Elle. I live next door.’
Through a curtain of thick, dark hair, his gaze flicks towards my house. The set of his features shifts, tightens. He looks to be a few years younger than me – in his late twenties, perhaps – the first scribblings of lines settling around his eyes, his jaw grazed with stubble.
‘The author.’ There’s something about his intonation that makes it sound like an insult.
‘That’s right. You must be Enid and Frank’s son?’
‘Mark.’
That is it. They’d mentioned a son some time ago – when we were all still on good terms. I think Enid had said he’d left Cornwall for work, but I can’t recall the rest of the details.
‘Here’s the thing, Mark. There was an incident with a spider … I was evicting it from the premises, when the wind caught me unawares and the door slammed shut. Stupidly, my keys and phone are inside.’
His gaze travels down my body, over the pale blue summer dress, down my tanned legs, settling on my bare feet, which are set together, my toenails painted a shimmering pearl. I want to explain, I don’t usually dress like this in November. I’ve come from the airport. I—
‘Shoes.’
I blink.
‘Your shoes are locked inside, too.’
‘Oh. Yes. They are.’ I hug my arms to my chest. ‘Would you mind if I used your phone to call my sister? She has the spare key.’
He waits a beat, then steps aside, holding the front door open. I move past him into the narrow hallway.
The smell of fried onions hangs thickly in the air, alongside something pungent. Weed, I realise, a warm burst of memory swimming back to me.
‘Are Enid or Frank home?’
‘No.’ There is a heavy clunk as Mark shuts the door. He stands with his back to it.
I shift. I always need to know where an exit is, to plan how I could get out of a room, a building – a habit ignited at university, which now seems impossible to shake. My gaze travels to the lock. Yale. No key on the internal side of the door.
‘So, are you visiting for a few days? You live in the city, don’t you?’ I ask, my friendly tone overlaying the first prickle of fear. ‘What is it you do? I think your mum mentioned something about computers, or I may have made that up.’
‘Why would you make that up?’
I can feel myself shifting uncomfortably beneath his gaze. I am a thirty-three-year-old woman. I don’t need him to like me. I just need to use his phone.
The landline sits on an old-fashioned telephone table, set below a brass-framed mirror. ‘May I?’
‘Not working.’
‘Do you have a mobile?’
There is a pause before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a mobile. He taps in a passcode, then holds it out to me. There is an odd moment of resistance – no more than half a second – where he holds onto the phone as I go to take it.
Flustered, I try to recall Fiona’s number. I don’t want to look up, yet I’m certain Mark’s gaze is on me. Heat is building in my cheeks.
‘I can’t remember her number. I used to know everyone’s numbers, but now they’re all programmed in our mobiles, aren’t they?’
He says nothing.
I clear my throat. I begin entering the dialling code and, as I do so, the rhythm of the rest of the number comes to me. Relieved, I hold the mobile to my ear, listening to it ring. I make a silent prayer that Fiona will be there.
The leather of Mark’s jacket squeaks as he leans against the door, checking his watch.
‘Yes?’ Fiona whispers, Drake most likely asleep nearby.
‘Oh, thank God! You’re there! I’m calling from someone else’s phone. Listen, I’m locked out. Tell me you have my spare key? That you’re home?’
‘I’m home. I have the spare.’
‘Can you come over? Or I could get a taxi to you if Drake’s in bed?’
‘Bill’s here. I can come. Gets me out of bath-time.’
‘Perfect, thank you.’
‘Whose phone is this?’
‘I’ll explain later.’
I can imagine Fiona’s expression as she tells Bill that she has to go and rescue her sister. Again. Getting locked out of the house is not the sort of thing that happens to Fiona. There will be some sort of system in place, a back-up key meticulously hidden, or a syndicate of neighbours with spares.
I return Mark’s phone. ‘My sister is on her way. She’ll only be ten minutes.’
There are several beats of silence. Then Mark says, ‘I’m going to be late.’
‘You … you want me to wait outside?’
He doesn’t answer, instead he opens an under-stairs cupboard and spends a moment rummaging within it. He turns back to me holding out a woman’s purple fleece.
Then he opens the front door. There is no mention of whether I’d like to borrow shoes. I step out onto the freezing concrete step noticing that dusk has slipped into night.
I push my arms into the sleeves, a musty, lavender scent filling my nostrils. ‘I’ll drop this back later.’
He shrugs as he moves past me, pulling the door closed behind him.
A black motorbike is parked at the edge of the property. I almost laugh. Of course he’d ride a motorbike! I watch as he pulls on his helmet, straddles the bike, then guns the engine.
Crossing the driveway, I’m grateful when the security light flicks on. I perch on my doorstep, the cold of the flagstone seeping through my seat bones.
‘Hurry up,’ I mutter to myself, imagining my sister sitting stiffly behind the steering wheel, sticking religiously to the speed limits.
I pull the fleece tighter, my shoulders hunched towards my ears.
I can feel the house behind me, looming, empty. I half wonder if it’s punishing me for abandoning it – like a dog put into kennels who ignores its owners when they return.
The security light switches off and I’m left shivering in the darkness.
A single-lane track carves through tall hedgerows, climbing towards the cliff top.
‘It’s at the very end,’ I tell the taxi driver.
The driveway is gravelled with grey and white stone, no doubt selected to complement the exterior paintwork and natural wood weatherboarding.
The house sits imposingly on the cliff top, steel struts bored into the rock so that the sea-facing side of the house seems to hang suspended above the cliff. There is something in the contrast of the fresh warmth of the house, versus the jagged dark hues of the rocks below. It is an incredible feat of architecture.
‘Lovely place you’ve got here,’ the driver says as the taxi crunches to a halt.
‘Yes, indeed,’ I say with a private smile.
I pay the fare, tipping him more than is necessary.
I carry my holdall to the front door, setting it down on the flagstone steps. I wait until the taxi has circled from the driveway and disappeared within the tunnel of hedgerows.