He gives me a toothy grin. ‘Pearlholme’s much too small for that, love. It’s on the route but it’s an unnamed stop that’ll take you to the edge of the village. It’s the number five bus you want, and you’ll need to get off outside a pub called The Sun & Sand.’
‘Brilliant, thank you.’
‘You’ve not long missed the bus though. It went through about twenty minutes ago, and they’re only every two hours.’
‘Oh, great.’ The journey has gone well so far; something had to go wrong at some point.
‘It’s only about half an hour on foot and it’s a lovely walk.’
I glance in the direction he points, wondering how lost I could manage to get on this walk because the chances are pretty good that I’ll never be seen again. But the weather is gorgeous and I have been sat on a train for the past three hours, and the station behind me looks like you’d struggle to occupy five minutes in it, let alone an hour and forty of them.
‘You’re Pearlholme’s second tourist this week,’ the man says. ‘They must be doing something right.’
I can’t resist asking. ‘Was the other one a tall guy with dark hair?’
‘Indeed he was. If you’re looking for him, he’ll be on the beach doing up the old carousel that’s been found. From The Sun & Sand, you can either take the back road into the village or the front road along the promenade and the beachfront. You can’t miss the carousel from there.’
Wow. Nathan was right, they really do know everyone around here. ‘Thanks.’ I give him a smile because of how much he reminds me of where I grew up, where you couldn’t walk up the road without someone asking where you were going and why you were going there.
‘It’s beautiful at this time of year,’ he says. ‘Gets a bit busy once the summer holidays begin, but this time of year is ideal. You’re not staying at The Shell Hotel, are you?’
‘I managed to get a room there at the last minute,’ I say, smiling again.
The man visibly cringes and I feel my face fall. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing. I’m sure it’ll be lovely.’ He gives me a smile that looks completely false.
‘That question did not have an “I’m sure it’ll be lovely” tone to it …’
He huffs and his shoulders slump. ‘The village itself is exquisite, but the hotel … not so much. I best not say more than that, love, I don’t want to put you off.’
‘All the cottage rentals were full. I thought I was lucky to get a room at the hotel.’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Lucky.’
He doesn’t sound like he means lucky. Or like he’s going to enlighten me any further.
I thank him for his time and buy a newspaper because it seems like the polite thing to do, and set off in the direction he points me in, after assuring me that it’s a straightforward road.
I feel like I’m cutting school as I drag my suitcase down the wide pavement, like when you used to go on an errand for your teacher and walk through the empty school grounds when everyone was in lessons. It always felt a little bit naughty and a little bit thrilling, and it always made you feel a little bit more grown up than everyone else.
The road gradually shifts from residential houses to a tree-lined country lane, branches heavy with white flowers hanging across the pavement, hedgerows spilling over with pink wild roses, and the odd pretty cottage dotted among them. There’s hardly any traffic, and the occasional car that does pass is pootling along so slowly that I can overtake them on foot. I’m enjoying the walk so much that I’m surprised how quickly the time has passed as the pub comes into view.
I stop and read the blue lettering on a sand-coloured board above the door. The Sun & Sand. Even the name makes it sound nice. There are tables and chairs outside, a wide green lawn, and two huge but neatly trimmed trees on either side, weighed down with not-yet-ripe green cherries. It looks like the kind of image you’d see on the front cover of a romance book about a woman who moves to a tiny village to run a pub and falls for the handsome builder who comes to mend the roof.
It would be so easy to take the front road and walk along the seafront and find the carousel and Nathan, but I decide to be sensible and head to the hotel first. It’s not even two p.m. yet. There’s plenty of time for that when I’ve had a quick wash and change after travelling all day.
There’s a woman trimming the hedge outside The Sun & Sand who calls over as I go to walk away. ‘Where are you looking for, love?’
‘The Shell Hotel?’ I say, not used to this number of people keen to help you find your way around.
She makes the same face the newspaper man made. ‘Are you an inspector come to shut them down?’
