‘That wall came off about eighty years ago. Just crumbled into the sea,’ he says. ‘So I got that glass plate and oak frame cut, to fit the hole exactly. I love how you can see where it’s falling apart, but obviously now it’s airtight,’ he laughs. ‘But it’s cool, because sometimes the tide comes right up – almost to the window.’
It’s incredible. A huge glass wall makes up the sea-view side of the house, giving it an openness and lightness you wouldn’t expect from a cottage of this age. But because it’s glass and wood, it looks completely at home against the old stone.
‘I’ve only done that wall so far,’ he says, as I swing round and see that he’s putting coffee on an old gas stove top and pulling eggs out of the fridge. ‘It’s expensive. And it takes time to get it right, you know?’
‘It’s amazing. It’s like the perfect mix of old and new,’ I say, turning back to the view.
‘There’s heaps to do,’ he says. ‘I just do bits and pieces when I have the time. But it’s got power now, and gas. And last year we got a septic tank installed, so the toilets are not as gross as they were.’
‘Do you want to live here one day?’
‘That’s the plan, Birdy.’
I close my eyes and listen to him call meBirdyon repeat in my head.
The sun spills suddenly into the room via a small skylight. I look up and cover my eyes. ‘Was that a hole once, too?’
‘Yep. Good place for it, though – makes the perfect skylight. Have a seat, let me make you breakfast.’
I take a seat on the old sofa that faces the view. I sink into it. It feels like a feather bed. It’s deep enough to pull both my feet up and cross my legs, and I drag a soft woollen blanket across me. There are a bunch of cookbooks – an old copy of Nigella’sHow to Be a Domestic GoddessandJamie’s 15-Minute Meals– on a little upturned apple crate, I note with amusement. There are also two framed photos: one ofIrene and James (he looks about an awkward eighteen), and another of a man with enormous sideburns and a mousy brown mass of curls. He looks familiar.
‘Is that your dad?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow, great sideburns.’
‘I know. It’s the only photo I have. And will ever have, I suppose.’
‘I feel bad that I said he was a creep, when we went fishing.’
‘I didn’t know him,’ James says with a shrug. ‘Mum gave me that photo, and it felt like I should stick it in a frame. Not sure I’ll leave it out, but she didn’t want it at the cottage.’
It isn’t long before he’s prepared a tray with French toast and a couple of mugs of coffee made with warm milk. The toast is lightly dusted with icing sugar, but we don’t get very far through it before the tension starts to build again. It’s the squeezy honey’s fault. As he swirls it around the toast, I am finding it ludicrously erotic, which makes me giggle.
James puts his hand on my waist.
‘I stink,’ I tell him. ‘I haven’t had a shower and I’m still wearing yesterday’s knickers. Oh, and in this light, I’d better warn you, there will be some disappointments. My nipples, for example, are too big and the wrong colour for my skin tone. I have a scar that runs down my right thigh, from when I slid down a bannister drunk and there was a nail sticking out of the railing. My stomach is only flat if I’m lying downandbreathing in. Then it looks quite good, I think. But it’s at the expense of my boobs, which will start to disappear under my armpits.’
And then he’s kissing me again. I think to shut me up, and I think it was probably a wise idea, because it looked like I was going to continue listing all my imperfections like some sort of pre-shag disclosure agreement.
‘Birdy?’ James says moments later, as we lie across his sofa in a haze of sweat.
‘Yes,’ I say, soaking up the sound of my own name coming out of his mouth, playing with his smattering of chest hair.
‘I don’t want you to go.’
It’s the most beautiful, and the most sobering, sentence I’ve ever heard. I can’t look at him, but I can feel his eyes scanning my face, looking for reassurance. I feel the same. But I don’t look up; instead I stare out onto the water, watching it ripple along the bay, lapping at the black stones of the shore.
‘Me too,’ I say in the end, because it’s the truth.
30.
‘Hi, Russell,’ I say, with as much swagger as I can manage.
He’s sitting at the bar, looking furious, and I have to assume he’s been filled in on the other night’s reviewer disaster. I’ve been avoiding him as best I can since then, and admittedly I have been distracted by the delicious haze of fresh lust with James. James in the cellar. James in our cottage. James in his cottage. Even James, unsuccessfully, in the chiller. ‘It’s just a bit cold,’ we’d agreed.
I shrink into myself momentarily, before deciding I am comfortable hating Russell from here on in.
