‘But in a bathroom? How is that even possible?’
‘I’ll tell you about it when I see you down at Mum’s. By the way, Saturday or Sunday? Either is good for me.’
‘I’ll check with Mum which day is best for her and get back to you. Just don’t go planning anything else meanwhile.’
The conversation finished, Willow emptied the bath, dried herself and put on her pyjamas. She then folded the ruined towel to take downstairs to put in the bin, grateful that that was all she’d damaged. The thought of having to tell her friends, Lucy and Simon, that she’d burnt down their house made her vow never to light another candle while she was housesitting for them.
She wasn’t living here entirely for free; she paid her friends a nominal amount of rent on the grounds that she took good care of the house while they were away. They’d decided that once it was safe enough to travel again they would spend their last year of freedom before starting a family travelling the world.They had jacked in their jobs and simply taken off. They were currently in Kyoto in Japan before going on to Vietnam.
It was the kind of thing Willow would love to do if she had the money. Although knowing her, she’d probably get hopelessly lost.
‘Bloody risky if you ask me,’ her boyfriend, Rick, had said when she’d explained to him why she was lucky enough to be living so close to Victoria Park in London and in such a great house, considering her lack of funds.
Lucy and Simon could have earned far more money renting out the house through a letting agency, but then they would have had to get rid of their two beloved Siamese cats, Sirius and Cedric.
Every week Willow had to email Lucy with an update on the cats and her biggest fear was that one of them might escape through a door that she had accidentally left open. They were strictly indoor cats, apparently too pampered and valuable to be allowed to roam the neighbourhood.
Thinking about it, confessing to Lucy that she had nearly set the house on fire by falling asleep in the bath would be far easier than admitting she had lost one of the cats.
With her precious charges on her mind, she went to look for Sirius and Cedric. She found them curled up together in the shallow log basket by the radiator in the sitting room. They had proper beds to sleep in but rarely used them, preferring instead the empty log basket with a blanket to lie on.
When Rick came here, she had to keep the cats away from him because he was so allergic to their fur; it made him sneeze and his eyes itch. Which was why he liked her to spend time at his place, or for them go out.
They had met almost four months ago back in December last year – in the way that so many people met these days, by swiping right on Tinder.
He was the one who had swiped right first and after checking out his profile and liking what she saw (he had a nice smile that lit up his eyes), she swiped right to make a match. They then started messaging each other and a couple of weeks later they arranged to meet in a bar. The rest, as they say, is history.
But given how bad at sticking with a relationship she was (she could never get beyond the six-month mark), was Rick destined to be part of Willow’s history, and not her future?
It was too soon to tell.
Those of her friends who had met Rick said he was a great catch, and even Martha, who never approved of any of Willow’s boyfriends, described him as a keeper. Mum liked him too, and no doubt Dad, if he were still alive, would have given him the thumbs up too.
So why then could Willow not allow herself to believe that maybe she deserved this chance to be happy with Rick?
Chapter Three
It was a beautiful spring morning and with the tide out, wading birds were busy searching the mudflats for cockles to prise apart with their long probing beaks.
Coffee cup in hand, and aching in places a woman of sixty-three years of age had no right to ache, Naomi Miller shielded her eyes from the April sunshine and made herself comfortable on the bench at the end of the garden. The silvered wood of the seat gave her the best view of the shoreline; from here she could observe all the comings and goings of the beach, as well as the birdlife.
She and Colin had bought Anchor House thirty-two years ago, shortly before Willow was born and when Martha was already three years old. Back then she and Colin couldn’t believe their luck in being able to afford a spacious five-bedroom Edwardian house like this with a large garden that stretched down to the beach. It had been a dramatic leap up from their terraced house in south London, and they had taken to life here in Tilsham Harbour like … well, like ducks to water.
That’s what Colin used to say when anybody asked how they were enjoying their new life out of London.
‘Oh, we’ve taken to it like ducks to water,’ he’d tell them.
Not that Colin had been here all the time. From Monday to Friday he’d stayed in a small studio flat in London while working in the City, then straight after lunch on Friday he would drive down to Sussex to be with Naomi and the children. A lot of his weekends were spent sailing and he loved being out on the water, nothing gave him more pleasure. It was the sense of freedom he’d enjoyed, that and pitting himself against the elements.
It had been a great disappointment to him that his wife had never shared his love of sailing. Naomi had shown willing from time to time and gone out in the boat with him, but too often he would bellow some order or other which she would misunderstand and do entirely the wrong thing. She much preferred pottering around their little harbour, no more than an inlet really, in a small rowing dinghy. She was not a natural sailor, and to Colin’s further disappointment, neither were his daughters.
It used to exasperate him that she didn’t know one sailing boat from another. To her they were just boats with sails. Yes, she could tell the difference between the older craft made of wood and the fibreglass ones, but she couldn’t put a name to them. And never saw any reason to do so. Perhaps it had just been her being stubborn and bloody-minded, which she knew she was apt to do.
Her interests lay more on terra firma, in particular the garden at Anchor House. Before they bought the house, the garden had been left to its own devices by the previous owners, an elderly couple no longer able to keep on top of it all.
Much of it had been overgrown and unusable, not to say unsafe with the smashed glass of the greenhouse and tumblingdown sheds. But gradually over time Naomi took it in hand and turned it into a garden that was her sanctuary as well as somewhere for the children to play,when they weren’t on the beach.
Through her love of gardening, Naomi also developed another passion, for collecting old gardening tools and equipment. She used to scour auctions and charity and second-hand shops for bits and pieces – old terracotta pots, galvanised watering cans and laundry tubs, wooden-handled tools, wicker baskets and trugs, stone troughs and urns, and old ornate wirework tables and chairs.