‘No, just a guest.’
‘Oh, lovely.’ She sounds just as false as the newspaper man. What is it about this hotel?
‘It’s that way.’ She points down the second road that clearly heads into the village. ‘It’s right on the other end of the village, just follow this road and go downwards when you come to the fork. You can’t miss it.’
‘Thanks.’ I set off before the idea of this hotel sends me running straight back to the train station.
‘Come back anytime,’ she calls after me. ‘We do the best chips in Pearlholme! The fish and chip shop on the seafront will tell you otherwise, but we all know which one of us is right!’
It makes me smile as I wheel my suitcase behind me, through a narrow, cobbled street that seems barely wide enough to allow even the smallest of cars. This street must be the main residential street, and its rows of brick cottages fit perfectly with the uneven cobbles of the road. Each cottage looks like it could tumble down at any moment, but they all have perfectly neat front gardens, separated from the cobbled street by a haphazard brick wall covered in trailing purple aubrietia flowers. Each one has a path of stepping stones up to their door, a neatly trimmed lawn, and borders full of flowers. Even the birdhouses on tall stands at the end of each garden are miniature replicas of cottages, and birds who are happily pecking at seed inside their tiny bird cottages fly off in groups as I walk past, my suitcase bouncing along the cobbles behind me.
There’s one house on the street that’s a bit different. This one still has a freshly mowed lawn and the scent of cut grass is strong in the air, but in the window is a ‘Post Office’ sign, and instead of flowers in borders, there’s a bright red postbox outside, a chalkboard advertising fresh milk and bread, a newspaper board with today’s local headline, which is blank, and I wonder if that’s indicative of how quiet it is around here. Zinnia would’ve told them to make up a story about someone being mauled by a starfish to sell more copies.
Even from what Nathan said on the phone the other night, I didn’t realise quite how picturesque it would be. Every house has window boxes brimming with a rainbow of flowers and trailing hanging baskets on either side of their bright-painted front doors. It’s like a picture-perfect film set, the kind of village that you see artists painting in watercolour.
At the end of the main row of houses, the road forks – the left fork curves down towards a battered-looking old barn, and the right twists up a shallow slope towards green hills and a handful of little cottages that must overlook the beach. I’d rather take that road, but the woman outside the pub did say to go downwards, didn’t she? And I’m sure there’s something written on that old barn …
As I walk towards it, only the side is facing me, peering above rusty black railings. The back garden is hidden behind overhanging trees that have overhung so far they’ve gone for a scramble through the blackberry bushes behind the building. It looks more like an overgrown graveyard than any kind of hotel, but as I cautiously walk round the front, I realise that’s exactly what it is. The Shell Hotel is in big letters across the front of the building, but the S has gone wonky and dropped down, looking like it’s hanging on by a thread.
This does not look like a hotel. It looks like somewhere you’d expect Lurch to open the door.
I suddenly understand why everyone I’ve s
poken to so far has made the same face at the mere mention of this place.
* * *
The hotel is not that bad. If you like broom cupboards with no view. There only seems to be one elderly man working here, and the only other guest I’ve seen is a man I passed in the corridor with an easel under one arm, making me think I wasn’t far wrong about artists painting such a picturesque village.
And I suppose I was lucky to get a room here at such short notice, in June, in a gorgeous little seaside village, and it doesn’t matter how small my room is or how uncomfortable and stained the bed looks, because I’m here, and I’ve done something unusual for me; I’ve ‘put myself out there’ as Daphne would say, and now I’m walking up the other fork of the cobbled road, towards the cottages, and hopefully the carousel on the beach.
At the peak of the hill, I stop and take in the view. From here, to my left, are the green hills of the cliffs overlooking the beach, and they’re spotted with little cottages, all with pretty gardens stretching out behind them. In front of me is the most perfect beach I’ve ever seen. Miles of unblemished sand stretches out into the ocean. The tide is out and the waves are lapping in the distance.
