‘Don’t you worry. I’ve no intention of being late, Ma.’
She reached for the hot mug of tea nestling on top of the Raeburn. Who it belonged to didn’t matter. Tea, like most things inside the cramped cottage, was communally shared. ‘Lord above! You’re heating all of bloody Cornwall!’ her gran, Ellen Kellow, was fond of yelling every time she nipped in from her home at number two Kellow Cottages next door, tapping on the door frame with her walking stick and hefting the door shut with her ample bottom.
Pulling her towelling dressing gown around her, Merrin gripped the tea in her palm and took her place at the rickety pine table that had also, for as long as she could recall, lived on the rag rug in the middle of the room. The bathroom, from where her dad now whistled, was at the back of the cottage, once ‘outdoors’， now ‘indoors’ by virtue of the lean-to her Grandpa Arthur had put up in the nineteen sixties. The two bedrooms could be found at the top of the steep, wooden stairs.
Port Charles was ever-changing. Restaurants, bars, pop-ups, concessions and businesses with expensive interiors and grinning merchants came and went with the seasons. More often than not, those same merchants who arrived in paradise were, by the end of the summer mere months later, out of pocket and cursing all they had invested, financially and emotionally. Smiles were replaced with tears as they packed up their wares along with their dreams, positioning the large ‘For Sale’ sign in the window, hoping to attract another dreamer with high hopes and deep pockets. Then they would throw the keys on to the estate agent’s desk, before trundling back up-country to wherever it was they had once planned to escape from. She would never understand how they could bear to leave this little slice of heaven.
Her family’s cobbled pathway, the deep window seat in the bedroom she shared with Ruby, the tarnished brass door plates, the rusted spear-headed gate with the creaky hinge, even the ancient Raeburn – in these things she took solace. They were permanent, unchanged and they attached her to the land as surely as if her feet had sprouted roots that went all the way down to the last of the tin that nestled beneath her. It had pretty much been the same for all of Merrin’s life and she liked knowing that the wood flooring had felt the touch of her relatives’ footsteps, and the soft, knitted blankets on the arms of the chairs the brush of her grandma’s fingertips.
She had a glorious life to look forward to – not that she would ever say it, mindful of the feelings of her family and worried that Ruby would rib her about ‘acting all high and mighty’ – now she would be living in the grandest house in Port Charles. Her sister, she knew, wouldn’t miss the chance to tease her. Not that Merrin would be going far, and she planned on visiting daily, quite unable to imagine a life without the daily banter and cuppa around the range. She pictured her children in this very room and beyond the front door, where the beach had been her playground, and everyone who lived close – neighbours and kin alike – had been her babysitters. But the fact remained that she couldn’t wait to climb the stairs to the chauffeur’s flat above the garages at the Old Rectory; she just hoped there might be a spot free for her own beloved VW Beetle, christened Vera Wilma Brown.
Digby’s parents lived in Bristol for the winter months, a place she had only visited twice. Despite her dad’s dire summing-up of the place – ‘You wouldn’t catch me going there. It’s all townies! The same townies that drive us mad all summer – but they’re everywhere, all the time! They ain’t never going home because they are home! Townies with their fancy restaurants, too many cars and pollution. You don’t wanna go anywhere near it, my little maid . . .’ But much to her surprise, she had quite liked the city with its noise, traffic, shops, busy streets and harbourside – a bustling place with enough water and boats to make it feel familiar – she hadn’t even minded the townies and their coffee shops. Although she had been a little stunned at the opulence of the Mortimers’ vast and beautiful Palladian Clifton home, which was fronted with tall stone pillars and wide steps, she knew she wouldn’t mind making trips here when necessary.
Both Digby and his father oversaw the biscuit empire that had made the Mortimer family fortune. Like her family’s long tradition of fishing, the Mortimers had run their business for five generations. But unlike fishing, the biscuit world seemed a little bit more predictable and a lot more lucrative than the catching and gutting of fish, on account of the fact that, if the catch was a little thin, her dad couldn’t whip up a batch on the kitchen table.
Merrin rubbed the damp soles of her feet on the rug, as her mum held her shoulders, bending low to kiss her scalp.
‘My little girl, getting married! I honestly can’t believe it.’
‘Don’t cry again,’ Merrin instructed. Not only did she find her mum’s emotions hard to handle, but she wanted everyone to look their best, and puffy lids with purple dots of distress around her nose was not Heather Kellow’s finest look.
‘I’m not.’ Her mum sniffed through her tears. ‘I just can’t believe it.’ She shook her head.
‘So you’ve said. Do you mean you can’t believe someone wants to marry me full stop or you can’t believe it’s happening today?’
It was most likely the former; Merrin was so very ordinary whereas Digby was . . . he was incredible. A quick shove on the back of her head made her lower her chin to her chest as her mother pinned the top section of her hair into a knot then took up the curling tongs. It was one of the acts that had always bound Heather and her daughters close: ever since they were kids, Merrin and Ruby had sat on the stone wall facing the sea with a towel around their shoulders, while their mum slowly and painstakingly trimmed the ends of their long locks and, on one disastrous occasion, attempted a fringe that made everyone on the school bus laugh and point at them. Merrin had cried while Ruby had punched the chief instigator, Jarvis Cardy, square in the mouth.
Most days, Merrin wore her long, thick hair in a loose braid that twisted to one side at the nape of her neck and sat over her shoulder. But not today. It had been decided that on her wedding day, she would have curls. Digby adored her hair. He loved to run his fingers through it and to have it spread over his broad chest when she lay in his arms, looking up at the big Cornish sky where stars punctuated the inky night. In those moments, Merrin had never known such happiness.
Her mother drew her from her thoughts. ‘I can believe someone wants to marry you, ’course I can, but you are so young, nineteen . . . just a babby really.’
Here we go again . . .
‘You were eighteen when you married Dad. And only a year older than I am now when you had Ruby! And Gran was married to Grandpa Arthur at twenty-two and had Dad soon after.’
‘I know all that. It’s just that . . . things were different. I suppose . . .’ Her mum faltered and the scent of singed hair filled the room.
‘I can smell burning!’ She tugged her hair from her mother’s grip and whipped around to face her.
‘It’s only a little bit! You’ve got lots of hair. I’ll tuck the burnt bit in, no one will see. Don’t worry about it.’ Her mum spat on her hair as if any potential flame could be extinguished with such a paltry gob. It did little to erase the stench or restore Merrin’s faith in her mum’s hairdressing ability.