Summer at 23 the Strand Read online

  Alison hadn’t gone much on the plan when she’d told her about it.

  ‘Shirley Valentine? You’re going to do a Shirley Valentine? Have a fling with someone you’ve only just met? In Devon? I wish you’d tell me where exactly ‘cos I’d come and rescue you from yourself! Are you mad? And to think you turned down Ibiza! You do realise doing a Shirley Valentine is very old hat these days, don’t you? And you’re not running away from a husband you’re going to go back to because…’

  ‘Thanks for your diplomacy, not!’ Lucy had laughed. ‘And I have absolutely no intention of having a fling with anyone.’

  Lucy knew it wasn’t meeting someone that would make her feel good about herself again. It was more about opening up her mind to new experiences, wasn’t it? She’d think about looking for a job and finding somewhere new to live, seeing as Ben had bought her out of her share in the house they’d bought together, but not until after her holiday. Oh, and taking all her stuff out of her parents’ garage where she’d put it in cold storage – she’d have to get round to that. She had fourteen days booked here and the potential for fourteen new experiences. There were lots of things a person could do on their own – things for which a partner, of whatever sort, wasn’t required – and Lucy was going to find them.

  ‘Hi. I’m Ross.’

  ‘Lucy.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘Right, Lucy. Okay. You’ve never kayaked before?’

  The instructor – a very muscled bloke around her own age, tanned, with his curly hair tied back in a ponytail with what looked to Lucy like a bootlace – looked at her doubtfully.

  ‘No. But I’m a good swimmer.’

  She and Ben had planned to go snorkelling off Bali on their honeymoon. Well, she had. ‘Snorkelling?’ he’d said when Lucy had suggested it. ‘On honeymoon? Aren’t there better things to be doing?’ Lucy had countered that he could sit on the beach and wait for her to come back and then they could get on with ‘better’ things. Well, not now they couldn’t – her and Ben, that is.

  ‘Great, but not going for a swim is the objective,’ Ross laughed. ‘I’ll do my best to keep you in the kayak but I think you’ll be more comfortable in a wetsuit than just that bathing costume you’re wearing. It can be colder out on the water than it is standing here.’

  Lucy was wearing a kingfisher-blue, crossover bathing costume with high-cut legs she’d bought to take on honeymoon. She looked good in it. She knew she did, and especially since she’d lost a bit of weight in readiness for her wedding day, and the oyster-satin sheath dress she now wasn’t going to wear.

  ‘You’re the boss,’ Lucy said. ‘Lead me to the wetsuit.’

  There was a little cabin at the back of the beach, kayaks of various sizes and colours laid out in front of it, and a rail with wetsuits hanging up, some of them still dripping where the previous students had hung them. Lucy hoped she wouldn’t have to get into one of those but, if she did, then so be it.

  ‘Hey, you’re really good for a total beginner,’ Ross said once Lucy was duly suited and in the water. ‘Great balance.’

  He was paddling along beside her and, while Lucy realised he was slowing his pace to hers, it still felt as though she was racing along at an exhilarating speed.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Do you feel up to going a bit further?’

  ‘Further than what?’ Lucy asked, surprised she was a little out of breath.

  ‘Well, normally I take first-timers to the headland and back, but I think you could cope with going on to the next cove. Tide’s high so we’ll be clear of any rocks. Up for it?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Lucy said. ‘Oh, look. That’s where I’m staying’ She took one hand off the paddle to point at 23 The Strand and the kayak wobbled horribly. She saw the water rising up towards her as she began to tip sideways. Lucy breathed in sharply as her heart rate began to increase alarmingly.

  ‘Whoa!’ Ross said, reaching out to grab the back of Lucy’s kayak.

  Lucy felt herself being jerked to a more balanced position.

  ‘Phew. Thanks,’ she said. ‘I got a bit overexcited there. Sorry.’

  ‘No worries. So, I take it you’re stopping on The Strand?’

  Ross smiled at her showing beautifully even white teeth. The smile made the skin crinkle beside his eyes. Lucy took in how tanned he was, and wondered if he was careful to use sunscreen. Such a strange thing to be thinking about someone she’d only just met and who she wasn’t likely to see again unless she took another kayak trip.

  ‘I am, yes. Two weeks.’

