‘I—’ she said, desperate to break the tension. ‘Oh!’
The sensation took her utterly by surprise. Something fluttering in her belly.
‘What?’ Robbie asked. ‘What is it?’
‘I think—’ There it was again. The faintest tickle, a curl of bubbles unfurling. ‘I think I felt the baby!’
Anna moved his hand to her stomach, pressing it to her. They stood silent, for another moment, and then—
‘There! You feel it?’
‘Yes!’
‘God, that’s weird,’ Anna laughed, her hand still over his. ‘Poor thing must be protesting at my heart rate.’
His laugh resolved into a smile and a raised eyebrow. His hand was still on her belly. He moved it, sliding it around Anna’s waist and pulling her closer, until she was pressed against him. ‘Your heart rate?’ he said. ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’
She couldn’t breathe. He was warm and so very close. ‘Oh,’ she managed. ‘A bit fast, maybe.’
He grinned. ‘Really? Why?’
Anna shook her head. ‘No idea.’
He dipped his head. ‘None?’
‘None at a—’
The rest of the word was lost against his lips. They moved over hers, gentle and soft, and to Anna it felt both like home and like nothing she’d ever felt before.
Later, they left the Fishergirl’s Luck and walked hand in hand to stand outside the Inn.
‘Do you think we can do it?’ Anna asked, looking up at the peeling paint, the faded sign.
Robert lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them. ‘I know we can. I know you can.’
‘It won’t be easy.’
‘Nope.’
Anna nodded, then turned to look out over the sea. The sun was beginning to set, edging the ragged clouds with vivid bursts of orange and pink. Out in the bay, Anna spotted movement. They moved closer, a series of sleek curves leaping out of the waves. Up, and up, and up again.
‘Well, would ye ken that, Anna Campbell?’ said Old Robbie, slipping his arm around her shoulders and pressing his lips to her hair. ‘The dolphins have come to wish us luck.’
Epilogue
Anna put down the phone and stared at the colourful proof pages spread across the desk. The cookbook was almost complete, and she had three more days to check everything one last time before letting Melissa know of any changes she wanted to make. Anna picked up the pencil she’d been using to make notes and drummed it briefly on the image of the gooseberries she had harvested and photographed in the kitchen on the day that the new worktops downstairs had been fitted. The sun had been out, pools of bright light pouring through the windows, shining on the space in which Anna now spent a lot of her time. There were still three months until she’d open her first service at the Crovie Inn, but Anna already knew the kitchen like the back of her hand.
She stilled her pencil, tried to read another sentence, failed, sighed, drummed the pencil again.
From behind her came a gurgle, and then a tiny but distinct giggle. Anna smiled and went to pick up her daughter from her nap. The baby was lying on her back in the crib that Robert had built from the designs Frank had left behind. Months he had spent on it, wanting it to be perfect, wanting to make sure it would hold the memory of the man that the baby who would sleep within it would never know.
‘Well now,’ Anna said, showering kisses on her daughter’s chubby, delicious neck as she scooped her up. ‘Look who’s awake already. Did you have a good sleep?’
Her answer was a headbump, aimed softly at Anna’s shoulder, as the happy baby pumped her arms and legs, excited by the sheer prospect of being awake and loved.
Anna left her proofs where they were – she couldn’t concentrate on them anyway, not now – and went out into the hallway. The faint sound of music from a radio filtered in from somewhere, along with the murmur of voices coming from one of the Inn’s almost-finished bedrooms.
‘Pat, Susan!’ Anna called. ‘I need a break – we’re popping along to the Fishergirl’s Luck. We won’t be long.’
‘All right, love!’ Pat called back.
Downstairs, the baby murbled as Anna slipped her into the carry sling on her chest before pulling a tiny hat over her daughter’s downy hair. ‘I know, you don’t like it,’ she said, kissing the little forehead under her chin, ‘but if the wind’s up, you’ll need it.’
