MAY
1
The Harbourside, St Aidan
Window Boxes and New Leaves
Sunday
‘Asummer by the sea might not be what we’d planned, Pumpkin, but it may turn out to be awesome.’
As I’m talking to a pony, I’m not expecting an answer, and we both know I’m reassuring myself as much as him. Getting Pumpkin all the way from Somerset to Cornwall on a sunny Sunday when the narrow winding streets of St Aidan are heaving with visitors means there’s been no time for regrets about the life we’re leaving behind.
Arriving on the harbourside with a bright chestnut Shetland pony who shakes his blond mane as he takes his first breaths of sea air means an audience is unavoidable and Pumpkin insists on getting an ear scratch from every group of visitors we pass. His hooves are clattering on the cobbles as we finally leave the brightly coloured boats bobbing in the harbour and head off towards the beach path.
I give a firm tug on his lead rein when he tries to snatch a mouthful of daisies from the window box of the last of the little stone cottages that line the quayside. ‘The flowers here might be at nose height, but they’re not there for ponies, mister!’
As I hitch up my rucksack of essentials I feel the vibration of my phone in my pocket. I’m guessing it’s my big sister, Scarlett, checking in on us.
Me having to move out of the bedsit where I’ve spent the last few years wasn’t ideal, especially when I have a pony in tow, but Scarlett has come to our rescue and offered us the use of her Cornish holiday home while she’s away in the States. It’s all been a bit rushed and I’m hoping to slip into town quietly so she can bring her other half, Tate, up to speed with the arrangements before he hears it from anyone local.
When it comes to organisation, Scarlett is epic. Within a couple of hours of me jumping at her offer she’d sorted a space by the harbour for me to leave the horse trailer, organised a local parking permit for my car, had a fencer to check that the field her cottage stands in is pony-proof, and a botanist to check there were no poisonous plants. And if this is her now, she’ll be ringing from the departure lounge at Heathrow to fill me in on any last-minute instructions.
‘Great you’re there safely, Betty! What colour is the sea?’
I look out across the bay. ‘The water’s deep turquoise, the sun is making it shine like fish scales, and there are lines of white breakers racing towards the shore.’
She gives a wistful sigh. ‘Tell me some more. I need a last Cornish fix before I fly away.’
I look around. ‘The seagulls are calling as they follow a fishing boat, the pink and white cottages look like Lego houses stacked up the hillside behind me. We’re walking past that cafe made out of planks, and it’s so busy the queue is spilling off the deck and onto the sand.’
She moans. ‘I’msogoing to miss the Surf Shack.’
I catch sight of the painted menu board. ‘However delish the ice cream sundaes are here, once you get to New York you’ll be all about the cheesecake and the hot dogs…’ I always forget she’s practically vegan so I add, ‘They’re bound to have fabulous meat-free versions.’
Scarlett and I are four years apart and other than sharing our surname and our auburn hair tone we couldn’t be more different. I try to sidestep the sensible stuff, where she grabs it with both hands. As a child, while I was making flower petal dinners for butterflies she was strutting around in Gran’s cast-off high heels, taking shorthand notes and picking out her wedding cake from the Marks and SpencerComplete Guide to Celebration Icing.
Her entire childhood was spent trying to fast-forward to adulthood, and at thirty-two she’s made a name for herself as a buyer in the fashion industry, she has an architect husband, Tate, and they live in a gigantic house that they built themselves in the coolest suburb in Manchester. Thankfully they stopped short of kids, because much as I love her, I’m not sure Scarlett has the space to add a child into the whirlwind that’s her life.
Obviously they had to put their spare energy into something, and the next best thing to a baby was a holiday home, which is how Pumpkin and I ended up here in the picturesque village of St Aidan at the furthest westerly edge of the country.
I’m not implying that Scarlett wouldn’t do a wonderful job if she and Tate did choose to have a family. As kids she was like a tigress when it came to defending me– she once flattened an entire bus shelter of lads when they had me in tears calling me ginger-nut– and since we lost our mum she’s been there for me without question.
My jaw is on the floor at what she’s achieved in her life, but even thinking about the commitments she’s made turns my knees to jelly. I’ve had a string of hot dates and calamities rather than relationships, my jobs since uni have been temporary or freelance, and I’d run a mile before I stepped into the same room as a mortgage leaflet. All the way to twenty-eight my hello-clouds-hello-sky attitude to accommodation has worked like a charm. And then, very abruptly, it’s turned around to bite me on the bum, which is how I’ve landed here. But it’s basically all because of Pumpkin.
Most people assume Pumpkin is our childhood pony, but our mum actually rescued him when Scarlett left for uni. As a lifelong single parent, she’d brought us up to be independent and self-reliant, but having given us the tools to fly, she didn’t want the thought of us leaving her on her own to hold us back. Ever practical, with the empty nest racing towards her, she jumped in and filled it with the kind of horse-child who would never leave home, and then took him to work with her in her job as an art therapist at the local hospices.
If Mum had had any idea that she was going to develop a brain tumour serious enough to need surgery, she would never have taken Pumpkin on. As it was, her cancer came out of nowhere and galloped at a million miles an hour. One day, she was at the optician with blurry vision, the next we knew, she was packing her hospital bag ready for her operation. She was so upbeat we never took it in that she may not come home again.
When she died the summer after I turned twenty, there was never any question of us not keeping Pumpkin. At first Scarlett and I juggled our lives and shared the pony care between us, but once her career took off it was down to me.
I’ve spent the last six years rubbing along in deepest Somerset where we grew up, staying in a make-shift room in the stable yard at an animal sanctuary, which came free with Pumpkin’s board and lodging in return for me giving a hand around the yard and having a steady nerve with a pitchfork at haymaking time. Thanks to my degree in media studies, I now write freelance pieces for the living-the-rural-dream aspirational blogs and magazines that millennials can’t get enough of and which are inhaled like oxygen by city dwellers with burnout. So long as I miss out the bits about freezing my butt off in the winter, and the strawberry fields next door getting decimated by summer drought, I’ve had the perfect authentic base for me to create the rural content there’s so much appetite for.
We always knew the lease on the sanctuary was precarious, but no one imagined how fast plans would be passed for a housing development, or that bulldozers would be moving in to flatten the buildings around the yard within days of them serving notice.
Luckily the other local rescue centre was able to take in most of the animals along with the owner and her ancient caravan. But Pumpkin and I were always slightly on the outside and it was quietly understood that we’d make our own arrangements. Which is how we came to be jumping across to a new county, and arriving at our stop-gap here in Cornwall.
My vegan slip-up has refocused Scarlett, and she’s onto her local contacts. ‘If you lose your key, Zofia, the cleaning person, has a spare; she comes on Mondays. For cake, coffee and friendly chat there’s Clemmie’s Little Cornish Kitchen at the end of the beach; Plum’s at the gallery up the hill; Floss is at the beach huts before the hotel; Nell delivers free-range eggs and Zach is bringing the hay. Anything else you need, they’ll be happy to help; you’ve met most of them when you’ve visited.’
