Annie refused her mother’s invitation to stay for dinner. They’d taken a family walk around the island and been back to her mum’s for another cup of tea and now all Annie could think about was going home. Gerty wanted her to go to their house so she could show her her new trampoline but Annie politely declined. Although the look of horror on Suzi’s face at the idea of an un-arranged pop-in had almost been enough to make her take her niece up on the offer.
‘When are you coming back?’ Her mum asked as she stood on the doorstep in her slippers, wrapping her cardie round her against the afternoon chill coming off the river.
‘I’m not sure. I’ve got to tie up some stuff with work. You know?’ Annie ran her hand through her hair, trying to save it from frizzing up in the moisture.
‘I like your hair like that,’ her mum said. ‘Very modern.’
Annie rolled her eyes, reached up self-concisely to touch the shorn edges of her hair. When she’d finished the shareholder document and presented the mortgage company with her stupidly large cheque, she’d decided that maybe now was the time to celebrate. She had finally achieved what she set out to do. No longer would she have to scrimp and save, squirrelling away money, in an attempt to prove herself. When she couldn’t pay her dad back her loan, it seemed vital to put that money into something else. To prove that she wasn’t the flake they all thought her. That she could create a business, she could be a success. She could invest as her father invested.
Why she never mentioned it to anyone still confused her. Especially when Jonathan’s every success was flaunted on the family WhatsApp group. But it felt like this was her little secret that none of them could take from her. She was triumphant. And none of them could tarnish it with their set-in-stone views of her character.
Sending over her finished files she wasn’t ‘Oh, Annie!’, she was Annie White, owner of White Graphics and Illustration, home-owner. For the first time she hadn’t felt like she was masquerading under a flashy title that she’d made up. It actually felt like her. Like she could relax and believe it. So, to celebrate, she’d bought herself a latte from Caffè Nero, one glossy magazine and one trashy one, a whole big round chocolate orange, and then as she was perusing a new scarf in the window of a far-too-expensive boutique she’d seen a girl walk out the salon next door with dip-dyed pink hair and she’d thought, I want pink hair. Or at least new hair. She felt like suddenly she was allowed to let a little bit more of herself back in. She had paid for her mistakes.
‘I’m all yours,’ she’d said to the hairdresser. He’d waffled on about side-swept fringes framing the face, textured ends and on-trend jagged cut layers transforming a traditional pixie cut. When he’d said that white-blonde streaks were very now she’d nodded and told him to go for it.
And when she’d left the salon, the man from the deli had wolf-whistled and given her a free cannoli.
But now, embarrassed by her mum’s attention, Annie lied and said, ‘It’s been like this for ages.’
‘Well I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘It’s a teenager’s haircut,’ her brother called out as he came from the living room to the door and stood just behind her mum. ‘I don’t know what your clients think.’
Annie sucked in a breath. He could make her feel tiny. Like a snail on the doorstep looking up at his looming figure.
‘Anyway, look, Annie, before you go, you need to sort that business out. It’s just haemorrhaging money.’
‘Jonathan, I’ll deal with it.’
‘You can’t just ignore it, Annie. Get it sold. Better yet, tear it down.’ He crossed his arms in front of him and leant against the door jamb, talking as if there was no other possible opinion than his. ‘It’s not listed, it’s not a conservation area, they’d let you knock it down. If anything it’d be a blessing ‒ give a better view of the cherry trees. I mean, that’s why people come here, isn’t it? There’s better food at the pub, better views of the river. Flog them the cherry pie recipe and your hands are clean. I can do it for you if you want.’
‘Oh yeah, right,’ Annie laughed. ‘You must be joking.’
‘Annie,’ her mum warned.
She watched Jonathan’s nostrils flare as he breathed in through his nose. ‘I got a good price for that land, Annie.’
Annie scoffed. ‘You succumbed to a developer’s charm and you know it.’
The reminder of the land her dad had owned made Annie mad and she had to look away for a moment. Take in the rows of neatly planted mini daffodils that lined the front path and the foxgloves and delphiniums standing tall by the front gate. A lot of people moaned about the gardening conditions on Cherry Pie, too damp to grow anything. But her mother had never had any trouble. Her allotment was the same, competition-worthy vegetables every year without fail. And the Cherry Pie Veg-Off trophy on her mantelpiece year after year.
Jonathan was covering his back, waffling on about bringing the island into the twenty-first century, while Winifred tried to placate the situation. ‘Maybe you should talk to Valtar about the accounts?’ she suggested, waving away Jonathan’s snort of derision that implied the place wasn’t worth a penny.
