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Chapter Seven
Jowan’s Cottage
‘Is there anyone I can ring for you? Or the phone’s right there if you want to use it?’ Jowan prompted when the woman emerged from the bathroom after her long soak.
Mrs Crocombe was laundering her clothes for her right now up at her cottage. She’d shuffled off up the slope with her sopping bundle, having exchanged them for an oversized T-shirt that said ‘Crocombe’s Ices’, fresh from its cellophane, and a pair of Scottie dog pyjama pants Mrs C. had intended as a Christmas present for her daughter. The ankles flapped around Alex’s calves now as she made her way down the stairs.
She had to stoop under the low ceilings and even lower light fittings. Everything in Jowan’s house – once upon a time it had been a fish salting loft – was diminutive, Alex was discovering, even down to the vintage kimono Jowan had given her to wear over Mrs Crocombe’s offering.
For a moment Jowan gulped and couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Alex, then he fixed his eyes on his cocoa mug and couldn’t bring himself to look again.
‘No, thanks, I don’t need to ring anyone,’ she told him, struggling to balance the fluffy towel over her hair as it bumped off the ceiling. What she really meant was, there was nobody she wanted to talk to.
The phone that had been in her back pocket as she tried to navigate her way to safety in the harbour wasn’t there any more; she figured it must have fallen into the sea. It didn’t matter. It had run out of battery power days ago anyway.
She wondered at how easy it had been to give up contact with her little community. Was this how people broke away from their old lives? She’d never have imagined a few years ago that she could cut herself off so entirely.
She perched on the sofa by the crackling fireside and across a low coffee table from Jowan where a cup steamed invitingly, waiting for her. Aldous, who’d been sleeping there, shifted closer to her, laying his bony little body along her thigh, immediately falling asleep again with a little snort of happiness.
‘Thank you for this,’ she told her host, touching the kimono sleeve which ended at her forearm.
‘Isolde was a good two foot smaller than yourself – tiny she was, really, but only in stature, she wassomewoman,’ Jowan said, his misty eyes betraying how difficult it had been to lift the gown from the closet and put it in the hands of someone else.
The robe smelled of cedar wood oil, lavender and something else, something salty like the sea breeze. He’d obviously taken care of it and aired it out often.
His Isolde, Alex realised, had been gone for a long time. She could see it in the careworn little ‘V’ between Jowan’s brows that never dissolved entirely, even when his eyes crinkled into a smile.
‘Mrs C. will be back shortly with your clothes,’ he added quickly. ‘You must want to be on your way home? Minty from the Big House has offered to drive you whenever you’re ready.’
Alex sipped the hot chocolate – the old-fashioned, velvety kind made in a pan with full fat milk. Delicious. The warmth settled in her belly and, finding it empty, prompted a loud grumble. She clutched her stomach.
‘After lunch though, eh?’ Jowan sprung immediately to his feet and loomed over the fire. ‘You’re in for a treat,’ he told her as he lifted two foil-wrapped bundles from the grate. ‘My speciality…’ He plopped them onto plates already set out on the coffee table and deftly opened the foil with fearless fingertips. ‘Baked ’tato.’
How could something as simple as potatoes baked in a wood fire smell so appealing? Alex’s stomach growled again in response.
‘And… my secret recipe.’ Jowan had slit the steaming potatoes in half and retreated to the little scullery for a second, coming back with a bowl. ‘Creamy mackerel mousse. Ever had it?’
Alex shook her head and watched as Jowan cut two big pats of yellow butter in a dish before dressing their lunches with it, followed by a big blob of mousse. ‘Mackerel flakes, fresh from the local smokery, crème fraîche, squeeze o’ lemon, snip o’ dill, black pepper, and there you have it. Tuck in, lass.’
The first mouthful made Alex smile for the first time in a long time. Jowan only nodded back, pleased she was pleased.
‘This is a B&B?’ Alex asked, remembering passing the sign attached to a vintage bike fixed to the garden railing outside.
‘Was,’ Jowan said, ‘I retired in the autumn. Laundry, visitors arriving late and setting off early, all those fried breakfasts! It’s a young person’s game and my ’eart was never in it.’
Alex thought of her ferrying. She understood.
‘It was Isolde’s idea, when we realised her illness was serious. She wanted us moved out the bookshop and into a proper cottage. Then she made me promise not to waste away missing her, so I did what she told me to do. I opened the B&B. She said it would keep me out of trouble. Did it for years. Can’t say I enjoyed it much.’
Alex smiled in sympathy. She definitely understood what it felt like to carry on doing something you really weren’t keen on because it was immediately in front of you at a time of need. And now she’d gone and sunk her dad’s beautifulDagalien. It didn’t bear thinking about.
‘She wanted you to move out of a… bookshop, did you say?’ Alex asked, trying to act as normal as she could under the circumstances, especially when Jowan was being so welcoming and unobtrusive. She at least owed him normal.
‘Up-along. We ran it together for years, built it up from scratch. Another of Isolde’s ideas. We were happy as two birds in a nest there, day in, day out, readin’, chattin’ and sellin’. I didn’t want to stop, but she knew me better than I know myself, and insisted me and little Aldous didn’t stay on alone with all the memories, making ourselves miserable.’
Keeping her fork in one hand, Alex let the other settle on the little dog’s curly back. The poor mutt had lost his mum.
‘So you sold it?’
