for bed.
The dog moved as he stood up, and with an unexpected rush of delight he picked it up and looked it in the eye. ‘Smart little darling, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You and I are going to have a big adventure.’
* The days fell into a routine. Rose would drag herself out of bed early in the morning, exhausted, her eyes red and puffy, the ability to sleep lost somewhere in Scotland, along with her husband. She would force herself to rush around for an hour doing housework, then go to the gym. Sometimes have a coffee, sometimes not. Come home, have lunch and then sit feeling sorry for herself.
She’d set aside a couple of hours each afternoon to prepare for the new marine labs she would be teaching next year, but it was slow. She should have been preparing lessons outlining the differences between hard exposed shorelines, soft shores, open sand beaches and the inner harbour mud flats. Instead, she stared out the window and thought about life, love and loss.
Sam had already gone, last heard of at a beach somewhere on the Coromandel Coast. There’d been a string of excited texts from him, photos of the five boys with their surfboards, the only people on the beach. They had found a perfect spot, a youth hostel on a deserted stretch of the coast. One pathway led to a surf beach with a magic break and another to a protected estuary filled with pipis and cockles. Muesli in the morning, surfing all day and pipi spaghetti at night. Three French girls in the hostel had taught them how to cook it. It made Rose think of sun and teenage love and all those things long forgotten. Yearn for it with a fierce hunger. Lucky Sam. Soon Katie would be flying out and Rose would be alone.
In the late afternoon she walked to the beach, pretending to herself it was part of her work. The patch of sand and mud at the bottom of the pathway was an example of inner harbour soft-shore mud and it was teeming with invertebrate life adapted to the conditions—burrowing bivalves, gastropods, crabs, worms, even anemones hidden away from prying eyes. Most days the dog people joined her. Let their dogs run free as they laughed and chatted to each other. Rose didn’t have a dog, but the dog people talked to her anyway and she was glad of the company. A cheerful vignette before the start of a long and lonely night. But it shocked her. She’d discovered most of the women lived on their own. Husbands dead, husbands gone. Some had partners but they were busy, constantly busy. It chilled Rose. That would soon be her fate, alone in a big house. Like Catherine Ambrose from number seven. One evening, when the weather was mild, the two of them had lingered on the beach and Catherine had related her story.
‘Classic, my dear. I couldn’t believe it. My kids had just left home, my youngest had been gone less than a month, when my husband packed for a week’s trip to Perth. “Business,” he said. ’
‘What happened?’ asked Rose, intrigued.
‘He rang after a couple of days and gave it to me straight. Marriage over, moved in with Diana. Across the other side of town. Done and dusted. All those business trips to Perth turned out to be rubbish. So calculated, don’t you think? Just to make it easy for himself.’
Catherine stopped talking and tickled her dog on the side of his face. Barney was a small white thing with brown splotches, short hair and an inability to stand still. ‘Knocked me for six. Didn’t see it coming. And then,’ she turned to Rose, ‘the kids gave it to me.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t mind now, I let it wash over me, but at the time it cut deep. They said, “No wonder Mum, have you seen how much you’ve let yourself go?” Kids huh.’
Rose saw the straw hair and homely body, the hand-knitted purple jumper, checked blue pants, and felt a rush of pity. They had become firm friends and now they met most
afternoons.
* Katie was packed, all winter woollies and puffer coats. Scotland in mid-winter. Tonight, the two of them were going out for dinner, the little Thai place up the road, to celebrate the end of exams and the trip to come. Then, for Rose, the summer would start
in earnest.
She had to be cheerful for Katie—anything else would be selfish. But the empty nest syndrome had snuck up on her, and she felt panic rising when she thought of her own mother’s spiral into hell after her father died. Knew she would have to work hard not to fall into a state of lethargy. Annoyed with herself, she strode down to the beach, saw the tide was low and wandered over to the rocks. She scrambled up and was examining the rock pools when she heard the furious yapping of Barney telling the world he and Catherine were on the beach. Rose slid back down and hugged Catherine.
‘It’s so good to see you. Here I am feeling sorry for myself. Katie’s leaving
