It Started at Sunset Cottage Read online

  “No, don’t be daft. You’re both rubbish at this game. So I win,” she said, helping herself to a custard cream and slowly eating it as the other two stared at her. She loved keeping them in suspense; this was fun.

  “Kate, out with it! I’m worrying here,” said Sarah.

  “Don’t be silly, nothing to worry about, it’s good news. You remember my second novel?”

  “Love.com!” shouted Sarah.

  “Yes, ten points and straight to the top of the leader board you go,”

  “There’s talk of making it into a film.”

  “Wow!” mouthed Sarah. “You could have famous actors and actresses playing your characters. How about George Clooney and Gwyneth Paltrow?”

  “Beautiful, but too old for my characters. They’ve only just sealed the deal, so it’s a bit early for choosing the leads,” but Sarah was already lost in a mini-fantasy.

  “I know! What about Timothy Calder and Emma Watson!”

  “Nice combination, but let’s not get carried away just yet.”

  Sarah stared into space and Kate clicked her fingers in front of her nose. “Hey! I was just picturing Timothy Calder…” said Sarah before drifting off again.

  “He’s naked isn’t he?” said Kate.

  “Well, obviously. My fantasy. My rules. Don’t pretend you don’t lust after him, either, Miss Marshall, you’re not immune. I’ve seen that Agent X DVD in your bedroom.”

  “That’s research,” said Kate as a grin spread across her face and Andy tried to take a drink from his empty mug.

  “Okay, tell us everything,” said Sarah, shuffling forwards in her seat with curiosity.

  “Marcus Leonard, he’s another author with the same agent as me,” said Kate. “You’ve met him, Sarah.”

  “Um, grey hair, wears tank tops and bow ties. A bit of a lovey and obviously gay,” précised Sarah.

  “Good description but definitely not gay. Very married, to a very lovely American woman.”

  “Really?” said Sarah looking genuinely surprised. “My gaydar is rarely faulty; he must be borderline.”

  “Anyway, he was the screenwriter for the Agent X films and other stuff. He’s kept things moving on the Love.com film front, when I didn’t really have the interest in it at all, to be honest.” Her friends sat silently, willing her to hurry up the story. Recognising their impatience, Kate continued. “Marcus and my agent have been speaking to people in the film industry. A couple of companies have been in talks over the last couple of months. Anyway, we’ve agreed a deal with one of them and they’re going to make the film. Sometimes they just buy the rights but the film never gets off the ground. I’m just waiting to hear what happens next.” There was stunned silence, broken only by a little girl chanting, “Ibble, obble, bibbly, bobble” over two biscuits. Andy was the first to speak.

  “Kate, that’s wonderful news, I’m really pleased for you.” Kate shrugged, trying and failing to be nonchalant. Sarah jumped up and hugged her friend tightly as she tried not to cry. It seemed silly to cry over happy things, when Kate was constantly being so brave.

  “I’m so proud of you,” said Sarah, briskly wiping away a stray tear with her sleeve.

  “Well done,” said Andy, as he leaned across the table and lightly kissed Kate’s cheek. “He would have been made up. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know,” said Kate. She knew exactly how James would have reacted. He would have been overexcited and keen to tell everyone. Kate had always loved to write but did it as a hobby and never felt her work was good enough to be published. That wasn’t why she did it, but James had read one of her novels and loved it. He’d packaged it up and sent it off to a series of agents and one of them had taken Kate on and persevered to get her first book published. After that she was able to leave her office job and really give the writing a chance.

  Kate wrote to escape into another world. Not that she needed to escape. Her own world had been pretty near to perfect. She and James had met at a party, but had both realised within hours that they had something special. Kate had been a calming influence on the manic James and he, in turn, had inspired a confidence in Kate that had previously been lacking. They had got engaged within a year and set the wedding date for the following summer. This had all been shattered when James had died in a motorcycle accident nine weeks before their wedding. Her newfound confidence appeared to have died along with James.

  For the second time that day, it was Amy who broke Kate’s train of thought and brought a smile back to her face. Amy was standing in front of her holding something large and yellow about an inch from Kate’s nose.

