I pull on my dressing gown with a smile and go downstairs to the hallway, unlocking the door to the downstairs apartment. My guests who were supposed to arrive yesterday had to delay their trip until tomorrow, so we have rare access to the whole house.
I’m in the bright, airy kitchen, making us a cup of tea, when Finn drives through the gate in his rented SEAT Leon, moving it from the car park across the road. I open the back door and call to him as he’s climbing out of the car.
‘I’m in here!’
He gives me a thumbs-up and then pops the boot, getting out a battered army-green rucksack, followed by a black hard-shell suitcase. I laugh as he wheels it across the drive towards me.
‘You reallyaremoving in for the summer.’
‘I hope that’s okay,’ he replies with a cheeky grin.
‘Do your grandparents mind that you’re not staying with them?’ I ask as I step aside to let him in.
‘Nah. Anyway, you might change your mind yet and kick me out.’
‘Unlikely.’
As he takes me in his arms and kisses me, I imagine for a moment that this is our life. An ordinary moment in an ordinary day, kissing in our kitchen as the kettle sings.
I back away from the precipice – that way only heartbreak lies. Because this beautiful thing we have will once again be put on ice when he returns to the other side of the world.
I try to push these thoughts aside and live in the moment with him, but I can’t escape the fact that our time is limited.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
‘Wow!’ Finn exclaims when I show him what I’ve been working on.
It’s a sculpture of David Schulman, my first commission, given to me by his wife, Arabella.
I never did finish Finn’s sculpture. To have him sitting for me in person was magical – it made me feel alive and connected to the process. But once he’d gone back to LA, I had no interest in it.
What my fingers itched to feel was fresh, untouched, untainted clay. I lost myself in the material for a while, creating weird and wonderful shapes that soothed and healed my heart. And eventually I felt that pull back to figurative sculpture.
In the autumn, once Seaglass had shut up shop and most of the visitors had left our peninsula, I turned to museums, galleries and artists’ studios for inspiration.
I met Arabella at an art exhibition in St Ives back in January. She was on her own and held herself with incredible poise. In her early eighties, with grey hair secured in a neat bun, she was wearing a long black dress and a diamanté-studded comb in her hair that kept catching the light, sending sparkles bouncing off the dark walls. My attention wasrepeatedly drawn back to her, but she was the one who sought me out as I was staring at a huge painting of a flower.
‘I’m not keen, are you?’ she said bluntly.
‘Um …’ I looked around for the artist, hoping she wasn’t in earshot.
‘Too much colour,’ she added before assessing my floral print dress and long red cardigan. ‘Colour looks good onyou, dear. Just not on that painting. And certainly not on me.’
I smiled at her, feeling tongue-tied. I tried to think of something to say that would keep her with me – I was finding small talk tough as I was suffering from a severe case of impostor syndrome.
‘I’m still in mourning,’ she offered up.
‘I’m so sorry. Who have you lost?’
‘My husband, David, one year ago. Cancer.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I repeated.
‘Are you an artist?’ she asked me.
‘I’d like to be.’
‘There’s no “like” about it, either you are or you aren’t.’