She opened the Inn’s back door and stepped out onto the path. The wind was brisk, but the day was warm with it, the sun bathing the coastline in gold and turning the grasses to a russet blush. She turned and waved to the digger driver up on the landslide and saw him wave back from his cab, the noise of the vehicle joining the sound of the waves and the screech of the gulls overhead. It had only been a matter of days since the work had progressed enough to be seen from the village. Speculation was rife about how much longer it would be until the road was clear, and then how long after that it would be useable for the villagers. It had taken months to get to this point as it was.
‘Anna!’ a voice shouted as she turned away. It was Young Robbie, making his way along the path from Gamrie with his ubiquitous binoculars strung around his neck.
‘What are you doing here?’ Anna asked as the boy ran towards her, tugging her down so he could kiss the baby soundly on the cheek. ‘You didn’t come over on your own?’
‘Nah, Rhona’s behind me,’ Robbie said. ‘She’s got something to show you. Dad said he couldn’t go out with me today because he’s so close to finishing the Fishergirl’s Luck but I needed to do dolphin patrol, so I said I’d come. From the path is better than nothing.’
Anna rubbed a hand through his hair – so like his father’s – and looked up again to see Rhona appear along the snook path.
‘Ach, hen,’ her friend said, when she got close enough. ‘Where are you off to on this fine day?’
‘I’ve been struggling with the cookbook proofs all morning. Thought I’d take a break and see how Robert’s doing at the bothy.’
Rhona cooed at the baby. ‘Aye, fair enough. I’ve got a couple of new glazes for you to look at though, in case you want to add them to the comparison test next week. And I want a cuddle of the bairn, so not too much canoodling, eh?’
‘Yuk!’ Young Robbie screwed up his face. ‘I don’t need to know about that!’
Rhona flicked the boy’s cheek gently. ‘Come on, then. Let’s you and me go and make Pat and Susan a brew.’
‘They’re upstairs, sorting the curtains out,’ Anna said, as Rhona steered Robbie towards the Inn. ‘They could probably use a break. And help yourself to lunch – the bread’s still warm.’
Anna made her way along the path, murmuring to the baby as she went. The water lapped against the sea wall, white foam peeking over the edge before dropping away again with a whisper. Around her, the sounds of industry echoed from the houses as she passed. Faces smiled at her from replaced windows, along with the occasional shouted ‘hello’ and wave. She waved back at the neighbours who, since the storm, had become an even closer-knit community. No one wanted that night to cap the village’s long history with tragedy and desertion. Even the cottage owners who visited once a year had made a pact to ensure that Crovie was restored. It was happening, though progress was slow. Heavy work had been made even more difficult than usual with no road access and money was short without the income from the rental properties that needed repair.
At the Fishergirl’s Luck there was no sound at all, no hammering or banging, no echoing rasp of a saw. Anna saw why when she spied the two figures sitting at Liam’s bench. Robert MacKenzie had repaired the broken seat himself, though it would have been easier to simply buy a new one. It was important to the place’s history now, had been his reasoning. It deserved to be repaired alongside the tiny home of which it was part. Anna was glad. The place had seemed incomplete without it.
One of the figures glanced up at Anna and lifted his old chin in a kind of silent greeting as she approached. The other turned to see her comin
g and smiled as he got up. Robert came towards her, hair lifted by a sudden breeze.
‘Hello, you two,’ he said as he reached them, wrapping his arms around Anna and leaning down for a kiss, before planting one on the baby’s head, too. ‘How’s the cookbook going?’
‘Ugh,’ Anna said, making a face. ‘I can’t tell if it’s good or terrible. I go from thinking it’s one or the other minute to minute.’
Robert kissed her again. ‘It’s brilliant.’
‘How do you know?’ Anna laughed. ‘I haven’t let you read it yet!’
‘Stands to reason. Everything you do is brilliant.’
‘Flatterer.’
‘Saying it how I see it, that’s all.’
‘I don’t—’
There came the sound of a throat being cleared by the old man sitting behind them. Anna peered around Robert.
‘Afternoon, Dougie.’
