Summer at 23 the Strand

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Of course.’

  Lucy and Ross sat drinking cocoa and eating Hobnobs in companionable silence. That was something Lucy had noticed – they didn’t need to be talking all the time. Ben had talked all the time – usually giving Lucy a kick-by-kick replay of some football match he’d watched, or a million reasons why he didn’t want to do whatever it was Lucy had suggested they do. She couldn’t think now why she’d ever thought they could have a future together.

  ‘Penny for them,’ Ross said.

  ‘He’s not worth that,’ Lucy said.

  ‘The ex?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Phew!’ Ross laughed. ‘Thank goodness for that. Although I do have a lot to thank him for in a way. I mean, had he not run out on you, you’d never have been here, and I wouldn’t have met you.’

  ‘There’s that,’ Lucy said. ‘Serendipity, my old grandma used to call it. It means finding something lovely quite by chance. And now I have. You. If you think you want me in your life for longer than a holiday romance?’

  Sometimes you just have to grasp what’s in front of you even if the timing isn’t what you expected. Being in the right place at the right time was a hackneyed saying but it had never been truer for Lucy than now. This wasn’t a rebound thing for her. It was for real. And, she hoped, for ever.

  ‘Which brings me very neatly to my next question. Supper tonight? At mine? Meet Toby?’

  ‘Yes, yes and yes,’ Lucy said.

  As it turned out, Lucy didn’t meet Toby that night. He texted Ross to say he was stopping the night with someone called Millie.

  ‘He’s chicken,’ Ross said to Lucy, after he’d texted Toby back to say thanks for letting him know. ‘First time ever he’s stopped out. What timing!’

  ‘I don’t think it’s unintentional,’ Lucy said. ‘My gut feeling – never having had any experience of children of my own to come to such a conclusion, of course! – is that he’s been wanting you to find someone before flying the nest, as it were.’

  So it was at breakfast – that scenario Ross had been so afraid of setting up – that Lucy met Toby for the first time.

  He came in, rucksack hanging from one shoulder and fresh, probably, from Millie’s shower, with his hair all damp, tendrils of curls dangling in front of his ears. Like a huge cherub, Lucy thought.

  ‘Hi!’ Toby said. He high-fived his dad, and offered his hand to Lucy. Then he changed his mind. ‘We’ll go all French, shall we? Double cheek kiss?’

  Lucy offered her face, right cheek first, to be kissed.

  ‘God, but I’m starving,’ Toby said. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘The usual,’ Ross told him. ‘Weetabix and toast. Or toast and Weetabix.’

  ‘Or I could make drop scones, if you like?’ Lucy offered. ‘With honey.’

  ‘You’re on!’ Toby turned to his dad with a big grin and gave him a massive bear hug. ‘She’s a keeper, Dad. Don’t muck it up!’

  Lucy was so excited, and surprised, at how her fortnight at 23 The Strand had panned out that she almost forgot the tradition that she was to leave something for the next guest. But she had the perfect thing – a watercolour she’d painted sitting on the deck of the view in front of her; the sea wall with a seagull pecking at a cockle, the beach with a couple strolling hand in hand, paddling in the shallows, and the evening sky turning from pink, to red, to indigo. Just time to nip into town and find a photo frame for it.

  And then she moved in with Ross.

  Dear new occupant,

  It seems it’s something of a tradition at 23 The Strand to leave a welcome gift for the next tenant, but only if you want to – nothing is written in stone. So my gift to you is this painting of the view that lifted my spirits and fed my soul, and ultimately led me in a totally new direction to the one I thought I was moving in when I arrived here. Be brave if, like me, you need to be. Happy holiday.

  Lucy x

  Chapter Five

  EARLY JULY

  Ana

  ‘Oh, I like this,’ Ana said, as she stepped inside 23 The Strand. ‘It’s not small.’ Ana had looked up ‘chalet’ in her Romanian/English dictionary and had been expecting something like a garden shed. But this was lovely – all fresh and bright, and very clean, and with an uninterrupted view of the sea. ‘Very nice.’