  “What’s this?” enquired Kate, trying to move back slightly so that she could focus on the yellow mass, but Amy brought it closer still, both her hands clenched tightly around it.

  “You hold it, Kate, it’s very heavy,” she said, as she let go. Kate reacted quickly and caught the lump in mid free-fall. It was heavy, Amy was right, and it was made of pottery. Its surface was scored and blobbed with yellow glaze and a single spike protruded from what Kate supposed was the top. As if reading Kate’s mind, Amy announced, “It’s a pineapple! I made it,” to which both Kate and Andy feigned mock awe.

  “Of all the fruits to pick, she picks a sodding pineapple,” said Sarah, “not a pair of cherries like her friend Freya, or a strawberry like Lauren. No, Amy wants to make a pineapple.”

  “I like it,” said Kate, feeling a little defensive towards Amy, who had got bored again and had left the kitchen, taking her heavy pineapple back to its place on the hall table.

  “They charge the parents by weight,” explained Sarah.

  “Oh,” said Andy and Kate in unison.

  “Exactly. Six pounds, forty-two pence I paid for that sodding pineapple.”

  “That’s more expensive than Waitrose,” said Kate.

  “It’ll last longer, though,” said Andy helpfully. “I thought it was a hand grenade!”

  The adults sniggered and passed around the biscuits for a second time.

  “Mummy, what flower do you think Sebastian will be?” said Amy, plonking herself and her collapsing custard cream on her mother’s lap.

  “Mmm”, thought Sarah, “probably a winter pansy.”

  “What’s that like?” said Amy reaching for her third custard cream.

  “They are very pretty little flowers that bloom during the winter and they come in all colours, but often purples, blues and yellows.”

  “That sounds nice. I think Sebastian will like being a pansy,” and with that she jumped off Sarah’s lap and went off to play. Kate and Andy looked perplexed by the conversation, so Sarah began to explain.

  “When Goldie the Goldfish died, when Amy was about two and a half, we buried him in the garden and I went with the conventional line of ‘Goldie has gone to heaven’.”

  “Makes sense,” agreed Kate. Andy nodded.

  “But a few days later Amy walked into the kitchen in tears. She was covered in mud and held in her hands a slightly decomposing Goldie the Goldfish. She had dug him up to check that he had actually gone to heaven.”

  “Ah, I can see where there’s a flaw in the plan,” pointed out Andy.

  “Exactly. So now, when one of the family dies, our spirit goes to heaven and we become a flower. Which also avoids us being dug up quite as easily,” said Sarah, looking over her shoulder to check that Amy was still out of earshot.

  “Nice touch,” agreed Andy.

  “That’s really quite a lovely thing to do,” smiled Kate, thinking how nice it must be to be Amy and have all your concerns explained away by someone who loved you enough to protect you from life’s unknowns. Sarah scooped up the empty mugs, pushed back her chair and gestured to the window. Kate and Andy followed Sarah to the kitchen window, where she pointed out Goldie, who was now just a stalk but last summer had been a dwarf sunflower and Gerry the Gerbil, who was a primrose.

  “It depends what time of year they die as to what type of flower they become.” All the
adults nodded and were a little shaken by the voice that suddenly came with such gusto from behind them.

  “Kate, what kind of flower is James?”

  Chapter 2

  Kate peered out onto the typical October day and was grateful she didn’t need to be anywhere that morning. The sky was dark with rain clouds that seemed intent on depositing most of their cargo in the few square yards of Kate’s front garden. She needed to get some chapters of her current book written and that would keep her busy until the tea round tonight. As she watched the swirl of raindrops, her scene was interrupted by a large, bright-yellow umbrella that turned into the drive and approached the house at speed, a pair of sensible black lace-up shoes on a mission to convey their owner into the dry as quickly as possible. Kate leapt into action, ran to open the front door and beamed her usual greeting at the yellow umbrella. The umbrella swung around and was vigorously shaken for just a fraction longer than was needed to remove all the water droplets. Despite the exceptionally large umbrella, its owner’s coat was wet beneath it where the driving rain, helped by the fierce wind, had sought out opportunities to dive underneath and hit their intended target.

