Frozen, she didn’t answer, but Polly didn’t notice.
‘Oh, he might have brought his own stuff from the mainland. I wonder if he’s going to eat all those strawberry tarts by himself?’
She chattered on, even as Marisa was mentally breathing a sigh of relief. She took the bread and keys, muttered thanks and escaped outside before Polly had a chance to give her directions.
But outside there were people around, walking dogs, boats coming in, people hailing each other and saying hello and she realised she couldn’t stay like that either, and glanced at the map in the file of papers, and turned, and putting one foot in front of another, started pulling her suitcase up the hill.
Chapter Nine
The village loomed above her although Marisa barely noticed; the huge church at the top, the houses tumbling higgledy-piggledy down around the mound of it.
In the spring sunshine it looked attractive and inviting, the early morning mist still burning off around the foot of the hill, making it look as if it had just shimmered into view, as if it were purely magical. The lighthouse was on her left, out on its own promontory; the beach scooped beneath the harbour walls and, on the other side, were many clattering fishing boats. Along the harbour front the pub, the fish and chip shop, gift shops, ice creams . . . and the bakery, of course, just there on the corner, in its charming dove-grey.
But Marisa didn’t look at any of it. She kept her head down and ploughed on alone, stepping miles away from anyone who approached her on the narrow pavement.
She felt so abandoned, so far away from everything, as if every day sailed her further away from the life she had once known, once had.
She followed the road as it wove around the hill, each house higher up than the last, sometimes the older stone cottages looking as if they were leaning tipsily on one another, their small doorways opening directly out onto the road. Eleven Polbearne Heights . . . where was it? She was getting out of breath as the sun beamed down and her suitcase seemed to get heavier and heavier, like dragging a cow up a hill.
The church was just above her now, and the school was to her right-hand side. She couldn’t see a lot of houses. Was this right? Her phone signal was blinking in and out. Oh good, that wasn’t going to be a lot of help. She was panting now, red in the face.
Just to the right, the cobbles ran out completely and there was a dusty unlaid road turning sharply uphill. There was no road sign on it at all. This couldn’t be it, could it? She remembered what the woman in the bakery had said to that man, about the road running out. Could it be?
She turned a steep corner up the cliff, with a sheer rockface just to her left – and there they were.
A little row of four beach houses: two unfinished, but two ready. They looked like overgrown beach huts, with clapboard frames, four of them in a row, painted pastel colours: lemon-yellow, sky-blue, pink and mint.
Number 1, hers, was the lemon-yellow. There was a set of steps up to the high front door, through a tiny patch of ungrassed yard. Underneath was a kind of garage space that didn’t look quite finished.
She took out the key Polly had given her. The four glass panes in the entrance showed all the way through; she tried the key, which turned right away, and she couldn’t help herself – she felt, for the first time in months, a tiny flicker of excitement.
The house smelled brand-new. Obviously, given the digger parked nearby, nobody had ever lived there.
At the other side of the large room in front of her was a glass door that led out onto a balcony that looked straight down over the other side of Mount Polbearne, away from the town and over the lighthouse and out to the open sea, far below. It was breathtaking.
The ground floor was one large kitchen diner, a windowless bathroom with a real bath, and a small bedroom; upstairs was a mezzanine with a pointed roof, another little terrace and a bathroom too.
The furniture was plain but lovely; a pale stripped wooden floor covered in an oatmeal hessian rug; a plain but incredibly comfortable neutral L-shaped sofa, with pale yellow cushions a . . . Oh my goodness. Marisa practically ran to it. A real fire! But, even better, a fire that looked real but ran off gas so she didn’t actually have to chop logs or do anything like that.
It was beautiful. It was the loveliest, neatest, cosiest little place she could possibly imagine. It was by far the nicest thing that had happened to Marisa in a very long time. She thought for a moment she was going to cry.
She texted thanks to Caius, who was only a few hours into Marisa not being there and was already wondering why the kitchen surfaces had stuff on them, then started to unpack her bag. There was something about the place that appealed immediately; the quietness, the remoteness. Nobody knew she was here. Which was a little frightening, but also rather comforting. She could be safe here.
She could lock herself away, work and never come out again. She had everything she needed. She could go out on the balcony, order supermarket deliveries, work from home . . . This was absolutely perfect in every way. Here, she would definitely get better.
The door closing was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard, closely followed by the silence that enveloped her, although when she opened the balcony doors, the sound of the sea was suddenly very apparent, swooshing gently at the foot of the cliffs far below. Yes. She would stay here, she would finally get her therapist, breathe in the sea air, luxuriate in the peace and quiet away from the stress of other people’s parties and the noisy city. She would finally heal. This was perfect.
In the event, she felt this way for slightly less than an hour.
Chapter Ten
Actually, it was more like forty-five minutes.
She opened all the fresh empty drawers to put away her things – very few, all comfies, most of her stuff was still in the car, with a plan to drop it off for storage – but did that matter?
The downstairs bedroom was carpeted and cosy and had wardrobes covering one wall, and the bath next door, so she chose that over the mezzanine.
She made up the brand-new bed with the brand-new sheets – what a luxury this was, truly, kitted out for holidaymakers – and sat on it, her knees drawn up to her stomach, holding herself close, looking out on a bobbing sea, feeling far away from everything; feeling safe, the gentle lapping of the water in her ears.
At some point she dozed off – properly out of it, in a way she hadn’t been for so long, besieged as she was by both insomnia and terrible dreams that would not let her rest. But now she fell properly asleep, and didn’t know how long it was when she suddenly jarred awake. At first, she couldn’t remember at all where on earth she was.
Then it came back to her. She’d had to move, to Cornwall, and was in a brand-new house that was incredibly quiet except . . .
CRUMP!
The noise that had awakened her came again. As well as some shouting and a fair bit of cursing. Well, it might have been cursing, she couldn’t quite tell: the language didn’t sound like English.
Carefully, her heart beating fast, she moved out of the bedroom and towards the main door of the little house, where she could see through the kitchen window.
Outside was a group of large, quarrelling men fighting beside a van. Terrified they’d spot her through the glass, she half-crouched behind it. They were all shouting at each other in a language she didn’t understand, and there was a lot of banging. She couldn’t tell if they actually were angry, or whether it was just because she didn’t understand their tongue. Then one of them made an unmistakable gesture at another. Oh. Properly annoyed then.