There came the sound of the ‘tradesman’s’ door opening and closing.
‘Ahh, here’s Frank,’ Pat said, standing up as a figure appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Frank Thorpe turned out to be a tall, well-built man in his mid-sixties, with the sort of face that looked as if it were laughing even when it wasn’t. He was carrying a curtain pole in one hand and a drill case in the other, and when he saw his wife he grinned as if the sight of her was something he’d been looking forward to for weeks. Anna went to stand up, and the smile took her in too.
‘Ah ha!’ he exclaimed. ‘So the visitor is ours! I wondered whose car it was.’
‘This is Anna, Frank. The new owner of Bren’s place,’ Pat told him, as Anna got to her feet.
Frank leaned the curtain pole against one of the cabinets before taking her hand and shaking it. ‘Very good, very good,’ he said, with a bright enthusiasm. ‘Well then, lass, welcome to Crovie.’ He held up the Makita. ‘You need anything done in that little place of yours, here’s where you come, all right?’
‘Thank you,’ Anna said, smiling.
‘Poor thing’s arrived just when Old Robbie’s got a call out, and she can’t get the key,’ Pat told her husband, as she poured an extra mug of tea and set it down for him.
‘Well, I can pick the lock for you, if you like,’ Frank suggested, his eyes twinkling as he sat and pulled his mug towards him.
Anna blinked. ‘Oh. I—’
‘Oh, Frank, behave,’ Pat chided. ‘The poor woman doesn’t want to know that her nearest neighbour counts that as one of his skills, does she?’
‘It’s only a hobby, promise you,’ Frank told her. ‘I’ve done it before for Bren, as it happens – a few years back she dropped her key in a squall and whoosh! Off it went over the sea wall, and you can forget about getting a locksmith around these parts, at least before kingdom come. So I let her in until Old Robbie could arrive with a spare.’
‘Robert MacKenzie,’ Anna said, seizing on a safer subject, ‘he’s who I bought the place from. I suppose he must have been a relative of Bren’s, if he inherited?’
‘Her nephew once removed, or some such,’ Pat said. ‘Relations around here are tangled and mysterious. Everyone’s related to everyone else in some way or other.’
‘I think I’d better wait until he can get here himself,’ Anna said. ‘I don’t want to offend anyone else.’
‘Douglas McKean,’ Pat said, in answer to the eyebrows that Frank raised at her across the table.
‘Ahh, that old gasbag,’ Frank said. ‘Ignore him. You’ve got nowt to worry about where Old Robbie’s concerned – he’s one of the good ones. Do anything for anyone, he will, hence him still being on the lifeboat despite the fact that it’s long past time he mustered out. He’ll not fret if I get that door open for you. And anyway, the Fishergirl’s Luck is yours now, in’t it? Do what you like with the place.’
‘Don’t let him niggle you into it, Anna love,’ said Pat, getting up to flick the kettle on again. ‘Frank’s looking for an excuse to show off, that’s all. Fancies himself as a criminal in a past life, when he’s really softer than whipped cream.’
Frank grimaced and rolled his eyes at Anna before further taking advantage of his wife’s turned back by reaching for a handful of biscuits.
‘You needn’t be making that face, Frank Thorpe,’ Pat said. ‘And if you think you’re eating all of those before dinner, you’ve got another thing coming.’
Frank sighed extravagantly. ‘Once a teacher, always a teacher, eh? Eyes in the back of your head.’
‘No choice with you around, is there?’
Anna listened to this exchange with a smile on her face, though a curious pang had worked its way into her heart. It felt familiar, though it wasn’t the sort of relationship she and Geoff had ever had. Anna found herself going back to her early years, when her mother had still been alive and her father had been young. They had been happy, her parents, right up until the blip on the hospital screen that had reduced first her mother’s life expectancy and then, eventually, her father’s optimistic nature. Anna stared at her fingers as they gripped her mug. She was older now than her mother had been when the cancer had taken hold, and what did she have to show for it? A career that had been permanently truncated in favour of a man who had never loved anything but himself, and the deeds to a house no larger than a shoebox, in a place she had no roots.
