In the Summertime (16 page)

Miranda tip-tapped at the Mac and quickly skimmed through her Inbox. Nothing much immediately stood out as needing attention. There were tempting end of season sales bargains to be had from Toast and Brora. Dan was there asking about the children and telling her again that having them to stay could be a problem, but
then there was a message with a scarlet urgency mark flagged up beside it – something from Coopers-Lee, the very company she was pinning much of next year’s income and a growing of her reputation on. Please, she prayed as she opened the message,
don’t
let them be cancelling the whole shebang.

‘Aaagh!’ she yelled, as she read it.

‘You really are a noisy lot, aren’t you? Or are you that terrified of seeing me again?’ A man’s shadow loomed across the table.

‘Steve! God, you made me jump. Where did you come from?’

‘The side path. Sorry to have startled you.
Was
that a reaction to me or did a wasp get you?’

Miranda quickly skim-read the relevant sentence of the email again, hoping it would say something different, then closed the computer down. This could be dealt with. It just needed some thinking about. ‘No, it’s just something in an email. Work stuff. It’s OK. Or it
will
be OK. Actually I was expecting a visitor, but not you, someone from the agency.’ She smiled at him. ‘That noise issue you just mentioned – we’ve been warned we’re getting a telling off. I expect we’ll be evicted and have to pack and leave by nightfall. Cup of tea?’

‘Thanks. That would be good.’ She was conscious of him close behind her, following her into the kitchen. Something about him made her feel awkward, a bit uncoordinated. How would they get past this
atmosphere between them? It crossed her mind that she might be the only one who felt it. He seemed perfectly relaxed – and why wouldn’t he? Again she wondered about how she should have interpreted the remark about sleeping with the owner’s girlfriend.
Had
he meant her? Which also meant … She fussed about with the kettle and tea bags and found some ginger biscuits in the larder.

‘So the telling off you’ll be getting from the agency. That’ll be about last night’s rumpus,’ he said, leaning comfortably against the worktop and watching her. ‘About shouting and swearing and loud car horns in the middle of the night. You’re a disgrace, you lot. Not the sort we want in the village.’

She looked at him sideways. Nice hair today, she thought; it looked just-washed, slightly baby-bird fluffy. But as for what he’d just said … he’d never been much of a one for showing obvious rather than subtle humour, but surely he wasn’t serious?

‘Oh, come on, it wasn’t the middle of the night. Barely ten o’clock, for heaven’s sake,’ she protested, feeling a bit put out. He wasn’t remotely close to smiling. ‘Sorry, but did you come here to have a go at me just because of a bit of village gossip?’ She picked up the boiling kettle.

‘Careful. That kettle spits a bit.’

‘It does, doesn’t it? Not the best designed item in here.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘And yes, I did come here for exactly that. But better to get me than agency Angie. She’s
fierce
.’ At last, a smile.

The pennies that had been in mid-air since he’d brought the prawns round finally dropped into place. ‘So you
are
the owner of this house? I thought you just might be from something you … er … said. But then I thought, no. Unlikely.’

‘Unlikely? For a simple village boy who fishes for lobsters? Actually, I am,’ he said, taking a mug of tea from her.

‘Awkward.’

‘Is it? It shouldn’t be, should it? Shall we sit outside? Too nice a day not to.’ He led the way back to the terrace (
his
terrace) and they sat together on the bench (
his
bench).

‘I wish I’d known,’ Miranda said, watching a small boat sail away from the end of Andrew’s garden.

‘Would it have made a difference?’

Miranda shrugged. ‘Before I booked it? I don’t know. It would be ridiculous if it did, but …’

‘I know. I do get it. But it’s been a long time. More than half our lives, if you think about it that way.’

‘Don’t – that makes me feel old! So it’s you who’s come here to tell me off? And when we’re evicted and we end up camping in a lay-by for the night on the moor and being eaten alive by the Beast of Bodmin, you’ll be the one to blame?’

‘Yep. That’s it in one. Someone complained that the racket woke them up so you’re to be put out for the panthers.’

‘That Cheryl probably. She’s taken against me.’

‘It wasn’t “that Cheryl”. She was out last night.’

Miranda had to ask and it was out before she could stop herself. ‘With you?’