  ‘Number?’

  ‘Ah ha,’ Lucy said, ‘that would be telling!’

  She paddled on, pulling ahead of Ross a little. She wasn’t going to fall for that one! But he soon caught her up.

  ‘It might be best to let me lead,’ he said. No dazzling smile this time. ‘Although the tide is high, there are a few rocks we need to skirt around. And I only asked about the number because I’ve got a friend who rents out one of those chalets. Investment sort of thing. Number 18.’

  That’s me told then, Lucy thought. But what she said was: ‘Nope, not Number 18.’

  ‘Right. Got that,’ Ross said, and Lucy couldn’t be sure he wasn’t thinking he’d just had the brush-off. ‘And now I’d like you to follow me. As close as you can without hitting me. Follow my pace, and try to paddle in the same rhythm as I am. There’s a channel we need to go over so as to avoid any rocks. If we’re lucky we could see seals.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lucy said, feeling less sure of her abilities now. She had a feeling a seal would be pretty big close up. Big enough to rock her kayak?

  ‘Shout if you’re worried,’ Ross said, as though he’d just read her mind.

  ‘Okay. Will do.’

  ‘But I’ll keep looking back to check on you.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lucy said again.

  Gosh, but the cliffs and the beach looked stunning from the sea – the beauty of it was quite taking her breath away and robbing her of saying much beyond ‘okay’ it seemed. A totally different aspect to it all, a different feel completely to how it looked walking or driving through it. The houses had red roofs and just for a moment Lucy thought she’d had a time-shift experience and been whisked back to a holiday she and Ben – damn him for encroaching on her thoughts here – had been on to Italy. She could see traffic high up on the main road going past but she couldn’t hear it. A cormorant stood still and sentinel on a piece of rock jutting out at the base of a cliff.

  ‘Oh!’ Lucy said as they arrived at the cove. The beach went far back, a perfect crescent of sand with not a soul on it. ‘I didn’t know this was here.’

  ‘The area’s best-kept secret,’ Ross said, beckoning for Lucy to come alongside him. ‘Worth the journey?’

  ‘More than,’ Lucy said.

  ‘It’s only accessible by abseiling down the cliff, and that’s not recommended any more because the cliff’s crumbling a bit. Or by sea. As now.’

  Bright-pink Hottentot fig tumbled down over the cliff and Lucy wondered for a moment if this was where Arthur had picked the ones he’d left for her, although she doubted it. He sounded a positive sort of man but not the sort to go abseiling down cliffs. She imagined him in a collar and tie, even at the seaside somehow.

  ‘Two o’clock,’ Ross said, pointing in the direction he wanted Lucy to look.

  Lucy could see the top of a large, rounded, glistening head. And then the head popped out of the water further and two large round eyes and a whiskery nose came into view.

  A seal. Lucy had just seen her first, close-up seal, although she’d seen them at a Waterworld somewhere or other – she’d forgotten where. How free this one looked by comparison. How big! Its head was bigger than a big man’s would be.

  Lucy couldn’t think of a thing to say. It was quite awesome being this close. Seeing a seal hadn’t been on her list of things to do, so it was a bonus.

  ‘Seals to order,’ Ross laughed.

  The seal came righ
t up to their kayaks. It put out a paw – or whatever it was seals used to swim with, Lucy didn’t know – and touched the front of Ross’s kayak.

  ‘This one knows me,’ Ross said. ‘We call her Doris. Don’t ask me why. I can tell her apart from others by the scar over her left eye. Got in a bit of a scrap, didn’t you, old girl?’ Ross leaned over and patted Doris on the head.

  A bit like me, Lucy thought. Not a physical scar from her break with Ben, but an emotional one. However hard she was telling herself she was going to be okay, that she was fine, she still got a pang of some sort of loss now and then. It was such an old-fashioned thing to happen, wasn’t it – being jilted at the altar almost. And then the job. She sighed.

  ‘You okay with this?’ Ross asked. ‘You’ve gone a bit quiet. Doris won’t threaten you at all, will you, old thing?’ He scratched the top of Doris’s head and she seemed to luxuriate in his touch, like a cat, before swimming off.

