The House Beneath the Cliffs

by Sharon Gosling

  ‘Thanks for asking! I had a good time.’

  The boat pulled out of the harbour as he hooked an arm around his son’s shoulders. He raised his voice and shouted over the waves, over the engine.

  ‘Do another lunch at the Fishergirl’s Luck.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she shouted back.

  ‘Promise me!’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t make promises I might not be able to keep.’

  He threw up his arms in mock exasperation, but he was still smiling. In another moment the boat had disappeared around the promontory, heading for Gamrie.

  Twenty

  ‘Well,’ said Cathy, who had called not long after Anna had arrived back from her unexpected expedition. ‘That sounds like a pretty full weekend to me. What are you going to do now?’

  Anna glanced at the clock. It was barely eight o’clock, but she was struggling to keep her eyes open. ‘Well, right now I think I’m probably going to crash into bed and go out like a light.’

  ‘What, again? That’s really not like you,’ said Cathy.

  ‘I know,’ Anna laughed. ‘Being here is making me soft. I think it’s all the sea air I’ve had today – I’m exhausted. Or maybe it’s my age. It usually is if you’re a woman, isn’t it, one way or another?’

  ‘As long as it’s not depression,’ Cathy said seriously. ‘I know you say you’re fine about the fling with the hot Kiwi ending, but—’

  ‘It’s not depression,’ Anna assured her. ‘I promise.’

  ‘All right, then. And actually, I was talking about life in general. The pop-up, for example. Doing another few of those would keep you busy, wouldn’t it?’

  Anna sighed. ‘Robert MacKenzie was trying to talk me into doing another lunch, too.’

  ‘Smart man. I knew there was a reason I liked him.’

  ‘You’ve never even met him.’

  ‘Don’t need to. He’s clearly got my girl’s back, and that’s enough for me. Besides, as if there’s any chance of me not liking someone you described as “a young Robert Redford”.’

  Anna leaned back against the sofa, shaking her head. ‘I’m still not sure about doing another lunch.’

  ‘But it went so well!’

  ‘Aside from the humiliating addition of Douglas McKean, you mean?’

  ‘You can’t let one cantankerous old bastard ruin it for you.’

  ‘Robert said that too. Or words to that effect.’

  ‘I told you – smart man. Besides, think of everything you got together for that first lunch – the dishes, for example. You can’t not use those again.’

  ‘I know, I know. It’s not only one old man though, is it? It wasn’t him that called the health and safety people. There’s someone else out there who doesn’t like me.’

  Cathy made a dismissive sound in her throat. ‘What do you care? There are clearly more people who support you than who don’t. Do another one, pronto. I’ll get a poster done. Hey, you know what would be a good idea? You should set up a TripAdvisor entry for the Fishergirl’s Luck.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Anna, over the sound of Cathy moving around on the other end of the line. ‘It’s only going to be for this summer.’

  ‘Why should that matter?’ Cathy asked, over the sound of her tapping keys. ‘It’ll be great publicity. I bet it’s really easy to do. Hold on, I’m just looking now…’

  There was a couple of seconds of silence. Then:

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘What?’ Anna asked.

  ‘There’s already an entry here. It’s got a five-star review.’

  Anna sat up. ‘What?’

  ‘Someone’s already set up a page for the Fishergirl’s Luck. There’s a photo of the bench and everything. “A unique dining experience, as close to the sea as it’s possible to get,” ’ Cathy read aloud, as Anna scrabbled for her iPad and flipped it open. ‘ “Food so fresh the fish was practically still flapping… We’ve rarely eaten so well outside a five-star restaurant… Local colour—” ’ Cathy laughed. ‘ “Local colour”! That’s one way to put it! “Local colour and company combined to make an unforgettable lunch. We wish the Fishergirl’s Luck well and hope to be able to eat there again soon in its very bright future.” ’

  Anna stared at the review on her screen.

  ‘Have you found it?’ Cathy asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said faintly.