  She couldn’t help smiling, despite the things that had happened in her life to bring her here – her early, but no less sad, miscarriage, Vasile’s desertion, poorly paid jobs that meant she felt her life was going nowhere. And then she laughed out loud because she realised she’d been talking out loud, to herself, and in English. English! How good was that! It meant she was acclimatising, didn’t it? Well, after seven years she would expect that, but it had been hard. At first she’d mixed only with people from her own country. Some of them had lived here for a long time and spoke English well; they helped Ana fill out forms so she had been slow to learn these things for herself. But she was learning now. And she had no Romanian friends in this area so surely that would help to improve her language skills further.

  Brought up in the Romanian countryside it had always been Ana’s dream to live by the sea.

  ‘I am here now,’ Ana told her reflection in the rope-framed mirror on the wall behind the couch. ‘My first time by the sea.’ Ana had seen the sea before, of course, but only glimpses from the plane when she’d arrived, or when she went on a day trip with people she’d worked with. Or Vasile. ‘I have waited twenty-seven years for this.’

  There had been no sea near the places she had worked in Birmingham, and London, and Bristol. There had been rivers and canals there, and she’d loved to walk along them. But the sea was different. It seemed, to Ana, to be full of the promise of journeys yet to be made, and people yet to meet. She would telephone her mother tonight and let her know she’d arrived safely. And when she had a permanent address, not just this chalet at 23 The Strand, she would let her have it.

  Her mother was always writing to her to say ‘come home’ – she was ill, she was lonely, she had no money. Ana knew the last was all lies because she sent money on a regular basis. So did her brother, Andrei, who had gone to Paris to find work and was now the manager of a small café off the Champs-Élysées. Ana also knew her mother wasn’t ill because she texted her sister, Izaura, every Saturday, who said their mother was well and had been baking, and that after scrubbing and polishing the house from one end to the other, and cleaning out the chickens. And her mother wasn’t lonely either, because Izaura lived with her, and the neighbours were always popping in for drinks now her mother had money sent on a regular basis from England and France to buy them. It was Ana who was ill and lonely and had no money… well, not no money, because she did have a few hundred pounds in a building society account, but very little because she sent so much back to her mother in Romania. And she had no computer now because Vasile had taken it – they’d shared that, like they’d once shared a lot of things. But she had her laptop. She’d almost left that behind in Bristol because it was heavy, but she knew it would be useful for finding jobs in the area online.

  Ana wasn’t seriously ill either, just sick in the heart. Vasile, whom she’d met when she worked in a hotel near Paddington Station and with whom she’d fallen in love, and who had declared his undying love for her, had decided to ‘move on’, as he put it. Ana’s English was much better now than it had been when she’d arrived but she didn’t know what ‘move on’ meant. The lady – Jean – who was in charge of housekeeping at the hotel in Clifton, Bristol, where Ana worked explained the ‘bottom line’ was that Vasile didn’t love Ana any more and was going in search of someone else, if he hadn’t already found them. Ana knew what ‘bottom line’ meant – it was the end of her relationship with Vasile.

  Ana stood by the bedroom window in the chalet and looked out to sea. She allowed herself to think about Vasile for a moment, although mostly she did her best to banish him from her mind.

  ‘If only I had the baby now,’ she said, just so
she could hear the words and remember that once she had carried a baby inside her. For almost four months she had carried that baby and felt her body change, her tummy swell just a little. The baby – hers and Vasile’s. When she’d told Vasile she was pregnant he’d looked horrified. Said a baby wasn’t in his plan. It hadn’t been in Ana’s plan either but she knew what her responsibilities were. It was from that moment that she felt Vasile draw away from her – he came in late, he left early, he didn’t kiss her hello and goodbye as he had before and there was no waking with his arms wrapped around her in the morning.

  And then the baby had died inside her. Ana went alone to the A&E department at the hospital. Vasile said he was too busy, and anyway, if she couldn’t carry a baby properly… he’d left the rest of his thoughts unsaid but Ana knew what they would be. It was her fault, in Vasile’s mind, that she couldn’t hold a baby inside her for the full nine months.

