by Alex Morgan
Andy grinned. “I know.”
“Really?”
“I know the area quite well. I love Scotland.”
They were the first words they had exchanged since stopping for another coffee just after the Border.
The van bounced down the twisting, potholed road. “I hope there’s nothing fragile in those boxes,” he observed. “My suspension isn’t up to this kind of thing anymore.”
“Yours or the van’s?” Paula enquired, hoping humour might dilute the sensation of panic seeping up from her stomach.
But Andy didn’t rise to it. Stopping to let a tractor out of a field, he looked round at her. “I don’t know what you’re running away from, but whatever it is, you couldn’t have picked a nicer place to hide.”
Paula smiled weakly.
Packing up
The night before, Paula had answered the door to Andy dressed in an old T-shirt and denim shorts. She had felt him looking at her legs as she led him up the hall. They were the only part of her body she really liked, muscular yet lean and shapely. Her mum was always telling her how pretty she was, and Ollie was forever saying she had beautiful skin and gorgeous eyes – they were a pale greeny-grey, with long fine lashes – but Paula invariably gave the same reply: “Gorgeous won’t get you up a hill when you’re knackered.”
“Sorry, I’m not quite ready but I won’t be long,” she said.
“I get the impression this was a last-minute decision,” Andy replied.
Paula chewed her lip. “It wasn’t exactly planned.”
She showed him into the sitting room. There were piles of books, CDs and DVDs everywhere, and four large cardboard boxes sat in the centre of the room. The furniture was modern and simple. An angular sofa, a couple of chairs with cream linen covers and a wall of blond wood bookcases were softened and brightened by arty prints and colourful cushions. The windows had blinds rather than curtains and the floor was pale laminate. The lack of fussy details, ornaments or other knick-knacks pointed to an existence that was normally far more ordered.
“Please, sit down,” Paula said, lifting a stack of magazines from one end of the sofa. She gazed around for somewhere to put them.
“There’s a bit of space under the coffee table,” Andy suggested.
She slid them under the table.
“It’s not actually as bad as it looks.” She wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or herself.
“It’s good to see you’ve got decent boxes,” he offered. “I once moved a woman who had thousands of books and she’d put them all in carrier bags. It was one of the worst days of my life.”
“I can’t take credit for the boxes. The flat upstairs just changed hands and I begged them from the girl who moved in.”
Paula had called him the day before, after seeing his advert in the local paper. Van with driver. Reasonable rates. All work considered as long as it’s legal. Happy to travel anywhere, particularly north of the Border. She asked if he meant what he said about going to Scotland. He said he did.
“Could you take me and some stuff to Fife then?” she asked. “The other drivers I phoned didn’t want to venture beyond the M25.”
“No problem. I enjoy getting out of the South-East. Spend too long here and you start to forget the rest of Britain exists.”
“I know what you mean.”
“When were you thinking of?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Well, if you want to go during the day, next Tuesday’s the soonest I can do, but if you’re happy to travel overnight we could leave late tomorrow.”
“Overnight?” She sounded uncertain.
“If that doesn’t suit you, why not wait till Tuesday? Or you could try some more numbers.”
“No, overnight’s fine.” She said it quickly so neither of them had time to change their mind.
She was peering into one of the boxes now, left hand tugging on her right earlobe. She looked over at him. “Sorry, did you say something?”
“I said is he coming?”
“Who?”
Andy leant over and picked up a threadbare stuffed animal with a long tail that was sitting on a pile of books. “Your friend here. Is he a rat?”
She managed a brief smile. “That’s Arthur. He’s a very elderly dormouse.”
“So is Arthur coming to Scotland?”
She held out her hand and Andy passed him to her. She put him in the box nearest to her. “That’s the easiest decision I’ve made all day. I was sure I’d be done by the time you got here, but deciding what to pack’s taken far longer than I expected.”
“Is it a permanent move?”
She shrugged. “I won’t know till I get there.”
“That’s exciting.”
Paula picked up a handful of CDs, checked through them and put them into one of the boxes. Lifting them out again, she discarded a couple and returned the rest to the box.
“If you’re not certain what to take, it’s probably better to pack too much rather than too little.”
“I suppose.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“Do you want to bring some music for the van? It’ll need to be cassettes – the facilities are pretty basic.”
“I only have CDs.”
“You’ll have to make do with my choice then. Most people drive themselves when I move their stuff, so I only have my own taste to consider. I take it you’re not a car owner.”
“I don’t drive. I prefer the view from the passenger seat.”
“I love driving, especially long journeys. They give you so much thinking time.”
“Was that a hint?” she asked quickly. “I won’t intrude on your peace, if that’s what’s worrying you. I’ve no plans to tell you my life story.”
“That’s not what I meant. I was just trying to say I’m happy alone or with company.”
“Sorry.” Paula gnawed on the corner of a fingernail and glanced around the room.
“Actually, I think I’m the one who’s intruding. Why don’t I leave you to it for a while? It’ll be much easier to get organised without me breathing down your neck.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “No, no, it’s fine. I’m fine. I really am organised.”
