Chapter 2
Chapter Two
TOM
Iintend to go straight to the surgery. My intentions on this score last approximately as far as the top of the hill, where my parents’ house sits back from the lane with the front door open, as it always is, and the sound of lunch in full swing audible from the gate.
I pause, hesitating. The Treloar farm is at two and I have seventeen different things to prepare.
But lunch, Mum’s lunch… I look at the oatcake packet and open the gate, head up the path, push through the ajar front door, and duck so I don’t headbutt the low beam on the cottage hallway ceiling.
Twenty-three times I’ve forgotten about that beam since I turned eighteen and reached my full height. Yes, I’m counting.
The kitchen is full of chaos. Mum is at the Aga stirring one pot, while peering into another.
Dad is at the table reading, his long Darcy legs stretched out under the table, the Farming Life magazine held at full arm’s length because he’s forgotten that his glasses are perched on top of his white springy hair.
Again. Hayley, my youngest sister, is telling a story that involves both hands and appears to have been going on for some time.
She’s all Mum’s colouring, strawberry blonde and freckles.
Meg – the middle of the Darcy siblings and undoubtedly the most annoying of us – spots me in the doorway and points with a cocky smirk.
The smirk tells me she is one hundred per cent judging me for being an independent bachelor but still turning up for my mother’s lunch more frequently than I should.
‘Tom.’ Mum doesn’t turn around. ‘Sit down. There’s quiche.’
‘I just came from Dot’s—’ I sit down anyway, on the wooden kitchen chair that I’m pretty sure has been curved to the shape of my arse.
‘Dot’s not ordering enough stock, we all know it,’ she says. A slice of quiche slaps down on the plate. ‘Sit down. Tomatoes? Sainsbury’s, I’m afraid – our crop is still green.’
Dad looks up from his magazine, takes in my face, and returns to his page. This is his primary parenting contribution and it is, in its way, faultless. He’s retiring from our family practice at some point this year, stepping back, taking it easy.
Thursday morning is when he does the early shift, and somehow, somehow, he always manages to have an empty enough schedule to be home in time for Mum’s homemade quiche.
Which makes me think things are being planned to be ‘easy’ or just ignored.
I really should have gone straight to the practice to see what sort of mess he left it in this morning. Mum’s quiche, though, smells amazing.
‘—and then she said,’ Hayley continues, picking up mid-sentence after my arrival has interrupted her flow, ‘that if we were going to Truro on Saturday, we should make a whole day of it, go to that new place on the quay, and Tom’—she turns to me—‘you should come. When did you last have a day off that was actually a day off?’
I take a bite of quiche, knowing full well it’s considerably better than Dot’s oatcakes that not even the tourists want. ‘Can’t. Treloars on Saturday.’
‘Sunday then.’
‘Maybe. And for the record I had time off for that wedding.’ My stomach lurches again at the memory.
‘Oooh,’ says Meg from the counter, where she is doing absolutely nothing productive, drawing the word out across three syllables before leaving a pause so theatrical it should have its own lighting rig. ‘But, Tom, you should definitely come to Truroooo. We could pop in and say hello to Niiiiina.’
The table goes into one of those pretend quiets.
Dad turns a page.
Mum moves something on the Aga that doesn’t need moving.
Hayley examines her lunch with sudden and intense interest.
‘You know where her mum’s new café is,’ Meg adds, entirely unrepentant. ‘Which I know because Brynn told Jude and Jude told me. Friendly visit. Very casual. We could all go. Nina’s mum does make the second-best cake in the West Country, second only to Nina’s.’
Damn, I miss that cake. The shortbread, the… No. I slam the door on that thought. Tom Darcy is moving on.
Tom Darcy is moving on.
Tom Darcy is moving on.
‘Meg,’ I say, voice flat.
‘What?’ She reaches over and snaps a piece of pastry from the quiche on my plate. ‘I’m just saying it would be nice. For everyone.’ She eats it. ‘You’ve been moping.’
‘I haven’t been moping.’
‘You were in bed at quarter past nine this morning on your day off.’
‘Jude told you that as well, did he?’
