you, ma’am.’
Leonie went out again into the sunshine and found that she was smiling.
The store was on a corner at the intersection of two streets. Traffic lights blinked at an empty road each direction and a large yellow dog lay panting in the shade of the store awning. There was a public telephone against the outside wall. Leonie glanced at it and hurried into the store.
A pleasant-looking woman was stacking cans behind a glass-fronted display case. She had the same shyly indirect gaze as Roger. ‘I guess I can,’ she agreed, when Leonie had blurted out her request. ‘It’ll just take a couple of minutes out back.’
While she waited Leonie idly read the local ads on cards pinned beside the door. Laurel Jackson had lost her progressive bifocals, brown steel-rimmed, some time after the first week in August. There was to be a colossal yard sale at Kingdom Road, and a grey and white cat, four white paws, very friendly, had gone missing from home. And under the heading Summer Rental was a snapshot of an uncompromisingly plain grey-boarded box of a cottage, one square window on either side of a tight front door, set in a pretty woodland clearing.
Leonie read the details twice. Suddenly available for short summer rental. One bedroom, fully furnished, $280 per month, plus utilities. No pets, no children, no smokers. There was a name and a telephone number at the foot of the card.
She became aware that Roger’s mother was at her elbow, holding out the hot-dog in a folded paper napkin. ‘Ketchup or mustard?’
Leonie paid, then propped herself against the hood of Tom’s car while she ate, eyed by the yellow dog. The peace and emptiness of Haselboro was soothing. An idea was turning over in her mind and before the last mouthful of frankfurter it had turned into a decision. If not Boston, where she didn’t yet want the company of friends or their inevitable questions, then why not here rather than anywhere else?
It was far enough from the sight and sound of the sea.
In a cottage in the woods she would take a spell of solitude and reflection. Such a place would give her the privacy she needed and the independence, much more than a hotel or a bed and breakfast. There were still almost two weeks of her summer vacation remaining and she could spend that time alone, thinking, and walking and making some plans for the future. At the end of it she would have to go back to Boston, to the job that she now needed more than ever, but maybe, Leonie thought, her mind running ahead, if she kept a cottage she could come back to it when she needed to. It would be her own place, not permanent enough to be a tie but still somewhere she could depend on. Somewhere that was neither Boston nor Pittsharbor and so free of all the associations that clung to the familiar places.
‘Was that hot-dog good?’
‘Better than good. Mrs …?’
‘Brownlow.’
‘Mrs Brownlow, I’m looking for a rental cottage. Not for too long, maybe only a couple of weeks while I sort some things out. Do you know if this one is still available?’
She looked doubtful. ‘Jim Whitsey’s place? It’s a ways out of town, I wouldn’t know who’s up there right now. But you could give Jim a call, he’s generally at home in the day since he retired. Phone’s right out there on the front wall.’
Two hours later, after a series of wrong turnings on the woodland roads, Leonie sat in the sun on the cottage step waiting for Jim Whitsey. Goldenrod and magenta spikes of loosestrife grew in the long grass at her feet. There was plenty of light in the clearing and the mixed woodland encircling it danced with shafts of pale green and gold. It seemed welcoming after the forbidding spruce stands of the Pittsharbor shore.
Mr Whitsey bumped up the track in a Chevy pick-up. He shook hands and unlocked the cottage door, stepping aside to let Leonie walk in. He was a man of few words.
There was a woodburner in the main room and the ingrained scent of woodsmoke caught in Leonie’s throat with a reminder of the shadowy room in the Captain’s House. The kitchen was in a corner of the same room, with the bedroom leading off it. The only other room was a tacked-on bathroom at the rear, with an old water-heater and a green-stained bath. A large spider was stranded in the bottom. Leonie opened the window and carefully deposited it outside. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘Two weeks in advance. Cash.’
‘I’ll have to drive back into town to the bank.’
‘Yup.’
But when he secured the door again behind the two of them he extracted the key from the lock and dropped it into Leonie’s hand. ‘You enjoy yourself here. I’ll call by later for the money, if that suits.’
Leonie smiled at him in the sunlight, wondering why she felt so cheerful when she had just turned her back on her whole life. ‘Thanks. I’ll be here.’
After Jim’s pick-up had bumped away she took her seat again on the step. Back into her mind’s eye came the picture of Marian’s crab and conch shells spinning in crooked arcs over the porch rail. Anger had disabled her to the point where she couldn’t even throw straight. Leonie dropped her head into her hands and laughed out loud at the memory.
There was no one on the beach. At the public end were the usual families and groups of kids, but in front of the five houses the glitter of sand and shingle was unbroken.
May paced her way slowly along the tideline. Fragments of twine and polystyrene granules and crustacea shells were caught up with the bladder wrack. The harsh sun burned on her head and drew an unhealthy stink of decaying fish out of the debris at her feet.
The Beams’ porch was empty, not even Sidonie or Ashton was about. Their bright-coloured toys lay scattered around. May looked sidelong, in fear of seeing Lucas, but also willing him to be there.
The breeze had died away and the air was motionless. She shaded her eyes and looked in the opposite direction, out to the island. Its ridge of black trees looked like the spines of some fantastic creature. She thought the whole island might shudder and heave, then dive slowly beneath the water.
A year ago, Doone was already dead.
When she turned to the beach again she saw that Ivy had suddenly appeared. She picked her way over the stones at the base of the beach wall, gold-skinned against the faded green wood of the breakwater. When she reached a patch of sand she spread out her beach towel. Even at this distance May could see the minute crescents of pallor exposed beneath her buttocks as she bent over. Ivy arranged herself on the towel and bent her neat head over a book.
May went on walking aimlessly but all the time her path tended itself towards Ivy. At length she came obliquely to a point within talking distance.
Ivy glared at her. ‘Don’t hang around me. Come over and sit down if that’s what you want.’
May sat down a yard away, looking straight out to sea. Ivy was always so dismissive. May wanted her sister’s attention and she wanted to challenge her too. ‘Where’s Lucas?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Where did you go last night?’
‘Oh, just to the Star Bar with Sam and some of the others. It was okay. Not that thrilling.’
‘Yeah? I went for a long walk with Lucas.’ She had Ivy’s
