Page 30 of One Summer

‘There’s a glass of wine and some cheese included in the door price. I’m the man who brings the wheel of cheese,’ he says. ‘It’s very good cheese if I do say so myself. You’ll like it.’

‘Great,’ I say. ‘That sounds great.’

It doesn’t sound great. It all sounds incredibly awkward. And where is he getting his wheel of cheese? Is there a dairy farm on the island? Because I haven’t seen any cows. And why is he still talking to me when I so clearly need to pee?

He carries my luggage down the last of the steps and leaves it in the porch. Nemo is furiously trying to fight his way out of his travel bag.

‘We’re here, Nemo. We made it.’

I put my fingers up to the transparent door of his basket and he swats at me, which makes the driver snort with laughter.

‘You’ll need a feisty animal on your side,’ he comments.

Will I?

‘Why?’

‘Never hurts, does it?’

It’s like we are having two distinctly different conversations.

‘Bye then,’ I say, as he leaves, but he doesn’t answer; he just keeps chuckling to himself. What the heck is so funny?

Just as he reaches the cart, there’s the sound of tyres on tarmac and the red-haired woman from the harbour rides up to him on an electric bike. She says something and he booms, ‘None of my business, Betty. None of yours either. She’ll find out soon enough.’

The woman catches my eye. She’s not smiling.

She looks… worried.

Twenty-Seven

Surprise

I don’t have to use the combination code lockbox to locate the key because the box is empty and hanging open; when I try the handle of the door, it gives.

Maybe someone’s come ahead to make sure everything’s all set up for me? Left fresh towels and linen on the bed, milk and bread in the fridge – a bunch of daffodils on the kitchen table, even? A ‘Welcome to Loor’ box of chocolates and a bottle of wine?

I go in and see that directly opposite the entranceway is the bathroom – weird feng shui, surely.

I run in and relieve my bladder. My eye catches movement on the bathroom window: fat, bloated blowflies – at least a dozen of them. A clutch of eggs must’ve just hatched.

Hastily, I reach forward to open the bathroom window and hope they’ll find their own way out. If not, I’ll have to deal with them later because I don’t think I have the energy to chase down flies and wrangle them now.

After washing my hands, and shutting the flies in the bathroom, I walk into a very small but scrupulously clean kitchen. There are no daffodils on the table.

Optimistically, I open the fridge to check for milk to get me through the first day or two.

No milk. No anything, except a squirty bottle of mayonnaise and a jar of homemade blackberry jam.

Not ready to give up the dream, I look in the breadbox and cross my fingers for a loaf. Even half a loaf. A single bread roll would do.

No bread.

Neither does the kitchen table have any chocolates or wine adorning it.

Clearly that was just the embarrassing wishful thinking of a mere child. I’m not living in a movie; this is real life where you have to buy your own wine, and your own bread and milk for that matter, and where all you can expect in the way of a warm welcome is a family of blowflies.

The kitchen leads onto a large living room, prettily decorated with seashell-print cushions, ceramic lighthouse lamps and a rectangular mirror with a chunky frame made of bleached driftwood. It’s the sort of décor that I imagine a posh person would consider kitsch and one step up from ‘roughing it’.

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