One
I was beginning to think this was a huge mistake as I drove down the steep hill leading into Seahorse Harbour. I’d been making a lot of mistakes over the past three years, so that was nothing new. But seeing the line of funeral cars, the gleaming black funeral coach and the six horses, their ebony coats shining in the cold December air and their glossy manes teased by the biting afternoon breeze, really gave me the creeps.
What if I’d come too late? What if this was Aunt Elsie’s funeral?
I don’t know why I thought that, but I did, and I hoped to God I hadn’t just lost Aunt Elsie. Christmas was already looking bleak. Her being dead would make it utterly miserable.
Not that I really knew her. I think I’d only met her a handful of times in my life. But she was the only living connection to my parents and although she wasn’t related to me by blood, but by marriage, she was still family. And right at that moment, I really needed family.
But I hadn’t told my aunt I planned to visit. In fact, I hadn’t really planned my visit at all. It was a spur-of-the moment decision. And one I was beginning to think I may have reason to regret, as I drove right past the turning for Rock Road, where the Sunrise Bed & Breakfast was situated. The journey had already been a pain in the proverbial with roadworks, diversions, delays and endless queues of traffic. Perhaps the Universe was trying to tell me something. Like go home and don’t continue on to Seahorse Harbour. So when I missed the turning, I wondered if that was yet another sign.
I had been so busy taking in the gorgeous vista of the seahorse-shaped cliffs to my left, set against a gun metal grey sky and a flat-calm, steely grey sea, where the sun hung low in a pillow of purple, pink and red clouds, that I hadn’t heard my sat-nav telling me to take the next turning on the right. I not only missed that one but also the next road where I could’ve turned around, so after telling me I was stupid, my sat-nav calculated an alternative route.
Well, it didn’t actually call me stupid, but I always thought there was a rather judgemental tone to her voice, as if she were saying, ‘Why do you bother asking me for directions? You never listen and you always end up having to double back.’
I was looking for somewhere to do just that when a sizeable formation of heavy-looking clouds swept down from the north, across the fields to my right and released a shower of thick, fluffy-looking snowflakes. Great. Snow. That was all I needed.
Seeing those cars parked outside the church only emphasized my feeling of unease ... and meant I also missed the next turning on the right – Meadow Lane. Now, my rather irritating sat-nav informed me I’d have to drive right around the church. And I realised I’d also have to avoid running down anyone in the crowd of people crossing the road to attend this funeral.
But it couldn’t be Aunt Elsie’s funeral, could it? She couldn’t possibly have dropped dead in the last few days.
Could she?
Her Christmas card and round robin letter had only plopped onto my door mat two days before.
Although that didn’t mean anything. Dad had dropped dead one sunny Sunday, January morning three years ago just one month after Mum had succumbed to the pancreatic cancer that had shocked us all with its sudden arrival, its aggression, and its determination to take her from us as quickly as possible. Both Dad and I were devastated, but we’d supported each other through those first few weeks and I had started to hope that we’d be okay – eventually … until that Sunday morning when his coffee cup had slipped from his hands, along with his smile of, ‘Good morning, sweetheart’, and seconds later he’d followed the cup to the floor.
He didn’t smash into pieces like the cup, but I immediately knew he was dead. That didn’t stop me from giving him mouth to mouth and frantically pumping his heart in a futile attempt to bring him back to me. I was more of an optimist in those days. I even thought Mum would beat her cancer. Life taught me I couldn’t be more wrong. About lots of things.
Until three years ago I’d had a pretty perfect life. Mum and Dad were the best parents in the world. They adored me and supported me and all my, sometimes questionable, choices.
We lived in a sprawling but ramshackle Victorian villa which Dad was always ‘doing up’ but never seemed to finish. He converted the lower ground floor into a flat for me, so that I could have my own space and privacy but could still pop upstairs to spend time with my parents and they could pop down to visit with me. They gave me the key to my very own front door on my twenty-first birthday.
Lower ground floor sounds like a cellar, doesn’t it? But it was far from that. As with many Victorian homes, the ground floor was actually raised and reached by a staggered flight of stone steps: five steps and then a sort of terrace area followed by five more steps to the impressive front door. That meant the lower ground was only a few feet – and a flight of eight stone steps – down from the front garden. It had its own separate entrance – used by servants in the era it was built – and its own, not quite as impressive, front door.
I loved living in that flat, but when Mum and Dad passed away it didn’t feel the same and after a matter of months, I’d had to sell the house because I couldn’t afford the upkeep. They had left me some money but they’d never been rich, and I’ve always been hopeless with finances, so I had no savings of my own. I considered keeping the flat and selling the upper part, but no one seemed interested, so in the end I’d had to sell it all as one. I think I got a good price for it, considering all the work it needed, and I used the proceeds to buy a little cottage in the country and have some cash in the bank for a rainy day. I’d always loved the idea of living in rural splendour. Well, maybe not splendour – more like cosy quaintness.
The reality of muddy lanes, no street lights, no mains gas, only oil, and isolation was a real eye-opener. And it seemed to rain a lot – both figuratively and literally.
Who knew that a cottage could cost as much to repair and maintain as a large, sprawling house? At least my cottage did. Or that when it did actually rain, owning a cottage right beside a stream was not as idyllic as it had at first seemed, particularly when the stream became a raging torrent intent on establishing a new tributary directly through my cottage.
And I had no idea that thatched roofs were home to several living creatures, none of which I particularly wanted to get to know.
I lost a lot of money when I eventually managed to sell it and return to civilisation.
Now I had a rented flat. Being a property owner had not worked out well for me, and besides, I had expected my long-term boyfriend, Clark to ask me to move in with him any day.
Except he didn’t.
He abruptly ended our relationship instead.
On top of that, I’d lost my job. Although I should’ve left Barratt, Rose & Corne long before. I’d never wanted to work for a firm of undertakers and I’m still not sure how I had come to do so. I blame it on a series of mistakes.
I wasn’t entirely thinking rationally after Mum and Dad passed away and, having been made redundant the week before Mum’s diagnosis, I had no money coming in. Then, when I sold the house and bought the country cottage, I foolishly thought I could live cheaply and self-sufficiently off the land and with the remaining sale proceeds. Take it from me, it may look like the perfect lifestyle and fairly easy on all those TV shows but the reality is completely different. Especially if you’re living on your own and really don’t know one end of a chicken from the other. By the time I realised country life probably wasn’t for me, I’d been without a proper job for a year.