The day I turned 28, I bought a lighthouse and met the love of my life.
I mean, as you do. Get up, have boiled egg, meet love of life, buy lighthouse. We’ve all been there, right?
Of course I didn’t know, when I was right in the fog of it, that I was meeting the love of my life. I didn’t know I was less than an hour from buying my very own lighthouse either. Sometimes these things just jump out at you with a tummy-flopping, life-changing “boo!”.
Cragport’s Victorian lighthouse stuck up out of the chalk cliff that jutted into the North Sea’s foam-crusted swill, rotting itself quietly into the ground just as it had for years. A red-and-white-swirled job like a fairground helter-skelter, half bleached by slashes of seagull guano. It was about 90ft high and indecently phallic, arched windows long denuded of glass at intervals all the way up and a round knob crowning the lantern room on top.
Once upon a time, this beacon-that-was had beamed Cragport’s fishermen safely home. But its light had gone out for good decades ago, and these days all locals saw was an eyesore – if they noticed it at all. Cracked and graffiti-covered, the one-time colossus was just another broken thing in a town full of them.
I passed it every morning walking Monty. Barely noticed it, like everyone else. It was just furniture for a background, marked daily as Monty’s property through the medium of a sly little wee up the side.
That day a man was there, nailing a notice to the half-rotten wooden door at a little distance from us. I put Monty on his lead before he decided both man and lighthouse belonged to him and it was damp trouser time.
“Morning.” The man turned to flash us a bright smile that had no place on any self-respecting person’s face at that time on a damp Saturday. It was like he wasn’t even hungover. Surreal.
“Morning.” I nodded to him as we passed, but something in his smile made me stop.
I hadn’t seen him around Cragport before, though he had the town’s own Yorkshire twang. Squinting at him in the sun’s white glare, I could just about make him out: tall, broad, with longish hair and a rash of stubble, dressed in jeans and a padded jacket to keep out the chill nor’wester.
And he was gorgeous, really bloody gorgeous. I mean, if you went for that chiselled, rough-hewn look. He wasn’t my type, but still, it was hard not to stare. You didn’t see many bodies like that around town, not since Jess had dragged me off to see The Dreamboys last year.
“What’s it say?” I asked him, pointing to the notice. I had to raise my voice a little so he could hear me over the yammerings of an increasingly toothsome clifftop wind. “They’re not pulling the old thing down, are they?”
“They can’t.” He tapped in the last nail and turned to face me. “Listed building.”
“Oh. Good.” I wasn’t quite sure why I said that. Something about the derelict lighthouse disappearing from my skyline rankled. “So what’s the notice for? Is it for sale?”
“Yep.” His face broke into a broad grin. “Why, you want to buy it?”
“A lighthouse?” I laughed and gestured down at my scruffy stonewash jeans and too-big hoodie-with-fashionable-bleach-stain combo, my hungover dog-walking costume of choice. “Don’t let this well-heeled exterior fool you, mate. I don’t start the day with a swim in a Scrooge McDuck money bin, you may be surprised to learn.”
“You don’t need to. Here.” He beckoned me to his side and I skimmed the laminated notice fixed to the door.
LIGHTHOUSE FOR SALE
£1
First offer gets it – NO TIMEWASTERS
Call 01947 482704 to enquire
“A quid?” I said to the man with a puzzled frown. “Oh, and it’s Bobbie, by the way.”
I was hoping he’d tell me his name in return so I could stop thinking of him as “the man”.
“I know,” he said, bending to stash his hammer in a small toolbox on the ground.
I cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “You know what?”
“I know you’re Bobbie.”
Er… what? Unless the extra year I’d added to my age that morning had just shoved me arse-first into a full-on senior moment, I was pretty certain I’d never seen this bloke before in my life. Monty was tugging at his lead, keen to claim the rest of his walk, but I ignored him.
My stomach gave a sudden lurch. Could there have been some drunken hook-up I’d forgotten about? If so it’d have to have been a bloody long time ago: it was getting on for nine months since I’d last seen any action in that department. I mean, yes, it was only six months since the big break-up – but that was a whole other story.
The man straightened to face me. Now the blinding sun had disappeared behind a cloud, I could see him more clearly.
The deep green eyes were flecked silver, lightly sparkling as he squinted into the wind. And there was something in his face, a crinkle round the eyes … as if he was enjoying a private joke at someone else’s expense. He reached up to push away the rusty brown hair that was whipping round his forehead.
That face… it did seem familiar. A half-remembered smile…
“Ross?” I said, blinking.
He grinned. “Knew you’d get there eventually.”
“Oh my God!” Impulsively I threw my arms round him, a wave of pleasure sweeping through me. So it was Ross Mason: the boy in the band. What was he doing back here?
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognised him – but then he’d beefed up a lot since sixth form. I released him from the hug and drank in the well-built frame, trying to match it up with the beanpole of a lad who’d sat next to me in English. Not that Ross hadn’t always been good-looking in a cheeky, boyish way, but I never thought he’d grow up to be… well, buff was the only word for it.
And… there had been a hook-up, hadn’t there? My first kiss. School disco, Year 9, slow dancing to Angels by Robbie Williams. We’d managed a fair amount of experimental tongue action and some