  ‘It was posted by Nathan and Kate Archer yesterday.’

  ‘They’re the couple who were guests along with Robert and Fraser.’

  ‘They must have set up the page themselves,’ Cathy said. ‘Wow, what a first review to get!’

  Anna said nothing, still staring at the page.

  ‘Anna? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Taking it in, that’s all.’

  ‘You know what?’ Cathy said. ‘Now you really do have to do some more lunches at the Fishergirl’s Luck.’

  Rhona was of the same mind. She came over the following evening and the two women shared a glass of wine and a lemon and pea risotto.

  ‘Ach, you must do more,’ Rhona said, as they relaxed after dinner, her tall frame folded easily into one of the armchairs. ‘It would be such a pity if you didn’t. And one thing’s for sure – if you waste your time trying to understand the inside workings of an old man’s head, you’ll drive yourself mad. So don’t, is my advice. This place is yours now, Anna, well and truly. Stop acting as if you need permission to be here, because you don’t. Plus, the good weather won’t last forever. We get caught by a lot of summer storms here,’ Rhona told her. ‘So I’d make the most of it while you can if I were you.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Anna said, with a laugh. ‘You’ve convinced me. Lunch at the Fishergirl’s Luck will return.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Rhona said. ‘When?’

  Anna grimaced. ‘You’re a hard taskmaster. Later this week, if I can get myself together. Friday, let’s say.’

  Her friend lifted her glass in a silent toast. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  The two women smiled at each other and clinked glasses, and Anna thought it would have been a perfect evening if only she hadn’t been quite so tired again. The next time she went into town, she really must remember to get some multivitamins.

  The next morning, Anna woke so nauseous that she barely made it to the bathroom before she threw up. Afterwards she felt better, and could not work out where an illness would have come from. She wondered briefly if it could have been her own cooking from the night before, but no, surely not – she could cook a risotto perfectly even in her sleep. It was worrying because she could not reopen lunch club if she had any form of stomach flu. She didn’t feel as if she had a fever, but unless she had forty-eight hours free with no sickness, she couldn’t serve food to guests. She began to feel better later in the day, though, which was a relief. Whatever it was seemed to be passing.

  It was only when Anna was sick for the third morning running that the shadow that had been lurking at the back of her mind began to coalesce into a full-on phantom. She stared at the calendar hanging on the wall beside the door of the Fishergirl’s Luck, counting days, but that made things worse, not better. Her periods had always been erratic, arriving early, or late, or sometimes not at all. It had caused her endless mental agonies as a teenager. The gap her mother’s death had made in her life had always been present, but that was the point that it became impossible to ignore. Her dad had tried, bless him, but the idea of talking to him about such things had filled Anna with complete dismay. At sixteen, she still hadn’t bled, and secretly thought that there was something terribly wrong with her. Then, one day, there it was, following the faintest of pangs – a pale stain when she got up in the morning that worsened only slightly throughout the day. The next day it had gone again. She’d religiously written down the date and then looked out for it the next month, but there was nothing. It took another three months for her to bleed again, and even then it was the same why-bother event.
>
  It was only when she’d been hustled to the doctor by one of her mother’s old friends that her mind was finally set at rest. She’d started seeing a boy called Nick who was in the sixth form at school, which had sent her dad into such paroxysms of panic that he’d drafted in ‘Aunt Violet’ to talk to Anna about it. Violet had given her three pieces of advice.

  ‘Always, always use a condom; never, ever let him talk you into doing anything you’re not sure you want to do; and go on the pill.’

  That had led her to a consultation with her doctor in which the full extent of Anna’s worries had come tumbling out. Doctor Jeffries, who had been a constant all her life, had listened carefully, nodding her neatly coiffed grey head every now and then.

  ‘You’ve been worried about this for a long time, haven’t you?’ she’d asked, once Anna had finished. ‘Your mother had the same issue, you know. In fact, her cycle was so uneven that she was two months pregnant before she even realized you were on the way.’

