Chapter Seven

We settle into a routine, me and Alice. She has school every weekday morning. I drop her off and come back to Blue Rocks to make our beds, wipe down the bathroom—we share mine—and clean house.

Once the day’s chores are done, and any errands completed, I walk on the beach, read on the porch, or climb the rough paths behind Blue Rocks, one of which leads me up the hill, all the way around the back of Mariner’s Fish Fry, and onto Hidden Cove Drive, where the mansions of Lobster Cove hide between old trees.

Life here is utterly different, and, on the surface, I like it. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’m somehow fulfilled. Do I have a suppressed urge to nest? Is that why I decide the hallway of Lucas’s house needs some pepping? I drag in a round table from the never-used living room. At the bottom of the stairs, in the curve of the newel post, with flowers—a mixture of roses and hydrangeas from the thigh-deep lake of cut flowers outside Flowers in Bloom—it makes all the difference, even if I did have to buy a vase myself. Any moment now, this house will become a home. There’s also a potted daisy plant from Cherri, who left it on the doorstep with a note scribbled on a paper napkin when she passed by yesterday, along with a punnet of glorious blueberries, warm from the sun. The house remains bare, but it’s shining clean and the brave daisies on the kitchen dresser shout Look at us. See how jolly we are. I love them.

I’m not cleaning this house. Isn’t that what I said to Lucas? Because I am, actually, and while I do I notice someone’s spent a lot of time and brainpower on its design. Everything’s spacious and practical. Is this an American thing? Am I unfairly comparing poky—all right then, cosy—English homes to the generous, warm, airy spaces of Blue Rocks? Yes. Simply put, it’s wonderful to live in this organized way—with plentiful cupboards, bathrooms everywhere, a laundry room, pantry, storeroom, basement, wide porches, double doors and huge windows giving onto the jewelled blues of Maine, everything from pale sapphire to cobalt, and turquoise and jade. I love these colours. Compared to the restrained greys and greens of England, they are forward, honest, and pure.

I wonder if Lucas’s wife designed Blue Rocks? I wonder if she died before she got around to furnishing? Or is this it: a kind of failed attempt at Shaker? Perhaps she and Lucas had big, happy plans, and the memories of those throw long shadows on his heart. Is that why he stays? And why he goes away?

So many questions, but not the sort I can ask in my daily emails to him, even though we’ve settled into a relaxed routine, way better than how we started out. Rather, I send short messages and pictures of Alice. I ask questions like:

Jay Sawyer says the Jeep needs new tires.

After a few days, Lucas answers, Do it.

Or: Lucas, can I Hoover your studio? There are dust bunnies the size of tumbleweeds in there.

Three days later: Hoover?

Vacuum, to you.

Two days later: If you must.

I must. I did already.

Four days later: Don’t move anything.

Oops.

We’re ten days in, Alice, Buster and me. Our routine is set. The weather’s wonderful and everything’s going smoothly. Life is good, although one thing’s puzzling me. When I Hoovered Lucas’s studio I sat in the leather chair at one of his desks and had a good read through my CV. I am a stranger to myself. I don’t relate to that woman describing her life’s goals, dreams if you like, on those pages. Am I trying to be something I’m not? Something I think I should be, rather than someone I can be, want to be? Is this a new-style Maine me, interfering with my stability? Strange, but my photo’s missing. I look around for it but can’t find it anywhere. Where’s that gone?

****

About that new, relaxed way Lucas and I communicate around Alice? It doesn’t last. My fault, I guess, hunting for answers to questions about Lucas. This is how it starts: I’m not a nervous person. However I wouldn’t say I have nerves of steel either. I’m brave enough to survive general life, but I’d rather not be put to the test, so, when first I hear noises in the house I take no notice. Imagine if we all went about life jumping and screaming at every unexplained little noise, even if heard at night? But I lie in bed—in what is essentially Lucas’s bed—every night and think about where I am, in this silent house on the lonely shore between dark sea and sky. Sometimes, unable to sleep, I watch through the window, like I’m waiting for something, seeing nothing except timid stars and pale surf pushing through the blackness. And then I hear the noises. You have to listen really hard or you’d think it was your imagination. There’s movement, whispering, rustling, barely audible, but nonetheless there.

