with documents in the bureau, the post that arrives with the handwritten address.
I can take my time, enjoy these small discoveries because, for now, your house is mine.
I drift from the kitchen to the lounge, admiring the sense of continuity and flow between rooms. Everything is marvellously tasteful: the low-backed cream sofa, framed by two upholstered tub armchairs, each carefully angled to face the water. The neutral tones and uncluttered lines naturally focus the gaze towards the sea. Even on a dull day, such as this, there is a mesmerising quality to the water. In warmer weather, I imagine sliding back the bifold doors, removing a wall of the room so that it feels as if the house and water are just a breath apart.
It’s a truly beautiful home. I’m sure some people would be quick to add, ‘Well, yes, easy if you’ve got the money.’
I disagree. This takes vision.
I could never have created this.
My gaze is drawn to a slight groove in the seat of your sofa, the lightest depression in the fabric. This is where you sit. My eye travels to the adjacent coffee table, where there is a scuff mark close to the edge where you must put your feet up.
I lower myself into the spot that is familiar to you. I find my hand sliding down the side of the sofa. It’s the forgotten corners in a home that are often the most revealing. I feel the rough grate of sand or crumbs beneath my nails. My fingers meet something firm and narrow, and I withdraw a pencil. The end of it is splintered, the lead protruding further than the wooden housing. It appears as if the pencil has been snapped in two.
An accident?
Pushing myself to my feet, I turn. Behind the sofa is a library wall. Carefully selected pieces of pottery punctuate the rows of books with the grace of well-placed commas. I stand for a moment admiring your literary choices, many of them classics: Hemingway, Shakespeare, Brontë and Austen. A little predictable, but nice all the same.
I step closer, running my finger along the worn spines of the fiction shelf, passing psychological thrillers, romance novels, literary novels – but no, I still do not see it. I keep looking until I’m sure.
There is only one notable absence on these shelves: your book.
I drop the final piece of naan into my mouth, then gather the takeaway dishes, following Fiona through to her kitchen.
‘Avert your eyes,’ Fiona instructs, glancing at the sink, which is piled with washing up. ‘One of those weeks.’
‘I’ll do them. It’ll take me a minute.’
‘You will not.’ She blocks the sink. ‘You can pour us more wine.’
My sister’s relentless bossiness has a nostalgic flavour. I’m used to my actions being channelled, as if I’m something fluid, destined to flow around Fiona.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ I say, watching her rinse the plastic takeaway dishes, then jam them into the recycling bin, punching down a cereal box to make room. ‘You know when you cleaned after the Airbnb, did you happen to go into my writing room?’
‘Oh God, don’t tell me I was meant to clean in there, too?’ She forces the bin door shut with a shove. ‘I had such a busy week that I only got over for an hour. I’m not doing it again, by the way. Next time you can find a cleaner.’
‘No, it’s not that – it’s just, when I went in there, the window was left open and it felt like things were different.’
‘Different?’
‘Like things had been moved.’
Fiona turns. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I have this blue glass paperweight on my desk. Do you remember? Mum brought us them back from Malta.’
‘Yes, with the swirls of ink.’
‘It’s been chipped. I found the missing part lodged in my bedroom carpet.’
‘And?’
‘I think it happened while I was away.’
‘Thought you’d locked your writing room?’
‘I did.’
‘So, you think,’ Fiona says, an eyebrow cocked, ‘that the Airbnb renters broke into your writing room, chipped your paperweight, then tossed the broken piece into your bedroom?’
I’d anticipated this reaction: dismissive, unperturbed. That is precisely why I decided to tell my sister.
Fiona continues. ‘The glass probably got stuck to the sole of your shoe, and then you walked it around the house, and it finally came loose in one of the rooms.’ She slots a tablet into the dishwasher and clanks it shut with more force than is necessary. ‘I knew you’d get like this after renting your house. You need a dog.’
‘I do not need a dog.’
I fetch a bottle of white from the fridge and refill our glasses. The fridge door is covered with photos, notes, and the first of Drake’s crayon scribblings. My gaze lands on the picture of me and Flynn standing in front of our campervan, alongside Bill and a heavily pregnant Fiona.
I miss that camper. An old Mercedes Sprinter, which Flynn had spent months converting. We’d pull up at quiet beaches and cook dinner with the slide door pulled wide.
I pluck the photo from the fridge, looking more closely. I remember the first time I’d seen Flynn – the long sandy hair, the sun-tanned face, the skateboard slung under his arm, the carefree curve of his smile. My stomach flipped with desire as I’d served his coffee, slipping an extra biscuit on the saucer. He’d come back to the café every day for a week before he worked up the nerve to ask, ‘Fancy hanging out after you finish?’
I was twenty-four years old at the time and felt impossibly lost. I was working shifts in cafés and bars, sleeping at strange hours, barely leaving my rented flat except to go to work. I felt as if I were submerged … that life was happening to other people and I was watching it at a distance. I’d lost contact with my school friends and had distanced myself from Fiona and our mother. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted until, on a Tuesday morning in spring, Flynn Fielding walked into the café with his skateboard. I could see the surface again; I could breathe.
Fiona moves to my shoulder. ‘Remind me why you’re divorcing again?’
I shoot her a look that says, Don’t.
‘You know what I’ve been thinking?’ Fiona says as I pin the photo back in place.
‘Here we go.’
‘You need to start
