The two women sat in silence with their thoughts.
‘Is there anything else you want to say, Loretta?’ Merrin braced herself for more revelations.
‘Yes.’ She sat up in the chair and straightened her pearls. ‘Do you have any wine?’
‘Oh! I do, somewhere.’ She walked to the cardboard box in the corner and fished out a bottle of red, rinsed the mugs in the bucket and gave Mrs Mortimer a slug of warm red in an old tea mug before lighting a candle and sitting down with her own.
‘So what now, Loretta? Do I need to give you this place back? Is it rightfully yours? Is that what you’re saying? How about the Sally-Mae?’ Her jaw was tense, her tone firm, and she decided in that moment that if that were the case, she would do it and she would survive. After all, she’d been through worse.
Loretta laughed out loud. ‘Good God, no! Of course not! They’re yours, of course they are yours! They were never mine. None of it is mine. Not a penny. Guthrie’s parents made sure of that. Everything passed from Guthrie to Digby. I don’t own a thing. Which is odd, really, as even my parents owned their caravan and the one hundred and fifty prime acres it sat on.’ She winked at Merrin and lifted the mug to her lips. ‘Cheers!’
She felt a loosening in her shoulders and neck and raised her own mug. ‘Cheers, Loretta.’
The woman stood and wiped her mouth, and Merrin followed, ready to see her out. It was a surprise when she walked forward and held her in a tight hug, talking over her shoulder.
‘I meant what I said that day: let yourself live, Merrin. Grab life and run with it because it’s short.’
Having stood on the slipway and watched Ma Mortimer make her way up Fore Street, Merrin decided to sit on the steps that led down to the beach and try to make sense of the evening they had shared. As the cool night air bit, she looked towards the cottages, where lamplight glowed from the windows and her beloved family awaited her return. Sitting still, she looked out over the water.
‘Oh, Gran, how I would love to chat to you right now . . .’
Turning her eyes towards movement, she saw the silhouette of a figure walking briskly up from the shoreline, as if newly sprung from the sea itself. A silhouette she didn’t recognise, but a man, certainly. Tall and broad, he appeared to be heading straight towards her, his stride purposeful. Her mouth went a little dry with nerves. It was one thing to be alone out here in the environment she knew back to front, but with a stranger? She looked back at the lights along the quayside and took comfort from them, halfway between home and the pub, where family and friends were within shouting distance.
‘Oh! Hi!’ His voice was friendly and his manner confident as he lifted his hand in a wave and came closer.
As he approached she recognised the shape of him as someone she had seen jogging once or twice at a distance or had opened the door of Everit’s for to let him pass. ‘I thought I saw someone coming down to the beach; made me quite self-conscious, and then you disappeared. Didn’t realise you’d taken a pew there in the shadows.’ He wasn’t from around here, no Cornish accent.
‘Ha! I don’t take a pew often,’ she retorted.
‘What?’
‘Church, I . . . I don’t often go to church.’ She didn’t know why she shared this.
‘Ah, just the usual then? Weddings and funerals?’
‘You don’t know how accurate that is!’ She laughed.
‘I keep meaning to pop into St Michael’s there on the hill.’ He pointed over her head. ‘It looks lovely, but I haven’t been inside.’
‘It is . . . Last time I went in was for my dad’s funeral. He died.’ She didn’t know why she felt the need to tell the stranger, but did so anyway.
‘It’s probably best.’
‘What is?’
‘That he’d died, if you had a funeral for him.’ He drew breath. ‘Sorry, that’s my idea of humour, which I can see by your expression is entirely the wrong thing to do at the moment. I do that when I get nervous, and death makes me nervous.’
‘I think it makes everyone nervous.’ She stared at the stranger, his manner odd.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ He let the sentiment settle.
‘Thank you. It was a little while ago now, but still feels like yesterday in some ways.’
‘Yep, I know that feeling. It gets you here.’ He thumped his chest, where his heart lurked. ‘It’s awful, isn’t it, when your dad dies? I lost mine five years ago and it’s . . . awful. Yes, that’s the best word.’
Merrin felt the spring of tears.
‘Oh no, you look like you might cry! That’s really bad! Worse than my joke.’ He took a step towards her and stared, as if figuring what to do or say that might help. He had a kind face, crinkly eyes and a nice mouth. His hair was quite long.
‘No, it’s not; I mean, it is bad, but it’s not you. I can usually control it. But tonight has been quite emotional and sometimes any mention of him or any thought of him and it’s like flicking a switch, and that’s terrible because when I saw him in real life, I never felt like crying, just smiling.’
‘Well, the good news is that it stops. I can promise you that.’ He spoke with authority.
‘Which bit?’
‘The sudden crying. Although I still cry – not all the time, but if I see someone in a coat similar to his, because I think it might actually be him and the disappointment is overwhelming. And I cry if I hear his voice on a message or a video. I cry when my mum or my brother cries about him; it sets off a sort of chain reaction.’
‘You still seem to cry a lot.’ She sniffed. ‘After five years.’
He looked up towards the darkened night sky. ‘Not really, maybe twice a month, and I think that’s okay. But that switch thing you were talking about, that resets.’
‘So it’ll keep getting easier?’ she asked with a note of hope that was too much to be putting in the direction of a stranger.
‘Easier?’ He put his hands in his pockets and looked out to sea. ‘Not easier, no; it gets different.’
‘Different?’
‘Yeah, it’s like it hurts just as much, but you’ve lived with it for so long you don’t notice it quite as much, and you still miss him like crazy, but you learn to talk to him in your head and hear his answers too, if you’re smart about it.’
‘I do that already.’
‘Then you are way ahead of the game.’ He nodded in her direction, his expression kind.
She looked over at the Sally-Mae, moored against the harbour wall. ‘My dad was my guy, my person. I knew that, no matter what, he would be there – not always sober, not always with the best advice. Some of his ideas were hare-brained!’ She smiled. ‘But he was my guy.’
‘Well, I think you were very lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
‘Yes, I think so. Some people have terrible fathers and they would give their left nut to be sat here today feeling an overwhelming love and gratitude for a dad who’s gone.’
‘I guess you’re right.’ She looked down and noticed he was barefoot on the cold, wet sand. ‘Where are your shoes?’ She sat up straight, a little aghast.