During daylight, the sounds are impossible to recall. When the surf’s up, I hear nothing. Is it Buster, getting into the roof somehow? I reckon he’d make more of a racket.

“How does Buster get in and out of the house?” I ask Alice.

“Through the door,” she says.

Figures. “Which door?”

She takes my hand and leads me into the basement. Buster has a high-tech cat flap set into the outside wall, and another in the door that leads from the basement into the house. We go outside and wander on the grass in the fresh, crystal clear air, walking all the way around the house, me looking at the roof.

“What’s that?” I ask Alice, pointing at the cupola.

“Tower.”

“Do you go up there?”

She looks at me like I’m crazy. “I can’t go on the roof!”

“I know that. I mean can you get up inside that tower from inside the house?”

She shakes her head and bends to pick one of the small yellow flowers growing in the grass. She presents it to Buster who’s just arrived. He sniffs politely and rolls on his back for a tummy tickle in the sunshine.

I gaze at the cupola, tiled like the rest of the house, and neatly louvered, although one of the planks under the southern eave has slipped. What a handsome ornamental detail to place on a roof—the perfect finishing touch, like the cherry on top of a cupcake. Ornamental or not, I bet there’s some way to get up there. The mermaid weathervane shifts this way and that, no more than an inch in the light breeze. Somehow she doesn’t look quite so pierced-though today.

That night, the sea falls silent, so I can hear the noises properly. Not thinking about how isolated I am, not dwelling on the possibility that the house could be haunted I put my head under the duvet and resolve to buy earplugs.

The following morning, Alice and I pull up in the school car park at the same time as Cherri. “What plans have you got this fine day?” Cherri asks. I tell her I’m about to scour town for earplugs because of the noises in the roof.

“Oh, that’s probably mice,” she says. “They can do a lotta damage. Best get a trap from Dylan at Old Mill Veterinary. A humane trap, that is,” she adds, quickly, when she sees my face. Admittedly, I had imagined a Tom and Jerry contraption with a big chunk of cheese well-placed to hide the beheading mechanism.

“Although…” she muses, “didn’t I once hear something about Blue Rocks being built on a sacred site?”

No. I’m not going there. I refuse.

I kiss Alice goodbye and go straight to Old Mill Veterinary. This is the first time I meet Dylan Foster, although I’ve spoken to her on the phone about updating Buster’s inoculations.

“So Buster not doing his job, then?” She smiles, handing me a plastic tunnel thing, one-way entry, no exit.

“I think the job’s too big,” I answer. “Where should I put this?”

She hands me three more. “Best place is in the roof, if you can access safely.”

“And then what happens?”

“You bring them back, and we dispose of them.”

“Dispose?”

“We set the mice free in a suitable location, in the wild.”

Do they really do that? I look deep into her kind eyes. She’s not joking. Her receptionist nods, equally serious.

Okay, I believe them. I return to Blue Rocks and start looking for a trapdoor in the ceiling somewhere. I search high and low, literally. Inside and out. Eventually, I give up. I’ll message Lucas and ask him how to get into the roof. I’m having one last look around on the upper floor of the house when, walking along the gallery outside the small room Lucas uses as a bedroom, I open a large, double-door cupboard for no other reason than I’m looking for something I can’t find.

Hello. What’s this? I push the door wide open, right back against the wall. It’s no regular door, being heavy, soundproofed by the looks of it, and well-insulated around the edges. And this is no cupboard. It’s more like a small hallway with—would you know?—a spiral staircase in the corner. I knew there was a way to get to the cupola! I look at the floor at the base of the stairs and, sure enough, there’s a trapdoor that must open up to Lucas’s studio below. How exciting. I feel like I’ve made a significant discovery. You know, if Lucas took these big old doors off and opened this space up to the gallery, what a fabulous feature that would be. I marvel for a moment and then go to the top of the main stairs where I’ve left the mousetraps.

