‘You’re very kind. Are you sure?’ Elizabeth had to ask, because she knew that when Lucy Nolan had agreed to come here today, neither of them had truly expected her to say she’d come back another day.
‘I’m not really sure, but I think Mum has been certain since the moment she mentioned it on the phone to me and who am I to disappoint her at this stage?’ She took up her mug and they toasted the next two weeks. It was, Elizabeth knew, just a reprieve, but already, it was one she was looking forward to.
*
Later, when the day had mellowed, in spite of the gushing overflow of water racing down the cliff face and the constant drip of gutters and eaves, it was decidedly warmer than anyone could have predicted. Elizabeth decided on a walk. She would only head to the end of the village, perhaps look out across the pier and thank the heavens for the fine evening it was turning into one way or another. There was, Elizabeth knew, an unmistakable lightness in her step after her conversation with Lucy Nolan earlier. She hardly noticed walking past the familiar houses, so caught up was she in the glorious blue skies and the notion that there was room to breathe.
Soon she was turning onto the road where the fishermen’s cottages stretched off into the end of the village. Jo’s little house sat stout and proud and she remembered the afternoon they’d spent there, when she’d felt the warmth of another person’s home envelop her in a way her own had never managed. It struck her as odd, this feeling that somehow she’d never really thought about it before, but her house – for all its faded elegance – had never been homely.
At the very end of the row, she stopped for a moment, looking back up the hill from Jo’s house, and then she looked back at the cottage. It was the only one with a gable wall and wide entrance lane running about its side. It had its own tiny garden, squaring it off, making sure that everyone knew it was just a little different from the rest. A plaque said the row had been built in the 1920s. There were narrow windows either side of the front door.
Jo had lived her whole life in that house. She tended the roses around the door – ready to bloom again in time for summer and she polished those brasses every single Saturday morning that the weather would permit.
Elizabeth leant against the low perimeter wall for a second. The sky overhead had pushed back any hint of cloud now, a clear blue vista, with a soft, end-of-day sun intent on drying out the land; it was inviting her to walk a little further.
‘Elizabeth.’ Jo’s voice at her back startled her. ‘Just the person I was thinking of.’ She was making her way down the path. ‘Lucy told me – it’s wonderful news.’
‘It’s only for two weeks, but…’
‘Initially. Let’s see how it goes first,’ Jo said softly and of course, Elizabeth knew her friend would love nothing more than to have Lucy here full-time. ‘But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.’ She stopped now, as if assessing Elizabeth for bad news.
‘What is it?’ Elizabeth felt her stomach turn over with the inevitable nerves that come before hearing the very worst.
‘Oh, it’s nothing bad, it’s just…’ Jo bit her lip for a second. ‘Don’t say no immediately, but I was wondering, if you’d like to come swimming with me tonight. It’s…’ Her voice trailed off, perhaps registering the look of horror in Elizabeth’s eyes.
‘It’s rather cold for that sort of malarkey for me, but…’ God was there any way out of this? ‘I…’
‘Of course, of course,’ Jo said quietly, ‘it was silly of me. I just thought you might really enjoy it – something to knock off a bucket list, if you had one.’ She was laughing now, but Elizabeth could see that she’d let her down somehow.
‘Maybe next month? When it gets a little warmer. You know what they say: never swim when there’s an R in the month!’ Elizabeth said lightly, but the thought of going into the freezing waters now didn’t particularly appeal to her. She didn’t even have a swimming suit for heaven’s sake.
‘Right, that’s a date. We’ll make it May Day, or rather night,’ Jo said, happy now that she’d tied her down to a specific time.
‘Right.’ Elizabeth agreed, a little shocked. Dear God, what had she let herself in for?
7
Dan
Dan’s parents never made a secret of the fact that he was adopted. Mind you, his mother was such a typical English rose and his father still burned to a freckle if he so much as looked at the sun, it wouldn’t exactly have come as news to anyone, with Dan’s dark skin, pitch-black hair and heavily lashed brown eyes. Being adopted had never been a thing for him. Even at that stage, when other kids rebelled, Dan just counted himself lucky. He was an only child, lavished with love and he adored his parents. If he’d wondered at other kids, searching for their birth parents, he’d have probably supposed that they mustn’t have had the same happy home he’d had.