To the right is the seafront, and my reason for coming here. I walk down the lower road towards what is obviously the promenade. A blue-painted iron railing springs up along the grassy edge as I head towards a row of colourful beach huts along one side of the road, opposite a wide set of steps and a long ramp leading down to the beach. Just beyond them, is the tip of a marquee tent. It must be the carousel. It’s exactly where the newspaper man described.
The road has changed from cobblestone to smooth tarmac now, which I notice because my knees are shaking as I walk, and while I could convince myself it was because of the cobbles before, now I have to admit that it’s nerves. What the hell am I doing here? Coming halfway across the country to meet a man I smiled at on a train a few times? He’s going to think I’m a nutter. Maybe I am a nutter.
If I left now, I could probably make it back to London by tonight. I could at least stay somewhere near the station and get the first train out tomorrow morning. He would never know I was here. We could meet like normal, sensible, sane people in a neutral place in London where I can hand his phone over like a normal, sensible, sane person, and not stalk him two hundred and fifty miles across the country. In six weeks’ time. When he gets back … Six weeks is a hell of a long time. And I’m here now, aren’t I? I can just drop by the carousel and hand over his phone like it’s not a big deal … Maybe I could tell him I’m visiting family in the area? That’s a reasonable excuse, right?
My legs have carried on walking without me realising, and I’m suddenly on the liveliest part of the promenade, right next to one of the sets of steps leading onto the sand, and mere metres from the marquee surrounding the carousel. He must be in there. It’s too near, this is too weird, everything about it from the train to the phone to the article … and the lovely-sounding guy who phoned me, who I talked to unreservedly the night before last, who voluntarily rang again last night and then texted when I didn’t answer, and I still haven’t responded to.
I examine the row of beach huts on the opposite side of the promenade to delay having to approach the carousel and somehow make myself sound rational while explaining that I’ve stalked him halfway across the country.
They’re all painted in bright colours, each one different from orange to purple, graduated so they form a rainbow along the street. All have signs above their doors and sandwich boards outside advertising their goods. There’s the fish and chip shop I’ve already heard about, an old-fashioned arcade, an art shop showcasing paintings by local artists, a shop selling all kinds of beach goods from dinghies, windbreakers, and inflatable whales to buckets and spades and snorkels, and there’s an ice cream parlour … Oh, now there’s an idea.
The sign outside advertises a 99 cone that still costs 99p, something that’s probably as rare in Britain nowadays as when a Freddo used to cost 10p, and I can’t remember the last time I had one. I go into the little red hut and buy two. Turning up with ice cream makes this much less weird, right?
There are four rows of wide concrete steps leading down to the beach and sandy ramps side on, so I walk down one of them, holding an ice cream in each hand.
A wooden walkway has been installed in the sand surrounding the carousel, and a temporary metal fence about six-foot high has been put up around it, stopping anyone getting any closer.
As I cross the sand towards it, I try to work out what on earth I’m going to say. Shall I knock? If I can even get in, how do you knock on a tent? Rattle the fence? Call his name?
Just as I’m thinking the best thing to do would be to run away and eat both the 99s as I go, he steps out from around the side of the tent and I freeze because it’s suddenly real. He’s actually here. I’m actually here. I actually did something so completely out of character for me, and maybe that’s not an entirely bad thing, even if it is about to go down in flames.
He’s wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of dungarees, which are covered in paint and oil stains and ripped at the knees, and he’s rubbing a manky-looking cloth over something, looking out towards the sea. He looks completely entranced by the ocean and hasn’t even glanced in my direction, and I wonder how long I could stand here admiring him if these ice creams weren’t melting.
‘Nathan?’ I finally pluck up the courage to speak and it comes out barely above a whisper. I’m sure he won’t have heard but he jumps at the sound of something other than the squawking of seagulls and swivels towards me.
‘Ness?’ He physically does a double take and squints in the sunlight.
At least he recognises me. That’s something.
‘Ness!’ he says again, his voice going high. ‘You actually came?’
