Nemmie purses her lips. ‘We haven’t even started upstairs.’
I’m incredulous. ‘They had tunnels in the sky?’
She looks back at me. ‘They might have escaped through the lofts.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘We probably need to come back with torches and better tools.’
Mum sits forward. ‘We actually came to tell Lando about the house next door to us.’ She pauses to give me time to realign. ‘It’s coming up for sale, but Jack who owns it wanted to give Lando the heads-up in case he wanted to buy it.’
I take a moment for the full despair of that thought to sink in. It’s not just that everything is out of my control; it’s as if everyone I know and love is working for the opposite aim that I am.
I stare at Lando. ‘What happened to always wanting to live on the quayside?’
Mum cuts in. ‘If Lando’s staying in the area, it makes sense to get somewhere bigger. And obviously for us, it’s better to have a neighbour we know.’
Anyone else would do. Of all their thousands of friends, it doesn’t have to be him.
I sniff. ‘That cottage is a wreck under the surface. We’ve always said it would cost ridiculous amounts for anyone unlucky enough to end up with it.’
Lando’s looking from Mum to me, working out how to react.
He pulls a face, then comes off the fence. ‘I can certainly take a look…’
I can tell Mum’s doing mental whoops. She reaches out and pats his arm. ‘You’re not committing, Lando; you’re simply exploring possibilities.’
If I hear any more of this, I might just be sick.
29
The B&Q car park, St Aidan, Cornwall
Trip hazards and hanging gardens
Tuesday
‘Even in this dress, you could stop traffic.’
We’ve just arrived in B&Q car park, and instead of heading off into the store to take photos, Lando’s marching round the tarmac sizing up suitable hanging places for our pictures.
I take a breath and count to ten. ‘Now is definitely not the time or the place for this.’
He frowns. ‘It is the place, but whatever. Do you know how hot you look when you’re cross?’
If I was mildly annoyed before, now I’m fuming. ‘As an observation between working colleagues in the twenty-twenties, that’s completely inappropriate.’
His eyes narrow. ‘What if I were commenting as your make-believe husband-to-be? Or as your lifelong friend?’
I snap back at him. ‘Both off-the-scale worse! And we’re not friends. We agreed we have big differences.’
It hasn’t escaped me that the longer I spend in his company, the more like him I sound. Who knew using big words in complicated sentences would be so catching?
As for short temper and tetchiness, that’s been my permanent state since I broke the news on the stepping stones, going up a notch with every conversation we’ve had about Nemmie since. He hasn’t actually had his guided tour of the house next door to Climbing Rose Cottage yet, but the threat is hanging over me like a doom cloud. Every night when I think that his bed might end up feet away from Nemmie’s and mine I find myself thumping the pillow when I should be sleeping. Knowing he’d have to do major renovations before that happened isn’t really a comfort.
Lando gives a cough. ‘I didn’t set the tone here. You were the one promising a Dua Lipa boob exposé. In any case, focusing on our marital connection might help the photographer?’
Tia has already reached the peat-free compost piles next to the entrance doors, and she calls, ‘Leave me out of this. Do we need a pound for the trolley?’
What’s even more annoying is that the dress I’m wearing is demure rather than sexy. It’s got a plain bodice, spaghetti straps, and the fabulous, gathered skirt in the lightest silk falls to graze my ankles. The full-length slits in the skirt only show when I pull it up or twirl, and they have the lightest lace inserts, so the most you get is a flash of leg behind the almost-transparent net. All topped off with a light hip length veil, I look purer than Snow White.
As Jess’s list of participating businesses grows by the day, we’re trying to cover as many as we can, so this is our sixth stop of the morning. We kicked off by posing with Janice by the ladder stacks outside Hardware Haven, had a quick stop at the Spar supermarket Prosecco shelf, then quickly moved on to the bright pink velvet sofas at the Little Cornish Kitchen where the mums and bumps group was in full swing. Then we moved on to Trenowden’s solicitors by the harbour, where we perched on the desk either side of sole partner, George, and after that Tia snapped us browsing the post card rack outside Milo and Betsy’s, then drooling over the croissants inside. Only then did we jump into Tia’s car and hop across town to B&Q where I finally blew a fuse.