She became aware of silence and glanced up to see Pat and Frank looking at each other, as if they’d been speaking to her and received no response.
‘Sorry,’ she said, rubbing a hand over her face. ‘I zoned out there for a moment. It’s been a long few days.’
‘I bet it has,’ Pat said sympathetically.
‘You know,’ Anna went on, looking up at Frank. ‘Maybe I will take you up on your lock-picking offer. If you really don’t think it’ll offend Mr MacKenzie?’
‘It won’t,’ Frank said confidently. ‘We’ll call Barbara and let her know you’ve managed to get in so he doesn’t have to come over when he lands. He’ll be relieved, I bet.’
Three
Shortly afterwards, Anna stood by as Crovie’s answer to the Pink Panther fiddled with the lock on her new front door. There was no sign of any other human movement in the village at all. The wind was getting up as the light began to tip towards dusk, dashing foamy waves against the sea wall so that they split against the stone with a noise somewhere between a hiss and a sigh. Overhead the gulls cried and cried, circling on air currents as turbulent and as unseen as a riptide. Anna’s gaze followed the staggered line of houses until they curved out of sight, melding with the rock. The grassy cliffs were changing colour in the early evening sun, turning to gold as the light trembled against them, making shadows out of all their ragged edges. Crovie seemed to her as if it were caught between two tides, and the cliffs were not cliffs at all but another wall of water, about to crash down to meet the sea at the exact point where she now stood.
‘Gotcha!’ Frank exclaimed, and the door of the Fishergirl’s Luck popped open with a slight metallic twang. He looked up at her with a beam on his face.
‘Thank you so much,’ Anna said, relieved beyond belief.
‘You’re welcome. Can I help you with your boxes?’
‘There’s really not much to move. I’ll be fine now. I’m just going to… explore for a bit, first.’
Frank nodded and stepped back, apparently understanding her need to cross alone through a door he knew but she didn’t. ‘Well then, give us a knock if you need anything. We’ll be away to bed at around eleven, but any time before that, all you have to do is shout. A hand, a hammer, tea, chocolate, wine, whisky or company – whatever you need. All right?’
Anna smiled. ‘Thank you – again. I didn’t expect to meet such lovely neighbours so quickly.’
Frank shrugged. ‘No call to be any other sort now, is there? We’re glad you’re here, love. If this place needs anything, it’s new life. Why don’t you pop over for breakfast tomorrow? Nine thirty. If we see you, we see you. If we don’t, that’s fine too.’
He left her then. Anna stood on the step of the cottage, one hand on the open door. She took a deep breath and pushed at it, stepping inside and then closing it behind her. Directly inside the door was another, forming a tiny vestibule, the walls of which had been built from pitch pine. Behind her, she could still hear the wind, but ahead of her the air was still, the hall space acting as an airlock against the weather outside.
Anna pushed open the second door and a waft of stale air rolled out to meet her. The space beyond was gloomy, though a faint light was being cast by the small windows. She fumbled for the light switch and flipped it on, frozen in the doorway as she looked around in the harsh glare from overhead. Even from where Anna stood it was obvious that no one had been inside the Fishergirl’s Luck for quite some time. Dust eddied in the air and had settled on every available surface, leaving a grey film that made everything dull.
&n
bsp; She had paid the asking price on the understanding that she could keep the furniture and fixtures, because she had none of her own and the impracticalities of Crovie’s geography made buying anything new a challenge. The solicitor had warned her that the Fishergirl’s Luck would need ‘updating’, but at the time Anna had thought it was the best way to deal with the situation. Now, though, she saw that it meant she’d been left with a load of old junk. The main room – the living area – spread out to her left. Beneath the window that looked out onto the path was a saggy two-seat sofa in coarse blue fabric, stuffing pluming from the ends of its worn arms, and in front of that was a pine coffee table, grubby with dust. Two lumpy-looking armchairs stood the other side, upholstered in orange and brown fabric that looked as if it might have been fashionable in the 1970s. All this was arranged side-on to a hearth built into the far left wall, which housed a tiny wood burner. The staircase Anna remembered so vividly from the photographs was stuck in the far corner, next to the hearth and disappearing up to the second floor against the wall that backed on to the ocean. As Anna regarded it now, it seemed a lot less like a cute and quirky architectural feature and a lot more like a death trap. Under her feet was a threadbare blue carpet that didn’t quite match the colour of the sofa, even though it seemed about the same age.
