Page 23 of Carry Me Home

‘You know it’s correct.’

‘I’m checking. Three weeks is a long time. You might have changed.’

‘Into what?’

‘I don’t know. Someone who takes sugar. Someone with different socks. Someone who makes conversation like a normal person instead of answering everything with questions.’

‘Do I do that?’

She points at me. ‘See? You’re doing it now.’

‘That was deliberate.’

‘Was it?’

‘Now you’re doing it.’

She laughs – proper laughing, the kind that crinkles her eyes and shows her teeth and makes the whole room feel warmer than it was a second ago – and slides my mug across the counter. The blue one with the chip on the handle. The one I always end up with. She didn’t think about which mug to give me. She never does. The blue chipped mug is mine without either of us ever deciding it. That’s how it works with Nina. Things become yours by proximity, by repetition, by the slow accumulation of showing up until you’re part of the furniture.

I know. I’ve been part of her furniture for a long time.

‘So,’ she says, hopping up to sit on the counter, her legs swinging. The sundress rides up above her knees and she doesn’t adjust it, doesn’t notice, because it’s me, because I’m Tom, because I’m the person she can sit on a counter in a sundress around without thinking about it. Chips positions himself beneath her feet like a small furry sentinel. ‘What did I miss? Three weeks of Sea Salt Bay gossip. Go.’

‘Dot’s at war with the tourists again.’

‘Dot’s always at war with the tourists.’

‘This time it’s about parking. Someone left a campervan outside her shop for four days. She’s considering legal action.’

‘She’s not considering legal action. She’s considering a strongly worded note and a campaign of aggressive tutting.’

‘She mentioned a solicitor.’

‘She mentions a solicitor every summer. She’s never actually called one.’ Nina takes a sip of her tea, her legs still swinging, one foot almost but not quite brushing my hip where I’m leaning against the counter beside her. She doesn’t notice. I notice. ‘What else?’

‘Mrs Penhallow’s hip replacement went well. She’s already terrorising the physiotherapist.’

‘I’d expect nothing less. That woman is unstoppable.’

‘Brynn pulled a fishing net out of the lifeboat propeller last week. It took three hours and she said words I’ve never heard before.’

‘Brynn knows words nobody’s heard before. She invents them specifically for mechanical failures.’ Nina’s foot catches my hip on the backswing – the lightest contact, there and gone – and she glances down, says ‘Sorry’, and keeps going, and I take a sip of tea thinking perhaps I need something stronger ‘What about Isla? Have you seen her?’

‘Briefly. She came into the surgery to complain about the baby’s positioning.’

‘To you?’

‘She wanted a second opinion. I reminded her I specialise in animals.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said, and I quote, “Same basic principles, surely.”’

Nina snorts tea. ‘That’s extremely Isla.’

‘I told her I wasn’t qualified to comment on human babies. She told me I wasn’t qualified to comment on anything, but as I still had opinions about her choice of baby names, I might as well have opinions about this too.’

‘And do you have opinions about her choice of baby names?’