Annie remembered the reading of the will, where it was revealed that the bulk of her father’s property portfolio had been left to her brother. Most of it she was happy for him to have; the shops in Soho, the restaurant in Vauxhall, the townhouses in Southampton. But the wasteland on the far side of the island, that her dad had been umming and ahhing about what to do with ‒ contemplating everything from a wetland centre to a cinema ‒ Annie had desperately wanted. Her intention being to preserve that land, and his dream. To do something good and beautiful with it. But it had all gone to Jonathan because he was the one they all trusted. He wasn’t the one who’d made the mistakes. He was the one with the bloody PhD. She’d ram that certificate up his nose if it wasn’t framed in his surgery.
And what had he done? He’d been duped by a smarmy developer and flogged the plot in a deal that still made people wince when they talked about it. Her father had been a wheeler-dealer, no bones about it. Alan Sugar crossed with Arthur Daley. He chucked a bit of money here. A bit there. Lackadaisical with a streak of ruthlessness. Built up an empire during the week based on shady deals done in the back rooms of pubs and cafes off the beaten track. Places where she sat at the counter and ate ice cream while he went out the back for a meeting that seemed, to little Annie, to involve mainly wild hand gestures and oodles of red wine. But however shady, it was all done with a heart of gold, a Robin Hood moral compass that made him continually bat away the very developers that her brother had fallen straight in with. A generosity of spirit that made people nod to him in the street as he walked past. Had people turning up on their doorstep at all hours needing help with their problems. He was like the unofficial mayor and while he was alive the island just knew it was safe.
Sadly, the only thing her brother had inherited from her father was his stubborn self-belief. The rest ‒ the entrepreneurial skill, the emotional intelligence, the Lady Luck chancer gene ‒ had skipped him completely. It was Valtar who had diplomatically stepped in and saved the rest of the portfolio. Securing sensible deals at good rates when the market was buoyant.
‘OK, I’ll talk to Valtar.’ Annie nodded.
‘He’ll just tell you what I’m telling you,’ Jonathan sighed.
Annie cracked. ‘Oh for goodness sake. You’re so annoying. You’re a doctor, you know nothing about how to run a cafe.’
‘Oh and you do?’ he scoffed.
‘Please don’t argue.’ Winifred held her hands up to quiet the pair of them. ‘Remember, Annie, Dad wouldn’t have minded what you do with it, so don’t feel under any pressure.’
Suzi had come to the door with the yapping dog in her arms. ‘We’ve got to go, hun,’ she said, stroking Jonathan’s arm.
‘Me too,’ Annie said, flicking the flicky hair that she was completely un-used to behind her ear, for ever ruined by Jonathan’s teenage haircut comment, ‘Thanks for having me.’
She heard her brother sigh as he walked away from the door and it reminded her so much of when they were kids that she wanted to run back in and shake him. Suzi left with him, the two of them speaking just low enough so Annie couldn’t hear.
‘Aunty Annie, are you going?’ Gerty came running out the door and down the path. Wearing lemon-yellow jeans and a fluffy pink jumper, she looked as sweet as the frosting on a cupcake.
‘Yeah, honey, I have to go back.’
‘I thought you were staying for ever now?’ Gerty said, big blue eyes staring up at her like a guppy.
‘I’m not sure the island could handle me,’ Annie laughed, pushing Gerty’s fringe back so it stuck up at crazy, curly angles and then walking away down the path and through the gate.
‘I’d like you to stay,’ she heard Gerty call from where she stood, and Annie turned so she was walking backwards and waved at the sweet little face.
Then, as she was still walking the wrong way, her attention focused on Gerty, watching as she bounded back into the house, she felt herself collide with a solid wall of person. Felt strong hands steady her as she stumbled.
‘God, sorry,’ she said, turning and trying to get her balance. She found herself staring at the bobbles of an old black woollen jumper. Glancing up, the guy’s face was obscured by the shadow of a baseball cap pulled low, and it took a moment for her to realise it was the man from the cafe, Matthew.
When she’d got her bearings, Annie stood back from his grip, smoothed down her top and said with a half-smile, ‘You following me?’
‘No,’ he replied, deadpan. ‘Buster had to take a pee,’ he said, reaching up to break off a sprig of blossom.
Annie glanced down and saw an ancient-looking pug dog cocking its leg against one of the colourful wooden planters packed full of evergreen shrubs that were dotted along the path between the cherry trees.
‘Nice,’ she said.
‘Well, when you’ve gotta go…’
The evening was just tipping into twilight. Objects had a hazy edge and the streetlights had come on over the path. Old Victorian ones that flickered with moths, their bulbs laced with spiders’ webs.
‘Well I’m walking this way,’ Annie pointed to the path ahead of her that led past the cottages to a patch of parkland that opened out onto the cafe road.
‘Us too,’ Matthew replied, twirling the sprig of blossom between his fingers and clicking for the pug to follow.
‘OK then.’
‘OK.’