‘Jude tells me everything.’ She helps herself to another piece. ‘I’m a very good listener.’
‘You’re a menace,’ I tell her.
‘And yet beloved.’
I look at my father, who has reached the bottom of the page and is now examining the table with great attention to detail. ‘Dad.’
‘Mm.’
‘Anything to add?’
He looks up. ‘The Treloars called this morning,’ he says. ‘Added a sheep to the two o’clock and confirmed Saturday.’ The Treloars and their farm up on the clifftop overlooking Sea Salt Bay are the bane of my professional career.
He returns to his page.
Coward.
Mum puts another slice of quiche on my plate and squeezes my shoulder as she passes, and I eat it because it is very good and because this kitchen, infuriating as it is, is the warmest place I know.
Sometimes that is enough. Sometimes – on a Thursday in May, when the café across the village has been shut for three weeks, and you were in bed at quarter past nine for reasons you won’t name – sometimes it is exactly what you need even when you didn’t know you were coming here to get it.
‘I’ll think about Sunday,’ I say.
Meg beams. ‘Knew it.’
‘I said I’d think about it.’
‘Same thing.’ She steals another piece of pastry. ‘Wear the blue jumper. It does things for your eyes.’
I push back my chair. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘Love you,’ Mum calls, already back at the Aga. The woman cooks like it’s existence itself.
‘Love you,’ Hayley calls.
‘Wear the jumper,’ Meg calls.
Dad raises a hand without looking up from the new page he’s turned.
I close the door behind me and stand in the lane for a moment. The thing I am not naming does its thing in the left side of my chest. I eat one of Dot’s oatcakes – stale, but it’s the principle of the thing – and walk back down the hill towards the surgery.
The afternoon is a farm visit that runs long.
As predicted. The Treloars have found something additional to be concerned about in the time since they called, not including the extra sheep they’d called Dad about, which is their habit and also their right.
By the time I’m done it’s gone half four, and I drive the coast path back down to the village because the lanes are choked with returning beach traffic and I am, frankly, done with cars. Cars and sheep. In equal measure.
The path cuts through vibrant gorse above the village, the sea spread out to the west in late afternoon gold.
Down below, the harbour is a miniature of itself – boats back in, tourist cars filtering out, the village beginning its quiet exhale.
The kiosk closed. The kayakers packed up and gone back to whatever cottage they’ve rented for an extortionate amount of money that only city dwellers could ever afford.
The flamingo incident has probably been thoroughly processed and filed by that family, and that poor man is no doubt lying face-down in his holiday accommodation while some poor soul rubs aftersun on him every thirty minutes.
The gorse’s warm and coconutty scent rushes through the open windows of my Land Rover, and I suck it in. God, I love the smell of the sea, the heather and gorse on the cliffs, the screech of the gulls moaning because their afternoon of ice-cream diving is over.
I just love this place.
The path turns and the village disappears for a moment and it’s just the sea and the sky and I breathe.
When the scrub a couple of feet to the left of me rustles, I slam on my brakes.
Through the open windows there’s the distinct sound of a bark – well, not quite a bark, too exhausted for that.
It’s more a declaration of continued existence under difficult circumstances.
Bringing the Land Rover to a stop, I unbuckle and jump out, not bothering to shut the door – I don’t want to make any loud noises.
The gorse rips through my hand with sharp claws as I pull it to the left, so I can see inside its dense spikes, to find a small wire-haired terrier cross.
It’s dirty, with tan patches that I reckon might be white under the dirt and encrusted sand.
It’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.
Ribs showing. One back leg held clear of the ground – not dangling, not broken, just not trusting the surface.
It looks at me with eyes that want to tell me a tale about the very bad time it’s been having.
My heart aches. Literally aches.
I probably shouldn’t have become a vet, for this very reason; animal suffering pulls wicked strings inside of me. It was Isla Quinn’s gran who told me that this was the very reason why I should follow in my father’s footsteps, not run away from them.
I crouch down. Hold out a hand. Wait.
