I stand and kiss my sister, our cheekbones clashing.
Locking the door behind Fiona, I move into the kitchen, flicking on all the lights and the radio.
I take my notebook from my handbag and position a pencil beside it. I take a step back, looking through the screen of my phone at the configuration. I snap the picture, then upload it to Facebook, adding the caption:
After a lovely fortnight tutoring on a writing retreat, I’m back home and SO excited to be diving into my novel – on the home straight now! #amwriting #authorlife
Then I put the props away.
Opening the fridge, I inspect its contents, hoping Fiona might have left a pint of milk or a loaf of bread – but it’s bare.
Too tired to contemplate getting back in the car, I root around in the pantry and pull out a bag of pre-cooked quinoa and toss it through with tahini and lemon juice. I eat standing up, flicking through the post.
I glance at the bills, trying to ignore the words FINAL REMINDER blazoned across my electricity statement. Next there are a couple of packages from my agent containing proof copies of other authors’ books requesting advance praise. The remainder of the mail includes requests for charity donations, two fan letters forwarded on from my publishers, and an invite to a friend’s birthday. Nearing the bottom of the pile my hands reach for a thick cream envelope embossed with a gold logo. It’s from Flynn’s solicitor.
In France I’d been reminded of our first trip together in our mid-twenties, when we’d taken the ferry to Bilbao and then driven north to Hossegor in Flynn’s battered Seat Ibiza with a surfboard strapped to the roof and a tent in the boot. We’d camped in the shade of thick pine trees and lived on noodles and warm batons of French bread. We drank cheap stubby beers and wine from cardboard containers, and spent the evenings playing cards by headtorch, or lying in the tent, the door unzipped, salt and sun-cream glossing our entwined limbs.
On that trip Flynn had talked about all the places he wanted to travel – and I had said yes to it all, knowing that I wanted to be anywhere but home. When I was with him, the rest of my life seemed like something that had happened to a different person, someone I was happy to leave behind in the campus of a university town I’d never return to.
I scrape the rest of the quinoa into the bin, then collect my suitcase and go upstairs. Flicking on my bedroom light, I pause in the doorway, my gaze on my bed.
Fiona has done a half job of making it, of course. The cushions aren’t plumped, the soft olive throw is stretched across the entire bed, not just the foot of it. These tiny details remind me that I wasn’t the last person to sleep in this bed – rather another woman and her husband.
I set down my case, then wander round my room, eyes scanning the clean surfaces. I slide open my wardrobe door; my clothes are still hanging in one portion of the wardrobe just as I’d left them, the rest of the rail clear for the other couple’s clothes. I move to my bedside drawer and pull it open. Empty, as I’d left it – oh, except for a small pot of men’s hair wax pushed right to the back. I twist off the lid and, seeing it is almost empty, drop it into the bin.
Taking out my washbag, I move to the large free-standing mirror at the foot of my bed, where I dab cleanser onto a cotton pad and sweep it gently around my face. I’ve picked up a little colour in France, and my hair has been lightened by the sun to a warm caramel shade.
As I lean in, that’s when I notice them: fingerprints. Larger than mine. I look closer: a hand has been pressed flat to the mirror, the smear of a stranger’s skin marking the glass.
Standing here with the empty room reflected behind me, an unsettling feeling creeps over my skin. Someone else has been in this room. Been in my house. The woman who’d rented it – Joanna – must have stood where I am, her image caught in the mirror. It feels as if this stranger’s gaze is still here, watching.
As I step back, a hot pain bursts into my heel.
I snatch up my foot, reaching out for the wall for balance. There is a deep puncture in the very centre of my heel, a bead of blood springing to the surface. What the hell have I stood on? I crouch down, searching the carpet, running my palms across it until they meet the waspish scratch of something.
A shard of glass, knife-sharp, is lodged deep in the plush carpet. I grip it between my fingers and carefully pull it out. The downlights illuminate a beautiful blue icicle, something vaguely familiar in the glitter of the glass.
Has something of mine been broken? I can’t think of anything in my bedroom that this piece could’ve come from. I keep the surfaces of my bedside table clear, except for a tripod lamp and a jug for flowers. My bottles of perfume have been packed away with the other breakables and valuables, which I’d locked in my writing room. It’s unsettling to not be able to place this lethal dagger of glass.
I wrap it in a tissue and, as I drop it into the bin, I glance down at the cream carpet and see it is marked with the crimson blush of my blood.
Oak, jasmine and something citrus – those are the smells that greet me as I step inside. There is a clean, fresh quality to the air that is different to my house: it is dry, free of cooking smells, or that earthy dampness that comes from washing dried on radiators.
I can’t help myself. ‘Hello?’
There is, of course, no reply. I smile. The quiet is beautiful, softened by the distant sound of the sea.
My black holdall looks incongruous on the solid oak floor. I kick off my shoes and leave them discarded. Yours, I see, are placed neatly beneath the oak settle.
I walk through the entrance hall, which leads straight into the spacious kitchen. The walls are a warm shade of white; I think the paint has been chosen with light-diffusing particles so that it feels as if the walls are breathing air into the room. The splashes of colour – chalky pastel shades – come from the painted wooden cabinets, the well-chosen artwork, the pottery carefully displayed.
The style is graceful, calming. It’s as if a handful of sea-bleached pebbles have been gathered and used as the basis for the palette. The modern, sleek lines of handle-less cabinets and a granite work surface have been married with a beautiful old farmhouse table, the wood ring-marked and age-worn. A long bench seat is set against the wall, strewn with hessian cushions. It’s a table for a family, or for dinner parties. Not a table for one.
I smile to see that the high chair, as requested, is placed at the end of this table, although it won’t be used, of course. On the kitchen counter there is a small bunch of wildflowers in an old honey pot, tied with brown string. Leaning against it is a handwritten card addressed to Joanna and family.
A thoughtful touch.
I pick up the card, tracing a finger across the elegant handwriting, but I don’t open it.
Setting it back down, I move past an aged dresser painted duck-egg blue, where earthenware mugs hang from neat iron hooks. Seagrass-speckled pots are stacked artfully between mason jars containing nuts, pulses and attractive spirals and ribbons of pasta. I slide open the dresser drawer and, as I reach
