The House by the Sea. Louise Douglas

moonlight was caught in the small waves rolling in from the bay and breaking against the rocks. The cicadas sang their song. Joe did not comment on the preparations I’d made. Perhaps he was thinking about the evening before, when I’d rushed off to my hotel room rather than eat with him.

      I tried not to think about Anna’s dead siblings watching from the shadows as I laid out the food, bottles of water. I unwrapped the wax paper from the cheese, opened a jar of olives, sliced tomatoes. Joe opened two bottles of beer and passed one to me. We sat at the table in the candlelight. I pulled the zip on my jumper up to my chin. Joe was thoughtful, staring into the mouth of his bottle. It was peaceful and I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere, so I tried to think of something to say that would be friendly, without compromising my anger; something that wouldn’t summon the spirit of Anna to the table.

      ‘Did you used to eat out here,’ I asked Joe, ‘when you came, before, on holiday?’

      ‘All the time.’ He looked around as if remembering the people who used to occupy the empty chairs. ‘My grandmother used to love entertaining. There’d be lanterns hung in the trees, lights everywhere.’ He trailed off and fell silent again. ‘There was a housekeeper then, did I tell you? And a caretaker, a married couple. They lived together in a cottage behind the garage. They had a little dog. They were very good to me and Cece.’

      ‘Was Cece upset that Anna left this place to you and me?’

      ‘She got the London house. She thinks she came off best.’

      Oh, Anna. More evidence of your scheming; you giving the uncomplicated London house to your uncomplicated daughter and the abandoned, difficult Sicilian villa to the abandoned son and his difficult ex-wife.

      ‘Did your father ever come here?’ I asked to change the subject.

      ‘No,’ Joe replied.

      ‘Never?’

      He raised the bottle to his lips, tipped back his head and drank. ‘He didn’t like the heat. And he thought Sicily was a shithole of an island.’

      That sounded exactly the kind of thing Patrick Cadogan would have said. He might have been a psychologist but he had the tact of a meteorite.

      I pulled my left leg up onto the chair, wrapped my arm around it and rubbed the ankle. Moths were batting at the candle jars. Bats darted overhead, blacking out tiny parts of the sky.

      We finished our beers and opened some more, becoming more relaxed. We told one another a little about our lives now. Joe talked about his gardening work, the van he drove, the long, solitary walks he took around the mountains and coastline of North Wales. I talked about the dogs and Fitz, how we joked we would grow old together, becoming more set in our ways until we turned into two eccentric old women surrounded by rescued pets.

      We didn’t talk about Daniel, but I could tell from the careful way Joe stepped around telling certain stories that Daniel was in his mind as much as he was in mine. Our son was as present at that table as if he’d been asleep on my knee, my arms around him. I could almost feel the weight of him. I could almost look down and see his lashes flickering, his lips apart, the thumb that had been in his mouth now hovering close to his chin. I could almost feel the heat of his body pressed against mine. If I closed my eyes and drank another beer, I could almost bring my darling boy back to me.

      Almost.