And yet the thought of seeing him again left her feeling more than just unease. There was anticipation there too, which she was trying to put down to simple curiosity. Robin found she was bashing the eggs into submission, her chunky mayonnaise becoming more of a purée. She scooped the filling into two rolls, emptied packets of Kettle crisps on to the plates and took them through to where Molly was waiting on one of the sofas facing the sea view.
This room, she had already decided, would be called Sea Shanty. The upright piano, its keys remaining dusty for years, sat in one corner, and Robin had plans to distress the long wooden table that ran down the room’s centre, buy a tea-chest coffee table and antique globe, and soften the room by replacing the teal wallpaper with ivory and adding navy and red rugs, curtains and sofa cushions.
She sat down, her breathing slowly returning to normal. Thinking about the guesthouse was becoming a balm to other, more troubling imaginings, somewhere comforting she could turn to when thoughts of Tim, or memories of Neve, tried to take over. But, it seemed, Molly wasn’t prepared to let the subject lie.
‘Something else I should tell you about when I saw Tim,’ she said slowly, scooping up some stray mayonnaise with her finger.
‘What?’ Robin asked, a little too sharply. ‘Sorry, what else? Was he with someone we know?’
‘Uh uh.’ Molly shook her head. ‘I didn’t speak to them, but I might have scooted close to their table on a couple of occasions, and I heard them mention Goldcrest Road. Specifically number four.’
Robin swallowed too quickly and started coughing.
‘Shit, Robin!’ Molly slapped her vigorously on the back until the coughing had subsided and Robin’s shoulder blades were throbbing. ‘I should have waited until you’d finished eating.’
‘They want to buy Tabitha’s house?’
‘I didn’t hear enough of their conversation – I could only pretend to be interested in last year’s New Year’s Eve menu for so long. But they definitely mentioned next door.’
‘Do they want to develop it?’ Robin asked. ‘What’s it like inside, is it sellable?’
‘No idea,’ Molly mumbled through a mouthful of crisps. ‘But Malcolm and Tim are moving on from straightforward sales these days – except for “high end” properties.’ She accompanied the last words with quote-mark fingers. ‘They’re all about the developments. Replacing the old with the new, smartening up the area, as if Campion Bay needs to be turned into a sea of luxury high-rise apartment blocks. No beach finds in their properties, and I expect the word “guesthouse” would be laughed at for sounding too quaint.’
‘Well,’ Robin said, ‘they can’t do that with Tabitha’s house. It’s got special status.’
‘The Jane Austen plaque?’
Robin narrowed her eyes. ‘I will fight you to the ends of the earth on this point, Molly. Ends. Of. The. Earth.’
‘Tabitha was eccentric,’ Molly said, in a tone that reminded Robin she’d said it all before. ‘She put it up there herself. I’ve always thought that, even though she denied it.’
‘No,’ Robin shook her head. ‘Tabitha was just lonely; she lived on her own in that huge house, and she liked to know what was happening with the neighbours and sometimes, sometimes, she would embellish the stories she told us, but that doesn’t mean she made this up. It’s a good quality plaque!’
‘Any sign-maker could copy it – you can probably buy them on gift websites and create your own slogan. And there’s no evidence that Jane Austen wrote a book here.’
‘A lot of Persuasion is set in Lyme Regis! It’s a few miles down the road. It’s so plausible and it’s been there for years, since before online gift shops existed.’
Molly turned her gaze towards the window. ‘Honestly, if that plaque being genuine meant the difference between number four staying as it is and Tim and Malcolm getting their hands on it, I’d swap sides. She was a laugh though, wasn’t she, Tabitha?’
Robin grinned. ‘She was amazing. I’m just sorry I lost touch with her when I went to London. I should have made more of an effort to visit her when I came back to see Mum and Dad. And now her house has been empty for nearly a year and, if what you heard is anything to go by, it’s about to be gobbled up and turned into posh flats that are only lived in for two months out of twelve, just to fill Tim Lewis’s pockets.’
‘See if you can borrow an extra million off your folks and double the size of the guesthouse.’
Robin rolled her eyes and polished off her sandwich. That idea was obviously well beyond her means, but maybe there was some other way she could prevent next door from falling into the hands of the developers. It had been years since she’d been inside Tabitha’s house, but as a child she’d spent hours there, playing Monopoly and Gin Rummy and being introduced to Tabitha’s strange taste in tea. She’d been devastated when she’d heard the old woman had died, but it had been too close to Neve’s death for her to fully absorb it.
It was only now that she was back in Campion Bay that she’d been reminded of the time she spent with her, wondering if the figurines she’d had, the sheep collection that, as an eight-year-old, Robin had adored, were still in the cabinet in the dining room, the glass front keeping out years of dust. She wondered what the house would look like to her adult eyes. Maybe if Tim did get his hands on the property – or the front door keys at least – and Robin plucked up the courage to see him again, he’d let her have one last look before he wiped out the original features in a fit of magnolia paint and stainless steel.
Campion Bay town centre, a twenty-minute walk from the guesthouse, was a mixture of chain stores, quaint seaside gift shops and independent cafés. Bunting was strung up along the brick weave, pedestrianized Seagull Street all year round, the pink, orange and blue fabric flapping enthusiastically in the January wind, and the warm glow of shop interiors beckoned Robin in out of the cold.
She pulled her large jute bag further up her shoulder and pushed open the door of Seagull Street Gallery, the bell giving an appealing ‘ding’ as she stepped inside. The gallery owner, a grey-haired man in his fifties with rimless glasses and a round, pleasant face, looked up from a desk in the corner and nodded her a greeting. She returned it and began a slow tour of the room. It had white walls and polished pine floorboards, each painting given its own space.
In London, when she and Neve had gone on fact-finding missions, or after an initial meeting with a client, Neve would often take Robin into the National Gallery, dragging her by the arm to look at the latest exhibition and always, without fail, the room that housed Turner’s seascapes: The Fighting Temeraire and The Evening Star. Her friend could stand in front of them for hours, absorbing them, though she’d usually limit it to ten minutes in deference to Robin’s waning interest.
Buying one of the Turners was about a hundred times less plausible than Robin being able to purchase Tabitha’s house in an act of preservation, but she had the idea that one of the bedrooms in the new guesthouse would celebrate the work of local artists, with seascapes and portraits on the walls, the understated furniture giving it the feel of a mini gallery.
Her boots echoed on the floor and she stilled her movements, walking almost on tiptoe as she looked at the paintings; vibrant still-life acrylics in chunky frames; oil portraits with bold brush marks and, as she’d been hoping for, a wide array of seascapes. She stood in front of a large painting of the sea at dawn. The sky was burnished with golden streaks against the first, pale beginnings of blue, the water a dark turmoil beneath and a single smudge of colour on the horizon that, despite its lack of detail, was undoubtedly a boat. It was mesmerizing, an image to be stared at for hours. Robin felt her throat tighten,