Chapter 9
Tilly had just stepped off an old timber tram after riding it the length of what she presumed was the main street of Darling Island.
The tram ride had fulfilled everything she'd read about the place and then some.
Gorgeous old shops had trundled past the window, a conductor had rung the tram's huge old brass bell, and as the fog had cleared, the little town of Darling had looked better and better at every turn.
Things were looking up. So far, so good.
Watching the tram rumble away, dragging her suitcase behind her and with her backpack on her back now feeling as if it were a dead weight, Tilly had very high hopes for all things Darling.
Consulting her phone and Margery's message, she took an alleyway to the right, pulled her case over cobblestones and was so full of positive vibes that she felt at any moment as if she might break out in song.
The hills are alive. Five minutes later, things only improved as she followed the way to Darling Bay.
Turning down a road, she stopped as a curved sweep of a most perfect blue greeted her.
Stopping dead in her tracks for a second, she vacuumed up the view and smiled.
Who needed a tropical island, the Maldives, or a cruise ship on the high seas?
Old Blighty on the south coast basked in sunshine and was ready to give anyone or anything a run for its money. Our girl Tilly was there for it.
By now, actually humming for real, Tilly followed around the bay, past a gorgeous old pub she'd certainly be stopping in for a drink, past a row of small whitewashed kiosks each topped with old-fashioned blue and white canvas awnings, and then again turned to a smaller side area behind a row of old fishing huts.
Long timber jetties, a shingle beach, a higgledy-piggledy row of cobbled-together buildings, shallow water, what looked like some kind of netted areas and not a soul to be seen.
The English seaside sitting there doing its delightful thing.
Right at that moment, nothing in the world could possibly do it any better.
Gingerly making her way down a gravel road, Tilly tapped her phone again and squinted.
She must have taken a wrong turn somehow.
Enlarging the map, she tapped, checked the address, walked for a few minutes and stopped outside an old building with its own dilapidated jetty section not far from a netted area.
A little white wooden building lower than the others, sitting slightly out over the water, with a peaked roof, faded bunting, a small wooden, weathered sign at the entrance, the lettering nearly gone, gaps in the boards, lapping blue-green water.
A small wooden rowing boat tied up to one of the posts of the jetty.
White-painted clapboard walls. A pair of double doors at the front in pale blue with two big sliding bolts and an old brass lock in the middle.
A side door, smaller, also pale blue. Windows to the side, the colours washed out to almost nothing.
Tilly wasn’t sure what to think. She might as well have been on Mars.
Soldiering on, after a bit of searching, she found the key lock thingy, keyed in the code, wiggled a sea salt-encrusted cover and pulled out a key.
Two seconds later, she was around the back of the shed, fiddling with a dodgy lock.
Eventually, pushing the door open with a scrape, she coughed and gagged as a damp, seaweed-y, dusty, very peculiar smell engulfed the inside of her nostrils, seeped into her skin and slammed bang onto the top of her head.
What even was the murky, musty, dank smell?
Tropical flowers in Fiji all of a sudden seemed very attractive.
Gulping, Tilly tentatively inhaled again.
Salt, old wood, maybe some kind of food smell.
God, was it rotting food? Not sure, but not nice.
She watched as another rose-tinted adventure slipped away, tumbling off down the road and crossing on the ferry.
Light from the doorway fell across the floor in a long bright slab, and Tilly could see, in the half-dark of the interior, the shapes of things.
A long counter at the back, shelves on either side, a very old computer, a wooden chair on its side.
So, so, so many seaside accoutrements piled hither and thither: fishing nets, old-fashioned zinc buckets, a set of faded yellow oilskins, coils of thick rope, oyster cages, wax jackets, fishing rods.
A jumble of coastal junk of the like she’d never seen.
Letting her eyes adjust, Tilly pursed her lips.
It was much smaller than she'd imagined.
Smaller, more tired, and it had to be said, grotty.
Full of grot. A few things were positive: exposed beams, water views and lovely cladding.
