about Kitty as I promised.’
Maybe the Kitty problem had been dealt with. Agnes anticipated being gracious and understanding, and prepared to dissipate any awkwardness, but was not offered the chance to do either. Julian greeted her at the station – Agnes’s car was being serviced – and drove straight to the beach. There he busied himself with the boat, a J24, issued requests and Agnes’s high spirits did an about-face. The wind blew in smartly from a choppy sea and, despite the oilskins, her extremities were a mass of gooseflesh. Ignorance made her clumsy and Julian’s commands became sharper. ‘I said I was a novice,’ she protested, when he ordered her to wind a sheet round the cleat.
He seemed amazed. ‘What difference does that make?’
Eventually, sail flapping and sheets clacking, they nosed their way out of the protection of the point and headed for open sea.
Once beyond the spit, the wind screamed and the land bucketed across her vision. Out here, the sun was brighter, tougher, refracting off an expanse of white, wind-tossed water, and Agnes was the dazzled traveller gliding over its waves.
‘I don’t like to mention this,’ Julian hailed Agnes from the tiller, ‘but could you pay attention? The wind’s backing up and it’s going to get rough.’
Agnes hung on grimly to the side of the boat.
‘We’re going about,’ shouted Julian, the wind whipping his hair into a frenzy. Agnes lost her balance and went sprawling against the railing.
‘Novice’s luck,’ said Julian unfeelingly.
How she loathed being useless. She scrambled into a sitting position and rubbed potential bruises. ‘Everyone loves a sailor,’ she said bitterly.
An uncomfortable half-hour later, they beat shore-wards. Agnes shivered with anticipation of dry land, for any pleasure in the sailing had long vanished. She crouched lower on the bench and tried to cover her hands, now enticingly mottled, with the sleeves of her oilskins. In contrast Julian looked on top of the world and glowing.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ she asked, and when he shook his head, said with some feeling, ‘I hate you.’
Back on shore, they queued for fish and chips at the van parked at the harbour entrance then wandered to the nearest bench to eat them. Shuddering cold fits attacked Agnes, and she hiccuped and shivered.
Julian draped his oilskin over her shoulders. ‘You didn’t like that much, did you?’
She shook her head.
He prised the empty chip paper from her stiff hands. ‘It’s a bit early in your sailing career to be subjected to the rigours. I should have made sure that you went out on a sunny pancake.’
‘I have a sailing career?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since meeting me.’
‘I see. Forgive me asking. I just wanted to know, that’s all.’
‘A reasonable question.’ He squinted, balled up the chip papers and launched them at the rubbish bin.
The chips and the strong tea were excellent restoratives. Agnes buried her bare feet in the sand, a thousand tiny abrasions pricking the skin, and slid her hands up inside the sleeves of her waterproof jacket, which almost persuaded her she was warm.
Julian leaned over and wiped a fleck of salt water from her nose. ‘A walk, I think.’
He led her east along the beach in the direction of Cliff House. The tide was way out and they scrabbled for footholds among the stones and layers of beached seaweed. Agnes stopped to pick up a shell with a razor-sharp edge. ‘How long have you lived here?’
She had the impression it was not something he talked about much, but he did now. Chilly parents, a small boy left to his own devices, silent meals, anniversaries unacknowledged. She watched a small figure in grubby shorts haring down the road on a bicycle, bird-watching on the dunes, solitary picnics accompanied by the music of sea birds on the cliff, the tired, cold return to a house where electricity was rationed by cost-conscious parents. Her imagination painted him as very small against the grandeur and sweep of sea and land, and she heard in the screaming wind the sobs of the boy whose tenth birthday had been forgotten.
We have no right to hurt the tender, curled child. Ever.
‘Childhood is a lottery, I suppose,’ she said. ‘You can be born to the wrong parents, in the wrong skin, or the wrong place.’ She let the shell drop to the sand.
They exchanged a look that surprised them both with its impact.
‘The best thing about childhood is that it comes to an end,’ said Julian eventually.
At twelve years old, she had scuttled and lolloped around the walled garden with no purpose, her companion the terror of being abandoned for a second time. ‘That’s why we go back. To make sure we are adults.’
‘Nothing so complicated. In my case, Cliff House was available. I wanted a base.’
The wind slammed a handful of hair into her mouth and she grabbed it. ‘Have it your own way.’
‘I will.’ He grinned and tucked her hand into his elbow.
They wandered on, their feet flicking up seaweed and pebbles, the wind attacking hair and clothes. In the spring light, stone, wood and sand appeared white and insubstantial. The gulls dived. Her hand was warm and safe in his pocket. Surely, once you had been through a love affair and were hovering on the brink of another the feelings and emotions would be the same. But, no, they weren’t. Not at all.
Julian slowed down and pointed. ‘Cliff House is over there. And over there…’ he paused ‘… where the cliff path runs alongside, is where Kitty lives.’
‘Kitty lives here? She lives separately?’ She stopped in her tracks.
‘I promised I would tell you about her.’
‘I’m listening.’
She thought she heard his sigh above the wind. ‘As I told you, I spend most weekends with Kitty’
‘Ah, I see.’ Actually, she did not quite see. ‘Not during the week?’
‘Not usually. Sometimes she comes up to London.’
Agnes asked, ‘Why have you invited me down here? To Kitty’s territory.’
Julian did not answer directly. Instead he pointed to the smooth overhang of rock where compressed clay and shale formed a perfect fossil bed. As a boy, I spent hours hunting for fossils and I found my best ones there. Often in the least likely places. I learned never to give up the chase which, in the end, was a pity because word got around and the fossil hunters descended in droves.’ There was a pause, and he added quietly, ‘Kitty and I allow ourselves a degree of freedom. That was the arrangement. It’s worked for a long time.’
A seagull screamed past and splashed heavily into the sea.
She stopped and pushed the obstinate strands of hair out of her mouth. ‘Does it work for Kitty too?’
‘I don’t know any more,’ he said.
‘And you?’
He hesitated. ‘Our agreement was that if we wished to go our separate ways for a little while then we were free to do so.’
‘Was?’ she reiterated.
He looked down at her. ‘Things change.’
In the kitchen of Cliff House, Julian produced cakes and tea. ‘I have a housekeeper who comes in when Kitty isn’t here and organizes things.’ He lifted the laden tray and conducted Agnes into the conservatory, which had an uninterrupted view over the garden to the sea. Through the glass, the sea appeared tamed and silent. Julian was still in his ragged, salty jeans, but he had combed his hair, and the wildness had been replaced by something smoother, less direct. The small, lonely boy had been put back in the cupboard.
Agnes drank her tea. ‘Who does the gardening?’ she asked, but she was thinking frantically about the business of Kitty. How did this woman, this weekend woman, fit in? Did he wish to get rid of one weekend woman only to substitute another? ‘Things change,’ he had said, and she flinched at the problems the two words encompassed. How could she have imagined that Julian would arrive unencumbered in her life?
‘Theo. He’s an outpatient at the local psychiatric hospital. He works for Kitty too. In fact, he adores her. Gardening and cleaning are part of his therapy.’
‘I need a Theo. Can every home have one?’
‘Agnes, can I say something? Don’t let your house drag you under for the sake of it. Preserving a house at all
