Steepleton, where the only shop to sell food that wasn’t ice cream or iced buns appeared to double as the post office, off-licence and fishing-bait shop. I wandered around in there for a while; they didn’t have any vegetables that looked any newer than my delivery, so I bought some stamps because I felt guilty, and a couple of postcards to send to my mother. She’d still be in Australia, I expected, but it showed willing if I sent her something from our new home.
I chose cards that showed the whole bay, wide and blue under a summer sun. Found a pen in my pocket and scribbled a neutral message, then put the card in the postbox. Duty done. Then I walked the length of the promenade, to where the shops petered out into a small shack with a sign ‘P Smith, Woodcarver’ over the locked door, and a path that ran down to a sea that was sloshing slightly menacingly against the cliff edge.
When I turned back, I could see the lights of the shops spilling out, illuminating the street and the railings in a damp gleam, like a Renoir, all the colours smearing into one another. It suited my mood, rather grey and a bit uniform. I supposed I should think myself lucky that I had the leisure time to mooch about and be miserable in the mist. Back in London I would have been hard at work in the flat on a typical Saturday, housework vying with marking and lesson prep, meals to be lined up for the forthcoming week to cut down on cooking time when I got in late; things, things to be done, all the time.
Here – here I had nothing to do but stand and stare at the muzzy scenery and wonder at the Impressionistic nature of it all. Also, the emptiness – where was everybody? I wasn’t expecting Kensington levels of activity, but surely there should be people on the streets or in the harbour? Didn’t you have to do things to boats? Like ponies? Always something to be tweaked or brushed down or mucked about with.
I walked slowly back towards my car, which was the only vehicle in sight, feeling a little bit as though I’d fallen into a horror film. If a distant howl travelled to me from the top of a nearby cliff, I wouldn’t have been surprised, although I would have fallen over my feet in an attempt to get into the nearest shop. I stopped and looked in the illuminated window that I was passing. It was the very woolly shop that I’d met Gabriel outside a while ago. His sister’s shop, I think he’d said, full of embroidered hangings and handcrafted lighthouses and things made out of wire that looked as though they might spring themselves unravelled and embed themselves in a wall twenty feet away.
I wasn’t really looking in the window, more giving my eyes somewhere to rest, so when I glanced up and into the eyes of someone on the other side, it gave me a start. I took half a step back in shock and trod in a puddle.
The person inside was female, multicoloured dreadlocked and wearing a pair of dungarees that looked as though they were made out of a blanket. She’d got a pair of Doc Marten boots in bright pink laced up to her knees and a kind of orange and black artistic smock over the top, that gave the impression that she was slowly being swallowed by Sooty. My eyes hurt just looking at her.
She beckoned me to the door, which pinged open with a little bell. ‘Hello,’ she said, strobing her way towards me in her colourful outfit. ‘You’re… Katie, right? From Harvest Cottage?’
I nodded. I was a bit afraid to open my mouth in case I got possessed by the Palette From Hell.
‘Gabe!’ she yelled suddenly. ‘Katie’s here!’ Then she gave me a nod and a wink, her dreadlocks swinging. ‘He’s upstairs in the flat, quilting. Go on up.’
‘Er, I didn’t…’ But she was a force of nature, sweeping me towards the staircase concealed behind a little door at the back of the shop with not much more than a flick of her smock and the explosive colours of her dungarees. And ‘quilting’? Did she mean making the beds?
I cautiously climbed the creaky stairs, which wound their way to the upper storey. When I got to the top, there was no landing, the staircase opened directly onto