A back wall lined with cabinets, a view straight out over the harbour from a window on the other side.
Blue-green water, a lighthouse on the headland, the hazy outline of the mainland poking its head up in the distance.
For a good three to four minutes, with her hand cupped over her mouth, taking as few breaths as possible, Tilly stayed rooted to the spot as Margery's words went through her head. The boat shed was real and she’d not been scammed as such, but she did feel as if she’d been swindled, if that was the word.
She'd have to find a way to pull out on the double. Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, she turned directly around and gazed at the water. What would her good old dad have said? Closing her eyes, she remembered some of the failing business premises she'd accompanied him to. Nothing had ever fazed him in the slightest, and he’d found himself in some hell holes for sure. Roy Bloomwood’s will and onward and upward attitude had been more or less impenetrable.
Not even the tobacco shop he'd bought that had turned out to be a marijuana farm had got him down.
Tilly certainly needed some of his attitude right there and then.
Looking at piles of terracotta pots on a deck, two old faded Adirondack chairs, old-fashioned glass buoys and many sets of old timber oars, Tilly sighed.
A tiny timber stool stood next to a collection of vintage watering cans, and in long, trough-like flowerpots, wigwams of climbing frames and brown dead plants hinted at someone growing things from years gone by.
Tilly didn't quite know what to do with herself as the overall shabbiness, unkempt feel and lack of upkeep of the place she’d landed in smacked her right between the eyes.
Trying to think about what her dad would have done, Tilly pursed her lips.
He would have rolled up his sleeves right away and got on with it.
Even when faced with a marijuana farm, he'd tied a scarf around his head as a mask and got stuck in.
With bunting flapping around on loose string, mouldy, weathered boards, moss on pots and filthy windows, Tilly yanked her backpack over the deck and launched it into the back door of the shed.
Shoving her suitcase in behind it, she pulled the neck of the jumper over her mouth and nose, switched on a light to the right and walked across the room.
To the left, another room led off and didn’t appear to be much better.
Piled high with junk and sporting its very own timber clinker boat, Tilly put her head around the door, sighed and left it at that.
Next, she was up a small set of stairs on the right.
Margery hadn't lied about the actual bones of the flat because, for sure, it had potential. She’d just omitted to mention its condition.
It was a flat in name, and that was about it.
Windows looked out over the estuary, a sloping ceiling under the eaves of the roof looked precarious, and floorboards that had once been painted white were scuffed and worn to the wood.
A faded blue armchair, a two-seater sofa, so much dust. A little kitchen with a kettle on the worktop and a row of mugs hanging from hooks under a shelf.
A small table by the window with two chairs.
A bedroom looking over the back with a tiny, narrow balcony sporting chairs on their side and a row of vintage lanterns.
A large bed with a metal frame, a striped mattress, no bedding.
A wardrobe in the corner with one of its doors slightly open, empty inside.
A small bedside table with a lamp on it, bulb and shade missing.
A very small en suite bathroom with a bath wedged under a window, a plastic shower head plugged onto old copper taps.
The kind of room where you could stand at the basin and look out the window at the sea while you brushed your teeth, if you could get past the smell coming up from the pipes.
Tilly heard her dad's voice, his words, the wisdom. Buy the bones, Tils. Everything else you can fix.
Going back down the stairs, with jet lag and tiredness from the journey making Tilly unable to think straight, she wasn’t sure what to do.
Plonking herself down on an old wooden chair in the middle of what felt like a near-derelict building she’d entered into negotiation on via the strength of a Facebook post, half a world away, she swallowed.
An image of her dad surrounded by discarded marijuana plants in heavy industrial wellie boots flashed through her mind.
She could still smell the stench of the place as if it were yesterday.
Her dad had turned it around and made a go of it, why not her?
At least the shed wasn't a drug den; there was that.
Shaking her head, Tilly fought back tears as realisation dawned. She’d made a huge, mahoooosive, whopping great mistake. A room in a Budget Inn currently looked attractive, indeed.