The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser (e books for reading txt) 📗

Since I’ve been up here, I haven’t ever been as unhappy as I was in the first month or so after Chris left. It would be impossible, I think, to sustain that level of misery. It’s a slow journey but things will improve; have improved – but I also know that in some ways I’m avoiding having to deal with my feelings. It’s easy not to think about it because I’ve come somewhere else. That ‘change of scene’ they talk about. Being busy in a new place allows you to avoid looking at things you should maybe look at. There are things I need to work on and I worry that this is merely displacement. That when I go home to my horrible flat, which is costing me money despite its emptiness, I’ll be back where I was when I left; none of it addressed or fixed at all. I shiver, as though the sun has passed behind a cloud, although there are no clouds, the sky a dense and brazen blue in every direction.

I’m lying on the beach peering at shells when Edward runs past me, leaping over patches of pebbles, dropping a towel on an exposed rock and wading out into the water. He doesn’t edge cautiously in but flings himself carelessly into the waves. I should think the water’s still cold, even if it is nearly August. I sit up and watch him as he front-crawls, rather splashily, across the bay. I’m jealous; I can’t remember the last time I swam in the sea.

Holding my now-heavy bag, into which I have gathered interestingly striped stones, limpet shells worn away to narrow loops and rings, and some pale blue-green sea glass, I walk down towards the water. There are three-toed gull footprints on the sand. And smaller ones – oystercatchers? Lacy wavelets ripple towards me and I look out to sea and the distant swimmer, and step into the water, which is, as anticipated, freezing. At first it seems too cold but I quickly accustom and walk out, jumping over the wavelets as I did as a child. Soon the water’s halfway up my calves and a larger wave slaps against my knees, making me gasp and laugh. My toes dig into the sand, my ears are full of the sound of the waves and again I am conscious of a precise moment of happiness.

Back at the Shed, I empty my finds into the sink to wash the sand off them, and then arrange them on a plate which I put on the lawn in the sun. I poke about in the hot silence, opening the bathroom door – the smell of sun-warmed wood, a view through the top half of the window, which is clear glass, contrasting with the bottom half, which is frosted, of the trees on the edge of the property. A large old-fashioned basin, a toilet. Clean but basic. There’s no actual bath, just a shower pan with a curtain in the corner. The shower itself is just one of those rubber tubes that you to attach to bath taps. There’s only one tap – I assume because there’s no hot water. A cold shower in Scotland seems unnecessarily harsh, but I suppose it’s good enough for rinsing salt out of your hair. There’s an old white-painted medicine cabinet on the wall, and above the sink a mirror on a chain, rectangular, with angled edges, vaguely deco. Perhaps it’s been hanging there since the Shed was built. Etched with flowers, it reminds me of the one my Hamilton grandparents had in their bedroom. It amuses me to think that, just possibly, it might have been bought in the same shop.

Opposite the bathroom, another door, which I open. The room is dark, the window still shuttered. I open the door wider to allow in as much light as possible. There are faded curtains in a splashy seventies flower print. The bed is larger than a single, but not as big as a double. Did Edward’s parents sleep in here? With the boys in the main room? It’s hard to imagine Lord and Lady Whatsit in here. There’s a small, slightly wonky wardrobe, a bookcase stuffed with paperbacks, and a chest of drawers, all in smooth, yellowy wood on stumpy legs. On top of the chest of drawers, a selection of shells and rocks, and something which, as I peer at it, I decide might be a whale’s vertebra. There’s an old Kilner jar half full of beach glass. Folded on the neatly made bed are towels and blankets. The room smells of dust and pillows. On the back of the door, a bright orange waterproof jacket, a mirror that matches the one in the bathroom, and hanging beside it a framed photograph of a woman, sitting outside the Shed, shading her eyes against the sun. Her hair and outfit – loose-fitting white dress but with shoes and stockings – put her somewhere in the twenties or thirties. Edward’s grandmother, is my guess; wife of the man who built the Shed.

I love how quiet it is. The silence, the smell of warm wood. The distant waves. Uncle Andrew’s is quiet – in fact probably quieter, since there’s no ocean – but this feels more isolated and empty. I know Edward said there are more holiday homes further round, but you can’t see them from here. And I’ve a theory that when you go to a place with somebody else, and that person leaves, it’s quieter than a place you’ve gone to alone.

I go back outside and shade my eyes, looking out to see if I can spot Edward. I can’t see him anywhere, and am just about to feel slightly anxious when his head appears above the rocks as he climbs back into the garden.

‘Hey. Good swim?’

‘Fantastic, thanks. I feel suitably invigorated. And I’m starving. Ready for lunch?’

‘Oh yeah, sure. Let me help.’

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘you can fetch things if