Chapter 4
FOUR
JANE
I can’t believe I’m actually here. In Bonnie Bay. A place that is, it turns out, a very long way away from anywhere.
I’m not sure my Romeo and I would have even made it this far, back in the day – what were we thinking?
We weren’t, is the short answer. At eighteen, we thought we were all grown up, but we’d led sheltered lives – my parents were middle class, Dad was a GP and Mum a nurse, and I was always cosseted and ferried around everywhere.
His were traditional and religious, big on control.
We rebelled against both, but we had no clue what the real world was like.
Even getting the train into London felt like a wild adventure, never mind escaping all the way to this little village in Scotland. It really is at the edge of the world.
Still, at least back then I had the excuse of being eighteen and in love – now? Now I’m forty-four and the only thing I love is my daughter, and on occasions the Domino’s pizza delivery guy.
I glance over at Beth. She grins at me, and I see that shine of excitement in her eyes. It makes her look like a kid again, and warms my heart. She is why I’m doing this, at least partly. ‘Ready?’ she says. ‘Or are we just going to sit in the car?’
I stick my tongue out at her. Cheeky, but nicely so – free of snark. Things have been much better between us since we had our heart-to-heart back in Stratford. She was a lot more keen to visit the Bookshop at the Edge of the World than I was, and tried to convince me that it would be good for me.
‘You know, closure,’ she’d said, nodding as though she’d just issued a High Court ruling. ‘Put it all behind you.’
‘Beth, I was eighteen – it’s so far behind me I can barely remember it!’
I was, of course, lying when I said that. I hadn’t told her the whole story about what had happened back in the year 2000. I’ve never told anybody the whole story. It wasn’t just getting my heart broken, it was getting my whole life broken – what happened changed everything.
I did not want to go to Bonnie Bay, and see how beautiful it was – it’s been hard enough not wondering ‘what if’ for all these years without coming face to face with the place where we were supposed to live our dream lives.
‘Why do you want to go so much?’ I’d asked her.
‘I just do. That card, the things it said… you know, about feeling lonely. About wishing you were living a rainbow?’
‘Yes?’ I’d asked, my stomach lurching at the idea that she feels so sad.
‘Well, sometimes maybe I feel lonely and broken, Mum! Sometimes I feel like everything’s a bit pointless, all right?’
She’d sounded embarrassed by the flurry of words, and I could hear in her tone that a Big Strop was heading our way.
I hated the idea of dealing with a Big Strop.
But even more than that, I hated the idea of my beautiful girl feeling so low.
I knew not to overreact – most teenagers think life is pointless at some time or another, it’s a fairly logical response to existence – but her despair seemed real. In that moment, she meant it.
Everything with her dad had worn her down, as well as the ongoing challenges of simply being a sixteen-year-old girl in the modern world. Being her age has never been easy, but the nineties seem like a breeze in comparison.
‘All right,’ I’d replied quietly, before she could built up a head of steam. ‘We’ll go. Check out the bookshop, maybe meet the person who wrote the cards and see how they’re doing? Even if we just do a flying visit, there are nice places nearby we could stay too.’
‘Really?’ she’d asked, eyes wide and voice a hopeful whisper.
‘Really.’
Now, after what feels like a lifetime of driving, we are here. I grab my bag and undo my seatbelt. She glances over at me, looking suddenly nervous, stubby fingernails digging into her palms. She’s probably worried it’s all going to be a disaster, and that I’ll be annoyed at her talking me into it.
‘It’s going to be great,’ I say, more enthusiastically than I feel.
As we emerge onto the main street, I have to admit it is incredibly lovely.
So close to the sea that it’s practically in it, with a harbour that is both functional and pretty.
The first thing I notice is the smell: it’s so clean, so pure, a gorgeous mix of salt and seaweed.
The sky is alive with seabirds, the sounds of their squawking and squeaking loud against the steady flow of the waves coming into land.
I look around, see that the long stone jetty disappears out into the glimmering turquoise water, that pretty boats bob and sway in the harbour.
Bigger vessels for fishing, smaller ones with little cabins, a few with sails fluttering in the breeze.
We stroll past boat sheds and wicker baskets and piles of fishing nets, heading towards the cobbled street.