  “Hace mucho frio,” said the small Spanish woman, giving the umbrella another violent shake.

  “Yes, it is cold,” said Kate taking the umbrella out of harm’s way and guiding Concetta into the hall. Concetta said this most mornings and, because of this, it was the one Spanish sentence that Kate understood.

  Concetta was in her late fifties, Kate guessed, but it was difficult to date her exactly as her skin was what you would describe as well weathered and had the colour and texture of a walnut. The walnut fixed Kate with a stare “Té?”

  “The kettle is on,” said Kate still smiling and she pointed into the kitchen and Concetta followed her directions, muttering something inaudible under her breath.

  The women drank their tea in silence and desperately tried to avoid eye contact. They both found it difficult to think of things to talk about, given the limited vocabulary between them – Concetta spoke no English and Kate no Spanish. Today Concetta was wearing one of her vast collection of loud dresses. If there were such a thing, thought Kate, this one would be a Hawaiian dress. It was emblazoned with oranges, lemons and the odd palm frond. It was a fruit salad of orange, yellow and green, in stark contrast to the day outside. Kate would have loved to have seen inside Concetta’s wardrobe as she never failed to surprise Kate with her amazing array of brightly patterned dresses. It must be like a drag queen’s ball in there, she thought. Kate wished she had learnt a little Spanish from James; just enough to exchange pleasantries with the poor woman; maybe offer her a choice of biscuit without having to wave the wrappers under her nose. Kate pointed above her head, “Changing the bed covers today, I guess” she said slowly as if addressing a child.

  “Si,” came the reply, as Concetta gave an awkward smile, took a last swig from her mug and disappeared upstairs, hurriedly putting on her apron as she went. Kate relaxed, her shoulders dropping to their normal position instead of the “to attention” pose they had automatically assumed as Concetta had entered the house. She tucked a loose tendril of hair behind her ear and took the mugs to the sink.

  Kate was interrupted by the front-door bell. A very wet Sarah stood on the doorstep, her ancient blue Beetle coughing and spluttering on the drive behind her. Her usually spiky blonde hair had been quickly reduced to limp tufts by the rain and her denim jacket was a very much darker blue than usual. She held out a soggy brown-paper bag to Kate.

  “Can’t stop, late for school. I mean work. Late for everything today, really,” she said. “These are for you. I have too many. You need to put them in very soon. Like today.” Before Kate could ask Sarah what was in the bag she was already back in her car, shaking her head like a Labrador. With a scurry of flying gravel, a small bang from the exhaust and a large cloud of bluey-black smoke, Sarah was gone.

  Kate returned to the kitchen with the mystery soggy parcel, opened it slowly and peered inside. Kate wasn’t too sure, at first, what it was full of. It was either shallots or bulbs of some description. Kate was no gardener, but she was a good cook and on closer inspection they were definitely not shallots. She studied the dozens of bulbs in the bag and then turned to the window to watch the stair rods of rain still thundering down outside and hoped she could remember where her wellies were.

  A couple of hours later, Concetta’s departure was announced, as usual, by the slamming of the front door and Concetta’s feet pacing across the gravel.

  “Bye,” shouted Kate belatedly, as she always did, wondering if Concetta ever heard her. Kate had played Angry Birds on the iPad and done some celebrity-stalking on Twitter, which had occupied a few hours, and she was rather pleased with her new profile on Linked In until she realised that she’d lost three hours and was still no closer to writing the three chapters she had promised to email to her editor by the end of the day.

  Now the coast was clear, she decided to venture downstairs and get herself some lunch. As soon as she opened the fridge door she was joined in the kitchen by Marmalade, a large female ginger cat that James had brought home from a rescue centre. Marmalade had two main functions: sleeping and eating, both of which she performed to Olympic standard. The fridge opening had triggered her unique food radar-detection system and she had appeared in an instant. Opening any tin elicited the same response. Marmalade was not a fan of Concetta’s and always spent those mornings sleeping under a spare bed in an attempt to avoid being shooed. Marmalade rubbed around Kate’s legs on tiptoes, purring as she did so. Kate fixed herself a sandwich and stared back at Marmalade as she eyed Kate’s lunch with interest. She decided that her procrastination in the book department was not going to improve, so she might as well brave the weather and plant the bulbs.

