A Cottage by the Sea

by Carole Matthews

  ‘I promised Harry for ever.’

  ‘Sometimes promises have to be broken. He promised to love and cherish you. Does he do that?’

  ‘No. I can’t say that he does.’

  She looks at the floor. ‘Has he forsaken all others?’

  ‘Harry hasn’t got time to be unfaithful,’ I quip. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. He’s always too busy at work to do anything else.’

  I don’t point out that he rarely wants to make love with me these days and, when he does, I don’t want to. I don’t think Harry’s libido runs to other women.

  Ella sighs. ‘Decide what it is that you really want. Do what’s best for you.’

  ‘I will,’ I promise.

  ‘Do you love Noah?’

  ‘I daren’t even let myself admit it, Ella.’

  ‘Have you talked to him about this? Does he know how you feel?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I even know myself.’ The strength of emotion that overtakes me when I think of him has blind-sided me and it seems as if I’ve lived a lifetime this week. ‘We’ve agreed to be friends.’ What else can we do?

  Ella frowns. ‘If you love him, don’t let him go.’ She looks directly at me. ‘You deserve happiness. Whatever you want to do, Grace, I’ll be here for you. You’ve been strong for me. Now I can do it for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ We hug each other.

  I do deserve happiness, but do I want it at the expense of other people’s misery? Especially people that I care for. Could I rip up the rule book and throw away my own values in the pursuit of it? Is my own happiness more important than that of others?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Noah walking barefoot along the beach at the edge of the surf, with his jeans rolled up and his trainers in his hand. Every fibre of my being yearns for him, but he is forbidden fruit.

  What do I want to do? I think. Only I can decide.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Flick and Harry come back late as afternoon is slipping into evening. I was beginning to get worried about where they were, but it seems I needn’t have. They are smiling and laughing as they unload armfuls of carrier bags from the boot of the Bentley. I watch them happy in each other’s company, and wonder why Harry and I can’t be like that any more.

  I’ve just taken Ella some tea as I heard her stirring. She looks better now that she’s had a good lengthy nap, but I didn’t want to leave her there for too long as she’ll be wide awake tonight.

  Noah hasn’t yet returned from his walk. He’s probably glad to get away from us all for an hour or two and have some peace. I hope he’s not deliberately avoiding me.

  Opening the door of the cottage, I lift one of the bags from Flick. ‘Hey,’ I say.

  ‘Christ!’ Flick stops dead. ‘What have you done to your face?’

  ‘Too much sun.’ Not enough make-up.

  ‘I’ll say.’ Her eyes travel over me and take in my roasted arm too. My legs I’ve covered up with a long skirt.

  ‘Good trip?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry we were gone so long,’ Flick giggles breathlessly. ‘We stopped at the pub in St Brides on the way back.’

  No surprise there, I guess. I should have known. I hope to goodness that Harry hasn’t been foolish enough to drink and drive, but he does seem marginally less giggly than Flick.

  They dump their shopping on the table and I follow suit. Harry kisses my cheek. ‘I bought you these,’ he says and holds out a bunch of somewhat wilted lemon carnations with the £2.99 price label still on them.

  ‘Thank you.’ I assume that I’m meant to be happy that he’s bought me flowers, but it seems like a cursory effort. Is this all the value he places on me? They look as if they’ve been left out of water for too long and are on their last legs. Much as I feel, so perhaps they are a good choice after all. ‘They’re lovely.’

  ‘Got stuff for stir-fry too,’ Flick says. ‘Thought it would be quick to knock together, then no one has to spend hours in the kitchen.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘How’s Ella?’

  ‘She’s spent the afternoon in bed, resting.’ I can hear movement upstairs. ‘She’s just getting up now.’

  ‘Upset about Art?’

  ‘Yes.’ Of course.

  ‘Fucker,’ Flick says. ‘I’d like to give him a piece of my mind.’ I think she’d have to get in a queue. Then, ‘Where’s Noah?’

  ‘He went out for a walk a while ago,’ I tell her. ‘I haven’t seen him come back yet.’

  I resist the urge to check my watch as I have been doing every five minutes for the last hour.

  As we talk, the back door opens and Noah returns. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘I was out longer than I meant to be.’

  ‘Had a nice walk, darling?’ Flick asks and twines herself around him.

  ‘Great. I walked down the coast to Martin’s Haven to see about taking a boat trip across to Skomer.’

  Flick looks blank.

  ‘It’s a fantastic island, full of seabirds. Puffins, guillemots, razorbills.’

  Flick still looks blank.

  ‘It’s a unique place.’

  She wrinkles her nose. ‘I’m taking it that you want to go there?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Noah says. ‘Anyone else fancy it?’

  Flick shrugs. ‘Is there anything else there but birds?’

  If I know Flick she’s thinking of branches of Harvey Nicks, Selfridges, Liberty’s.

  Noah laughs. ‘No. Nothing but birds.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her disappointment is palpable.

