the words ‘cottages for sale, Cornwall’ into Google.
On the Rightmove site a list appears and she begins to scroll through it, quickly finding an astonishing difference in the range of house prices here, from a run-down two-bedroom cottage at £75,000 right up to places going for several million.
But right now, £75,000 sounds like a miraculous, almost magical amount of money. All of a sudden, Isabelle’s last words appear in her head … ‘And keep it, if you can bear to,’ and the back of her neck prickles.
When the train pulls into Waterloo station, Neve drains the last of the warm gin and tonic, her second on the train, and begins to gather her things.
Over the course of the journey, she has made a series of plans:
1. Sell the cottage immediately. Pay off debts. Get own flat.
2. Say NO to cottage. How can I possibly accept???Find a way of contacting Isabelle’s surviving relative. Hand over cottage.
3. Sell it. Sell. SELL.
Walking across the concourse at Waterloo towards the tube station, at first Neve ignores the man pointedly staring at her, taking him to be a creep. But when she hears her name she looks at him properly and feels her stomach plummet.
It’s Fraser from work, gazing at her with a triumphant expression.
‘Well,’ he says, as commuters stream past them in both directions. ‘Looks like you have made a full recovery.’
‘Does, doesn’t it?’ says Neve. She has to stifle a yawn that rises from nowhere. She’s suddenly very, very tired.
‘I think we’d better have a word tomorrow, don’t you? A little chat about responsibility?’
He’s so pleased with himself that his face has turned the colour of ham. Neve sighs.
‘Bugger off, Fraser,’ she says, just as another man comes to stand right next to him, his expression one of injured puzzlement.
Without waiting to hear a reply, Neve turns away and hurries to the tube.
She can’t face going home.
Everything is buzzing inside her now. The tiredness has turned into a wired energy. She needs to go out, to do something. To find a way to make sense of the mad day she has had.
On the Northern Line, she makes the snap decision to get off at Camden station. She’ll go to the pub where she and Daniel used to hang out. There’s bound to be someone there who wants to have some fun. There might be a live band. Maybe Daniel will even come along. She can pretend it’s just like old times.
It turns out that most of her old crowd are there. By ten o’clock she’s standing outside, smoking a joint with her back against the wall and laughing so hard she almost starts to pee.
She’s with a drummer called Bick, a friend of a couple of years. No one knows where Bick comes from, exactly. He has a strange accent that is part American and part Scandinavian. He is six foot five and his shaved head gleams like polished ebony. Tribal scars nubble his cheekbones and rows of earrings stud his upper lobes. His sexuality is what he refers to as ‘fluid’. He’s the most beautiful man Neve knows.
She has told everyone about the cottage over the course of the evening.
Most agree that she must sell up straight away. A tiny, birdlike girl called Darcy, an ardent clubber, is of the opinion that Neve should go and live there. There was some talk of jam-making and a mass visit from them all at a date in the summer. Also possibly a music festival in the ‘grounds’. Everyone, including Neve, is hazy on the specifics but it sounds like the best idea for a while.
Bick is talking now and Neve smiles soppily up at him.
‘I think I love you, Bick,’ she slurs and puts her hands on his chest, raising her mouth to kiss him. But Bick steps back, laughing.
‘Neve, honey, I absolutely would, don’t get me wrong. But you’ve had a very weird day and I think you need to go home.’
Deflated, Neve stands back and almost falls off the kerb.
‘I’vegotafuckingcottage,’ she says as one word.
‘I know you have, darling. I know you have.’
A few minutes later he folds her into a taxi with assurances to the sceptical driver that she isn’t going to be sick. Neve manages to pass on Lou and Steve’s address. But when they reach the junction of Camden Road and Kentish Town Road, Neve leans over and gives new instructions, filled with a sudden second wind.
The driver eyes her warily, then changes direction.
A few minutes later, the car pulls up outside Daniel’s flat. The flat that was once hers and Daniel’s.
She pays the driver with the money Bick had insisted she take and stands on the pavement, staring woozily up at the top floor. A fox appears from the alleyway next to the house and regards her brazenly before slinking away. There’s a car alarm going off on the next road along.
Swaying slightly on her feet, she wishes fervently now that she hadn’t thrown the keys back at him during a fight. All she wants is to creep in and go to bed. She wouldn’t even bother him; she’d only sleep on the sofa. It seems so reasonable that she could do this. Who could possibly object to her sleeping on their sofa?
But there is no option other than to wake him up, now she’s here.
She wobbles up the steps and peers at the row of buzzers. Funny how unfamiliar it looks in such a short time. Focusing hard on not missing the target, she presses her finger squarely onto the buzzer and keeps it there. Then she removes it and does it again.
‘Hello?’ Daniel’s sleepy voice crackles from the intercom. She feels a happy rush that he is so near and she will see him within mere moments.
‘S’me!’ she says.
‘Who?’
Neve pauses, frowning.
‘S’Neve,’ she says a bit less cheerfully.
There’s a silence.
‘What do you want?’
Neve sways and tries to concentrate on what’s happening. This isn’t working out as she had expected.
‘To go to sleep,’ she says honestly and pushes the door, confident that it will have been released.
Nothing happens so she buzzes again and, a few seconds later, it opens and reveals a stony-faced Daniel.
He’s wearing an old T-shirt she has always loved, which says Revolution is Just a T-Shirt Away in white letters on black, faded to soft grey now, and pyjama bottoms. His hair is tousled and hangs over his eyes and he’s grown a small beard since she saw him last. He’s never looked more attractive and desire floods her entire body, hot and quick.
‘Neve? What the fuck?’ he says as she moves quickly and snakes her arms around his back. She breathes in the familiar smell of him