I know this part can’t be hurried. Fear doesn’t respond well to being rushed. You stay still, you breathe, you make yourself small and unthreatening, and you let the animal reach its own conclusion at its own pace. You give it somewhere to go.
The sea rushes and crashes below us. A gull passes overhead, giving a little squawk to remind all those who might be around of its existence. The gorse creaks in the wind.
The dog watches me.
I watch the dog.
A minute passes, maybe more, and then the dog steps forward and sniffs. I still don’t move, although my heart is squeezing and all I want to do is grab it, hold it tight, and tell it everything will be okay. It sniffs for a while. Then it sits down directly on my boot and stays there.
I look down at it.
It looks up at me.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Okay then.’
I lift it carefully – I’m guessing around six kilos of matted fur and tentative trust – and settle it against my chest. The leg is a sprain, I’m fairly sure.
Not a break. The rest is manageable. Dehydration, some malnutrition, the aftermath of a hard few days.
Nothing that can’t be sorted with time and attention and a consistent approach.
The dog tucks its chin over my forearm and exhales. A full-body release, like it’s been holding it while waiting for me to find it under the gorse.
‘It’s okay, little buddy, I’ve got you,’ I whisper into its fur, but then move back because, cute and frightened as it is, it stinks.
‘Painkillers, water, food, and a bath,’ I tell it, heading back to my car.
I don’t put it on the passenger seat, worried it might slip off, and I don’t have a crate with me.
Some vet I am. So I tuck it up on my lap, and drive down the hill to the village while it trembles and whimpers the entire way down.
It’s past six by the time I’m done. The dog is clean, treated, fed, and installed in the recovery kennel with all the dignity it can muster.
I scanned for a microchip, top to tail, but there wasn’t one, which means no registered owner.
I’ll put the word out tomorrow – the Facebook group, a poster on Dot’s board, the standard channels.
Someone will know something. Or they won’t, and I’ll deal with that when it comes.
I turn off the surgery lights and lock up.
The evening is warm and still. High summer a month away, but the light refusing to behave appropriately, lingering in that long Cornish way like it can’t quite be bothered to leave.
The car park at the top of the hill is emptying.
The tourist tide pulling back. The village resettling into its own shape.
The harbour lane is quiet. Someone’s cooking – garlic and butter, probably The Ship starting service.
A pair of second-homers are coming up from the beach with two sun-tired children.
A lobster pot has fallen off a stack outside the boat shed and not yet been replaced.
These are the things that constitute a summer evening in Sea Salt Bay and they are enough.
They are more than enough. They require nothing additional.
I stop in front of the Lavender Café.
The shutters are down. The fuchsia in the left-hand basket has gone over entirely, trailing against the painted wood.
The blackboard still has the spring menu on it, Nina’s handwriting in yellow chalk, the letters running slightly downhill on the right-hand side the way they always do because she has the spatial awareness, as she once told me with no apparent concern, of a golden retriever.
Lavender lemonade – freshly made, obviously, I’m not an animal.
Cinnamon buns – ask Maisie, she’ll tell you they’re the best on the coast. She’s right.
Soup of the day – today’s is leek and potato.
This soup of the day was weeks ago.
I don’t know how long I stand there, which is unlike me.
I’m not a standing-and-staring sort of person.
I have things to do. A dog in the surgery.
Paperwork. The whole apparatus of a functional life that I have built specifically so I don’t end up standing outside closed cafés at dusk like a man in a French film.
And yet.
The chalk menu hasn’t changed in three weeks. The fuchsia trails in the evening air.
Back soon. Be good. x
That note was on the door the morning I drove past and found the shutters down. Everyone has been saying the same thing since. Dot. Mum. Meg, in between being unbearable.
She’ll come back when she’s ready.
And she will. That’s the thing about Nina Ellis. I’ve known it since she arrived in Sea Salt Bay at sixteen and I watched her grow into a woman with her jangling bangles and her too-big laugh and her habit of making everyone feel like the most important person in the room.
The question is, when she comes back, am I going to be able to keep going with Tom’s Moving-On Plan, or will I be sucked right back to Square One of Nowhere like I always am with her?