In her whole life Annie had never been quite so aware of her breathing. It was like, with every step, that she forgot how to do it. And it seemed so loud. Matthew didn’t seem to be breathing loudly. If anything he was silent. Silent footsteps, silent breathing. Just a presence next to her that she was finding really difficult to ignore. Every couple of steps she glanced his way, but didn’t want to look too obvious so just caught the swing of his arm or the flick of his flip-flops. In the end she looked down at the dog, lumbering along between them, wheezing like it might drop dead any second. Looking at the dog gave her an excuse to look at Matthew’s calves. Tanned the colour of honeycomb, he had a tattoo up the inside of his leg. It looked like waves. No not waves, mountains. Maybe. Annie didn’t have any tattoos, she’d almost had one many times but never had the nerve and worried that she wouldn’t be able to pull it off, but he was managing to pull his off. Like it was part of his skin, like he was born with it.
‘You don’t strike me as a pug dog man,’ she said for something to say, instantly regretting it for its inanity.
Matthew looked down at the floor, clearly holding in a smile. ‘No?’
‘No.’
‘What does a pug dog man look like?’
‘I don’t know. Just not like you,’ Annie rolled her eyes inwardly at the conversation.
‘He’s not mine. He was Enid’s. I seem to have ended up with him.’
‘That’s nice of you.’
‘Not that nice. I couldn’t get rid of him. I tried to convince your mother to have him but he kept escaping and ending up on my doorstep. But it’s OK, I don’t think he has long left to live.’
‘You can’t say that?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s just there,’ Annie pointed to the dog.
‘He’s a dog.’
‘So?’
Matthew didn’t reply, just raised his eyebrows and looked away with a smirk. Annie couldn’t quite tell if he’d been being serious or not.
‘I didn’t know you’d wanted to buy the wasteland off my brother,’ she said after a while of silence.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s probably a lot of things you don’t know about me.’
‘That is such an unhelpful answer,’ Annie said, stopping abruptly.
‘Why?’
‘Because I was making conversation. You’re meant to say something like, yes, I’d wanted to preserve it for the next generation and I would have said, me too. Annoying that they built ugly yellow brick houses on it, isn’t it? See, conversation. Now we have to carry on in silence.’
Matthew frowned at her for a moment, then his lips twitched with the hint of a smile. He clicked for the dog and they walked on in silence.
Where the path joined the main road on the island there was a big wooden gate that creaked on its hinges like a horror film. She remembered swinging off it as a kid, her dad pushing it like a swing. Her brother once running up behind her, stopping too late and thwacking her head against it. Both her front baby teeth were left behind in the wood. She was pretty sure the marks were still there, two little indentations, but she certainly wasn’t going to point them out as Matthew stepped forward to open the gate for her. Instead she looked at the width of his shoulders. So broad that his jumper seemed to stretch at the seams. And she looked at the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck, blond flicks that brushed the collar of his jumper.
‘After you,’ he said, a wry smile on his lips like he’d caught her staring.
‘Thanks.’
He tilted his head to one side and said, ‘My pleasure.’
Annie rolled her lips together, tried to think of something clever to say but drew a blank.
‘Well have a good evening,’ Matthew said as he leant over and flicked the lock on the gate.
‘You’re not walking any further?’ Annie frowned. There was nothing else around except the cafe, a couple of shops and the massive new state-of-the-art eco house that was bolted and gated like Fort Knox.
‘Nah, this is me,’ he said, gesturing to the huge oak doors that secured the mansion.
‘You live here?’ She said it before she could stop herself. It was the type of place that featured on Grand Designs or Who Lives In This Amazing Jealous-Worthy Property And How The Hell Do They Afford It?
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Wow.’ Annie was dumbstruck. The front gates loomed almost as high as the sycamore in the orchard next door. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the top part of the house were just visible above the wall and, if she was lucky enough to ever peek through the slatted blinds, it wasn’t hard to imagine what the view would be like. Panoramic. Sky stretching out to infinity. A blanket of blossom from the orchard, fluffy white petals that frothed like ice cream soda, then across to the boat club with its alpine fretwork and pointy roof, then the cusp of the landing stages watching the rowers in their boats, and then out across the river, wide and sparkling, the water just cruising along, taking a break from a hectic winter of storm waves, eddies and floods. Then the big church in town, the high street with the massive green Poundland sign, Starbucks, Carpetright and the McDonald’s golden arches, the patch of park and the lido with its rows of coloured changing huts. He could probably see right the way to London on a clear day; The Shard, The Walkie Talkie, St Paul’s.
‘Well it was nice to meet you…’ he paused with his key in the lock.
‘Annie…Annie White.’ She found herself stumbling over her own name.
‘Matthew. Matt Walker,’ he said, pushing the door open and leaving her with a quick nod of the head.