Suddenly he’s moving, pushing aside one of the metal fence panels and striding towards me, his mouth turning into a grin that lights up his whole face and makes the laughter lines around his eyes crinkle up. He doesn’t look like someone who thinks I’m a deranged stalker.
What’s weird is that as soon as I see him, the moment I see that smile spread across his face and the dimples I haven’t been able to get out of my head since the first time I saw him, all of my nerves melt away.
He looks … overjoyed. No, it can’t be overjoyed. Maybe constipation? I don’t think anyone has ever looked that happy to see me before.
‘You made it sound so perfect.’ I have to wet my lips and swallow a couple of times to make my voice sound stable.
‘I can’t believe you came!’
‘And I brought ice cream.’ I hold one of the cones out towards him.
He goes to take it but his hand stops in midair and we both look at it because he’s covered in black grease. He pulls it back quickly and tries to wipe it on the cloth he was using to clean the thing he’s just shoved into the pocket of his dungarees. ‘Look at the state of me. I don’t usually get into this much of a mess.’
He plunges a hand into the dungaree pocket again and pulls out a mini packet of wet wipes, covering it in the black grime as he struggles to open it and pull one out, and I stand there with two ice creams melting in my hands, wondering when dungarees became so sexy. I’ve always thought of them as a work uniform for builders, but on Nathan, they look like something from a Calvin Klein aftershave advert. Even with the rips and stains, one rip in particular shows a delicious sliver of thigh, and …
I’ve been here for all of two minutes and I already can’t stop perving on the man. I can’t remember the last time I looked at a guy and fancied him this much, no matter how much Daphne tries to make me. Fancying men and how sexy they might or might not be hasn’t been on my priority list for a long time now, and yet I already want to slide a finger into that tear in the faded denim and … I force myself to think of something else.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Nathan’s scrubbing at his messy hands with a wet wipe, which looks about as effective as a chocolate teapot
. ‘Talk about a good first impression. This is a boiling hot water, exfoliating handwash, and a scrubbing brush job, and I’m nowhere near any of them.’
He seems nervous, maybe even more nervous than I was, and it’s completely and utterly endearing.
‘Do you need a hand?’ I say, wishing I could kick myself before I’ve even finished the sentence. Who makes terrible puns like that in front of a gorgeous man they wouldn’t be opposed to impressing? What is wrong with me? I don’t know why I bother hunting for excuses not to go out with any of the men Daphne tries to set me up with. I should go and let them be instantly put off by my terrible sense of humour. She’d soon stop trying.
At least he’s polite enough to laugh and make it sound genuine, his eyes crinkling up again as he grins at me, and I find myself staring at him. His hair is so dark brown that it’s almost black and his brown eyes reflect the colour of the sand and the sun, making them look golden in certain slants of light. I always thought he was gorgeous by the washed-out light of an underground train, but in natural daylight, he’s glorious.
‘You couldn’t, er, feed it to me, could you?’
I let out an undignified snort and cover it with a nervous giggle, sounding like a pig that’s had a nappy accident, if pigs wore nappies and were perceptive enough to be aware of soiling themselves. Maybe those nerves aren’t so far away after all. ‘Well, that’s one way to break the ice.’
I try to ignore the way my stomach flips as he groans and goes to smack himself on the forehead but stops just in time to avoid a greasy handprint across his face. ‘Oh God, that wasn’t meant to sound as bad as it did. I meant in a completely non-erotic way, obviously. Just hold it in my general direction and I’ll lick it like a dog.’
‘I’d be happy to,’ I say, wishing I could think up a clever, witty response to make up for the ‘do you need a hand’ fiasco.
‘My nefarious plan for getting pretty girls to feed me ice cream is almost complete. Next step, world domination.’ He steeples grease-covered fingers in an evil overlord way, making me giggle again. ‘I’m going to stop making an idiot of myself anytime now.’ He gestures towards the gap in the metal fence. ‘Come in and sit on my wood.’
The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea Page 6