  ‘I’m fine. A bit in awe at being so close to Doris. I sort of needed that in my life right now. Thanks. You know, for the experience.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Ross said. And then he started to paddle again. ‘Come on. Lots to see yet before your two hours are up.’

  ‘So, Lucy…’ Ross said, once they were back on the beach. There’d been a rudimentary shower beside the rack of wetsuits and Lucy had been glad of it before changing back into her jeans and T-shirt. ‘I’m going to give you ten out of ten for today’s lesson.’

  ‘I did my best,’ Lucy said, roughly towelling her hair dry, then running her fingers through it in a vague attempt at tidiness. ‘It was great actually. Thanks.’

  ‘Up for another trip? Another day that is. We could go out towards Berry Head and back. A bit more challenging perhaps, but I’m sure you’d cope.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said. ‘I don’t think so. Today was great, but…’

  ‘But how about a drink and we’ll talk about it? I finish up here about six. Say half an hour to grab a quick shower. I can be at the Buccaneer over there about seven.’ He pointed to a large hotel with a terrace outside set up with tables and umbrellas and strings of fairy lights.

  ‘How do you know I’m not with someone?’

  ‘A hunch. You get to read moods in my job. Couple of things you said out there on the water. That and the ringless finger!’ Ross said, smiling broadly at her. ‘Thought it was worth a punt.’

  Before today Lucy might have taken offence at being ‘a punt’, but all she did was laugh.

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Okay. But if you change your mind I’ll be at the Buccaneer anyway, and if you fancy another kayak trip, you know where to find me.’

  Ross was looking at her and his conker-coloured eyes seemed to be holding so much feeling in them that Lucy wondered what might have happened in his life to date. Lucy, not one for hunches, or she might have read Ben a bit better, got the feeling now that Ross wasn’t a regular flirt. And that perhaps he’d had to make an effort to ask her out for a drink. And now she’d spurned him. And it hurt.

  ‘I do,’ Lucy said. ‘Again, thanks for the trip. I’ll see you around.’

  She had a lot of things to get through and the last thing she needed was a distraction, albeit a very handsome one.

  ‘I hope so,’ she heard Ross say as she walked away.

  On Sunday morning, at ten o’clock, Lucy went out for breakfast. She’d slept like a baby after her kayak experience, with dreams of seals and flowers and sun glittering on water like diamonds. It was almost nine o’clock before she surfaced.

  ‘I can’t quite believe I’ve never done this before,’ she said out loud to Arthur’s pretty vase of flowers – she was definitely going to count that as a gift and keep it, take it home – before skipping down the steps. Just about everyone she knew went out for breakfast sometimes – even her pensioner parents – but Lucy never had.

  She ate a Full English sitting outside on the terrace of The Boathouse. Every scrap. And two mugs of strong black coffee. She wondered if she would ever be able to get up off the wooden bench seat, but it felt good. Ben had been heavily into health and fitness and a Full English was something that would never have been on his agenda. She spent the rest of the day taking short walks from her chalet before coming back to sit and read, have a cup of coffee. Doze in the sunshine. A gaggle of kayakers went past, all wetsuited and paddling furiously – more experienced than Lucy had been at a guess. She didn’t think the person leading them was Ross but they were a lot further out than she’d been the day before so she couldn’t really tell. She wondered if he’d met up with anyone at the Buccaneer or if he’d had to drink alone before going home to wherever it was he lived. It wouldn’t have hurt to meet up with him, would it? Ah well, not a lot she could do about that now.

  On Monday morning, Lucy decided – on a whim – to paint Arthur’s vase of flowers before all the petals dropped and the leaves curled. Watercolour. Lucy hadn’t painted since leaving school. Drawing had always been her thing and these days everything she did was on a computer. She found the local map left for tenants of 23 The Strand and navigated her way into town and an art shop. She bought a tin of watercolours, some pencils, three sable brushes and a pad of cartridge paper. Then she hurried back to her chalet, more keen to start painting than she could ever have imagined she’d be. Had she been in Bali, would she be painting now? She didn’t think so. Ben would more than likely have huffed and puffed that she wasn’t giving him her full attention if she had dared to put pencil and paint to paper. He would be saying something like ‘If you want a painting, buy one. I’ll pay’. To Ben everything could be bought. Well, some things couldn’t and the joy of creating a piece of art – whatever skill level a person was at – was one of them. She set to work. The painting would be a memory.

