The House Beneath the Cliffs

by Sharon Gosling

  Next were the cupboards and drawers, all of which had already been emptied but definitely needed a refresh. Then the fridge, which did not smell nearly as awful as Anna had been expecting, then the little pine ‘dining table’.

  By the time Anna was finished in her quest to clean the kitchen, she was tired, hot and, despite the huge breakfast she’d had courtesy of Frank and Pat, hungry again. Her clothes, towels, most of her toiletries and all of her kitchen equipment were still in the car. Anna realized now that she was going to be here for at least one more night, so she may as well bring more of her belongings into the Fishergirl’s Luck, if only so that she didn’t have to keep returning to the car every time she needed something.

  The village was still quiet as she walked back through it again, for which Anna was grateful given the sweaty mess she had become in her quest to clean. When she reached the old Fiat she saw that something had been pushed beneath one of her window wipers, a square of white paper that fluttered in the breeze blowing off the North Sea. Anna pulled out a note and saw that someone had scrawled on it in untidy letters that matched a brief, unfriendly message.

  Parking is for RESIDENTS

  Anna looked around as she held the note in her hand, but there was no sign of anyone who might have left it there. If she’d had to guess she would have said it was the work of Douglas McKean, but he already knew that she owned the Fishergirl’s Luck, so where would be the sense in leaving a note like this? She scrunched it up in her hand and then shoved it into her pocket, but the note’s advent left an unpleasant feeling lurking in her gut.

  Don’t worry, she said silently to whomever might be watching and wishing her gone. I won’t be here long.

  This time she used the barrow to cart her boxes along the seafront. She passed a couple of people, who nodded and said hello, suggesting that neither of them were responsible for the note, but then, who ever really knew what was going through someone else’s head?

  Anna gave the miniature bathroom a wipe down, and then tried the shower. The water was mercifully hot, the pressure not bad. She came out of it feeling refreshed, and pulled on a pair of sweatpants, a sweatshirt and the comfy boot slippers that Geoff had always condemned as ratty and cheap-looking.

  When she stepped out of the bathroom, Anna was caught by surprise at how good the kitchen looked in its newly clean state.

  All Anna could be bothered to make was an omelette, which was fortunate considering the meagre ingredients she had brought with her. She located her favourite copper-based frying pan (the one she had proudly bought herself with her first-ever paycheque and had looked after meticulously ever since) and turned on the gas hob, smiling to herself as she whisked the eggs. An omelette. It was the first thing she had learned how to make at catering college, even though she, as with every other student there, had scoffed at the idea that they didn’t already know this simplest of recipes – which was, of course, the point. Everyone thought they knew how to make an omelette, but to be a good chef meant first acknowledging that you didn’t know as much as you thought you did, and moreover that the basics were not beneath you. Because, maintained Madame Chaubert, their tutor, if you were too arrogant to acknowledge that one required a foundation of these basics on which to build, one could never achieve greatness. In her philosophy truly great chefs, even those at the top of their game, would always recognize that there was still much for them to learn. Therefore, learning to learn was the most important first step in a chef’s career, and what better place to start than with the ultimate simplicity of breaking eggs into a bowl?

  Geoff, she remembered, had refused to make that first-day omelette, declaring that his parents hadn’t spent a fortune on college tuition for him to be taught something he’d been making perfectly since he was six, and threatening to take his complaints to the dean if Madame tried to force him. Then, when she’d told him he was welcome to do so, he had made an omelette faster than the tutor and ignoring all her advice, just to prove a point. It was one of the things that had drawn Anna’s attention almost immediately – his utterly unshakeable sense of self-importance. She’d been appalled by and attracted to it in equal measure; she, the quiet little mouse from nowhere who had arrived at the college with promise but the full belief that there was still everything to learn. That moment had turned Geoff into the king of the class and given him an infamy that defined his career, right from that early moment. Everyone knew who he was, and he loved it.

  She should have known better, Anna saw now, than to be so easily dazzled by the shallow theatrics of ego.