He gave her a surprised look. ‘Actually yes, with me.’

Miranda laughed, mostly at herself. Where on earth had that ridiculous little niggle of envy come from? Steve was someone she’d thought of many times over the past two decades but hadn’t seen in all that time and yet here she was feeling mildly possessive about him. She could imagine her mother, if she knew, dismissing her as a silly girl, just as she had when Miranda had told her she was going to marry Dan at only twenty-two. Again, she wouldn’t be wrong.

‘So you own this house but you live somewhere else?’ As soon as the words were out Miranda wished she hadn’t bothered to ask. He’d be living with the Cheryl girl and now he was going to confirm it and make her even more … what? Jealous? How could you be jealous about someone you had absolutely no claim on, no relationship with and no plans for one either?

‘In my mother’s old cottage during the summer months. She’s gone to live with her sister in St Keverne. I live on my own, which is fine by me. At the moment.’

‘Good,’ Miranda said. ‘I mean … good that it’s fine.’

He finished the tea and got up, ‘Look, it was great to see you and I’m sorry about the warning from the agency. I won’t let them chuck you out, I promise. On one condition.’

‘It’s OK, I get it. There won’t be a repeat. Though for heaven’s sake, you get worse racket than that on the Chiswick High Road any old night. It was just my sister’s stupid ex-boyfriend. He’s at the Pengarret hotel now, or was after he left here. With any luck he’s gone back up north.’

‘Oh, I know he’s still around. Cheryl’s very excited about him.’

‘Really? Tell her from me not to waste her energy.’

He laughed. ‘You can’t tell Cheryl anything, trust me. And the no-repeat thing is not the condition.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘No.’ He looked hesitant and shuffled about a bit, hands thrust in the pockets of his jeans. Suddenly she could see him looking just as delightfully boyish as when he was nineteen. ‘It’s … would you, um … would you like to have lunch with me on Thursday? I have to go over to St Ives for a meeting and, you know, I just wondered if we could do a bit of proper catching up. If you want to, that is.’

It was possibly the last thing Miranda was expecting. He was asking her
out
? He hadn’t even seemed that friendly. He looked away from her, out across towards the sea as if definitely expecting the next word he heard
to be a firm ‘no’. But on the contrary, the idea of lunch with him made her feel quite thrilled. All the same, he wasn’t getting off lightly with an immediate acceptance.

‘Er … Well, I’m not sure. You’ve surprised me. Do you really want to be seen with someone who’s such a “disgrace”?’

He looked puzzled and a bit hurt. ‘I wasn’t serious. Just teasing, you know?’

Of course she knew. He used to tease her about being scared of crab claws, about being too posh to be any good at drinking straight from the bottle: ‘I should bring a crystal wine glass for you,’ he’d said, laughing at her one day on the beach as she’d managed to pour half a bottle of fizzy cider down her front.

‘I was teasing too.’ She smiled. ‘And yes, thank you. I’d love to go to St Ives.’

She felt like a fluttery teenager again as they exchanged phone numbers. It was only lunch, and she was a long way from sixteen, but all the same her hands were shaky as she clicked his number into her iPhone.

After he’d gone Miranda turned her attention back to the email that had so freaked her out. This was going to be a problem. The hotel people wanted to move the meeting – to the middle of the next week. It would mean returning to London and coming back on either the next night or the early morning after. It was a pain but it could be done. Clare would understand – she’d run a business of her own till recently. And if Harriet
stayed on for a while as a bit of grown-up company for Clare it would definitely work. It would have to – this was one deal she really couldn’t afford to lose.

Clare was out walking the cliff path to the next village and back. She knew the others were holding back from nagging her about Jack’s ashes and she felt she should at least go and look out to sea, think about making a decision about just where she wanted them to go. The boat issue still needed to be sorted but something would work out. Things mostly did. Not all things, of course, otherwise Jack would be walking along beside her instead of the cocker spaniel that belonged to the couple several hundred yards in front who, holding hands and leaning close in to each other, seemed oblivious of their left-behind pet. She tried not to envy them, tried to feel glad for them, to wish them a long and happy life together, but there was an inevitable brief, deep ache of her loss. She reached down and patted the black and white dog, told him to catch his people up, but he seemed content to trot along at her heels. Maybe she’d get a puppy when she went home. Or perhaps a rescue dog, something ready trained. She’d never had a dog before. A puppy might be too much like dealing with a toddler, all demands and incontinence, and she’d be wanting a creature to love, not to feel cross about.

