Page 6 of The Secret Beach

She took it inside, grabbed her reading glasses from her handbag and looked more closely. It was definitely handwritten. She looked out of the window, as if the sender might be standing there.

The trouble with guilt was that it made you paranoid.

She saw him for one second, in her mind’s eye. Then she brushed away the memory. No one could possibly know. They’d made sure not a soul in Speedwell had an inkling.

On a sudden impulse, she ripped up the card and put it in the bin. She wasn’t going to let it ruin the excitement of moving in. It didn’t mean anything. She was reading too much into it. Instead, she grabbed a Stanley knife. She wanted to get the living-room carpet into the skip and see what the floorboards underneath were like.

Cocktails with her new neighbour would be the perfect reward.

4

At half past five, the sun began to wander downwards to the sea, floating as light and as free as a dandelion head. Nikki poured a cap of Olverum into the ancient bath then filled it with hot water to wash away the dust of the afternoon. She’d managed to cut up the carpet, rolling it up in sections and chucking it into the skip. It was filthy work, but she’d been delighted to find the floorboards underneath undamaged. The stair carpet was next, but that could wait until the morning. She could feel grit in her hair and teeth and she’d need at least half an hour of soaking. Baths were her luxury, where she did her unwinding and her thinking.

She felt her muscles start to unknot as she lay in the fragrant steam, eyeing up the small window with its thick frosted glass. How much would it cost to knock it out and enlarge it so she could have a view of the sea while she bathed? What she really wanted was her ultimate dream, a clawfoot bath in the middle of the room, but that would be way out of her budget. She had to take this renovation slowly and buy things as she could afford them. For now, she was going to have a cheap kitchen and bathroom put in, and a few cosmetic tweaks, then paint everything white. Mike and Jason, two of the fitters from North Property Management, were standing by to fit everything as soon as she’d gutted it.

She’d managed to banish all thoughts of the mystery postcard to the back of her mind while she was working, but as she sank under the bubbles, it floated back into her thoughts. Logic told her there was no substance to her fears. No one knew her secret. No one would have any reason to remind her of it. It had given her a momentary jolt, but she wasn’t going to let the past – the distant past now – overshadow her achievement and her joy.

Afterwards, she stood in her towel and surveyed her limited choice of clothing. She had only brought scruffy stuff with her, and a couple of the floaty floral dresses she wore to meet clients. She’d adopted them as a kind of uniform, the sort of dress she thought people would expect a wedding planner to wear. She’d have to wear one of them as she couldn’t turn up for drinks in leggings and a sweatshirt. The rest of her wardrobe was hanging in one of the spare rooms at Mariners, and it was too late to go and grab anything. She pulled on the less formal of the dresses with her Converse high tops. The only mirror she had was over the sink in the bathroom so she couldn’t see the full effect, but she hoped she looked cool rather than dowdy. You had to be careful in your mid-forties to hit that sweet spot between mutton and frump.

She’d had the foresight to remember her hairdryer, so she coaxed her pixie crop into tousled imperfection. Chopping off all her hair a year ago had been liberating. She’d done it the day after she’d dropped Bill at Heathrow, to take her mind off her aching heart. Her hairdresser had persuaded her into going ice-blonde the same day, and she’d come out feeling invincible. It might be high-maintenance colour-wise but it meant the sneaky strands of grey went unnoticed.

‘Bloody hell, you look ten years younger,’ her older sister Jess had told her, and she’d then forced her to go and have her brows done properly. Jess took these things very seriously. ‘You have to, at our age,’ she told Nikki sternly, but Nikki wasn’t as worried about losing her looks as Jess was. Perhaps because she wasn’t as striking in the first place. Jess, with her heart-shaped face and flashing green eyes, had always turned heads.

Now, with lashings of mascara and a slick of lip-gloss, Nikki thought she’d scrubbed up all right. She was barely recognisable from the scarecrow of earlier. Not a head-turner, perhaps, but not bad.

Adam had the good grace not to look too startled by her transformation when he answered the door to her. She held up her hands with a smile.

‘I’m really sorry – I’ve got nothing to bring as an offering.’

‘Oh, don’t worry at all. Come in.’ He bent forward to kiss her and she felt the fleeting warmth of his cheek on hers. He’d changed out of his blue shirt into a white one with pale blue piping around the undone cuffs. He was still damp from a recent shower, his wet hair swept back, his feet bare.

‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked, leading her into the living room, which was the mirror of hers, the fire place on the left, the arch through to the back on the right. ‘I can do whatever you like, but I’m mad for gimlets right now. Gin and fresh lime, basically. It’ll stop you getting scurvy.’

‘That sounds great.’

He headed over to a bar area built into the wall to the right of the fireplace. Ranks of open shelves bore rows of glasses in all shapes and sizes, and underneath was a white marble work surface with everything needed to make cocktails. He grabbed three limes from a wire basket which he began to squeeze into a shaker, adding a handful of ice, before free-pouring a generous serving of Hendrick’s Neptunia.

Nikki looked around the room. The walls were a bright acid yellow – a perfect foil for the furniture, which all looked as if it had been bought on holiday in Provence or Puglia and shipped home. A bookcase spilled Booker Prize-winning novels, fat cookery books and autobiographies. A multicoloured rug ran underneath two beautifully worn suede sofas and a low coffee table. This hadn’t been your run-of-the-mill holiday let, thought Nikki. It must have been thousands a week to rent.

‘This is amazing,’ she said, and suddenly her plans for next door seemed very unambitious. This was a lifetime of accumulation, presented with an expert touch.

‘It’s all Jill. She “curated” it.’ He put quote marks round the word with his fingers. ‘It was her dream to live in Cornwall. We were supposed to move down full-time once we’d done it up. She had a job lined up at the hospital in Truro. But then …’ He sighed. ‘When she died, I handed it straight over to an agency because I couldn’t cope. It hadn’t been our plan to rent it. It’s taken me this long to sort my head out, sell the house in Ealing, get my act together … but at last I’m here.’

‘I hope you’ll be happy. And that you find peace.’

He nodded his thanks. ‘I’ll try. I know that’s what Jill would have wanted. I keep imagining her bossing me about, telling me where to put things.’ Adam vigorously shook the cocktail shaker for a few moments, then poured the contents into two coupes and handed one to Nikki. ‘Hopefully I won’t make the place look like a trashed Travelodge too quickly.’

They clinked glasses.

‘Welcome to Speedwell,’ said Nikki.

Adam gestured to one of the two sofas for her to sit down and she sank into it. It was incredibly soft and luxurious. She’d never be able to get up.

‘So, you’re a local?’ he said.

‘I’ve lived here all my life.’ She gave a wry grin. ‘I didn’t even go to university.’

He shrugged. ‘Why would you want to be anywhere else?’

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