Back in the newly discovered hallway, there’s…ooh, what’s that smell? Something stinks, like it’s seeping in through the walls. Well, it’s musty in here, surely. Whatever, I don’t want that ghastly smell going through the house. There’s a light switch, so I switch it on and close the door, shutting myself in. It’s not claustrophobic, not at all with the light on. I balance the mousetraps in my arms and start up the stairs. Ladders are not my favourite thing—those untrustworthy rungs—and these slat-type stairs, where you can see all the way down to the floor between your feet, are the next worst thing. Come to think, this is a bit silly. I should have left these traps at the bottom and gone up, to see what’s what, first. Too late now because I’m more than halfway. At the top, I pause on the small landing outside a low door, to listen. Nothing. Silence, apart from my crazy heartbeat.

Quite honestly, I’m frightened, but who else is going to do this? Should I have called someone from the sheriff’s office? For goodness sake. Imagine calling out a law enforcement officer to deal with mice—of which you are scared—living, and/or dead. Granted, dead bodies are scary if they’re human. That’s when we call the sheriff, but not for mice.

“Just do it,” I mutter aloud. “Do it and get out.”

Here goes. I turn the knob and looking down—because determined as I am to rid the house of pests, I’d hate to squash an innocent mouse—I push open the door, giddy from climbing in the round, without breathing in the sweet stench of rot and decay. One of those mice must have passed on, because only a dead body could reek like this.

It’s the worst fright I’ve ever had, in my entire life.

I’m looking down, so I don’t see it coming. It crashes onto me, this great stinking, black, dripping thing, screaming, screaming, screaming. I’m screaming too! I leap backwards and crack my head on the low doorframe. Stumbling, fumbling blind, I beat off the horror, fling myself out onto the landing and slam the door. Something crunches and squeals. My hand slips off the knob and I plunge down the stairs—not far at all, because of the tight spiral. If there had been a ladder I would have gone straight to the bottom, on my head.

God! What was that?

Rammed against the curve of the bannister, head in hands, I’m trembling head to toes, like a leaf made of jelly. My legs have given way and, much as I’d like to flee, I can’t. I also can’t sit here forever halfway between bursting into tears and throwing up. I lift my head and look at the door.

Are those fingers pinched in the door? Blackish fingers? A cold shudder pulses through me like the shock of an ice-bucket challenge. The fingers drop to the floor, flutter, and lie still.

Not fingers, but a poor little…

Bat! Crushed by me. Next to him, lies a comrade, very dead, I fear.

Bats, that’s all. I press a wobbly hand to my stressed heart, worried I’ve damaged it. Oh Lord. I find tissues in my pocket, reach out and wrap up the bodies, not actually touching them. Somehow I’d forgotten about the smell, but it’s back, overwhelming, dead bats, live bats, and both their droppings. I get to my feet, legs as dodgy as the Trident 202’s, and stagger down the spiral, clutching the bannister.

Here, at the bottom, are the remnants of the smashed mousetraps I don’t remember dropping. One has fared slightly better than the rest. I slip the dead inside and take them out to the car.

Back at Old Mill Veterinary I hand the box to Dylan and tell her briefly what happened.

“I can see you’ve had a scare,” she says. “You’re quite a lot paler than you were this morning.”

Granted. “Just a little.”

“Ah, the legendary pluck of the Brits.” She grins.

“You had to be there.”

“I bet. Now tell me, how many Chiroptera in that colony?”

What a question, and I presume she means bats! Thousands of course, if not millions. I give it some thought. “Um, twenty. Forty at the most.”

“Good. Not too large.” She hands me a business card. “Call these people to remove them. It’s costly but you’ll have to do it. Eventually their urine and guano will damage the walls and stink out the whole house.”

“I’ll probably wait for Lucas to get back—”

“Don’t. Do it now. That colony will only grow and it could develop into a health hazard. Some bats carry viruses that can be lethal.” She says goodbye, telling me she needs to sort out those poor little bat pups.

I’ve no wish to find out what sort out means in vet-speak. I presume by pups she means babies. I’m not thinking about it. Thanking her, I dash off to fetch Alice from school. Early, I sit in the school car park and call the bat-removal people from the car.