Her flat back at home seemed a distant reality at the
moment. Considering the as yet non-existent dog, she really had to think hard about where in her bedroom she’d be able to put its basket. What was between the blue velvet chair and the chest of drawers? Was there a good-sized space or was it where she kept the laundry basket? She and Jack had lived there for four years; there was no excuse to start feeling vague about its details after only a few days away. But, strangely, she was beginning to feel as if she was never going to live anywhere but here. Down here in Chapel Creek she was existing in a fuzzy, comfortable, unnaturally sunny bubble. Only a few days away from home and she’d almost stopped feeling constant spikes of panic about the future and of heart-stopping, tear-sparking agony of loss. They were still there – she’d had one only moments before – but blunted and over faster. Late in the afternoon, after a walk such as this or lunch across the estuary, she’d lie on the lounger by the pool, doing her crossword and thinking about nothing at all except how blissful it was to have this kind of sun in England in August. Given the awful summers of recent years it felt as if they were specially blessed. The absence of Jack was never completely out of her mind – later today, no doubt, she would look across to the adjacent lounger and for a moment wonder why it was Harriet or Miranda lying there with a book and not her husband, but instead of the future of bleak loneliness she would manage to focus on something good to remember. She
thought of weekends they’d had in Venice and Barcelona, of the trips to France, to Castillon-la-Bataille where Jack had taught a residential masterclass in landscape painting, not far from where their daughter Amy lived. That had probably been the last time he’d seemed completely well.

The coast path was just how she remembered it, with a few repairs and gaps and scars from rock falls here and there. Pinky-purple thrift frothed out of clefts in the stone. Vivid orange montbretia bloomed defiantly, waving above the scrubland. Below in the sunlight, tiny near-inaccessible beaches appeared almost Caribbean with the sea all gleaming shades of turquoise where the rocks parted and the seabed was a lemony drift of sand.

‘We’ve had the same idea. Solitary escape. I saw you from across the stile. I just came from the top of the hill for a look-see at the ocean.’ Eliot’s voice startled her.

‘Hello, Eliot. You needed to escape?’

He smiled. ‘Well, with a stroppy teenager in the house, you know … It’s a long time since I lived with one of those. Lola’s in a sulk because Jess won’t let her take her boat across to St Piran in the dark. There’s some music thing on at the pub over there on Saturday that she says
everyone
is going to.’

‘What time does the ferry run till?’ Clare asked.

‘Oh, plenty late enough for a fifteen-year-old. But you know what they can be like. May I walk with you awhile?’

‘Please do. I’d like the company.’

‘One hell of a view, isn’t it?’ Eliot stopped and leaned on a rock and looked out at the sea. ‘And when I say view, I mean just … the nothing of it. The unfathomable vastness of endless water. Have you been to Australia?’

‘I haven’t.’

‘You can look out at the ocean there and the air is so thin and clear you can make out the curve of the earth on the horizon. And everything out there is strong, brilliant blue. Distant sea here goes hazy grey but there it’s blue all the way out, darker further away but it doesn’t fade away to that dreary English colourlessness for as far as you can see.’

She turned away from the water and looked at him. He was still gazing out at the sea and seemed miles away, somewhere far off in his own head. Was it the view he was so lyrical about or had there been something else? She was surprised by her own curiosity.

‘When were you there?’ she asked.

He laughed. ‘Oh, years ago. Sometime after Liz upped and divorced me. Book publicity tours, that kind of thing. I got to like travelling. It was easier than being lonely at home. Not,’ he suddenly looked at her, ‘that I missed Liz that much, between you and me. Can’t think how or why we ever got together in the first place.’

Clare smiled. How inappropriate would it be to parody the old Mrs Merton line and tease, ‘So tell me,
Liz, what first attracted you to filthy rich, hugely successful author Eliot Lynch?’ Better not, she thought. It was too much of a toss-up whether he’d find it funny or a bit insulting. All the years she hadn’t seen him and now she was wary of losing his new-found friendship.