  The doctors and nurses were all very kind but there was, they said, nothing they could do for the baby. One nurse even gave Ana a huge hug.

  ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this,’ the nurse had said, ‘but I know how it feels. It hurts, doesn’t it? In the heart.’

  Ana had nodded. When the nurse pulled out of the hug Ana saw there were tears in her eyes. She knew, this nurse, because it had happened to her, hadn’t it?

  If only the baby had lived, at least she would have it to hold, to care for, and to love. Her body had recovered from the miscarriage and Ana hoped that, in time, her heart would recover too. But she was alone now and she was lonely. Very lonely. She had given herself a little holiday and two weeks to find somewhere permanent to live by the seaside. And a job. She would need a job. Ana had thought hard about where to go and come to the decision that the seaside would have lots of hotels, and she knew about working in hotels even if it was only making and changing the beds and clearing up after guests and cleaning the toilets. She didn’t think she wanted another job where she had to clean toilets but… well… if that was all there was, she would do it. And cafés. There would be lots of cafés. She hoped her English was good enough to take orders and serve cake and coffee – latte, cappuccino, Americano, macchiato; she knew all those words.

  Just thinking about coffee made her want one now.

  ‘Oh.’ Ana put a hand to her mouth in surprise. On the worktop, beside the microwave in the tiny kitchen, was a photo frame with a note on top of it. Should she touch it? Or should she take it to the lady in the information centre who had given her the key to 23 The Strand? It said ‘New occupant’ on the envelope.

  ‘I am the new occupant,’ Ana said, just so she could believe herself. She lifted up the envelope. ‘Oh.’ A framed painting. A very small painting about the size of a postcard. Should she put it on the wall? Was that what she was supposed to do? A shiver snaked its way up Ana’s spine, and rippled out across her shoulders. She was unsure what to do. Vasile would know because his English was almost perfect now. Ha. Of course. It was all those English girls he’d been seeing when he’d told Ana he was working late who had taught him, wasn’t it? She picked up the painting and held it out in front of her. She stepped out onto what the lady in the information centre had called a deck and told her she mustn’t have barbecues on.

  ‘Of course. It’s the view from here, isn’t it?’

  Ana laid the painting down on the table on the deck and went back for the envelope. There was a letter inside.

  ‘Written in stone?’

  What was that? What did it mean? Ana knew what a stone was. She had a feeling ‘written in stone’ was a bit like ‘move on’ and ‘bottom line’ and had a hidden meaning. If only she had someone to ask.

  Well, she would have to find someone, wouldn’t she? If Ana understood correctly she would be expected to leave something for the next new occupant and she didn’t want to not do that if that was what was expected.

  ‘Thank you, Lucy,’ Ana said, picking up the painting. ‘I will keep you. And tomorrow I will start to look for work. And then a place to live.’

  Rain. Ana hadn’t expected rain, not here at the seaside. When she had booked 23 The Strand (on her laptop back in the hotel in Bristol where she’d worked, with the help of Jean) it said this was the English Riviera. Ana had expected palm trees, and yes, there were plenty of those all along the main road where she’d got off the train and taken a bus. And boats. And stalls selling ice cream. And penthouse flats. Jean had explained what a penthouse flat was when Ana had seen one with a wall of sliding glass doors and a balcony overlooking the sea for rent and thought it looked wonderful. But it was far too expensive.

  ‘I must go out,’ Ana said. It helped her to feel less lonely to talk out loud. ‘I have a raincoat and I have an umbrella.’

  She must be careful, though, not to spend too much money.

  ‘Maybe just a coffee,’ she said. ‘And a pastry.’

  Ana found it difficult to resist a buttery pastry. And didn’t her hips let her know it! When she’d been to the doctor with an infection on her chest the doctor had furrowed her brow at Ana and said, ‘And losing some weight, Miss Dumitru, will help. About three stone.’

  ‘Perhaps just one pastry,’ Ana told herself, as, suitably dressed against the rain, she locked the door of 23 The Strand. ‘And then I will live on salad and vegetables but not chips.’ There seemed to be chips with everything in England and she found those difficult to resist too.