  Having eaten and wanting to avoid the dark grip of reminiscence, Anna found a renewed burst of energy. When the knock at the door came she was busy hoovering the carpet, having discovered that the threadbare patches weren’t all that bad, really. They could easily be hidden by a bit of strategic furniture placement and a new rug, certainly enough to satisfy the demands of Anna’s theoretical future tenants.

  ‘My goodness!’ Pat said, as Anna waved her visiting neighbour into the Fishergirl’s Luck. ‘You have been busy. It spruces up nicely, doesn’t it, this little place?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna admitted, looking around the room, into which was shining a cheerful amount of sunlight. ‘It does, actually.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to hold you up,’ Pat said. ‘It’s only that Frank and I were thinking we might have a few friends over on Saturday night. It’d be the usual suspects from Crovie and Gardenstown and the like. You should come, it’ll give you a chance to meet some new faces. They’re all good people, our friends.’

  ‘Oh,’ Anna said. ‘Well – that’s really kind of you, but…’

  ‘It wouldn’t be anything grand,’ her neighbour added. ‘There’s usually something going on at one or other of our houses on a weekend. It might help you to feel less like a visitor passing through if you knew more people, that’s all. It can’t hurt, can it? Even if you really do decide you don’t want to stay.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Anna told her, ‘once I’ve got this place straightened up and taken some photographs, I think I’ll try putting it on Airbnb until I can work out what to do with it more permanently. I’m not sure I’ll still be here at the weekend.’

  Pat smiled, though a little sadly. ‘I see. Ah, well, that’s a pity.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said, feeling inexplicably guilty.

  ‘Don’t be, love,’ Pat told her. ‘You have to do what’s right for you. But look – if you change your mind in the next couple of days, you’ll still be welcome to join us. Any time after seven. Just knock and come in.’

  Hey selkie lass,

  Dolphins are the latest thing, have you noticed? He’s drawn them all over his schoolbooks, in the margins, on the covers, everywhere. Should we worry about how obsessive he gets? Does it mean something? Is it normal? Is encouraging him a good idea, or not? Last week it was geology, wasn’t it? The bathroom is still full of rocks. Maybe I should give Miss Carmichael a call. Why don’t kids come with manuals? Everything else does and nothing else is nearly as complicated. Or expensive.

  They’re too easy to get wrong.

  Love you.

  PS: Yes, there is more beetroot. Just don’t ask me to open the jar. Love will carry you so far and then it’ll smother you in the fumes of a pickled beetroot. I’m not falling for that one.

  PPS: I can’t call Miss Carmichael. I think she fancies me. Can you do it?

  Six

  The next day Anna drove along the coast to Fraserburgh with a list of items she wanted to find for the Fishergirl’s Luck. Chief among them was a rug to hide the bald patches in the carpet. She also wanted a new muslin curtain for the bedroom and had borrowed Frank’s tape measure to take down the size. A kettle, that was essential – she’d have plenty more to buy for the kitchen before she put it up for rent, but for now, something she could make tea in while she worked on the place would be enough. She also needed a way to make the old armchairs a bit less garish… the list had lengthened exponentially as
she’d added to it the evening before.

  As Anna wound her way out of the village her phone found its first hint of reception in several days and beeped at her. She pulled into a lay-by and listened to the message Cathy had left the day before.

  I know you’re probably busy and out of signal in the back of beyond, said the woman who had been her closest friend for too many years to count, but do give me a ring when you re-enter civilization, won’t you? Just so I know you’re alive.

  Smiling, Anna held the phone to her ear as it rang out.

  ‘My goodness,’ said Cathy’s familiar voice, ‘if it isn’t Kensington’s answer to Scott of the Antarctic. I was beginning to think you’d discovered that the Earth is flat after all, and fallen off the edge.’

  ‘Close, but not quite,’ Anna laughed. ‘I’m fine. Sorry – this is the first time I’ve had a signal.’

