Ann Cleeves - Harbour Street

Next door to the yard was the lifeboat station, housing the inshore lifeboat, and outside it, to the seaward side, sat the tractor and trailer that would carry the vessel to the water in emergencies or on exercise. Then came the Mardle Fisheries: alive, buzzing with sound, background music from the telly on the wall, laughter from the people in the queue. During the day the fisheries sold wet fish, much of it locally caught, retail and wholesale from a long, low building at the back. In the evening it was a fish-and-chip shop, with a sit-in restaurant by the side. Behind the fryers two women dressed in white were flushed with heat, despite the snowflakes blowing in through the open door. There was a line of people spilling onto the street. All local. Mardle wasn’t a place for tourists, even in the summer. There was nothing beyond the fisheries except the harbour, enclosed by the wall. The boats there were dark shadows, half-hidden by the drifting flakes.

On the other side of the road stood the Coble pub, and already the snow was flattened and hard where people had crossed between it and the chip shop. Outside, a couple of hardy smokers leaned against the wall for shelter from the worst of the weather. Next to the pub was the low, squat building of the harbourmaster’s office; beyond that some rough ground that was used as a car park, and then, opposite the big residential house with the brightly lit basement, stood St Bartholomew’s Church. Victorian Gothic, a church built for seamen and pitmen, now regularly attended by a handful of elderly women. At the end of the street, like a beacon or a square glowing moon, shone the yellow cube with the black M that marked the Metro station. The end of the line. People waited on the platform to get into town for Friday-night partying, but no trains came.

This was Harbour Street.

In the big house Kate Dewar carried the linen up the stairs to the airing cupboard, pausing briefly outside the numbered doors. Not listening. Kate would never eavesdrop on her guests. But this was her territory and she liked to know who was at home. The house seemed quiet. Perhaps the snow was causing travel problems. She was glad her kids were already in; she’d heard them arrive earlier and imagined them slouched on the couch in the basement flat, watching TV. She had a rule about finishing homework before switching on the set, but it was nearly the end of term and today she wasn’t going to push it.

Climbing the stairs, she thought she heard the front door opening, but, stopping to listen, there was no other sound. It must be the wind, rattling the letter box. She could always tell when the wind was northerly because of that particular noise. The airing cupboard was on the attic landing, between Margaret’s room and the shelf where she placed extra sachets of coffee and tea, a tin of home-made biscuits. Beside the shelf was a small fridge with a carton of fresh milk inside. There were hospitality trays in each of the rooms, but she liked her guests to feel welcome. It was the small touches that brought them back. They certainly didn’t come for the location; there was little that was attractive about Harbour Street. An arched window looked out across Malcolm’s yard and beyond the fisheries to the sea. It was still snowing. She saw the flakes billow in a triangle of light shed by a street lamp. Out at sea a light buoy flashed red. Her husband had worked on the rigs and she still felt a mixture of guilt and grief when she thought of the vast space beyond her doorstep.

Kate stood for a moment and listened to the music in her head. She coaxed the tune to life, hummed it. A song for winter, clear and spare. For love in winter. And again she thought of Stuart and the unlikely infatuation that had hit her in middle age; she was breathless and astounded, aware that at this moment she’d sacrifice everything for her new man. He was more important than Ryan’s nightmares, his prowling through the neighbourhood at night like a feral animal, unable to sleep, his occasional outbursts of temper. More important than Chloe’s exam results and her terrifying ambition. Stuart, old and wiry, more like a mountaineer than a musician, had brought Kate back to life.

On her way back to the flat she bumped into George Enderby by the front door. He had snowflakes clinging to his woollen overcoat and his big, good-natured face beamed down at her. ‘What do you think, Kate? Snow for Christmas. The kids will be excited.’ He had one of those rich, posh, southern voices that made her think of a politician or an actor.

Kate thought that her kids were super-cool these days, and they’d consider building snowmen to be beneath them. But George was so innocent with this fantasy of a perfect family life that she couldn’t disabuse him.

‘Yeah,’ she said.

George worked as a publisher’s rep and he travelled with a big wheelie suitcase full of books. Often he left copies for her children. Chloe liked some of them, the thick ones about other worlds, but although Ryan pretended to be interested he wasn’t a great reader. He took the books in order to please. At the back of Kate’s mind there was always a niggle of anxiety about Ryan. He was no real trouble, but despite his easy smile she suspected he was unhappy and she wasn’t sure what she could do about it. And there were occasional flashes of temper that reminded her of Rob. But Harbour Street took up all her time and her energy, and Stuart took up all of her dreams. Ryan had stopped talking to her years before. She told herself that the boy was still young, and that kids were complicated and never confided in their parents.

George had a wife, but they’d never had any children. He’d told her that once. He’d told her a lot of things during late nights, as he took his usual nightcap in the visitors’ lounge. He’d sip whisky and she’d look at her watch and wonder when he’d go to bed. She ran the guest house pretty much by herself. There was only Margaret to help in the kitchen, and the last few days she hadn’t been much use.

‘Have you had a good day, George?’

She knew that business was tough for him. He’d confided that too. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do, Kate, without my work. Books are what I live and breathe.’ She’d sensed that he didn’t need to work to earn a living. He had that laid-back confidence and careless attitude to money that comes with being born rich. She thought he wasn’t happily married, though even when he was very drunk he was never unpleasant about his wife. ‘My Diana is a marvel,’ he’d say, ‘a wonderful woman.’

Now he was shaking himself out of his overcoat. ‘Usual room, Kate?’

‘Of course.’ George liked the big room at the back of the house looking out over the sea and didn’t mind that it was the most expensive in the place. My bosses are used to London prices, Kate. They never quibble about my expenses.

‘I’m just here for a couple of days this time. Then on my way south again. Unless the snow is as heavy as the forecast. Then you might have an unexpected guest for Christmas dinner.’ He smiled sadly and she thought he’d love that. A proper family Christmas lunch with her and the kids, sitting around the table in the basement, him carving the turkey. But this year there would be Stuart too, and she wasn’t sure what George would make of that. She had a sneaky suspicion that George Enderby fancied her rotten.

‘I’ll put a pot of tea in the lounge.’ This was a ritual too. He’d sit in the lounge with his laptop and his books, drinking tea and eating Margaret’s biscuits. Then, because she didn’t provide evening meals, he’d go out into the street – either to the fish shop or the Coble – for his supper and come back with a few pints inside him, to sit up drinking whisky until midnight.

As she entered the basement she saw the kids were watching telly. She thought perhaps there’d been something else on and they’d changed channel when they’d heard her on the stairs. Something unsuitable. She was a control freak and wanted to know what they were watching. Sometimes she wondered if she was too strict with them. Perhaps that was why they didn’t talk to her any more. They were almost grown-up, after all. She saw the way other kids behaved, what they got away with. But she knew what she’d been like when she was young: sex and drugs and the music scene. She’d never finished her exams and she wanted better for them.