The House by the Sea. Louise Douglas

was a bulky, difficult thing that kept twisting on its wheels. As I approached the exit gate, I lost my nerve and hovered behind the sliding doors. I looked each time they opened, but I couldn’t see Joe in the arrivals hall. Perhaps he was in a different terminal or perhaps I’d got the wrong airport. Such mistakes happened. Fitz knew someone who had once inadvertently bought a ticket for Birmingham, Alabama, when she only meant to go to the West Midlands.

      The doors slid open again. The family from the plane went through and a cheer went up from the relatives who had come to meet them. The doors closed. I tightened my fingers around the handle of the suitcase. The doors opened and closed; opened and closed. Each time I leaned forward and looked, each time Joe wasn’t there. I couldn’t stay here forever. Still I hesitated. The doors slid open and this time a man with tanned skin and short, silver hair standing on the far side of the barrier, caught my eye and raised his hand. He waved vigorously. I looked over my shoulder, assuming he was trying to catch the attention of someone behind me, but he wasn’t. He was waving at me.

      Was it Joe? No! Oh God, it was! I’d been looking for the young man I used to know, not an older, sensible looking man wearing a dusty blue golfing shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. The shock unfooted me. Had he been watching each time the doors opened? Had he seen my eyes scanning the crowd, slipping over him without any hint of recognition? Embarrassment heated my cheeks. What should I say? Should I apologise? No, no. I’d blame my eyes. I’d say I was tired. Shit.

      ‘Come on,’ I murmured to the suitcase, and I went forwards.

      Joe wasn’t smiling as we walked towards one another. His expression was one I recognised from my work, that of a parent called in to school because their child had misbehaved, a parent who didn’t want to be there, who’d rather be at the dentist’s or unblocking the drains or anything. I was almost sick with nerves myself.

      At the last moment, my bag unbalanced me and I stumbled. Joe caught me and there was a moment’s awkwardness. I assured him I was okay, but still I dusted the place where he had touched me and he wiped his hands together. We two, who used to spend whole weekends in bed, who had known every tiny part of each other’s bodies and used to delight in giving one another pleasure, we had become reticent about touching at all. It was painfully awkward and so was the silence that stretched between us so far I could feel the draught as metaphorical tumbleweed rolled sorrowfully by.

      It wasn’t a great beginning. I wondered how on earth we would get through the coming days.

      4

      ‘I can’t believe you’re still struggling with that old suitcase,’ were the first words Joe said to me on our reunion. He stared at the case, battered and grubby and covered with stickers. ‘You said you were going to get rid of it after Seville.’

      Oh, Seville; yes. At Seville airport, I had inadvertently pulled the case over the toes of an elderly man, causing him to drop the duty-free bag he was holding. The bottle of Laphroaig contained inside broke, spilling its contents firstly into the plastic bag and then, when the old man picked the bag up, over his beige slacks, his sandals, his white socks and the floor.

      I was pretty sure now that Joe was remembering the smell of whisky, the redness of the man’s face and his refusal to accept our help or our offer to replace the whisky.

      I hadn’t thought of that incident in at least a decade and wished Joe hadn’t reminded me of it; a thinly veiled criticism that carried all kinds of subliminal messages about my clumsiness, my carelessness, my inertia. At a time when I was already wracked with insecurities, it wasn’t a kind thing to do. On the plus side, it was gratifying to find a valid reason to be angry with Joe all over again.

      Now my ex-husband was staring at my face. If he said anything about me looking worn out or stressed, I would turn around and walk away. Really, I would.

      Instead he asked in a grudging voice: ‘Do you want some?’ and offered me the bottle of water he was holding. He’d obviously been drinking from it while he waited for me because it was half empty.

      ‘No, thank you,’ I said primly and even before the words had been spoken, I regretted them because I was desperately thirsty.

      ‘We’ll get going then.’

      ‘Right.’

      Joe tried to take the handle of my bag, but I insisted I could manage and then had to pretend I wasn’t struggling as I followed him through the arrivals hall.

      If I hadn’t known it was Joe in front of me, I wouldn’t have recognised him. His whole shape and demeanour were different. It wasn’t just the hair, although his ears were very brown against the silver; his shoulders were broader and his walk was no longer a relaxed lope, but more of a marching gait. He no longer hunched his shoulders. He no longer dragged his feet. I was probably different too. I wondered how other people saw us: a couple clearly not in harmony, the man walking ahead, the woman behind with her recalcitrant suitcase. They probably thought we were the kind of miserable, long married pair who had hen-pecked one another so comprehensively over the years that we’d lost the capacity for humour, or kindness.

      What did it matter? Who cared what anyone thought?

      I followed my ex-husband out into the brightness of the outdoors and the oven-like warmth. I breathed in the new, foreign landscape: herbs and exhaust fumes, a dry wind. The suitcase tipped again and Joe turned.

      ‘Let me…’ he said.

      ‘No,’ I said, tetchily. ‘I can manage. I’m fine.’

      We carried on, he striding ahead, the case bumping in my wake. I followed him past taxi ranks and car parks to the bay where the hire car was parked, small and dusty, one of a number of Fiats in a line beneath the twiggy shade of a row of lime trees. The windows had been wound down a couple of inches.

      The doors to the car beside ours were wide open and a young girl was sitting in the passenger seat, her bare feet up on the dashboard, staring at the phone she held in one hand while picking at her teeth with the thumbnail of the other. She looked at us over the top of round, pink plastic sunglasses, then turned back to the screen.

      ‘It’s not much of a car,’ Joe said with a hint of apology in his voice – or perhaps it wasn’t apology, perhaps he wanted to convey that he was used to driving bigger, better vehicles.

      ‘It’s fine,’ I said.

      ‘It was all they had.’

      ‘It’s fine.’

      Joe put my suitcase into the boot and I climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door, pulling it shut with a thunk, just loud enough for Joe to intimate that I was annoyed. Then I wished I hadn’t, because he would definitely have picked up on the fact that the almost-slam of the door had been deliberate. Or perhaps not. We had been apart for ten years; he would have forgotten how to read subtleties in my behaviour by now, wouldn’t he?

      My heart gave a flutter of panic. Does he still know me? No! No! Of course he doesn’t! But what if he…? Stop it, Edie. Stop, for God’s sake!

      Joe climbed into the car and started the engine.

      ‘Do you mind if I open the window?’ I asked.

      ‘No.’

      ‘You wouldn’t rather have the air conditioning on?’

      ‘The window’s fine.’

      Was this how it was going to be between us? Stilted conversation and surly, monosyllabic answers?

      I pressed the button and lowered the window. Warm air rushed in. I glanced at Joe. His face was as rigid as a mannequin’s. Fine. Good. Be like that.

      We jolted over a speed bump and queued for the exit barrier. Joe was staring pointedly ahead, I rested my elbow on the door frame and my chin on my knuckles and looked through the side window. Crows were pecking amongst the dusty grass at the verges. We moved forwards painfully slowly.

      ‘Is