Page 57 of The Key to the Last House Before the Sea

NESSA

Valerie had clearly come to the conclusion that her former daughter-in-law was deluded.

She hadn’t said as much but then she didn’t need to, thought Nessa, watching her Volvo disappear into the distance. Valerie could convey a whole raft of disapproval with the simple quiver of a lip or flaring of a nostril. And there had been a deluge of quivering and flaring from the moment she’d set foot inside the cottage.

Nessa sat on the wide stone windowsill and gazed through the glass.

She wasn’t deluded. She’d been working her socks off but she was well aware of the scale of the task ahead.There was still loads to do before the cottage would be suitable for Lily, who seemed, at least, to have settled in well with her grandparents.

That wasn’t surprising because Valerie was spoiling Lily. There was talk of new toys when Nessa took her to school, and excitement about a forthcoming trip to the cinema when they’d both gone to tea with Rosie at Driftwood House.

Valerie was also letting Lily eat chocolate, cake and biscuits every day, and Nessa, already indebted to her for having her daughter to stay, didn’t feel able to challenge her nutritional choices.

But all of that could be sorted out when Lily came back. If she comes back, said the little voice in Nessa’s head that seemed to have free rein in the silent cottage. What if Lily would rather live with Valerie for good?

Nessa sniffed. She wouldn’t cry again. She felt all cried out these days.

Instead, she’d channel her anxiety into something useful, like cleaning the old outhouse at the back of the cottage. The spiders there would soon chase away any gloomy thoughts.

Half an hour later, all gloomy thoughts had been well and truly banished, by terror. Nessa was a country girl, well used to bugs, but she’d never seen spiders this big before. They lay waiting for her in dark corners, their black legs arched and their cobwebs a silvery hammock across the ceiling.

‘Jeez!’ yelled Nessa, running from the outhouse and frantically rubbing at her hair. ‘Go away!’

‘Really?’ said a deep voice behind her. ‘That’s rude, even for you.’

When Nessa spun around, Gabriel was leaning against the wall of the cottage.

‘No, I don’t mean you,’ she spluttered, still rubbing her head. ‘A spider dropped on me, and they’re enormous in there.’ She wiped a hand across her face, realising too late that her hands were filthy. ‘What are you doing here?’

She sounded sharp but Gabriel never arrived in the middle of the day.

He was still showing up first thing in the morning and last thing at night. And recently their brief interaction – ‘Hello.’ ‘Hello, I’m still here.’ – had expanded to take in the state of the weather.

‘I thought…’ Gabriel frowned. ‘I thought I might take an hour off work to do some painting.’

‘Gosh!’

Nessa had never used the exclamation ‘gosh’ in her life before, but it seemed fitting somehow. Her gran’s art supplies hadn’t been mentioned since she’d offered them to him a week ago, but here he was, ready to paint. Straight-laced, workaholic Gabriel was about to do something spontaneous.

‘The painting supplies are still in the cottage, so… fill your boots.’

Gabriel smirked, and Nessa didn’t blame him. She wasn’t sure she’d ever said ‘fill your boots’ before either, but his sudden appearance had rattled her.

‘I won’t get in your way,’ he said, leaning over and picking a piece of twig from her hair. ‘I’ll leave you to your spiders.’

Nessa smoothed down the hair he’d just touched. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘That’s me,’ he replied, with what Nessa took to be an ironic eyebrow-raise. Then, good as his word, he left her to the perils of the dark, dank outhouse.

Two hours later, Nessa glanced through the window of the cottage. Gabriel had set up the easel a few feet from the sea and seemed absorbed in what he was doing.

Watching from a distance as his arm made great arcs across the canvas reminded Nessa of her grandmother. She would daub sweeps of colour and Nessa would watch in astonishment as the marks became recognisable as the landscape in front of them.

She’d tried to do the same but her attempts had ended up looking more like the pictures that Lily painted.

So far she’d resisted the temptation to see how Gabriel was doing but, summoning up her courage, she slipped out of the cottage and walked towards him.

He’d taken off his shoes and socks, she noticed, and had sunk his bare feet into the grass.

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