  ‘I thought as much. Glad to hear you, though. So – how is it all? Or is it too soon to tell? Tell me about Crovie. How have your first couple of nights in the cottage been?’

  Anna detailed the events that had happened since she’d arrived in the village, correcting her friend’s pronunciation from Crovie to Crivvie. It felt good to offload on someone who knew her almost as well as Anna knew herself. Anna had met Cathy in secondary school and they had been friends ever since. In fact, Cathy was really the only friend that had survived throughout the Geoff years. Any others Anna had had slowly faded from her life through lack of the nurturing that all friendships require. Anna knew she was to blame for that as much as anyone, just as she knew she had Cathy’s determination to thank for the fact that they were still close.

  ‘Anyway, long story short, I’m an idiot and I knew at once that this was a ridiculous misadventure,’ Anna told her, as Cathy listened with quiet attention.

  ‘You’ve hardly been there two days!’ said her friend. ‘It might not be quite what you expected, but honestly, Anna, it’s been a while since I’ve heard you sound as enthusiastic about something as you have been about this move. Besides, where will you go if you don’t stay there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Anna said, ‘but somewhere I at least have the hope of getting a job.’

  ‘But I thought you were going to take the time to work out what you really want to do from this point?’ Cathy asked.

  Anna sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. ‘I was.’

  ‘Look,’ said her friend. ‘It sounds to me as if you need to take a breath. You’re so used to that crazy kitchen, it’s bound to feel weird to have such a sudden change of pace on top of everything else that’s happened in the past few months. Why not take a few weeks – as a holiday, if nothing else. You deserve one. I think you need one.’

  ‘I should have gone to Spain, like you said.’

  Cathy laughed. ‘Knowing you, you’d have been just as restless there, too. Take some time out and… stop for a while. The place is yours. You’re not going to lose any more money on it if you keep it to yourself for a bit, and it’ll mean not having to outlay more money for something else, won’t it?’

  Anna chewed her lip and looked out at the glint of sun on sea. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Either way, it sounds to me like a sound investment as a holiday let,’ Cathy pointed out. ‘Quirky places to stay are the in thing. And this couple you’ve met, Pat and Frank – they sound lovely.’

  ‘They are,’ Anna agreed. ‘They’ve invited me to a party at the weekend, to meet some new people.’

  ‘That’s great!’ Cathy said.

  ‘Is it?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said her friend. ‘Meeting new people is always great.’

  ‘I think I’ve forgotten how,’ Anna admitted. ‘I can’t remember the last time I had a night out without Geoff. And every time I went somewhere with him, he was the one everyone wanted to talk to, not me.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Cathy said. ‘And you’re not standing in his shadow anymore. Even if you don’t end up staying there permanently, where’s the harm in getting to know your neighbours?’

  Cathy was right, Anna realized. She needed to remind herself how to make new friends, new connections. Crovie was as good a place to do that as any – especially, actually, if she wasn’t going to stay permanently after all.

  Start saying yes instead of no, she told herself. Don’t close yourself off. Be open to everything, or try to be, and especially while you’re here.

  ‘You’re right,’ Anna said. ‘I do need a holiday, and I do need new friends. I can stay a bit longer. It’ll give me time to get the place properly sorted out. I’ll be spending all day today shopping for new things for the Fishergirl’s Luck.’

  There was a pause. ‘Word of advice, then,’ Cathy said, carefully. ‘Avoid the magazine racks, especially the celeb rags.’

  Anna’s heart did a curious backflip. ‘Oh?’

  ‘The new series starts next week. He’s been doing the rounds. Interviews everywhere, alongside that smug face of his. In case you want to avoid them.’

  Anna sighed. ‘I will. Thanks.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘You’re okay, aren’t you?’ Cathy asked. ‘Leaving was the best thing you ever did, Anna. Even if you did follow it up by disappearing off to the back of beyond.’

  Anna hummed. ‘I know. Still—’

  ‘Yeah,’ Cathy said softly. ‘Still. But it’ll get better. I promise. You know you’ve always got a room here with us if you need it. But for now, make the most of where you are. This party sounds like a good start. Wear something swish and knock ’em all dead.’

