Those had been the long, lonely years during which Eloise had become a mother of two children under three, living in a big, draughty house, in a town she didn’t know, with a husband who was rarely there and – when he was – was often locked away in his study. Perhaps that was when the first tiny spots of rot had begun to bloom, when Eloise’s every waking hour had been taken up with keeping two small children quiet and occupied. Then along came success – for Jonathan; and, with it, the guest lecturing, the tenures as visiting lecturer, then professor, the media gigs, the awards and recognition. An impressive career that had taken him away, physically and emotionally, from Scarborough and his family. A flood of recollection washed through the car.
Perhaps Megan picked up on some of the sadness in Eloise’s voice, because she asked, ‘Do you mind that they’re going to sell it?’
Eloise gave herself a shake. ‘The View. No. Do you?’
Megan didn’t hesitate. ‘It’s not my place to mind. It was never my house.’
They retreated into the busy silence of their own memories.
After another twenty minutes Eloise saw the sea in the distance. It was a welcome sight. ‘I thought… Sandsend. It’s so much nicer than Whitby.’
‘I don’t mind where we go,’ Megan said.
The benefit of it being December was that they were able to park right down by the sea. ‘Do you want to go for walk?’ Eloise felt the need for movement.
Megan shrugged. ‘Fine with me.’
They set off for the archway on the headland. There was a gusty wind filled with sharp splinters of cold rain – perfect exfoliating weather. At points the path was so narrow that they had to walk in single file. Instinctively Eloise went first, but that left her at a disadvantage because she had no sense of where Megan was. She just had to assume she was following on behind.
They made it as far as the bridge at the end of the bay and stopped to look down at the little creek that ran into the sea, expecting it to be deserted. But no, this was the North, the land of hardy holidaying folk. There was a family in wellies and anoraks down below, playing in the water with fishing nets and bright-pink plastic buckets. On second glance, two of the children were actually barefoot, their jeans rolled up to their knees. The skin on their legs was mottled, like Stilton cheese. The sight of it made Eloise feel shivery.
She and the children had spent what felt like an eternity of chilly summer days at Sandsend, eating gritty sandwiches behind their stripy windbreak, searching for fruit-gum-coloured sea anemones in the rockpools and chafing the wet sand from cold toes. When the children got bored of playing on the beach, they used to walk along to the refreshment hut near the archway for ice creams. They would eat them sitting on the wall looking at the padlocks.
At some point, many years previously, someone must have attached the first lock to the railing leading down the slipway. For what purpose, no one knew. But that was part of the fun: guessing at the motivation of people choosing a padlock and bringing it with them to the seaside, to click into place, alongside the hundreds of others. Some of the padlocks were etched with messages, many were not, the meaning of the gesture known only to whoever had stood with the salty wind in their face, adding their token of emotion to the collection. The kids used to like looking through them, picking out their favourites, reading the inscriptions. Noah would always work his way along the railing, trying as many locks as he could, seeing if he could pull one free. He never succeeded.
One day, after they’d finished eating their ice creams, Jonathan had called the children over. He’d come with them for the day, for a change. He reached into his rucksack and produced three padlocks. The kids had gone wild, clustering around him in their eagerness to see. They were not bog-standard brass padlocks, but three very old locks, each a different weight, size and colour. All complete with keys. They were oddly beautiful, in their own way. Eloise never did find out where he got them. It was a lovely thought – which quickly descended into something far less lovely. Because, instead of letting the kids run off and add their locks to the railing, Jonathan couldn’t resist turning the occasion into yet another ‘learning opportunity’. He began to bang on about how padlocks were known to have been used in Roman times by merchants travelling across Asia, to protect their goods from marauders. His history lesson was cut short when an argument broke out between Noah and Liv as to which of them should have the biggest padlock. The dispute was settled with a game of rock, paper, scissors, at Eloise’s suggestion. Liv won and gloated, while Noah loudly and furiously declared that his lock was the best anyway. At which point even Jonathan conceded it might be sensible just to let them attach their padlocks and be done.
Eloise remembered how each of them had picked a space as far away from their siblings as possible, before clicking their padlock onto the railing. They kept their wishes and their hopes to themselves. Locks locked, Eloise decided it was time to head home.
As they walked back around the bay, Liv asked her father to look after her key for her, which he duly did, placing the heavy scroll-topped key inside his wallet for safe-keeping until they got home. Eloise wondered whether Liv still had it. She wouldn’t be surprised. Without asking permission, Noah hurled his key into the sea. A sudden exuberance, which was followed by instant, denied regret. Behaviour that, in hindsight, was typical Noah. Chloe held her key in her chubby little hand all the way back to the