Directly in front of her, beginning under the low reach of the stairs and finishing at the cottage’s right external wall, was the kitchen. Anna had checked the listing, and knew that the Fishergirl’s Luck had an oven, a sink and a fridge, all arranged on a tiled oblong of floor. At the time, that was all she had cared about – when she’d walked out of Geoff’s life she wasn’t sure she’d ever want to go back into a kitchen at all, at least not beyond making herself toast or the occasional microwave meal. Now though, she was taken by surprise at her sense of dismay as she contemplated the space. Sure, there were shelves and cupboards. There were worktops, and even a ‘dining table’, if that was the right term for a little pine bench built to fit under the slope of the stairs with two stools pushed beneath it. But the whole was so very tiny that it would have slotted into the lift back at Geoff’s place, and as she looked at it now Anna couldn’t imagine even wanting to make toast here, let alone anything else.
To her right, a second door slanted away at an angle and joined another sturdy wooden partition, cutting off the corner between the hallway and the external wall. Inside was the bathroom: a tiny corner power shower, a sink and a white toilet, all of which mercifully seemed clean – in fact, it seemed a lot more modern than the rest of the house – but was still covered with a film of dust.
Closing the bathroom door again, Anna turned round and crossed the floor in something of a daze. It took less than six paces for her to fetch up against the old Belfast sink of her new ‘kitchen’. Above it was the only window in the entire building that looked out towards the sea. It was barely bigger than a 10x8 photo frame, with small shutters that were presumably meant to guard against wave damage. Anna gripped the cold porcelain, feeling the grit of more dust beneath her fingers, and looked out at the green-grey waves.
‘Oh God,’ Anna muttered. ‘What have I done?’
Come on now, my girl, said a familiar voice in her head. Don’t write it off yet.
Her eyes filled with tears. Dad.
It was what he’d said to her on the day he’d helped move her into her digs for her first job out of catering college. That was almost twenty years ago now, but still remained vivid in Anna’s memory. They had arrived to find, not her dream of an airy apartment that looked out into the bustle of London, but a hot, cramped attic room stuck right at the top of the West End hotel. The only window was an ancient skylight that she could barely reach even standing on a chair. The room came free with the job, though, which Anna had thought would be perfect. Her dad hadn’t really wanted her to take it, she’d known that – but she’d already been following Geoff, even then.
‘Do your own thing, darling,’ he’d said, when she’d told him about the commis chef position in the kitchen. ‘Don’t choose this job because he’ll be there. What about that place in Lancaster, that chef who told you he’d have something good for you when he opened? It sounded like you’d be doing more than scrubbing carrots all day if you went there.’
‘But it’s London, Dad,’ she’d argued. ‘Geoff says—’
‘Anna, I don’t care what Geoff says. Last month he was a student, same as you. Why should he know any better?’
‘He’s so talented,’ Anna remembered saying. ‘He’s going to be a star. I know he is.’
‘And what about you, Anna?’ he’d asked her. ‘When are you going to get to shine?’
Anna had rolled her eyes. ‘Winning some little competition doesn’t make me the next big thing, Dad,’ she’d said.
‘Did Geoff tell you that, too?’ her dad had asked. ‘Because you beat him in that competition. I remember that, even if he’d rather everyone else forgot. And “Young Chef of the Year” doesn’t sound too little to me, Anna.’
‘You don’t know anything, Dad,’ Anna said. ‘This is in London. Anyway, I love Geoff, and Geoff’s there.’
