‘All settled then? Is it still quiet?’ Sophie’s voice crackled down the line. Isobel pressed the phone against her ear and heard her dad and Ella roaring with laughter in the background.
‘Quieter than there.’ She flexed her achy calf muscles. The hill that wound its way up here was a killer. Snaking and rising all the way up to where the cottage sat like a lost shoe under a gloomy canopy of evergreens. Isobel had smelled her clutch burning on her first crawl up the private road, but the price had been right and the particulars had promised privacy. Obscurity. Curlew Cottage had pretty much delivered.
Sophie shut a door and the laughter died. ‘Weather improved?’
‘Yeah, today was hot.’
Isobel had driven through sheeting rain to Fallenbay, the air inside the cottage musty when she’d first arrived. Bright, white plastered walls cold and cave-like to the touch. It didn’t feel lived in at all, but then she’d sussed how to light the log burner and eaten her first meal-for-one looking out towards the harbour in the distance.
One-bed cottage . . . Fronted by private woodland . . . Open aspect to the rear . . . Sea view . . . Yes there was, but to see it she’d eaten her dinner standing up, leaning against the frame of the bathroom door, the distant boats bringing welcome specks of colour through the little square window over the bathtub.
Sophie fell quiet again. Isobel checked her reception while Sophie thought of something to say. ‘So what are you thinking to your new digs? Now you’ve been there a couple of days? Did you ask about a landline?’
‘There’s a landline here, in the cottage. But I’m not sure how they’d charge for any calls I make so I’m just gonna stick with my mobile.’
‘Great. A mobile with no reception. Here’s hoping you keep it charged, at least. What about the rest of it?’
Of course it was charged, she wasn’t stupid. She looked around the clean, compact cottage kitchen. ‘It’s okay. It’s cosy.’
‘Looked pokey on the photographs.’
‘No, not pokey. Just . . . enough. Plenty of space actually, for a loner.’
‘You’re not a loner. Well, you’re not alone, anyway. Agh, I hate thinking of you there by yourself, Isobel.’
‘I’ll probably be back next week.’
‘No you won’t,’ Sophie said certainly. ‘You looked different when you left here, Is. Determined. And just as I was getting used to stealing your clothes again.’ Sophie was trying for upbeat. ‘Come back. Please? I’ll bunk with Ella, you can have the big room. We can come up with a brilliant plan – a bucket list! Everything you want to do with your life. I’ll help you, however I can, which probably won’t be much, granted. You’re the smart one, but I got the bigger boobs so it’s fine. Just . . . come home, Isobel. Please?’
She hovered next to the stable door, trying to catch another bar of signal. The sun was dying over the edge of the neighbouring woodland. These sessions are to help you make your way out of the woods, Isobel. Therapy speak. But it had been Sophie who’d led her through at the time, not Jenny and her analogies. If there had been any hint of a silver lining to the nightmare, Sophie had been it. They’d had a lifetime of lukewarm sisterhood, but then the blip, as their dad called it, had brought them together. The constant stream of unrelenting spite, the horrendous trail of filth and hate, it had somehow flowed out to something good right down at the core of them, forging their sisterhood into a solid, iron-like thing. They’d become a team Isobel could trust in, a message Sophie still hammered home at every given opportunity. And it was tempting. Despite everything Isobel knew now, Sophie’s suggestion to go home and pretend was just so achingly tempting.
‘I can’t.’
‘But what if you dip again, Is? You’re so many miles away from us.’
‘I’m not that far.’
‘Have you taken anything there with you?’
‘No.’
‘Not even for emergencies?’
‘No. That’s what phones are for. I’ll be fine.’
‘I have a bad feeling about this.’
‘You have a bad feeling about changing brands of shampoo, Soph. I can’t just pop a pill every time I struggle with something. I need a better mechanism than that.’
‘But . . .’
‘Sophie, relax. Really, it’s quite pleasant having a bit of thinking time. It’s kind of lovely here actually. There’s a sea view and everything. I walked down into the harbour this morning, had breakfast. It was good.’
‘So . . . does it feel like you’re kind of on holiday, sort of?’
Isobel’s eyes followed a darting movement outside, a squirrel skittering up into the branches. Perhaps she should’ve found somewhere less treed. She wouldn’t tell Sophie about the woodland just yet. She would keep that one in her pocket for now. Sophie’s brain already worked overtime thanks to natural sisterly concern and too much Most Evil on Discovery HD. Knowing there was woodland next to the cottage would freak her out entirely. It had been Isobel’s first thought when she’d seen the cottage ad. What would Sophie think? They both believed in big bad wolves.
Isobel held her cup of tea to her chest and breathed this new and foreign air. ‘I guess it does. It’s weird how quickly you get used to staying somewhere new.’ It was the staying alone bit that felt alien, not the waking up beneath gnarled timber beams or the super-soft mattress or the different brands of cleaning products left for her in the cupboard under the sink. She made a mental note to restock the cottage’s provisions before she left, whenever that would be.
‘I don’t want you to get used to it. Spend a few more days down there in Freaksville if you have to, read some books, eat some seaside shit . . . and come home?’
‘Everyone’s been fairly normal so far, Soph. No webbed feet or anything.’ Which wouldn’t have been that odd really, given the whole town’s thirst for watersports.
‘Who have you met? Where have you been? Male or female?’ There was a lilt of agitation to Sophie’s tone.
‘Sophie, relax. Just the old chap who owns this place, and a local coffee shop owner. She seemed quite nice, friendly.’ Isobel felt for the woman in Coast. The spat she’d witnessed hadn’t involved Isobel but her anxiety levels had still spiked. An actual real-life verbal altercation. Where people gesticulated and threw insults face-to-face, not hidden behind a computer keyboard. Or a username. A stupid username, like DEEP_DRILLERZ.
‘Did you just say coffee shop?’
‘Sophie, it’s fine—’
‘You promised you’d keep me in the loop!’
‘I am keeping you in the loop.’
‘No you aren’t. You went there. You went straight to Coast without telling me!’
‘Actually I walked past three times first. What a wimp, huh?’
Sophie made an exasperated sound. ‘You’re not a wimp, Isobel. Definitely not that. You’re just a bit . . . mental.’
Sophie had no idea. ‘Jenny thinks mental isn’t constructive terminology, Soph.’
‘She thought this little holiday idea of yours was legit, so let’s not kid ourselves that Jenny’s with the programme.’ A silence stretched between them. Across the yard the owner of the cottages loaded his wolf-dog into his battered Land Rover. ‘So you’ve met the owner of Coast. Fine. What about the old chap? The landlord?’
‘Arthur? He lives in the smallholding, sort of next door. The two cottages share the track, he lives in the bigger one with his massive dog. You should