  Anna hadn’t thought of that conversation for years. She wasn’t on the pill – she had been all the time that she’d been with Geoff because he’d insisted on it, even though Anna had always been told that the likelihood of her falling pregnant by accident with a cycle so uneven was so low. Not that Geoff had believed that, or ever had any intention of considering the fact that the contraceptive’s hormones had made her skin break out and her moods uneven. Condoms aren’t 100 per cent. Accidents happen. I don’t want that worry. All you have to do is take a pill. What’s the problem?

  Taking the pill was one of the first things she’d ditched after their break-up, because apart from anything else she hadn’t expected to find herself in another relationship so soon.

  But Liam and I did use condoms, she thought. Every time. Always. Didn’t we? Except… Was there one time early on, when we’d both drunk a little too much, and maybe… maybe…?

  Anna’s heart did an uneven jig in her chest. Oh, God. She couldn’t be, could she? She couldn’t be pregnant. I was on the pill for so long. Everyone says it takes forever to leave your system. And my cycle is so irregular anyway, and then there’s my age. And it was only once, only that one time…

  She sat down on the sofa, things suddenly falling into place. The inexplicable and abject exhaustion, the nausea, the sickness in the mornings…

  Oh God. Oh, God.

  Anna tried to breathe evenly. Either way, she had to know for sure, and the sooner the better. There wasn’t any sense in putting it off. There could only be one of two outcomes: either it would be negative and she could laugh at the whole thing, or it would be positive and she’d have to work out how to deal with it. Steeling herself, Anna got up, picked up her coat and keys, and headed out.

  Within an hour Anna was back, leaning against the tiny sink in the bathroom of the Fishergirl’s Luck. The nausea of early that morning had transformed into a knot of anxiety edged with something else – a form of anticipation that kept kicking at her heart and shivering in her gut.

  A career of gauging time had made her good at estimating the passage of minutes. Anna forced herself to leave four before she looked down at the small white tube. She didn’t even have to pick it up to know the truth.

  Two strong blue lines. Two.

  Anna’s legs turned to water and she sank to the floor, slumping back against the wall between the sink and the door. For a moment her mind was completely blank. She put one hand on her stomach and then felt foolish – as if there would be anything to feel. It couldn’t be more than six weeks old, this bundle of furtive nerves with the power to turn her life upside down.

  The cold of the flags beneath her forced Anna to her feet. She got up and went out into the living room still dazed. She sat down on the sofa, rested her elbows on her knees, and put her hands over her face.

  Pregnant.

  Selkie lass,

  We’re going to have to keep a really close watch on the wee lad. I caught him trying to go off to the dinghy on his own today. I got a call out right as we were about to go on dolphin patrol and told him to stay put until Barbara could get here and that patrol would have to wait, but then as I turned the car around I saw him sneaking out with his backpack. He said he couldn’t not check on the dolphin calf. I had to walk him right to Barbara’s door, just to make sure.

  We’ve raised a kid too conscientious for his own good, that’s the trouble.

  Keep an eye on him, won’t you? I’m not doing a good enough job on my own.

  Twenty-One

  ‘Where are you? Hope you’re not avoiding me. Can’t imagine why you would be.’

  Sunday morning, Cathy’s voice on her landline messages.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to you for what feels like ages,’ Cathy went on. ‘It’s all emails and texts. Come on, woman, give me a call. I want to know how the lunches went.’

  Anna waited for the beep and then deleted the message before heading blearily for the kitchen. No sickness this morning, she noticed, just an underlying but bearable feeling of nausea. She stared through the little picture window over her sink as she filled the kettle. The sea was rougher today, streaks of azure and turquoise quilting together in a surf rolling endlessly towards her beneath the wind. She stood staring out at the shapes the waves made, curved and angular all at once, soothing to a mind exhausted by circular thinking and physical fatigue.