It was his turn to smile.
“My dad says I remind him of a swan sometimes,” she offered, “desperate to give the impression that I’ve got everything under control even though it’s obvious I’m paddling frantically under the surface.”
“We all do that.”
She nodded. “I’ve just got to finish these and put a few last things into a case. Then I’ll get changed and help you into the van with the bike.” She looked at him pleadingly. “I could make you some tea or coffee.”
“No, you concentrate on what you need to do. I’m going to stretch my legs and buy some water for the journey.”
“The corner shop at the far end of the road should still be open.”
She made to follow him to the front door, but he held up his hand. “You carry on. I’ll see myself out.”
When he returned twenty minutes later, she had stacked the boxes from the sitting room into the hall, and by the time he had taken them out to the van, two more, one containing a giant spider plant, the other a trio of bushy ferns, had taken their place.
Paula was putting a pair of suitcases by the door when he came back in. “Nearly there,” she said.
She reappeared after a few seconds with a sports bag. “That’s the last of it apart from the bike. I’ll just pull on my jeans.”
As she turned to go back into the bedroom, he said, “That’s unusual.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “What is?”
He pointed to the outside of her left ankle, where the tattooed characters P&P formed a little curve just above the bone.
“What does it stand for? Not ‘Post and Packing’ I presume?”
“Not post and packing,” she confirmed curtly and closed the bedroom door with a sharp click.
19 Sho
re Road
“Isn’t that wonderful?” Andy inhaled deeply. “There’s no smell on earth to beat it.”
Paula shivered in the breeze from his open window. “I can’t smell anything.”
“Give it a couple of seconds. There’s no medicine like the sea. It’ll lift your heart and blow all the cobwebs away.”
She turned away from him to take in the row of Edwardian villas they were passing. They had freshly painted doors and window frames, and their cottagey front gardens were a riot of colourful neglect. The shiny SUVs and people carriers lining the pavement marked them out as weekend boltholes for well-heeled families from the Central Belt. The panorama of fields and trees on the other side of the road offered no clue to what lay less than a mile ahead, beyond where the road dipped out of sight, but before long, their occupants would be gathering up buckets and spades, pushchairs and fishing nets, sand-heavy rugs and carrier bags of swimsuits, and setting out on the day’s expedition to the shore. Children would dig holes and hunt for crabs, while parents sheltered with books and newspapers behind striped windbreaks. At lunchtime, they would share egg sandwiches and crisps, and drink through miniature straws from little cardboard cartons of apple or orange juice. Paula smiled inwardly at the thought.
As they left the villas behind, she tried to visualise what they would pass next, but nothing came. The bottom of the dip seemed to signal the beginning of Craskferry proper. There were houses on both sides of the road now, short terraces and a few individual cottages, all with a simple, symmetrical Georgian elegance and all utterly unfamiliar. She had hoped … What had she hoped exactly? That she would recognise everything instantly, after more than twenty years? Perhaps not, but it would have been reassuring if something, some small detail, reignited even a flicker of memory, a glimmer of recognition, just enough to confirm she had made the right decision.
Give it time, like Andy said, she reproached herself silently. There’s no rush now.
He pulled up at a T-junction. “Which way?”
Paula consulted the printout of the letting agent’s email. “It says turn right at the junction with Main Street.”
“Okay, that’s here.” He flicked on the indicator even though the roads were deserted. “Then what?”
“First left and sharp right takes us onto Shore Road. It’s number nineteen.”
He followed her instructions.
“Look, the odd numbers are on the beach side. It must have a sea view.” He sounded excited.
“The description says it does. You can park there.” Paula pointed to a space in front of a four-storey tenement with a crumbling cement façade whose door opened directly onto the pavement.
Andy manoeuvred the van into the space. “So which one is it?”
“This is seventeen so nineteen should be next door, but all I can see is a gap, and the house on the other side’s far too grand.”
Andy leant over the steering wheel and craned his neck. “What’s it supposed to be?”
She rechecked the email. “The ground floor of a charming seaside cottage built in the 1830s.”
“Oh dear.”
“What do you mean ‘oh dear’?”
“You should ask for a refund.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?” Paula demanded.
“It looks more 1840s to me.”
“Jesus, you frightened me.” She bent down to retrieve her bag from the footwell so he wouldn’t see how close to tears the harmless joke had left her.
“Do you have the key?” he asked.
“It’s supposed to be under a flowerpot to the left of the door.”
“Come on then.”
The house was set back three or four metres from its much larger neighbours. It had a little front garden, just a couple of beds of blowsy pink roses on either side of a short path of crushed shells. Andy felt under a terracotta pot of orange and yellow nasturtiums.
“Here.” He held up a ziplock bag containing a ring with several keys.
Paula selected the largest one. The heavy storm door opened with an easy clunk to reveal a tiled vestibule with a wooden umbrella stand and a single door panelled with intricately etched glass.