I gaze ahead, shielding my eyes from the sun, poking and prodding at my feelings to see what they’re up to.
I’m here, in Bonnie Bay. A place that holds near legendary status in my mind.
I’m really here – twenty-six years too late, single, and with my teenaged daughter…
but here all the same. How do I feel about that?
I look at Beth, who is skipping along in the sunshine, taking it all in with sparkling eyes that chase away all of her usual studied teenaged cynicism.
I feel fine about it, I decide. I am a grown woman now, and I am doing something fun and impulsive with my daughter – something she will remember for the rest of her life.
When I’m in my nursing home watching repeats of Poldark while I drool in my rocking chair, we’ll always have this: Remember, she’ll say, that time you took me to Scotland because of an invitation we found inside a book?
The village stretches up and away from the main road, higgledy-piggledy rows of stone cottages looking down over the bay.
I can only imagine how amazing the views from those pretty little homes are.
What would it be like, going to sleep with the sound of the sea as your lullaby?
Waking up and pulling back the curtains and seeing all of this glory laid out before you?
What a way to start the day. I like Watford, but when I pull back my curtains, I see a train track, next door’s motorhome and the back of a Tesco car park.
We make our way down the picturesque ribbon of buildings, a café, a little grocery with baskets of fresh produce outside, a pub.
All of them are painted in shades of pastel and white, a blur of colour so sweet it makes the place look good enough to eat, like the bricks and mortar are actually fondant and icing sugar.
As we move along past the harbour area, a beach opens up – rich golden sand backed by dramatic cliffs covered in yellow gorse.
It’s like every colour in the world is here, putting on a show.
There is very little traffic, and we stand on the cobbles, looking between the pinks and mint greens and baby blues of the buildings and the dazzling vista of the shoreline.
‘Wow,’ says Beth, gazing out at the sea. ‘Living a rainbow or what? You should paint this, Mum.’
I smile, imagining for a moment that I am the type of woman with enough freedom and self-confidence to simply set up an easel, and paint.
That I could move to Bonnie Bay and become an artist, live a different life.
‘I’m not sure anyone could do it justice,’ I reply.
‘Shall we find this mythical bookshop, then?’
She gallops off down ahead of me, and I follow at my ambling pace. People wave and call greetings, and initially I look behind me, wondering who they’re talking to. I need to switch off my London mindset and let myself relax, try and lose some of this tension.
I stop for a moment by the steps that lead down onto the beach.
I see a man in the distance, leaning down and picking something up from the sand, his feet bare as the waves roll in around his ankles.
Maybe he’s collecting shells. For just one moment, he looks familiar – he looks like my Romeo.
I shake my head, tell myself I’m imagining it.
It’s natural enough that I’m seeing ghosts, here in Bonnie Bay.
I know he moved back to Dublin, I know it’s not actually him – my mind is just short-circuiting.
I’m still shaken, though, and try to hide it as I catch up with Beth. She stands in front of a tall lilac-and-white building right on the waterfront. This is it: the bookshop that called us all the way here.
Its next-door neighbour looks to be a work in progress, but the bookshop itself is unbearably cute.
There are lush hanging baskets filled with trailing lobelia and pansies, and yet more flowers in full bloom in wooden containers either side of the steps.
Dahlias, lavender, beautiful black-eyed Susans.
A sign hangs from above, in the shape of a book, and the window display is a glorious swathe of fishing nets entwined with sprigs of heather, paintings of the sea, and tiny versions of books in glass bottles.
Beth and I share a look, a slow smile, and I savour the moment.
The sea behind me, bookshop in front of me, happy daughter by my side.
The sun is warm against my skin, and even the gulls sound welcoming.
Like they’re telling me I’m the right person, at the right time.
That now, I’m also at the right place. I might be seeing ghosts, but I refuse to feel haunted.
I close my eyes for a second, and send out a little prayer of thanks – one moment of perfection goes a long way to ease some of the stresses of the last few days. Weeks. Months. Hell, let’s face it, years.
‘I feel a bit nervous now we’re here,’ Beth says. ‘What if they didn’t mean it? What if the invitation on that card was a joke?’