Tilly stood and looked at herself in a funny scrap of mirror wedged by the door of the shed. Her hands were black, her face flushed, and something very odd was happening inside her chest. Something that felt like a Catherine wheel had been lit and was spinning off its nail, trailing sparks down to the very tips of her fingers and other hidden places, too. She pulled out her phone, opened The Properlies group, added a photo, then held the phone to her ear and started a voice note. Sounding a bit shocked, she laughed.
'Right, girls, you’re not going to believe this! I have been rescued from a near-death experience. Joking. I’ve just been pulled from a mudflat. I literally got stuck in the mud not far from the shed here. I’m covered in the stuff, and my wellies are full of it. My jeans are soaked and my hands black. There’s more, and I would only admit this to you two. I have just felt something that I can only describe as fireworks going off. My God, I think I fancy my new neighbour! Although I’m hoping I don’t because that’s thelastthing I need. Tell me I'm having a medical episode, a stroke, perhaps, or maybe a tropical disease has finally caught up with me because I am feeling things! What the? I have just been rescued by a man I thought was the rudest person inEngland, but now I want him to come back and do it again. I have not come to Darling Island to fancy someone. I have come to be alone, independent and not wait for anyone. Anyway, I’m joking, really, but I wanted you to see the pics of the mud. Only I could get myself in a mess like this.'
Pia's reply came through, and Tilly pressed play.
'Oh em gee, Tils! Fireworks? Yep, that’s when hormones and pheromones come into play. What’s the rescuer like? Wow, I didn't think that you would fancy your neighbour! The shed story takes a turn. Shoot me, but I’m loving this already.'
Tilly smiled with her heart still going like the clappers. 'Do-something-to-me brown eyes. I cannot believe I just said that. He has a dog, a chocolate Labrador called Stanley, who is very sweet, handsome and well-behaved, unlike his owner. The owner is tall, fair, late thirties, wax jacket, wellies, grumpy. Rough and capable. He actually shouted, then pulled me from the mud, carried me like I was nothing and hosed me down with industrial cold water. I stood there like a complete lemon while he directed a hose at my legs. All I could think about was his arms and the way he smelt. I don't know what I'm saying here, ha ha. I am covered in mud, and I’m babbling. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it, but I thought I’d give you both a laugh. Anyway, he's probably married with six children and a very nice wife who makes sourdough and runs a hedge fund from her laptop.'
Tilly’s phone buzzed with a voice note from Jasmine with the background noise of a theatre and someone shouting. 'Right, I'm backstage, I've got about ninety seconds before I have to do a quick change on the lead. Tils, not that many years ago, you left a controlling marriage and recently a cheating boyfriend. You are not in a position to be fancying anyone. You need to be sorting that shed, starting a business, and remembering who you are without a man attached. Do not act on the fireworks.We don’t need another Andy in a wax jacket at this point in your new start. Remember the plan. Did he ask or suggest anything that indicated this was mutual? Sorry, I've got to go, someone's having a meltdown about a wig. Text me. Love you guys properly.'
Tilly listened to Jasmine's voice note again. Of course, she was right. Jasmine was always right, which was deeply irritating. Tilly had not come to Darling to fall for anyone; she’d come to not need a single soul. She pressed to record. 'You are right. He told me not to do anything stupid again, and then he walked off. The fireworks are almost certainly one-sided. I will ignore them and focus on my shed, the business I’ve yet to start and my new life. Thanks for being an adult as usual.'
After stripping herself of the wet clothes, Tilly went upstairs and stood under the shower until her skin was pink and the mud had vanished from every crevice. As she got out and wrapped herself in a towel, she told herself to extinguish the fireworks and forget about the man who worked next door. Her phone buzzed as she was drying her hair. Pia with a text this time in the group, not a voice note.
Pia:What do you know about him?
Tilly:Nothing really.
Jasmine:Don’t even go there.
Pia:Don’t be such an old spoilsport.
Jasmine:I’m trying to be sensible.
Tilly smiled and raised her eyebrows. The fizzes she’d had were anything but sensible. Which is why she wanted them to blast her head off again.
20
Despite it being very windy, the storm Tilly had heard so much about still hadn’t arrived. On the whole, it didn’t make a lot of difference to Tilly. She’d had a few back-and-forth emails with Margery and solicitors, and initial dealings had begun. Storm or not, she had a list as long as her arm, a lot of cleaning to do, solicitors' gubbins to try and make sense of, and somehow she had to try and work out what she was going to do in the shed to pay her currently non-existent wages.
Therefore, she had no intention of going out, impending storm or not. The flat above the Boat Shed had become, after a load of Tilly's elbow grease, just about liveable or perhaps “survivable” would be a more appropriate word. However, there was still so much to do. Most of the clutter in the sitting room had been sorted or at least moved, and things were looking a whole lot less chaotic to the eye, but still not great. Overall, our lovely Tilly had a long way to go. Silver linings and all that.
Since her cleaning efforts on the first day, the bedroom had done its job fairly adequately of providing her somewhere to sleep. However, the room was not comfy, cosy, or even remotely close to the vision she’d dreamt up in her head when she’d first considered living in a shed by the sea. More campsite thanbedroom in its current form, it was little more than a place to rest her head. Once she’d cleaned and tidied it, she’d left it be, now that was about to change, and Tilly was on a mission to foof her new bedroom so that it was nice. It had views to die for, and Tilly had decided that if she was going to stay on Darling, which by her email exchange to and from the solicitors and Margery, she was, the bedroom situation had to improve. Therefore, she set to work with what she had and a couple of things she’d ordered online.