“This is strange.”
“What is?” Andy asked.
“The agent said it was a flat, with the owner living upstairs, but there’s only one door.”
“Go in and see then. I’ll unload.”
Paula took a deep breath and opened the inner door. Directly opposite her, across the dark green linoleum, was another front door where the bottom of the stairs should have been. It had a little nameplate that said McIntyre. She could feel her face beginning to crumple.
“That’s not on.” Andy put the box of ferns down in the vestibule and joined her in the hall. “You can’t have complete strangers walking through your flat any time they like to get to their front door. If I were you, I’d phone the agent and ask for something else.”
“There isn’t anything,” Paula said glumly. “This was all she had left. She said it had just come on her books.” She waved at the pristine magnolia walls. “Smells like the paint’s barely dry. She said the layout was a bit unusual and that was why it was quite cheap. I thought she meant the bedroom was off the sitting room or something.”
“Are you sure there’s nowhere else?”
“Not a thing. She said I was lucky to find anything at all at this time of year. The village is packed with holidaymakers.”
“We’d better get on then.” He picked up the box. “Where do you want this?”
“Let’s try in here.” Paula opened the door immediately to her right.
The square sitting room contained a worn chintz sofa, a couple of matching armchairs and a TV on a small table beside a cast-iron fireplace. The carpet was a swirly mess of red and green. Two net-curtained windows looked out onto the street.
A pair of oak doors in the centre of the back wall led them into a study with an old kitchen table for a desk, and a quartet of empty bookcases. A picture window running the width of the room revealed a long, narrow back garden and, beyond a wall with a gate in the middle, the sea, sparkling gold and silver in the early morning sunshine as it rolled away to meet the perfect turquoise sky.
The beach itself was hidden behind the wall, but Paula could see it in her mind’s eye. It was the one thing she could picture with certainty: the wide strip of sand, the peeling paint of the small flights of wooden steps that provided each back garden with its own private access, the disused granary building beside the harbour wall, the cliffs in the distance – they were as sharp as if she had seen them yesterday.
Andy gave an impressed whistle and set the box of plants on the table. “That’s some view. Maybe this place isn’t so bad after all.”
“Maybe not. I’m going to explore.”
She found the bedroom opposite the sitting room. It had the same hideous carpet, a small double bed made up with pale blue sheets still creased from the packet, and a wall of wardrobes with white louvered doors. There was a dark wood dressing table in front of the net-curtained window, with a dining chair upholstered in red velvet in place of a stool.
Next door was a shower room that looked as if it had never been used. A tub of grout sat in the white sink and there were two large tins of magnolia paint on the floor by the toilet. She glanced in the mirror. The person looking back had flatteringly cut and tousled blonde hair, but her eyes were dead.
The kitchen was at the far end of the hall and shared the same spectacular sea view as the study. It was clean enough but the avocado units and cream tiles with stylised maroon flowers were pure seventies.
“Where shall I put this?” Andy lent the electric blue tandem against the kitchen door.
Paula looked at it as if she had never seen it before. “I … I don’t know. It’ll be too long for the cupboard under the stairs but there doesn’t seem to be any other storage.”
Andy walked over to the window. “What about out there?” He pointed to a large shed
halfway down the garden. “Shall I take a look?”
She unlocked the back door and watched as he walked the length of the grass. There was something tremendously attractive, sexy even, about the easy way he moved, a relaxed confidence that said he was completely comfortable in the world.
Andy checked all around the shed, tried the door, peered in the window. “It’s perfectly secure and there’s plenty of space,” he shouted. “All I can see is a lawnmower and a wheelbarrow. Have you got a key?”
Paula examined the ring. “I don’t think so,” she called back. “The only one left is labelled ‘beach gate’.”
“Then you’ll have to ask your neighbour.” He nodded up at the first floor.
Together they lifted the tandem down the outside steps and propped it against the kitchen wall.
“It should be safe enough here for the time being,” Andy said.
“The agent said she’d arrange some basic supplies. Why don’t I put the kettle on?”
“Good idea. I’ll finish unloading.”
Paula found a litre of semi-skimmed milk in the fridge along with a small bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice, a block of mature cheddar and a packet of organic butter. There was a paper bag of tomatoes and a punnet of mushrooms in the vegetable drawer at the bottom. A box of free-range eggs, a pack of teabags and a large wholemeal loaf had been crammed into the bread bin. She wondered if the agent was feeling guilty about not mentioning the lack of privacy. She had probably thought Paula wouldn’t take the flat if she told her, but a few groceries couldn’t excuse such an omission.
She could hear Andy moving about in the hall.
“Do you fancy a mushroom omelette to go with your tea?” she called.
“That would be great.”
Paula gathered utensils from the unfamiliar cupboards and drawers. Stooping to light the gas for the frying pan, she felt a draft on the small of her back. She spun round but there was no one there.
“Andy?”
He stuck his head around the kitchen door. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she said hurriedly. “I thought you came in.”
