I would ask in the meantime that you treat your guardianship of my aunt’s property with due respect. I will undertake random spot checks of the property during the winter to ensure that the building is being reasonably maintained. Any action that is deemed to be in breach of this agreement will result in immediate termination of your tenancy.
I thank you in advance for your understanding in this matter.
Kind regards,
John Granger
Annie bristled. Even allowing for the fact that cadence could be tricky to interpret in writing, this e-mail felt rude. Who on earth did John Granger think he was? Who did he think she was? Some sort of serial squatter? She read the directions he had promised at the bottom of the e-mail and somehow even they contrived to irk her. How someone could make at the roundabout take the second exit sound like he was telling you to kiss his arse, Annie couldn’t fathom, but John Granger had managed it. Annie huffed as she reached out to turn off the lamp. “Sitting tenant indeed!” she blustered, and pulled the duvet roughly over her head.
Chapter 8
It was a bright morning and the air was charged with the woody scent of the changing season. Harvest was full upon the land and the leaves on the trees mirrored the colors of ripening squashes and pumpkins.
Annie drove out of the West Kent bustle, through the leafy Weald, with its miles of orchards and converted oast houses, toward the coast. She had never lived close to the sea, and the idea of it felt like an adventure.
She began to get glimpses of the ocean to her right: snatches of brilliant azure peeping between mossy hilltops. Annie followed the signs and found herself, at last, driving through the quaint little village of Willow Bay. Whitewashed cottages with wisteria climbing the walls and wildflower gardens, crisped at the edges by the sun, swayed in the sea breeze. There were two pubs directly opposite one another, the Sunken Willow and the Captain’s Bounty, and both had that look of charming decrepitude on the outside that promised a good home-cooked Sunday roast within. The thatched roof of the Captain’s Bounty drooped significantly on one side, and the wall beneath it looked as if it had been partially swallowed by the flower bed. And the Sunken Willow, Annie thought, was most probably only held upright by the thick mass of dark green ivy that smothered three sides of the building.
The road curved sharply to the left and a sign—hand-painted—read: Caution! Steep Hill. Check Brakes! Annie swallowed. How steep could it be?
The road narrowed as it descended. To the left, cottages seemed to cling to the climbing hillside, their pretty landscaped gardens trickling down to precarious driveways carved out of the crag. On her right side, dropping down away, were equally tenacious houses nestled in the cliff face, half shrouded by trees, their chimneys peeking out above towering rhododendrons.
Soon tarmac was replaced by the crunch of shingle as Annie pulled, at last, into a clearing at the bottom of the hill and parked, as she had been advised by Mari. She climbed out of the car and was greeted by the clack and hiss of waves on stone. A warm wind whipped her hair about her face, so Annie quickly pulled it back into a ponytail.
Beyond the small parking area were several stone steps leading up to a promenade. Behind her were dunes sprouting long grass and old rock falls that had become part of the landscape, and beyond them, a thick mass of thorny brambles scaled the hillside from which Annie had just emerged.
To the left, the promenade curved for maybe half a mile before disappearing around a jutting cliff.
The breeze smelled of warm seaweed, and Annie tasted salt on her lips. She shielded her face with her hands against the sun and followed the path round with her eyes. In the distance, set back a little from the promenade, Annie could make out a two-story building, with a gabled roof and what looked like a fenced garden to the rear.
“Surely not!” she said to herself. “Surely no one lives there!”
She took a deep breath of fresh sea air and began to walk along the promenade in the direction of the dwelling in the distance.
As she got closer, Annie was able to pick out more details of the building. It looked like the old Victorian double-height fishing huts she’d seen on the beach at Hastings. It was cladded in black wood, but as it came more into view, she could see that the bottom third was exposed stone and at some point it had clearly been converted into a habitable dwelling. A tin chimney poked up through the pitched roof, which was tiled black to match the shiplapped walls. A thin wisp of gray smoke escaped the chimney and curled into the sky. Annie hurried her pace.
She could find no door on the beach side of the building, only a hatch and three large windows, shuttered and locked. The door to the side was utilitarian, the only feature the gold circle of a Yale lock. A few paces back the way she had come was a set of concrete steps that led down from the promenade to more shingle and the garden she had seen from a distance.