  The answer to Cathy’s question was, very well. Her table had been full on both Friday and Saturday, and this time there had been no embarrassing interruptions from Douglas McKean. For Anna, lunch had passed in a pleasant bubble of activity and chat. She had floated through it all, confident in the bustle of kitchen work, enjoying the cushion that physical labour provided between theory and thought.

  Now it was Sunday and she had nothing for which to prepare – nothing to stop her thoughts churning over and over like the waves outside her tiny home. She made herself tea and sat on the sofa, listening to the wail of the wind as it tore around the corners of the Fishergirl’s Luck. She imagined Bren and wondered if she’d ever sat in the same place, nursing a quandary, trying to see her way through the murk of uncertainty towards a difficult decision. Anna doubted it, somehow. When she thought of Bren MacKenzie what came to mind was a capable, collected woman who had always known her own mind, a woman who had travelled through life on a simple yet direct and determined trajectory of her own choosing. Who else could have seen this old stone shack and realized it could be lived in, and then proceeded to turn it into such a haven? At the time Bren had decided to do so, too, when women, especially here on the ragged edge of a harsh shore, would have been expected to take a far different route than the one she had chosen. Part of Anna wished Bren were here now. She could imagine her as a good listener, who would sit opposite with her own steaming cup of tea and a patient look on her face as Anna spilled her troubles out over the small coffee table. What would Bren’s advice be? She’d never married, never had children. Was that a choice, Anna wondered now, or simply that the opportunity had never afforded itself?

  Bren wasn’t there and could help her with none of these questions, especially not the most difficult one that Anna had to answer for herself. She lifted her mug to her lips, realized she’d drunk her tea already, got up to put the kettle on again and glanced at the clock. It was almost 10 a.m. This would usually be the time that Glynn and David might knock on the door, but they were away in Portugal for a week, soaking up some more certain sun. Anna waited until her second tea of the day was ready, her heart thumping a little quicker as she stirred milk into her mug. Then she went to the phone and dialled Cathy’s number.

  This is it, she thought, as the phone rang out. Once I say it out loud to someone else, it’ll be real and I’ll have to deal with it.

  ‘There you are!’ Cathy exclaimed, once Anna had said hello. ‘I was beginning to think the hot Kiwi had come back on his hands and knees and whisked you off to New Zealand.’

  Anna couldn’t raise a laugh. ‘No, nothing like that.’
>
  ‘What’s wrong?’ her friend asked, immediately. ‘The old man didn’t cause trouble again?’

  ‘No, no. The lunches went well. Really well, actually.’

  ‘Right. Well, that’s great, but what’s going on?’

  Anna swallowed hard, but the words still stuck in her throat.

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. ‘I found out on Wednesday.’

  There was a brief silence, and then, ‘Ahh.’

  ‘You sound oddly relieved.’

  ‘I am. For a moment there I thought you were going to drop some horrible bombshell about all that extreme tiredness being caused by something else. Something much worse.’

  ‘Well, it’s not,’ Anna said, tracing her fingers over her stomach, looking down at a non-existent bump. ‘It’s a baby. Or what could be a baby.’

  ‘Okay then,’ her friend said, carefully. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean – physically I’m fine. Everything else…’

  ‘Yeah. I bet.’

  Anna shut her eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘That’s okay. You’ve got a bit of time to decide. Not much, but you can’t be that far gone. And I’m here to listen.’

  ‘I’m such an idiot.’

  ‘Accidents happen. Anyway, there’s no point dwelling on that now, is there?’ Cathy said gently. ‘It’s what you do next that’s important. I’m going to ask you something. There’s no wrong answer to it and you can tell me or not, it’s up to you, but it’s something you need to think about. All right?’

  Anna’s heart turned over. ‘All right.’

  ‘At some point since you found out, you had a gut reaction. Maybe more than one. What did it tell you?’

  ‘That morning sickness is the pits?’ Anna joked feebly.

  ‘It’s been there,’ Cathy probed. ‘Hasn’t it?’

  Anna thought about the shadow that had been lurking at the back of her mind for the past few days.