  ‘There’s one trip a day that leaves early in the morning and comes back late afternoon.’

  A look of pure horror crosses Flick’s face. ‘We’d stay there all day?’

  ‘There’s a lot to see,’ Noah reasons.

  ‘Birds?’

  ‘Sounds bloody boring to me,’ Harry says.

  ‘I’d love to go,’ I chip in before I can stop it coming out of my mouth. ‘If everyone else wants to.’

  ‘We’d have to get down there really early to make sure we could catch the boat. You can’t book in advance and there’s a limited amount of tickets for each day.’

  ‘Boat?’ Flick says. ‘I hate boats. Unless they’re yachts moored at Cannes. How long’s the journey? I’m a terrible puker.’

  ‘Not long. About half an hour.’

  My friend has gone green already. ‘OK,’ she says, surprising us all. ‘That sounds great.’

  Noah is clearly taken aback. ‘Excellent.’

  Then Ella appears. She looks much better, not so wan, not so vulnerable.

  ‘Sweetheart!’ Flick swoops to her and hugs her tightly. ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to be the drama queen. Emergency hospital runs? What were you thinking of?’

  ‘I’ll try not to do it again,’ Ella offers.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Grace did an admirable job,’ Ella assures her. ‘And Noah, of course.’

  ‘Noah is a superhero.’ The expression on Harry’s face shows that he wouldn’t necessarily agree. ‘You’re doing all right now?’

  ‘I’m starving,’ Ella says.

  ‘Let’s get this dinner on then,’ I say. ‘Flick has bought stuff for a stir-fry.’

  ‘Mm. Lovely. I’ll get started.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, lady!’ I tell her, sounding as stern as I can. ‘You’re doing nothing more strenuous than lifting your knife and fork tonight. Doctor’s orders.’

  She gives us a resigned smile.

  ‘Noah and I will do it,’ Flick says. ‘Won’t we, darling?’

  He shrugs. ‘Sure.’

  ‘We make a great team,’ Flick says. ‘I could really get used to this whole domestic lark. I think it quite suits me.’

  Then, just as I think we’ve got away with it, she stares closely at Noah. ‘One half of your face is all sunburned.’

  Noah colours up so that both sides of his face match. ‘I fell asleep in the sun.’

  Involu
ntarily, his eyes slide towards me and Flick’s follow. She frowns when they alight on my similarly roasted cheeks.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, puzzled. ‘It’s just like Grace’s face. You look like two halves of one person.’

  How can I tell her that’s how we feel too?

  ‘Must have been the angle of the sun,’ Noah says swiftly. ‘Now, what do you want me to do?’

  That distracts Flick enough for Ella and me to make a break for it. She and I exchange a glance, but neither of us comments. Instead we both slope out of the kitchen to sit on the terrace, soaking up the last rays of the sinking sun until dinner is ready. I try to bake the other side of my face to match. And we leave Harry hovering around in the kitchen like a gooseberry.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  After dinner we retire to the living room. I want this to be a quiet evening with no shocks or surprises. And, preferably, no dancing on the tables. Ella still looks tired to me and I want to make sure that she doesn’t have any undue exertion.

  ‘Fancy doing a jigsaw, Ella?’ There’s a pile of them on the shelves, all covered in a fine layer of dust. Clearly, it’s a long time since the jigsawing bug hit the cottage.

  ‘I used to love the rainy days down here,’ she says wistfully. ‘Daddy and I used to sit all day and do jigsaws.’

  ‘Jigsaws!’ Flick scoffs. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve never done one in my entire life. Never. Even as a kid I refused.’

  ‘Then you don’t know what you’re missing.’ I run my fingers over the colourful lids, studying the pictures. I don’t like them with too much sky or too many mountains. ‘They’re very therapeutic.’

  ‘So is a good shag. I know which of the two I’d prefer to spend time doing.’

  Only Harry laughs.

  As we’ve got only a couple of days left here, I need to choose something simple with not too many pieces. I don’t think I could bring myself to go home if there was a half-done jigsaw that needed finishing.

  I pick a gaudy, circular scene that features whales swimming around each other and, for some reason, bright yellow flowers. It’s very cheerful, if lacking in any form of artistic merit. I wave the box at Ella, seeking her approval.

  ‘It was Mum’s favourite,’ she says. ‘I think there may be a couple of pieces missing.’

  I shrug. ‘I can live with that.’ It’s years since I’ve taken time to do a jigsaw myself.

  ‘Let’s do it in the corner,’ she suggests, ‘then we can leave it out and finish it tomorrow.’

  So we sit cross-legged on the floor, tip out the pieces and start to sort. Even the smooth movement of the small cardboard pieces is soothing.

  ‘I’m bored,’ Flick says. ‘What can we do?’

  Noah has been browsing on his iPod and puts on an Ed Sheeran album. The mellow sounds fill the cottage. ‘Read a book,’ he says to Flick.

  ‘I spend all my working days reading film scripts. I don’t read for pleasure any more.’