He raised his chin again, but said nothing.
Robert grasped Anna’s hand and she let him pull her towards the bench, though Anna wasn’t sure she really wanted to sit down. She and Douglas McKean had silently agreed an uneasy kind of truce, but they weren’t really on chatting terms.
‘Let me take the bairn for a wee while,’ Robert said, and Anna undid the sling, smiling as she watched him hold her daughter against his chest. He sat down beside Douglas, and Anna slid in opposite. The sun was warm, the sea was calm, one of those days when it seemed impossible that the weather here was ever anything but gloriously beautiful. Behind the line of houses, the scar in the cliff was already being filled with grasses and wildflowers growing into the rivulets of soil left overlying the red rock. At this rate the slip would be invisible in a year, though the story of that night would remain part of the village’s history forever, and two of the houses below would never recover.
Anna brought her attention back to the table to find Douglas McKean looking at her through shrewd eyes. She tried for a smile.
‘Did you come to check out progress on the Fishergirl’s Luck, Dougie?’ she asked.
He nodded slowly. ‘Aye. Auld Robbie brought me o’er in t’ Cassie’s Joy.’
‘And… what do you think? Hasn’t he done a great job?’
McKean’s gaze drifted out to the ocean. ‘Ne’er seen inside t’ place afore. Nae got a thing to compare it tae.’
Anna glanced at Robert, who smiled and gave a tiny shrug. The baby laughed.
‘Heard ye called the bairn Bren,’ said Douglas McKean. He surprised Anna by reaching out one gnarled hand, waving a finger in front of her daughter until the baby caught hold of his calloused fingertip.
‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘It… seemed kind of fitting.’
‘Aye, well, what wi’ her being made in the Fishergirl’s Luck,’ McKean agreed.
‘Dougie, that’s really not—’ Robert MacKenzie began.
‘She’s a strong one, a’right,’ the old man went on, as he and Little Bren battled for control of his finger. ‘Just like that auld harpy herself. Aye, tis a fit name for a bold wee lassie. Ye’ll have ye work cut oot w’ her. An’ mayhap she’ll end up in the bothy when I’m deid and buried. That’d be fit, too.’
Anna was taken aback by the old man’s comment. There was something she’d never even thought about. That in a few years’ time, Little Bren Campbell – or maybe, just maybe, by then she might be Little Bren MacKenzie – might end up living in the Fishergirl’s Luck. There was something about that idea that made Anna smile. What would the village look like then? Some of the faces might have changed, but she thought that Crovie itself would probably stay very similar to how it must have been back in Douglas McKean’s younger days.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re not wrong, Dougie. That would be very fitting.’
Anna looked at the way her baby’s fingers were still wrapped around his, the eldest and youngest residents of Crovie connected by a sliver of time that might perhaps prove too narrow for Little Bren to remember in years to come. The thought cast Anna’s mind back to the phone call she’d had with Melissa.
‘Something’s happened,’ she said.
Robert looked up with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing bad. A bit surprising, that’s all. Melissa phoned.’ Anna took a breath. ‘They’ve had an approach from a production company. They want to make a series to follow the cookbook.’
Robert’s eyes widened. ‘Wow. That’s amazing!’
Anna smiled. ‘Is it? I’m not sure. I’ve never been interested in being on camera. It’s not my kind of thing. Writing a cookbook, yeah, but—’
Robert reached out one hand to cover Anna’s. ‘Hey. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘No, I don’t. And my first reaction was to say no. Melissa told me to think about it, and the thing is…’ Anna looked around at the village, slowly coming back to life around them. ‘It doesn’t have to be about me, does it? It could be about Crovie. My food would be a part of it, but there could be so much more to it than that. Local history, stories. I could talk about Bren’s notebook, cook recipes from it, go foraging the way she did. Her notes are tales in themselves.’
Little Bren murbled and Robert kissed her forehead. ‘That sounds like a great idea.’
