Page 64 of One Summer

I can hear the smile in his voice.

I walk home in a daze, not totally sure what just happened, but I think I might have made a new friend. Maybe even, one day… a special kind of friend.

Fifty-Four

Grabber

The next day, I do nothing except walk Ted, play with Nemo, clean the house, spray for fleas, defrost mice and feed the snakes using long, black, metal tongs. Not all the animals due a feed seem hungry, which means lots of wiggling dead mice in enticing ways, and when that doesn’t work, finding good spots to leave them, and rechecking every half-hour to see if they’ve been consumed, and when they haven’t, making a note of that, and finding new mouths for mice, so they won’t go to waste.

There’s no sign of Betty or anyone else.

I think about unpacking, but don’t dare until I know the house is fully clear of fleas. I have never in my life felt lonelier than I do here. I miss having colleagues. I’d even take a chat with Scotty right now, over the crushing silence of my beach house. There’s no radio or TV and I still haven’t managed to connect my phone or laptop to the internet, which has been torture, not least because I can’t watch any of Max’s new videos. I know it’s bad for me to want to watch them, but not having the choice has left me on edge. I need to understand what’s happening to him, need to see if he looks well, and happy. My brain can’t settle until I know either way. He might have posted a video in which he mentions making a mistake, ending a relationship that was the best thing in his life…

Of course, deep down, I know he hasn’t. He only has to text me if he wants to get a message to me, or ring me, but he doesn’t. All he wants is to move on with Greta the Great.

I leash Ted and we jog up the steps to the coast path. On a lamppost right at the top of the steps, somebody has pasted a flyer.

Usually I wouldn’t stop to read a flyer – being surrounded by so many in London – but Loor is different. Loor flyers have a magnetism that I apparently cannot resist.

‘Lonesome’? ‘New to Loor’? Come to our new ‘book club’ at the harbour bookshop every Thursday at 7 p.m. and meet ‘like-minded literary souls’. Free coffee and cake included (‘gluten-free’ alternative available).

Whoever wrote this is evidently a big fan of quotation marks. However, since I am both new to Loor and open to experiencing new things, this seems like kismet, and I resolve to scope out the bookshop and maybe buy a new paperback to keep me going between my stints of snake feeding and poop removal.

When I mention the harbour, Ted seems to know the way very well, although he keeps pulling to say hello to every person we meet on the path, rolling on his back, showing them his tummy and raising a hindleg, which slows down our progress significantly. After nearly an hour of this, we finally come to the quay. I take a few snaps on my phone of the old lifeboat station with its slipway for the boat, the row of shacks advertising wildlife-watching trips, and the cottages with a cake bakery, a Cornish pasty shop, a fish and chip shop and a ‘fudgery’. It’s all beautiful and so is the smell wafting from the bakery. It’s going to be extremely hard to avoid buying a yum-yum every morning.

The harbour is so picturesque that it’s no wonder tourists flock here in their tens of thousands each year. A photo on the end of the pier with the lighthouse and turquoise sea is a prerequisite for any visit. There’s so much to appreciate and enjoy, and for a moment, I remember how lucky I am to be here. There is, however, no sign of a bookshop.

I wander over to a small building next to the pier, which is apparently an ice cream parlour that also sells bags of candyfloss and inflatable unicorn pool floats. There’s nobody serving to ask about the bookshop. I could go and ask one of the fishermen sorting out their lobster pots, but they look determined, busy and not very friendly.

When I’ve checked all the buildings that might possibly be business premises and I can’t find a bookshop anywhere, I start to worry that I’m attracting the attention of the locals. Perhaps this behaviour looks somewhat suspicious. Maybe they think I’m a potential burglar, casing the area.

But it has to be around here somewhere because the address on the flyer said, ‘the harbour’.

But where?

I walk to a modern building halfway up the winding road to town. There’s a flashing neon sign outside that says ARCADE and there are two screeching rides outside, the ones where you put in a pound and a child gets to bounce around on a lacquered elephant while a head-doing song rings out and gives everyone tinnitus.

As I get closer, I see that somebody has added a cardboard notice to the arcade’s business sign, that says, puzzlingly, Reading Nook.

What kind of arcade also offers a reading room? Is it to cater to the bookish siblings of the gamer kids? How would it be possible to even read with this assortment of machines playing annoying jingles all day long?

I hear someone clearing their voice behind me.

Sexy Surfer – Round Four.

He’s on his way back from the harbour and this time, he’s not carrying a surfboard or skateboard; he’s carrying a bucket of dead fish.

‘Hey there,’ he says. ‘Sorry – I forgot your name again. The sistren tell me it’s Wendy, but that doesn’t seem right.’

‘It’s actually Lindy. Did you say the sistren?’

‘The matriarchs of the island – you know, the sister version of “brethren”. They’re called Radigon and Goodithea.’

‘I’ve seen them from a distance, but we haven’t been introduced.’

‘So, you fancy the grabbers?’

I ‘fancy the grabbers’? What does this mean? That I’m attracted to gropey men? Am I? I don’t think so, but maybe I am? He did grab me quite hard to pull me out of the concrete bowl in the skatepark.

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