  ‘There’s a whole host of board games here.’ Now Noah rummages on the shelves. ‘Chequers, backgammon, chess…’

  Flick tuts. ‘Do I look like a woman who’s had time in her life for playing chess?’

  ‘Snakes and ladders,’ he suggests.

  ‘That’ll do,’ she sighs. ‘Can’t you get a bloody satellite dish, Ella?’

  ‘I think that’ll be one of my next additions,’ she answers pleasantly. ‘All those long nights with some great films.’

  ‘You forgot to add the word “lonely” to that,’ Flick quips and then, as Ella’s face threatens to crumple, she adds, ‘Oh, fuck. Forget I said that. I’m a silly cow.’

  ‘Here’s some sea.’ I offer Ella a piece of bright-blue jigsaw to distract her.

  ‘Want to play snakes and ladders, Noah?’

  ‘I’m going to read through this guide book for our trip to Skomer tomorrow,’ he says. ‘Harry will play with you.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘It’s a while since I’ve played. I’m not sure what you’ve got to do.’

  ‘Christ, Harry, even I can work this one out. You go up the bloody ladders and down the bloody snakes. It says it’s for age four and upwards on the box. I’m pretty certain we can cope.’

  So while Ed Sheeran softly tells us about his ‘Lego House’ we collectively jigsaw, read and play board games. The only noise is the occasional slapping down of a counter on Flick and Harry’s hotly contested game of snakes and ladders.

  While Ella’s busy making a whale’s face, I sneak a glance through my eyelashes at Noah. He’s sitting in one of the armchairs under a reading lamp, the book open on his lap. He’s wearing narrow reading glasses and, if possible, looks even more handsome. I have a vision of him in the future, his children around him, immersed in family life. It makes my mouth go dry. It’s a scene that I’d like to slip into, sitting at his feet, my head on his knee. Perhaps we’d have a dog too. A proper man’s dog, not one of those little handbag things. A chocolate Labrador. That would be Noah’s kind of dog, I’m sure. He looks relaxed, content, and when he catches my eye, he smiles over at me.

  ‘We need to cheer this game up,’ Flick announces, which breaks the contact between Noah and me. My daydream shimmers and disappears. ‘Every time we go down a snake we should drink a shot. What have you got, Ella?’

  ‘Have a look in the kitchen cupboards. There’s all kinds of random booze in them. You might have to dig deep. There’s an awful lot of strangely coloured drinks of indeterminate origin that my parents brought back from holidays abroad.’

  ‘That sounds like much more fun!’

  ‘If you go down a snake, you’ve got to do a shot of something hideous.’

  Flick scampers away into the kitchen and comes back moments later, arms full of clinking bottles. As Ella said, there is a weird and eclectic selection.

  ‘They’re years old,’ Ella warns. ‘Make sure they’re not out of date.’

  ‘They’re all out of date,’ Flick says, when she’s had a quick look. ‘How can alcohol go out of date?’

  She lines them up next to the board game. From here I can see limoncello, ouzo, schnapps, metaxa, aquavit. There’s even a bottle of mead. Combined, they’d make a lethal cocktail.

  ‘Is this wise?’ I offer.

  I get a look from Flick that says, ‘Butt out, Grace.’

  So I hold my tongue even though this seems like an accident waiting to happen. I can see myself sleeping on the sofa again tonight.

  Flick finds the shot glasses. ‘Want in, Noah?’

  He holds up a hand. ‘Count me out.’

  Ella and I carry on with our whales, but I keep one eye on Flick and Harry. The game gets more and more robust as it progresses and they start to knock back the shots. Each one is greeted with a shudder. I lose count of how many shots they down, but the laughter gets more outrageous, the play more raucous. Poor Ed Sheeran is completely drowned out by the noise.

  A few more shots and they start to argue vociferously. They drop their voices, but I can still hear them hissing at each other under their breath.

  ‘Play nicely,’ I call across.

  But the argument just gets louder until Harry shouts, ‘You can’t do that, woman!’

  Clearly drink and board games are a volatile combination. I should have reminded Flick what it was like on the few occasions we played them with Harry and his boys. It always used to end in tears as Harry had to win at all costs.

  Seconds later, when Harry knocks the board over and the counters spill on to the floor, I decide it’s time to step in. They’re just lucky that it’s not one of the bottles that has been upended.

  ‘Right, you two,’ I say. ‘Enough. We need to calm this down.’

  ‘Oh, you’re such a spoilsport, Grace,’ Harry complains.

  I might be, but I’ve had quite enough excitement for one week.

  ‘You’re right,’ Flick says, which takes me aback. She’s not normally so acquiescent. ‘We should stop playing now.’ She looks pointedly at
Harry for reasons I can’t imagine. ‘There’s something I want to do.’

  She weaves slightly as she makes her way across the room towards Noah. ‘Attention, everyone!’ Flick claps her hands. ‘Attention.’ Noah puts down his book and, half smiling, regards her over his glasses indulgently before removing them.