  Anna laughed again. ‘Not that kind of party, really. Not that kind of place. And I’m definitely not ready for that anyway.’

  ‘Let your food do the talking for you then,’ Cathy said breezily. ‘I mean, they’ll all love you, obviously, but especially if you do that thing with the peppers. Dammit, I miss your cooking. And you. Horribly.’

  ‘I miss you too,’ Anna said, around a smile. ‘I’ll call you, okay? Love you. Give Steve a hug from me. He’d love it up here, by the way. What isn’t farmland is a golf course. You can be the first people to stay in the Fishergirl’s Luck when I rent it out, if you like.’

  They said goodbye but Anna remained where she was for long minutes, lost in thought, watching absently as a stray crisp packet danced across the wind-blown tarmac. She’d been an idiot to imagine that Geoff couldn’t follow her here. She wondered whether he’d had any moments like this, lost in a memory of her. It was doubtful. If she knew Geoff, one of those tabloid photographs would be a pap shot of him leaving some achingly hip nightclub with a baby-faced model on his arm. It would not, after all, be the first time, or even the second or third. The thought stabbed a pang through her chest and Anna took a breath, trying to dispel the sudden pain. It wasn’t worth dwelling on. That wasn’t her life anymore; it had nothing to do with her.

  She restarted the car and turned out onto the road. Anna wasn’t sure she really wanted to cook for the get-together. She’d been thinking that she’d pick up a bottle of wine or two, maybe some fancy crisps, that was all.

  Hours later and with the car stocked to the gunnels, she drove the twenty miles back to the village along the coast road, enjoying the green of the fields and the flash of light dancing on the water. There were only a handful of villages along the route – none were as precariously placed as Crovie, but all of them were small, with a slightly desolate sense of clinging to their existence by force of will alone.

  She negotiated the road down to the harbour more easily this time. As she dragged her bags out of the boot and into her cart she saw a figure in the distance. Hunched over a cane, a flat cap pulled down over his eyes, it was clearly Douglas McKean. Anna slammed shut the hatch and headed for the cottage, studiously ignoring his glare.

  Anna spent the next couple of days deploying her purchases around the house. The beautiful wine-red throws she had found were strategically tucked over the sofa and armchairs, followed by new cushions. A
t some point she’d probably have to replace the sofa, but actually it was surprisingly comfortable and the throw disguised the ageing fabric perfectly well. Meanwhile, the wool rug in a similar colour with blue and cream accents covered the worn patches in the carpet and tied the whole together. Upstairs, Anna wrestled the new muslin curtain into place, pausing to watch the light dancing on the waves, the sun so warm and bright through the glass that she thought she could probably lie on the floor and sunbathe in it.

  Since she’d decided to stay a while longer, Anna also unpacked the last few boxes of her belongings. Her clothes she tidied away into the wardrobe and drawers upstairs. As her kitchen equipment found its way into the cupboards downstairs, Anna realized that her initial dismay at the general grubbiness of the space had blinded her to how well it had been designed. Yes, it was tiny, but it was beautifully laid out, with everything positioned exactly where Anna herself would have put it had she been fitting it out herself.

  She unwrapped her chef’s knives, secure in the sturdy wrap her father had proudly bought her when she’d graduated. The thick linen was tired now, but she’d carry on using it until it fell apart, or until it was too threadbare to protect the blades within. For much of her life, right up until she’d signed the contract on the Fishergirl’s Luck, the knives had been the most valuable possessions Anna owned. She knew the weight and feel of each as if it were an extension of her own hand. Working with them felt like home. As she checked them over, Anna realized that she was looking forward to cooking in her new kitchen after all. And, for the first time in a long while, there was no faintly derogatory running commentary from Geoff about her ideas. He hadn’t followed her inside this space. The kitchen in the Fishergirl’s Luck, cramped as it was, was hers and hers alone. The thought lit an unexpected glow in her chest.