They assure me their method is humane—before I ask—tell me their work with animals is regulated and approved by the nature conservation authority of the state of Maine, and quote me a price, which is not so humane. I can’t spend this much money without agreement from Lucas, so I start typing an email. For some reason, I’m impatient. This message is too long; there’s too much to say. I know, I’ll call him. I might be lucky enough to catch him during downtime.

No luck. I leave a detailed message and ask him to respond ASAP.

That evening, while Alice is having supper, Lucas calls. The line is terrible. He sounds like he’s racing a motorbike through a waterfall, and that’s perhaps why he’s yelling.

All I can make out is “Jeez, Lara!” crackle fade beep “Alice? Alice? Alice?” crackle.

“I can’t hear you, Lucas—”

Crackle crackle “…wrong with her? What?”

What? “Alice is fine. One hundred percent.”

“Alice?” beep fizz clang “…happened?”

“ALICE IS FINE. It’s about bats—”

“Cats? Is it Buster?”

“Lucas! Go somewhere where we can hear each other speak.”

He does. He sounds like he’s going down a mine on metal stairs. I wait, imagining me and Alice, tiny dots on the coast of Maine, joined to Lucas by a thin beam of light—light that shoots way up via a satellite revolving in the sparkling cosmic dust of outer space, and then back down to Lucas, a third tiny dot on his rusty flake of metal in a vast, horrendous sea, on the dark side of the world.

“Okay,” he says, eventually. “What happened?”

It turns out that my message broke up—why am I surprised. All Lucas got was Alice, lethal, virus, hazard, dangerous and urgent. Of course he freaked out.

“Honestly, Lucas, would I leave a message about Alice being desperately ill. I would never do that.”

“I know. I know. Sorry, sorry,” crackle zzzzt. “Out here, the mind plays tricks.”

I tell him about the bat situation, and he tells me to go ahead and get them removed and to get the cupola professionally cleaned and painted.

“There were supposed to be windows in that cupola.” He says coo-pohhhh-la, with the emphasis on the middle syllable, and I say coo-polla, like Italians would—I think. It makes me smile.

“Shall I get someone to do that? Put windows in?”

“Why not? That was the plan. I imagined my…” phyrr zzitz “…up in that tower, looking at the glorious view, like a princess, and the secret staircase down to my…” bzzzp bzzpb “It didn’t work.”

No. Well.

Alice climbs on my lap, wanting to talk to her dad. It’s Lara this, Lara that, and the occasional reference to Teacher Pick, and a lot about Buster. Lucas laughs and asks her questions. Seconds before they say goodbye he asks to speak to me.

“Why did you call? You could have emailed all this.”

I hesitate. I could have. “I wanted to hear your voice,” I say, although I don’t really say—it just comes out of my mouth. “We,” is what I had meant to say, “me and Alice,” but I didn’t.

Believe me, Lucas, out here on the wild and desolate coast of Maine, just a little too far out of Lobster Cove to be cosy, the mind also plays tricks. The mind and the heart. If I know one thing Lucas, I know this. I want to be that princess in your tower, your coo-pohhhh-la. I want it to be me.

Amy calls the second Alice falls asleep.

“I had a call from Lucas this minute,” she tells me, “way out in the North Sea.”

A complaint? God, I hope not. “And?”

“We didn’t chat. The line was terrible, but he did manage to ask me a question.”

“Oh?”

“It’s personal information he’s after, and I need your permission to give it. He wants to know if you’re in a relationship.”

Oh. “Why doesn’t he ask me himself?”

“You tell me.”

Obviously, I can’t. I guess he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself if—

“When I interviewed you, Lara, you stated ‘not in a relationship’, but that’s not the kind of information I send to a client. I keep it confidential, for my eyes only.”

My heart’s skippety-hopping while my tummy does figures of eight. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Can I tell him?”

“I can.”

“What! And bust him? No, let me.”

Yes, Amy, sir. “Okay.”

We chat some more, say goodbye and hang up. It’s a clear-sky night in Maine, but my head finds some clouds to shove itself into, and that’s how I go around for the rest of the evening, smiling all over my face.