Page 7 of Carry Me Home

‘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.