‘I should talk to everyone else about it. See what they think.’ Anna looked at Douglas McKean. ‘What about you, Dougie? How would you feel about being on camera? I bet you’ve got a ton of stories you could tell, given the chance.’
Douglas McKean grinned, a surprisingly warm expression given his pronounced lack of teeth.
There came a shout from along the sea wall. They all looked up to see Young Robbie running towards them, helter-skelter, his cheeks red, his sandy hair flying in the wind. He was shouting.
‘They’ve done it!’ he yelled. ‘They’ve got through! They’ve cleared the road!’
Well now, my selkie lass,
Robbie and Anna have filled the house with daffodils. They bought jars of pickled beetroot, too. The house is a riot of purple and yellow, just for you.
Happy Mother’s Day, Cassie.
We love you.
Author’s note
The first time my husband and I visited Crovie was in 2017, during a spring tide so high and a wind so brisk that we dodged the waves all the way down the short line of houses, and failed to dodge them coming back. By the time we had returned to the point at which we had started, we were both soaked, and I was captivated. I have always been drawn to the idea of living somewhere that others would consider impractical, and in Crovie I seemed to have found that to a perfect degree.
By that point I had already encountered the meticulously converted mill pony shed that would become the Fishergirl’s Luck. The wonderful owner, Marie West, had invited me to tea and told me her stories of living in such a tiny place. The building is in another small fishing village on the same coast, but once I had visited Crovie, with beautiful Gardenstown visible across the bay from her narrow shore, I realized that putting the two together would give me the basis for the story that had taken root in my head.
Thus the Crovie in these pages is a version of the real place, but it is not an absolutely faithful rendering. The real Crovie is often busier than the one in my story. Homes are owned by people from all over Europe, and in summer families celebrate friendships renewed every time they and their children meet. They are all passionate about the village, fully aware that they are preserving a place that supported a way of life no longer in existence but still important to remember.
In September 2017, a severe landslide closed the single road into the village. It took a year for it to be rebuilt and reopened, during which time the only way in was on foot or by boat. This could have turned the village into a ghost town, but it didn’t, just as the huge destructive force of the Great Storm in 1953 didn’t stop families from thriving here. Choosing to own a home in Crovie requires tenacity, a willingness to take the weather as it comes, and to live amid the echoes left b
y centuries of people who did the same.
As I write this I am sitting in the kitchen of number 33, where I have spent the past few days polishing the manuscript of The House Beneath the Cliffs. It is 7 a.m., and through the window I can hear the engine of a fishing trawler crossing the bay beneath a sky that is lead grey after days of sun. I love it here, whatever the weather. I hope you did, too.
22 July 2020, Crovie.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Polly MacGregor, Angela Ritchie, Jess Woo and Amanda Lindsay for their continued encouragement, support and varying expertise, and for Marie West for showing me around her beautiful tiny home.
Thank you to my amazing agent Ella Kahn – without you I would never have believed I could write adult fiction.
Thank you to Charlie Haynes and Amie McCracken of the Six Month Novel: their online bootcamp forced me to get back to my keyboard and produce the first draft of this in the wake of surgery. During the writing of the first draft I also stayed just outside Pennan at the Mill of Nethermill, where Lynn Pitt’s beautiful Millshore Pottery became the inspiration for Rhona’s talents.
At Simon & Schuster, a huge thank you to my wonderful editors Clare Hey and Alice Rodgers for your expertise, kindness and diligence; to Pip Watkins for the beautiful cover, Genevieve Barratt for marketing, Sara-Jade Virtue for brand direction, Anne O’Brien for the copyedit, Maddie Allan and Kat Scott in sales and production controller Francesca Sironi, who kept the whole shebang on time.
The tiny inkling for the idea that would eventually become The House Beneath the Cliffs was planted during a holiday on the Aberdeenshire coast with my then boyfriend more than ten years ago. He is now my husband, and the publication of this book coincides with our ten-year wedding anniversary. Adam, it’s been a wonderful decade, and none of it would have happened without you. Thank you.
The House Beneath the Cliffs Page 27