ChapterSeven
I head downstairs, and take Larry for a trot so he can do his business. I see that my car has been retrieved, and sits forlornly in one corner of the small car park. The dog decides to pee on one of its tyres in protest.
By the time we go back inside, the place is about half-full, and a barman is busy serving. I notice the couple with the Springer Spaniels is still here. One of them thumps its tail when it sees us, but other than that there is no dog-based drama.
I spot Jake behind the bar, restocking the fridge with small glass bottles, and he waves me over.
“You look refreshed,” he says, giving me a small smile. “Everything okay?”
His tone tells me that he has managed to see beneath the clean hair and new clothes, through to the slightly murkier truth. It is borderline alarming, and I don’t want to engage in anything with a depth of more than five centimetres right now.
“Yep! Great. Thought I’d take you up on that offer of a drink, but if you’re busy, that’s no problem.”
“Nothing that can’t wait. Go and find a seat and I’ll be over in a minute. What’s your poison?”
“Surprise me. Anything at all,” I reply, then cast my eye over the various pumps and labels. “Though on second thoughts, nothing that has the words ‘Wizard’s Brew’ or ‘Crabber’s Delight’ in its name.”
He laughs and says: “Fair enough. Sardine Stout it is then…only kidding. Go on, sit. You look exhausted.”
I try not to be offended at that and do as I am told, pausing on the way to look at a huge framed map of this part of Dorset. I see the busy road I was driving along earlier, and I see place names I recognise as not being too far away – Lyme Regis, Burton Bradstock, West Bay. I see the smaller road I ended up walking down, but what I don’t see is Starshine Cove – on the map there is nothing but a yellow wedge of colour that indicates the beach. Huh, I think, weird – Starshine Cove does not officially exist. It is entirely possible I am having some kind of extremely lucid dream, in which I’ve created an alternative universe.
I wave to the Springer Spaniel people – imaginary or not, I don’t want to be rude – and then find one of the snug side rooms that only holds one table. It has a view of the beach, still glorious in the now fading light, and it makes me feel safe to be enclosed and cosy. Larry settles at my feet, twirling around three times before curling up in a fluffy ball. I seem to have accidentally found the most laid-back dog in the known world.
Feeling guilty at the thought, I get out my phone, planning to look at any local websites for missing dogs. I can’t keep him just because he’s filling a hole in my life – he will probably have left one in somebody else’s.
I am browsing, very slowly, through Facebook posts when Jake arrives. He has a pint for himself, and a sparkly concoction in a balloon glass for me. The liquid is clear, but threaded through with what looks like glitter.
“Fancy,” I say, taking a sniff, “what is it?”
“Starshine Special,” he replies grandly. “House cocktail. Basically a glorified gin and tonic with a few magical secret ingredients.”
“Ah. Magical secret ingredients. I’m starting to think that should be this place’s motto.”
“Well, if you listen to Trevor, that’s factually correct. He has this whole theory about ley-lines and star alignments and stone circles. You should ask him about it sometime – if you’ve got a few days to spare, that is.”
I pull a face and sip my drink. It is delicious, and also dangerous – I should definitely not have another one of these. Or at least not another two.
“So, how did you end up here?” I ask, remembering what Connie said earlier, about him not having been in the village for too long. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
He grins, and it is a knockout grin, lighting up his whole face and chasing away the more reserved man I’ve seen so far. It is possibly even more dangerous than the Starshine Special.
“I don’t mind you asking, but I totally get why you did – and it’s refreshing to have someone around who seems to respect personal boundaries…”
“Not Connie’s specialist subject, is it?”
“No. I’m…well, I’m slowly getting used to it. I still need time off every now and then, though – make sure I speak to people who don’t live here, make sure I actually leave the place every now and then. Still remind myself that I’m an individual, not part of a whole. That makes me a weirdo by Starshine standards.”
“Ha! I don’t think it’s weird. We all have to keep a bit of ourselves tucked away, don’t we?”
“We do. In reserve, just in case. That’s my theory anyway, but maybe I’m just being bloody-minded… As for how I ended up here, well, that’s a funny story – or at least it seems it now. It didn’t back then. It was about four years ago, and I was not at a good place in my life. In fact I was in a completely dark place. I won’t bore you with the details, but my mum had just died. She’s originally from Italy, and went back there when she was older – so she was a long way away and it was all…complicated, let’s leave it at that. And while all that was going on, my marriage imploded. I reacted to all the upheaval by throwing myself into work.”
“Running a hotel?” I ask, noting how he has skimped over the ins-and-outs of his dark place, and not faulting him for it – I know I hoard my own story as well.
“No, actually, I was a property developer. Buying, doing up, selling on – that kind of thing, but on a large scale. I was making a lot of money, and ticking all the boxes, but I wasn’t really feeling it – the money was just a way of keeping score. Of telling myself I was doing something right at least, that I hadn’t made a balls of absolutely everything in my life.”
I nod, and understand maybe better than he thinks – I saw Mark’s ambition and work ethic skyrocket after we lost Lizzie as well. I was the opposite – mine dwindled to nothing. Once we were through the worst of the pandemic, I signed up with the locum agency, and kept everything very low-key and manageable. I could have joined a local surgery, or been based in a big health centre, but I think I needed to keep moving – it was as though I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of a full-time base, of close colleagues who might become friends, of patients who I might start to care for a bit too much. Because once you have those things – the friends, the permanence, the people you care about – you can also lose them.
“So,” I say, seeing that he has stalled a little – that sharing even this much is still not easy. “Did you drive into Starshine Cove planning to demolish it all and build a holiday village instead? Like in one of those Hallmark movies where the handsome-but-ruthless property mogul discovers he has a heart of gold after all?”