  ‘Not bad for a first attempt after all these years,’ she said out loud. ‘No, scratch that. It’s very good.’ What was it with the British that they never praised themselves? Bragging. That’s what Ben would have called it if she’d told him she’d painted something and made a good fist of it.

  Tuesday was the day Lucy decided to buy a pair of walking boots, and some thick socks, and walk the coastal path.

  ‘You might like to put a couple of plasters on your heels. Waterproof ones, because they’re shiny and the socks will slip over them easily. Stops you getting blisters that does. Just a tip. Born out of experience. Ignore at your leisure,’ the rather elderly man who had served her said.

  ‘Really?’ Lucy said. ‘Thanks for the tip. I’ll do that.’

  She hadn’t thought about blisters but perhaps she ought to have done because this stretch of the coastal path was seven miles. She wouldn’t walk back, of course, but there was a regular bus service, even an open-top one that went every twenty minutes, traffic permitting presumably. Lucy had never been on an open-top bus before. But first the walk.

  The first bit, from her chalet towards the harbour, was flat enough. Lucy passed families and couples sitting or lying on the sand. Kids kicked balls about and a teenage lad was trying to get a kite to fly, running like mad, his arm held out stiffly overhead before jettisoning it skywards.

  Ah, at last. He’d done it.

  And then, there was Ross, walking down to the water’s edge, a kayak held high over his head.

  ‘Hi!’ he said, swinging the kayak down onto the sand. ‘Going far?’

  ‘Brixham. Along the coastal path. There was a map in the chalet.’

  ‘Hope your leg muscles are strong! It gets pretty steep in places.’

  ‘I’ll find out if they’re not,’ Lucy said. ‘But I’ve got good boots and the man who sold them to me gave me the plasters-on-the-heels, so you don’t get blisters, tip, so I should be okay.’

  ‘I’ll let you get on then,’ Ross said.

  Lucy got the feeling he wanted to say more but didn’t know how.

  ‘I could meet you for a drink later,’ Lucy said. ‘Let you know how I get on.’
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  ‘Not tonight,’ Ross said. ‘Things to do.’ He bent down and began fiddling with the spray deck on the kayak, as though he couldn’t quite meet Lucy’s eye. He looked up at her then. ‘Sorry.’

  Touché! And that’s given me my comeuppance for rejecting his offer of a drink.

  ‘Okay,’ Lucy said. ‘Enjoy your day.’

  ‘You too,’ Ross said. ‘Ah, there’s my first client now.’

  And off he went to greet his client and Lucy continued on her way, puzzled at the short exchange between them – sort of hot, cold, hot, cold again. But Ross intrigued her, and if she’d had more time here she would more than likely have tried to get to know him better. She felt he had a good soul, an honest soul. But what would be the point when she was moving on once her two weeks were up? And if she did have a fling, wouldn’t it just be on the rebound?

  Lucy walked on around the headland and, when she looked back, she couldn’t see the beach or Ross’s kayak school any more. She skittered down over a zigzagging path between beds full of flowers – agapanthus and cannas, daisies of some sort, hardy geraniums. The sand was a different colour here – more blond than red. Softer too. Not as grainy as the beach in front of her chalet. But she was soon away from the holidaying crowds and on a narrow path that hugged the coast. She wasn’t even out of breath – yet!

  She stepped into the longer grass to let a woman with a rather chubby golden Labrador go past.

  ‘Beautiful day,’ the woman said. ‘Going far?’

  ‘Over there,’ Lucy said pointing. ‘Berry Head.’

  ‘Been before?’

  ‘No,’ Lucy told her. ‘First time.’

  ‘It goes up and down a bit from here on. Mostly up! Good luck! Enjoy.’

  ‘I will, thanks. You too. Enjoy your day.’

  Lucy stopped and passed the time of day with at least half a dozen other walkers, glad of the break if she were honest because the walk was a lot harder than she’d thought it would be from the flat line on the rather rudimentary map she’d found in the chalet. She was consulting the map and the information sheet now.

  Elberry Cove. Often used for water skiing. Guillemots sometimes nest close by. Stony beach with little sand. No facilities. At dawn and dusk deer can be spotted in the wood nearby.