‘Heather,’ he says, and I can tell by his tone that he wants to say something serious.
‘Can you not call me by my full name any more?’ I say on the spur of the moment. ‘Reminds me of my mother.’
‘Okay … what should I call you?’
‘My close friends call me Birdy,’ I say, changing gears, crunching the gearbox in the process. Fuck it! I want him to call me by my name. Just for these last few weeks.
‘Birdy? Cute,’ he says and looks out the window at Brett, who is leading two guests along the garden path.
‘What were you going to say?’
‘I was going to tell you that you look pretty.’
I gulp, crunching the gears harder than the first time as we whizz out of the grounds of Loch Dorn and onto the windy single-track road.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘don’t let me stop you. Jesus Christ, I have no idea if another car is coming. This is worse than Cornwall.’
I look across and we meet eyes and grin at each other, and then I narrowly miss a tree stump, swerving at the very last minute. ‘I’d better concentrate. Where are we going, by the way?
‘My house,’ he says, and I can hear the pride in his voice. ‘Left here.’
‘Yourhouse?’ He can’t mean his mum’s – that’s in the other direction.
‘There!’ he says, pointing to another almost-invisible lane amongst the trees.
‘What is it with all the damned roads in this place?’ I say, slamming on the brakes, then reversing backwards and turning off down the little lane. It’s actually quite a pretty lane – and is properly cleared of trees and not too bumpy, now that we’re on it.
‘See that collection of oaks over there?’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s where I found my bounty of porcini last year.’
‘Oooh,’ I say, ‘when do they come?’
‘August, usually. Okay, down there,’ he says, directing me along another lane.
‘So, wait.Your house?’
‘Yeah. I bought it a while back, but it’s still a bit of a mess. Well, you’ll see.’
Suddenly the trees clear and we follow the lane alongside a farm, where a few sheep are lazily eating grass in small fields. We head down a steep road, until the land completely opens up and we’re driving towards a stony inlet.
‘Is that the sea?’
‘Yep,’ he says.
The road takes a final sharp turn, and at the end of a crumbling stone drive sits an also crumbling stone house without a roof; and then, further on, a bigger stone house built right out of the rocky cliff, complete with a very decrepit old boat-launch. I pull the car to a stop.
For a moment I sit there, gaping.
‘Well, it’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but a hell of a view,’ I say, gazing out across the deep-blue bay. There is a sudden singing in my heart at the emptiness and peace of it all.
‘Come on,’ James says, and he jumps out of the car and pulls a set of keys out of his back pocket. The sea air hits me, and I have a brief flash of Plymouth and happy days by the seaside, with hire-by-the-hour striped deckchairs, candyfloss and crowds. I can’t quite place the memory, but Heather is definitely there.
Then seagulls break the silence, squawking as they circle the hilltop above the cottage.
I gasp as he opens the door. We go directly into the lounge area, and it’s stunning. The cottage was obviously falling apart, but instead of rebuilding and restoring it, James seems to be creating something completely modern out of the shell.