  ‘Good morning!’ a cheery voice called out as Ana began to walk along the promenade. She looked about to see who the voice might be talking to. There was no one but her.

  Ana looked in the direction the voice had come from. An old lady – well, she looked old with her white hair and thin body, and her stick-like legs – was sitting under the shelter of an awning on the deck of Number 19 The Strand, with a shawl around her shoulders, knitting.

  ‘Good morning,’ Ana said.

  ‘You don’t want to be out in this, ducks,’ the woman said.

  Ducks? She is calling me a duck? Ana was confused now.

  ‘I look for work,’ Ana said. She stopped walking. It seemed rude to walk on when someone was being friendly to her.

  ‘Work? But you’re on holiday. You’re at Number 23, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Number 23. But I must find work. I have two weeks.’

  ‘And then? What if you don’t find any?’

  Ana shrugged. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. Go back to Bristol and see if she could get her old job back at the hotel? See if she could live in there until she found somewhere else to live that wouldn’t have memories of Vasile in it?

  ‘I will find work,’ Ana said.

  ‘Where’ve you come from then?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yesterday, I came from Bristol. Before that from Romania. I am English citizen now.’

  ‘Well, I’ll let you carry on, ducks. You’re getting wetter by the second standing there while I natter on.’ And the woman resumed her knitting.

  Ana thought she detected that the woman’s attitude had changed when she’d said she was from Romania. But maybe not. After losing the baby and Vasile walking out of her life she’d had her emotions more than a little dented, hadn’t she?

  ‘Oh, my goodness. Come in, sweetheart. You’re like a drowned rat.’

  A man who reminded Ana of her grandfather back in Romania – and just as big with his huge stomach – held wide the door of The Port Light. Ana hadn’t intended to go into the café but the man had opened the door and beckoned her inside as though he’d been expecting her.

  Ana stepped inside. It smelled of bacon cooking. And coffee.

  ‘Have you work?’ she asked.

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Yes. Work I can do.’

  ‘Ah, do I detect a slight accent there?’

  Ana’s shoulders went up towards her ears and she sighed. She was proud of being Romanian but her life might be easier if her accent were less pronounced.

  ‘Yes. I am from Romania but I am English citizen and I lo
ok for work. I have papers.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ the man said. ‘You being an English citizen. You’ll be okay for work, if you can find some that is. Everyone wants to work down here in the summer in the sunshine – when we get some! So, what will it be? Tea? Coffee? Chocolate?’

  Which was the cheapest? Ana scanned the prices board behind the counter. Ah, tea. £1.25. She could spare that much and the man had been so kind. He’d seen her coming along when he’d been wiping down a table and opened the door to her, calling her in. The least she could do was buy a cup of tea from him. Especially as he had no other customers. But a diet starts today, not tomorrow, so she wouldn’t ask for a pastry.

  ‘A cup of tea, please,’ Ana said. ‘No…’ Oh. What was the English for lapte? How could she have forgotten such a simple word? A word she used every day in the hotel when she replaced the welcome tray with coffee and tea, sugar and… what? Perhaps it was the wind and the rain making her muddled in the head. Ah, she remembered now. Milk. The English word was ‘milk’. ‘No milk.’

  ‘Black tea it is, then,’ the man said. ‘You say “black tea” if you don’t want milk in it.’

  ‘Black tea,’ Ana repeated. She would remember that. She’d always said ‘no milk’ before and no one had ever corrected her.

  ‘Got it in one, sweetheart,’ the man said.

  ‘And no sugar, thank you.’

  ‘Blimey, you’d be cheap to keep. Save me a fortune on milk and sugar, you would. Take a seat. Any seat. Big choice of seats today.’ He waved an arm around his empty-but-for-Ana café and laughed. ‘I’ll bring it over in a minute.’

  Ana went over to a table for two by the window and sat down. Rain slithered down the glass and when she looked out to sea it was as though she had double vision, and everything was blurred. Not a good start to her search for a new life, was it? Ana bit her bottom lip. So far she’d only met two old people… was there no young life in this place? She remembered something Jean had said when she’d told her she was moving to the seaside. Devon.