spending spree with a credit card Brad had forgotten to take away, running up heaven knew how high a bill on dozens of new outfits and at least six pairs of new shoes (at Natasha’s last count), none of which were remotely appropriate for a long train journey into Cornwall.
After a few scares, in which Hannah was convinced she was a suitcase short of space before managing to cram everything in, they checked out and took a taxi to Brentwell station. There they caught a train to Exeter, and took a connecting Great Western down to Plymouth. At Plymouth, they connected to another train heading into Cornwall, and after a two hour delay while—according to a jovial ticket master—the driver went off looking for a decent pasty, they made it to St. Austell.
‘Do you think we should get dinner or just go straight for the bus?’ Hannah asked, as they dragged their—mostlyher—luggage out of the exit to the street outside. ‘Although, there doesn’t seem to be much here.’
Natasha looked around. She could see a kebab shop that wasn’t open yet, and an Indian restaurant, but she had hoped for something a little more native.
‘Let’s get to the house first,’ she said. ‘Tina said the bus should only take half an hour.’
‘Okay, where is it?’
A bus stop sign stood across the street. They dragged their luggage over. Hannah sat down on a suitcase while Natasha looked at a timetable inconveniently hidden behind a piece of clear plastic that had been sprayed with graffiti.
‘I think it says the last bus is at six p.m.,’ she said. ‘What time is it now?’
‘Ten to six. I hope we don’t get marooned.’
‘Don’t worry. This is Cornwall, not Outer Mongolia.’
‘I couldn’t understand anything they were saying on the train,’ Hannah said. ‘It was like a whole other language.’
‘It was all posh people,’ Natasha said. ‘Off to their holiday homes. I couldn’t understand them either.’
‘We must be like peas in a pod,’ Hannah said, letting out an annoying laugh.
‘Like peas,’ Natasha muttered, as she scraped a hole in the paint with her nail, hoping that she hadn’t made a mistake. It would be okay; Hannah was harmless. And Tina had said it was a big house; if they fell out, they could easily avoid each other.
‘Where’s that bus?’ Hannah said. ‘Isn’t it chilly? The Isles of Chilly!’
She burst into a puttering of laughter like a misfiring machine gun. Natasha sighed. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Isles of Scilly, rhymes with chilly, right?’
‘Ah, right. I get it now.’
‘Did you think it was pretty good?’
‘Yeah, it was great. You should be a stand-up comedian or something.’
‘You really think so?’
Natasha was saved from having to answer by a bus trundling up the street. Hannah immediately begun jumping up and down, waving her hands over her head and shouting, ‘Stop, stop!’ before the bus had even reached them.
As it pulled up, Natasha gave the driver a shy smile as he frowned in Hannah’s direction, then shook his head.
‘Get on,’ he said, and Natasha felt a momentary flutter of nerves before realising he simply meant ‘Hello.’
‘Do you go to Penkoe?’ she asked, pronouncing how she thought it should be, as “pen-ko-ee”.
The driver frowned. ‘Where?’
‘Er, it’s spelt—’
‘Ah, you mean Penkoe.’ He pronounced it as “Pinkle.” He waved at them. ‘Get on.’ This time Natasha took it to mean as it sounded.
