‘Thor? Where are you, you beast?’
Ran called to his cat as he pushed open the door to Creekside Cottage. The kitchen was in deep shade and the flagstones soothingly cool. Thor had found the only pool of light, a small patch on the mat by the back door where he was curled up nose to tail in what Angel called a ‘kitty croissant’.
Feline sleeping postures aside, Ran couldn’t imagine a less croissant-like cat. Croissants were fluffy and sweet and Thor was neither. He was a sleek, honed predator … Ran had nicknamed him the Beast of Bodmin due to his penchant for catching any kind of creature from wood mice to frogs. He smiled to himself. Thor was a softy, really – when he wasn’t in killing mode.
Hearing Ran enter the kitchen via the sitting room, Thor opened one eye, saw that the visitor wasn’t worth chasing, and went back to sleep.
‘Welcome home to you too, buddy.’
Thor ignored him, not even blinking at the clatter as Ran threw his keys on the kitchen table. Ran stood and allowed himself to take a breath. The stillness was absolute. No breeze, no traffic buzz, only the cheeping of birds in the trees and waterfowl from the creek below the cottage. He’d been here well over a year now and still hadn’t got used to the quiet, often stopping to listen to it and marvelling.
Creekside Cottage was situated a mile out of the village in a deeply wooded valley at the very end of the amusingly named Smuggler’s Creek. Ran doubted if anything more exciting than ducks had ever hidden away on the creek, where there was only a trickle of water carving a path through mudflats foraged by waders and ducks.
Admittedly, it was a secretive, hidden-away spot where paths would wind from the cottage through the woods and over duckboards and footbridges, to Falford village itself. He’d often been glad to melt away into their shade and privacy while he forgot his past regrets.
Even so, regrets had stalked him all the way home.
He wished he hadn’t been so quick to deflect the opportunity to invite Bo to the cottage in person to discuss the music for the festive schedule. Most of all, he wished he hadn’t lied to her about Madame Odette’s comments.
To be fair, it wasn’t only the guilt he felt at lying that had made him reluctant to invite her. Conscious that he wasn’t the best company at the moment – if ever – he didn’t want to inflict his gloomy self on her. Madame Odette had probed at some raw wounds, and he had enough on his plate.
For a few hours at the festival, he’d managed to distract himself with lively company and great music but now he had to face up to what awaited him at home.
Even at Creekside Cottage, he couldn’t escape from reality.
He’d chosen the house as a bolthole from his former life in London the previous spring, though in many ways it was an impractical house for a man several inches over six feet. The thatched cottage and thick walls were charming but meant that the two bedrooms had been slotted in under the eaves.
The beamed lintels over their doorways had been padded to prevent occupants from doing themselves a serious injury. Even so, Ran had been caught out many times before he’d learned to duck instinctively when entering the master bedroom, which overlooked the cottage garden and the water’s edge.
Downstairs, there was a reasonably sized sitting room and a dining kitchen with a bright blue AGA which had taken Ran almost as long to get used to as the doorways. On the upside, it was a favourite napping spot for Thor.
In spite of its quirks, Creekside Cottage did have one major feature that had caused Ran to pay his deposit almost on the spot. The sitting room and the adjacent snug boasted floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and several built-in alcoves where he could stack his vinyl records.
Seeing his music lining the walls had given him a pleasure he wouldn’t admit to anyone other than another collector. He hadn’t been able to keep many in his London Docklands flat, apart from a small selection which were deemed to look stylishly retro on the white plastic cube units by the TV. The rest had been boxed up and moved into a storage unit.
In the solitude of the cottage, Ran wracked his brain, searching his mental files for where he might have seen Madame Odette before.
Was she someone from the diving club – a former customer? People tended to look very different in a full wetsuit and hood to their everyday clothes. She wasn’t one of the Flingers, that was for sure. Even if he hadn’t recognised her, Bo or Angel surely would. They knew everyone for miles around.
The woman was either very clever or completely bonkers. He’d told himself that a hundred times since he’d left her tatty tent and yet …
‘A woman whose name began with “P”.’
He cringed. That was too close for comfort, not that anything in connection with Phaedra’s name gave him much comfort. But why did the reminder of his past make his stomach clench and flood his mind with regrets?
He’d thought he’d moved on; he’d carved out a new life in Falford and had found solace in his music and diving. Hell, he’d even made new friends and started to trust people – was beginning to imagine growing closer to one of them.
Then Madame-bloody-Odette – whose real name was probably something sensible like Rachel or Sarah – had ripped off the scab and made him bleed again. That shocked him.
There was still no breeze to speak of but the rear patio was in deep shade so he took a pint of iced water out there and sat on the low wall that separated the garden from the bank of the creek. The tide was coming in, and eddies of brown water crept over the mudflats, filling in the shallow gullies and indentations.
Midges buzzed in the evening air as the sun sank lower. September was only around the corner, the nights drawing in despite the hot days. Ran needed something stronger than tap water but he wasn’t ready to go back inside and face opening the official-looking envelope that had arrived before he’d set off for the fete. It remained on the table, propped up against the empty teapot.
He tipped the glass to his mouth, as the rain started in earnest.
He had enough self-awareness to recognise that the reason he’d been so angry with Madame Odette was that her comments had struck a raw nerve. He did not expect to ‘be with the love of his life’ by Christmas because he’d already met her – and lost her. And it was no one’s fault but his own.