A friendly woman much her own age, with a child Em's age, struck up a conversation with Tess in the queue inside the bakery. She was Lisa, she said. Born and bred here, she said. You're coming to Musical Minis, she told Tess – your daughter will love it and we mums need someone new amongst us. We go for lunch afterwards, Lisa said, then on to the playground. She even waited for Tess to be served and then said, goodbye, see you soon – great to meet you, pet. To Tess it all sounded as intriguing as it sounded exhausting and she told herself she ought to do it. It would be good for her, and Em.
She walked on, meandering down towards the pier and half wondering if there'd be a flung pile of wetsuits and a semi-naked Seb today. The surf shop was open; there was a rail of sale clothes outside but there was no one tending the shop and no one browsing the wares. No Seb today, at least not on shore. She walked along the pier and watched the surfers but they were indistinguishable in their wetsuits from that distance. The tide was in, lapping greedily around the trestles of the pier, the swirling sea visible through the gaps in the boardwalk. The fishermen at the end of the pier had yet to catch anything.
Tess turned and faced inland and looked at the peculiar little cliff lift waiting for the tourist season to start; the vertical line of the track up the cliff looking like a zip. With the two tiny tramcars stationary midway up, it appeared the cliff's flies were half down. To her right, far along the beach, she noted the industrial chimneys of Redcar, the sunlight today investing the scene with the hazy romanticism of Monet as much as the prosaic charm of Lowry. Some distance to her left, the great lumbering mass of Huntcliff Nab commanded the beach to end in a perfect cove. So much to explore, she thought. How long before all this newness becomes my stamping ground?
Her visit to what she now thought of as the Everything Shop brought increased conversation with the proprietor today. Tess asked for rosemary and a shoebox full of packets of dried herbs was produced.
‘Sorry, love. No rosemary, but how about this – fines herbes. Sounds exotic, doesn't it.’
Tess agreed.
The lady continued. ‘Mind you, the way I pronounce it, sounds like a Scandinavian lurgy. Finiz herpiz.’
Tess laughed and had to agree again. ‘Well, I'll risk a packet anyway,’ she said. ‘Oh, and I need two more types as well.’
Between them, Tess and the lady went through the packets of herbs before Tess decided on tarragon and sage.
‘You cooking up a treat then, pet?’
‘I'm restocking. The old ones had creepy crawlies in them.’
‘You vegetarian, then?’
It was said so deadpan that it took a long wink from the proprietor to release Tess's laughter.
‘Would you have a nice vinegar? Try where? Real Meals – is that the deli on the corner of Station Square? Thanks for the recommendation. I'll have some of that jam, please. And do you sell wire wool? Of course you do – you're the Everything Shop.’
There wasn't much change. Tess calculated that balsamic vinegar might have to wait.
‘Stopping here a while, love?’
‘Stopping here, full stop,’ Tess told her. ‘I'm still finding my way around, still finding my feet. I met someone today who told me about a mums and toddlers group.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘London.’
The woman nodded her head gravely. ‘Why?’
Tess was stuck. ‘Why what?’
‘Why London – and why here?’
‘My sister lives in Edinburgh.’ But that was just the pat reason Tess had decided to use when the time was right to finally inform her friends where she was. She smiled at the lady as she prepared to leave. ‘Actually, why not here – it's good.’
The lady nodded.
‘I'm a house-sitter,’ Tess said. ‘Up the top. Anyway, I'd better go. I'm dying for a cup of coffee and it's a steep hike home with this old buggy.’
‘You want to take yourself to Camfields, pet. It's near the car park by Cat Nab, the funny little hilly mound near the beach – bottom of the Gardens. It's your kind of place, I would think, coming from London and all. You'll get your cup of chino there, or a latty or whatever. It's a café – you know – not a caff.’
‘I might just try it,’ Tess thanked her. And the next day she did just that. And the coffee really was excellent.
Nathalie stretched. She didn't really need to, there were no sore muscles or nagging joints to necessitate it. She did so because she was well aware how it presented her figure to its best advantage. So she stood in the front room of her apartment, on a Thursday evening, her hands clasped above her head, a slight hitch to one hip, knowing that her top, skimpy enough, was now stretched over jutting breasts as well as having ridden up to expose her toned stomach. She'd kept her high heels on because they elongated her legs and she'd locked her knees to increase further the sleekness of her limbs. Holding the pose a moment longer, while casting a nonchalant gaze out of the window, she then sighed as if she'd just had a satisfying yawn and she let her body go soft, her hands coming down to rest on her hips, one knee now cocked, breasts still up and out there.
‘So,’ she said, letting it hang, her lips maintaining a perfect ‘o’ of the word. ‘You will miss me, Joe?’ She did the same thing with her lips to the sound of his name. As pouts go, hers was textbook, but she made it look involuntary, as if it had slipped her mind to return her lips to neutral because sex was always on her mind and never far from her mouth.
Joe was sitting on the sofa, watching Nathalie as if she was a performance, a one-woman show, a private viewing exclusively for him. She didn't need an answer – it hadn't really been an enquiry. He went over to her and placed the tip of his finger against the hole her lips still made. Her tongue flicked at his fingertip before her mouth sucked it all in, down to his knuckle. He moved his other hand deftly up under her short skirt, rubbing his thumb along the gusset of her knickers while he closed his eyes. That mouth of hers, from which came her dirty, husky French accent. That mouth of hers, pretending to be a pussy, pretending his finger was his cock. Yes, he'll bloody miss her.
‘You come back to me soon, non?’
And she was pouting again, coyly, as she fingered the mound straining behind his jeans. He plugged her mouth with his tongue and ran his hands over her body; a grab at a breast, a squeeze at a buttock, a grasp for the back of her neck, a pull at her hair to release it from the chignon so that it fell and bounced around her face and caught across her lips. She started to pull her top over her head, stretching her torso into its best aspect again. Joe took charge of her top and worked it up into a blindfold while he stroked her, at first tantalizingly through the transparent