With a gorgeous light going soft and pink over the estuary, fresh sea air on a lovely breeze, no sight of the storm whatsoever and a good mindset, Tilly decided to do what she was now a master at: making up the bed properly. If there was one thing four years in high-end hospitality had taught her, it was that a beautiful bed solved many a problem. It centred a room, gave a sense of home and made all well with the world.
There was one problem with a bed being the centre of one’s life. On a foggy island with limited resources at hand, girlfriend didn’t have a lot to work with. All she had was a set of plain white sheets and two rechargeable wall sconces she’d ordered on day one. Plus various dress cushions she’d found whose inners had been aired and plumped, covers disinfected and blasted by the sun, and a couple of vintage reading lamps she’d found in the cupboard under the stairs. As she set about changing the bed, Tilly suddenly remembered something, stopped, frowned and started to rummage around in the duffel bag that had accompanied her around the world. Right at the bottom of the bag, wrapped in tissue, were two lovely old deep sludgy bottle-green linen pillowcases. Tilly had acquired the pillowcases on a housesitting job in Portugal with Lennixx. The pillowcases had been with her ever since gracing beds from here to Timbuktu. Why had she not remembered them sooner?
Lifting them out, Tilly could almost smell the Portuguese landscape around her. Heavy slubby linen, soft as anything from a hundred washes, a row of tiny drawn-thread stitches along the open end and a little looping monogram in the corner.QdF.She'd traced it with her thumb so many times she could have drawn it blind. Quinta do Fassque. A gorgeous old house in the Portuguese hills. She'd not meant to keep the pillowcases, but in the wash on the week they’d left, they’d tangled up by accident with her own bits, and by the time she'd noticed, they were three countries away. She'd told herself she'd post them back one day, but never had. Somewhere along the line, the pillowcases had become like a couple of old friends joining her in staff beds all over the place.
Sitting down on the edge of the mattress with the pillowcases in her lap, Tilly’s brain went back to the housesitting job. They’d seen the job online, applied, and when they’d been accepted, Lennixx had lined up gigs to play in local Portuguese bars here and there. It had turned out to be the cushiest job ever, which had mostly involved watering plants, dusting and spending long warm days sunbathing by a beautiful pool. A tough old part to Tilly’s four years around the world. Really, when Tilly looked back on it, it was the best time of the whole sorry adventure. Before cruise ships had got old, the waiting and the cheating. Back when running away had still felt like a promise of fun.
The housesitting job had really only involved them being taken on as caretakers, where basically all they were required to do was mind the house, remove layers of dust, water the lemon trees and keep the pool from going green. Lennixx had treated it as a free place to write songs nobody wanted, and Tilly had enrolled herself in language lessons and had made friends with the daughter of the family business.
One afternoon, Inês, the daughter, had taken her to see the family linen mill three valleys over, and Tilly had loved everysecond of it from the long, low stone sheds to the looms goingclack-clack-clackto the women who ran them. Then there was the smell of it, wet flax, machine oil, clean cloth, and the finished linen stacked to the rafters in every weight there was. Tilly had fallen in love with the hand-dyed colours lined up perfectly in rows. Mostly the linen was a plethora of shades of white, cream, putty, grey and oatmeal. But a small side of it was naturally dyed in huge vintage vats with deep berries, glorious greens, blues and reds. Tilly had wanted to wrap herself up in every single piece of the glorious linen and never leave.
As part of her tour, she’d been shown somewhere else. A small, tightly packed room known as the “dump room”, where the off-cuts and flawed things had ended up. A little back room, racked floor-to-ceiling with bolt after bolt of beautiful heavy linen in all colours, shapes and sizes. Inês had flapped her hand at the imperfect ones and the ones with faults, and rolled her eyes as if it hurt to look. The linen in the room was sold off by the kilo for dust sheets and rags because a thread had pulled, because the dye had gone a half-shade too deep, or because a slub sat fat in the weave where the loom had hiccupped, Tilly had stood and thought how the flawed ones were the lovely ones. Soft and heavenly with slubs that caught the light, wandering selvedges and quaint colours waiting to be slept in. Tilly, in her hopeless Portuguese, had asked Inês why they didn't make more of it, and why they hid the best cloth in a back room. Inês had hooted, patted Tilly’s cheek and said the English had strange taste.
Now looking at the pink light and shadows falling on the two pillowcases, an idea plopped into the centre of Tilly’s brain as it filled with images of the linens in the dump room. Turning around slowly, she nodded as a seed of a business began to form. The Boat Shed had come with a sort of promise of a shop, turnover, maybe a café, but really Tilly hadn’t felt it once she’darrived. Her dad had always said there was a click that told you you'd found the thing about a business and how to take a failing one in a different direction. Something about the pillowcases and the dump room’s contents clicked, and right there an idea for a business landed front and centre. A lovely line of thick, heavy linen sheets in deep berry colours designed to be kept for years and layered on beds with love.
It clicked so hard that Tilly had to sit down. A shed by the sea with the best light she'd ever seen pouring off the water. A room full of beautiful linen in the Portuguese hills. Four years of making beds so perfectly they could have been measured with a ruler, and starched into place. Forty-eight months of thinking about the rumpled, imperfect, cosy, soft, real beds of that place one called home.
Tilly felt as if she could hear her dad’s voice as if he were sitting right there with her at the end of the bed.It needs to click, Tils. That’s how you know.
21
Over the next hour, Tilly’s brain went nineteen to the dozen about the cosy comfy linen bedding business idea. She’d jotted down a few thoughts, made a list of what she might need and mulled it back and forth over and over again. However, it was one thing to write lists in a notebook in the careful capitals her dad kept for a business worth chasing, and quite another to actually do something about it. Really, Tilly hadn’t a clue where to start.
