Chapter One #2
Right at the end sat Honeysuckle Cottage—the house Nan had left me. It was made of golden stone with honeysuckle blooming around the front door and had to be at least two hundred years old. There was an air of timelessness to the place, and I knew it would be here for hundreds more to come.
As I pulled the car onto the pavement outside, I cast my eyes over the front.
The stonework looked to be in good shape as did the roof, but the wooden window frames were chipped and peeling, and the dark green front door was starting to look old and weathered.
The flower beds around the edge of the small front garden were covered in weeds, and the fencing looked to be in desperate need of replacing.
I knew Mum and David had done their best to keep on top of the maintenance for the past few months, but both of them were busy, and the cottage needed more attention than a Saturday afternoon could give.
Technically, Honeysuckle Cottage occupied both the house at the end and the one next to it.
At some point in the past, someone had bought both of them and knocked them together to create one large house.
It had been before Nan’s time, but when she and my granddad had bought it in the fifties, they’d done it up and had turned the cottage into a little bed and breakfast that Nan had still been running when she’d died.
Taking a deep breath, I got out of the car. The smell of the sea hit me instantly, and I took another breath to draw in the scent of salt and sand and the wind off the sea. It brought with it an ocean of memories, sweet and painful.
Leaving my suitcase in the car to fetch later, I pushed open the creaking front gate, which wobbled under my hand.
Several of the paving stones on the path to the front door had come loose, and there were more weeds sprouting through the cracks in the concrete.
From somewhere to my right, I heard a door open and close, and I wondered who was coming to check up on me.
“Oliver? That you?” The voice was old, gruff, and thickly accented.
I turned to see Ivor Roberts, Nan’s next-door neighbour for as long as I could remember, looking over the fence.
There were deep wrinkles on his tanned face, and he had a shock of white hair and a flyaway beard that made him look like a wild Father Christmas.
“Hey, Ivor,” I said, turning and giving him the warmest smile I could manage. The exhaustion of the drive had suddenly hit me, and I wasn’t feeling particularly sociable. “How’re you?”
“Not bad, I suppose. Your mum said you were coming to fix the place up while she was away.”
“Yeah, I’m here to supervise, but we’ve got people coming in to do most of it.”
Ivor nodded. “That’ll be Turner and his lot, then. Just make sure they don’t damage the roses. Mabel’ll have a fit.” He gestured to the line of shrub roses next to the fence that were just starting to display fluffy, white blooms.
“I’ll make sure they don’t,” I said, trying not to focus on the name he’d just thrown out. It was making my stomach twist uncomfortably like it was suddenly full of snakes.
“All right. Well, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow. I’m sure Mabel’ll be round at some point with something for you. Do you still like rock cakes?”
“I do, but I haven’t had any in ages.”
“Soon fix that,” Ivor said with a final nod as he headed back towards his house.
I turned back to the cottage’s front door and bit my lip to hide a smile. I knew Mabel, Ivor’s wife, had sent him out to see who it was, and now that she knew I was here, the rest of the cottages would too. In fact, by tomorrow, the entire network of elderly women in Heather Bay would know.
The lock clicked, and the door swung open easily, letting out a gust of cool, stale air. It never got any easier coming back here, especially not now that the cottage was mostly empty.
Mum and I had spent two weeks at Easter cleaning the place from top to bottom and sorting out the last of Nan’s things—from her extensive collection of cookbooks, to the boxes of old family photos, to the dusty cupboard under the stairs, which hadn’t been emptied in twenty years according to the dates on some of the receipts we’d found at the back.
Everything had been packed away and either donated or left here for me to sort.
Most of the furniture had gone too, but we’d left a few bits and bobs for me to use.
Mum had offered to let me stay at her house, but since it was outside of town, I’d said it would be easier for me to stay at the cottage.
Now I wasn’t sure how I felt about spending three months in a building site with nothing but the basics.
I walked through the empty hall into the kitchen, which still had a large, battered wooden table in the middle of it.
I ran my finger across the scarred surface and looked around at the old brown and white cabinets and speckled tiles.
There was a kettle at one end of the counter next to a cardboard box Mum had filled with store-cupboard supplies, including a box of teabags and some sugar.
I let out a soft chuckle, which bounced off the tiles. Of course Mum had left me tea.
I filled the kettle and flicked it on, feeling like a stranger in a place I’d known all my life.