  Despite the quagmire that she had managed to create, and the rain that had trickled down her neck, she discovered that she had enjoyed planting the bulbs. She had tried very hard to plant them randomly and not in neat rows, but it went against all her carefully honed neuroses. However planting the bulbs had felt as if she was making a nod to the future. That she would actually be looking forward to seeing them grow and bloom in the spring. Well done me, thought Kate to herself, as she headed off out for the tea round. St Gaudentia House, the convalescence home, was fairly close to Kate’s village, just a ten-minute drive and practically the halfway point en route to Sarah’s house. It was a Victorian hospital that had been renovated and was now a convalescent home whose main occupants were elderly people. Kate had been a helper for over three years, ever since she went to do some research for a book idea that had eventually turned into book number three. She had continued to visit and had enrolled as a volunteer because she enjoyed talking to the patients and felt that it gave her a purpose in life apart from work. Since she had left her office job to take up writing full time, she had had little interaction with people, which James had felt wasn’t healthy. The tea round was something Kate could do on her own and it gave her the added bonus of feeling she was doing something useful.

  Some patients rarely had visitors and to have someone who visited them regularly made a big difference to their day, giving them a short respite from their problems. The irony of this was not lost on Kate, who on some days over the last few months had looked more wretched than the patients had. She found that on the tea round she could become someone else. For just an hour she could switch on a happier version of Kate. In the early months after James’s death it was an effort to haul herself over to St Gaudentia’s, but she always felt better for it, and each week it became less of a struggle to switch on the smile and make the tea. Kate enjoyed the routine and simplicity of the night-time tea round and chatting to the patients, but most of all she liked to see the patients improve. Most made a recovery, even if sometimes it was an excruciatingly slow one.

  Kate filled up the urn from the water boiler and loaded up her trolley with supplies. She always started at the far end of the war
d in the rooms, which were usually reserved either for those who had just come in to the home or for those less fortunate who were soon due to leave, and not in a taxi. Kate tapped the first door and, receiving no answer, went in anyway. The whiteboard nameplate above the bed read “Deirdre Harris” in pink marker pen, and a lady who Kate hadn’t seen before seemed to be sleeping. Kate checked her records in case she couldn’t have any fluids and then gently said, “Deirdre, would you like a cup of tea?” The lady didn’t open her eyes, but as Kate turned to leave she replied.

  “No, but I could murder a G & T,” she opened one eye and smiled at Kate.

  “Sorry, I’m all out of the good stuff. It’s tea, coffee, hot chocolate or some malty drink that smells like boiled sawdust,” said Kate, returning the smile.

  “Black coffee, no sugar then, please,” came the reply as Kate moved back to the trolley to make the drink.

  “Only school teachers and doctors call me Deidre, everyone else calls me Didi.”

  “There you go then, Didi,” said Kate, handing her a plain white cup and saucer. “I’m Kate.”

  Andy had woken up earlier than he planned to, due to the rain lashing against flimsy, rotting windows but, since he was awake, he thought he might as well make an early start. He had purchased the house at auction two months ago and despite hours of hard work it didn’t really look greatly changed from the day he moved in. “Moved in” probably wasn’t the right phrase as it had only been him, a bin bag of essentials, his armchair and a bed.

  The intention was to move from floor to floor and room to room, until the whole house was completed and this had been a good idea, but the amount of time it was taking to make even the shell of the house stable was beyond Andy’s worst nightmares. He had seen it from the outside before the auction and had fallen in love with the location and the fields that lay beyond the weed jungle that would one day be a garden. It looked as though the outside needed a lick of paint and there were a couple of tiles missing from the roof but, with some time and care, it would look beautiful. I would probably want to paint the rooms inside a different colour anyway, thought Andy, so that wasn’t really additional work.