I should have listened to you, Anna thought, wiping her eyes. Her dad had tried to present another perspective right up until she’d point-blank told him she was going, and that was it. After that, he’d supported her all the way. He might not have agreed with her choice, but once she’d made it he’d been her rock, the same as always. He’d always tried to help her see her way through, to make the best of all her decisions.
You’re here now, he might have said, had he been standing there with her in the Fishergirl’s Luck. Might as well see the rest of it, eh?
Anna climbed the stairs gingerly and with a distinct sense of apprehension, but it seemed they were far sturdier than she had thought. The top two steps turned towards a small open space, partially taken up by a wardrobe that had been built against the gable wall over the stove below. There was a little window that overlooked the path outside, allowing in a bit of light. To the left of the last step, a wall divided what Anna assumed would have once been an open loft. Beyond the door in its centre, a single bed took up the right-hand side of the space. She was surprised – and puzzled – to note that on top of the bed was a new mattress, still wrapped in its plastic covering.
On the left was a low set of drawers that had been built to run the short length of the tiny room, providing shelf space on top. At the end, in the gable wall, was the biggest window the Fishergirl’s Luck possessed, arched to fit the space and barely an inch above the floor. This, too, had shutters. It also had an old muslin curtain that softened the gleaming light of the dipping sun. Other than that, the room was empty of anything but dust.
Anna sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the mattress and its plastic crackle beneath her. How could she live here? She’d done exactly the same as with that horrible room she’d spent three years in when she’d first moved to London – she’d daydreamed something that didn’t exist. Of course it didn’t! How did she imagine she could pay the pittance that she had for this place and end up with anything better? It was exactly as Geoff had often said, she had no grasp on reality. Stop writing cheques your brain can’t pay for. Accept your limitations for once, why don’t you?
She’d spend one night here, Anna decided, because she was too tired to go and find somewhere else to stay, but that was it. At least there was a fresh mattress for her to sleep on, and the one thing she had bought before coming was a new duvet and pillows.
As Anna walked back through the village she noticed that outside some of the houses was a kind of low wooden barrow, with two wheels and handles for pushing or pulling it along. Each had a number painted on it that corresponded to the house number to which it belonged. When she got to her car, she saw an area at the back of the small parking space, beside the recycling bins, that held more of these little vehicles. Right at the front was one painted with the name of the Fishergirl’s Luck. It was to make transporting goods a
long the sea wall to each house easier, Anna realized. Another ingenious invention that made living somewhere so inaccessible a little more manageable.
She didn’t bother pulling her barrow out. After all, she only wanted a few things from the back of her car. The rest could stay there, because otherwise she’d only have to put everything back in again when she left tomorrow.
Anna found the box with her bedding in it and pulled it out. Then, after hesitating for a second, she found another box – they were all carefully labelled, even though she’d had so little to pack – and slit it open. There, on the top, was a photograph in an old silver frame, a gateway to a happier past. She’d been about four when it was taken, during a family holiday on a beach somewhere, probably in Wales. She was on her father’s shoulders, chubby white legs dangling down over his chest. Anna was holding an ice cream, which had melted all over her fingers and was about to drip into her father’s hair. Her mother was trying to catch it, gripping her husband’s arm with one hand as she stood on tiptoe, stretching out an open palm to stop the drip. They were both laughing, and it had always struck Anna that it said a lot about them as a family, that this was the photograph her parents had chosen as worthy of a frame and a place on the mantelpiece. It had been the first thing she had reached for when she went in to clear the house in the wake of her dad’s death. It spoke to her of a simple happiness she had not yet attained in adult life, and now doubted she ever would.
Taking the photograph, her bedding and a bag of groceries, Anna went back to her tiny house. She dumped the shopping on one of the worktops, climbed the stairs and propped the photograph beside the bed. She took off her shoes, and then tugged open the plastic that covered the mattress. Sinking onto it, she pulled her duvet to her, not caring that she was still in her clothes, the bed was not properly made and that she had not eaten since breakfast. She fell asleep to the sound of the waves crashing around the feet of the Fishergirl’s Luck.
The House Beneath the Cliffs Page 2
