By the time she found herself walking away from her third port of call, however, a beautifully restored Victorian residence on Queens Road, her earlier positivity was beginning to waver. The phrase, needle in a haystack, sprang to mind and given it was now approaching 10 a.m. she needed a mid-morning caffeine hit. She supposed she should do something about sorting out a place to stay too.
As she turned right, The Esplanade had a steady flow of people going about their day and making the most of the blue sky on offer. She caught a whiff of brewing coffee on the breeze and was following the direction of her twitching nose when a sign in the window of a gallery caught her eye. She would have missed it if it wasn’t for the bold beach scene canvas displayed on an easel that had initially grabbed her attention. The handwritten sign next to the artwork said “Room to Let Enquire Within.” It was worth checking out, she thought, as something tickled at the back of her brain, something Brenda had said. What was it? It was no good; it would come back to her when it was good and ready.
The gallery, she noted taking a step back for a better look, was called A Leap of Faith – Art and Sculpture and the flat above the yellow and white striped awning was two storeys with two sets of large Victorian sash windows on each floor. The establishment looked perfectly presentable from the outside she decided, pressing her nose to the window pane to see further inside.
She jumped back from the glass, narrowly missing colliding with an older woman walking her dog, as a man appeared from behind the canvas. He was smiling at her, and her hand flew to her chest. He’d given her a proper fright, and she waited for her heart to return to its normal rate of beats per minute. She turned back toward the window, but he’d disappeared, and she stood there for a tick feeling rather foolish at having been caught out like some Peeping Tom. She tossed up whether or not she should go inside and see how the land lay. What did she have to lose? Isabel decided, pulling the door open with gusto and smacking straight into the solid frame of the man she’d seen a second or two earlier.
She had to wait to get her breath back before replying to his concerned questioning that yes she was okay. His voice was rich and melodious with the almost incoherent musical quality of a thick Welsh accent. ‘I’m sorry about that; I’m Rhodri Rees, the proprietor. Now then, was it the canvas in the window you were interested in?’
‘What?’ Isabel felt wrong-footed and unsure of herself as she gazed up at his welcoming face.
‘I asked if it was—’
‘No, no, that’s not why I’m here.’ She gathered herself. Good grief. Did she look as though she could afford expensive pieces of artwork? ‘Not that the painting isn’t lovely—I wondered about the room you have to let. My name’s Isabel Stark, and I’m over from Southampton, but I’ve found some work at the Rum Den up the road, and well, it looks like I’ll be staying here on Wight longer than I initially thought.’ She stopped to draw breath.
Rhodri looked amused. ‘I quite often pop in the Rum Den for a pint. It’s a lovely old pub.’
Good for you, Isabel thought annoyed by his twitching mouth. ‘So are you letting a room or not?’
‘I most certainly am. Would you like to have a look upstairs?’
Isabel hesitated. She did want to have a look, but it wouldn’t be the smartest of moves going to view a stranger’s flat when nobody knew where she was. Her mum’s voice rang in her ears, for the second time that morning. ‘Stranger danger, Isabel.’
‘If you don’t have time now—’
‘No its fine.’ She fished her phone out having had a bright idea. ‘My friend’s waiting for me in the coffee shop a few doors down. I’ll just flick her a quick text and tell her not to order my latte just yet.’
He smiled. ‘Good idea. Nothing worse than cold coffee.” He busied himself straightening up a rack of postcard-size prints while Isabel texted her pretend friend.
‘Right all sorted. I told her I'd be about ten minutes or so.’ She put her phone back in her bag.
‘We’d better go on up then. I’m glad I cleared the breakfast things away.’ He laughed.
The Welsh accent, when thick, could sound like a very beautiful form of flowing gibberish, Isabel thought watching as he hung a “Back in five minutes” sign in the door before locking it. Her eyes narrowed. He didn’t look like a nutcase. In fact, he was quite good looking in a dark and brooding way. He’d most likely have a girlfriend called Myfanwy or something like that, she reassured herself. Besides it was too late to change her mind now, and crossing her fingers behind her back she followed his long-legged stride the length of the gallery to a door behind the counter.
On the other side of the door was a corridor of sorts. A steep set of stairs ran up to the first floor and at the end of the corridor was a door which she guessed led to the back garden area. Rhodri took the stairs two at a time calling back over his shoulder that it was great exercise. She’d take his word for it, she thought, holding on to the railing with no intention of picking up her pace.
The living room space she saw reaching
