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living on top of you, underneath you, crowding into you on buses, pushed up against you on tubes, encroaching on your personal space but avoiding eye contact at all costs.’
‘But how do you know this?’
‘I lived there too. When I was studying. A century ago,’ he laughs. ‘I lived in Peckham.’
‘From here to Peckham? What is there to study in Peckham?’
‘Peckham – because it was a cheap place to live,’ he says. ‘I studied Design. And then I studied Engineering. Not because I wanted to be an eternal student. But because I knew what I wanted to do.’
‘Are you doing it still?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it that you do?’
‘I build bridges,’ he says.
‘As a metaphor? Are you a counsellor? Marriage guidance – that kind of thing?’
Joe laughs and she looks cross that he should. ‘No – real bridges, the type that go from A to B. Bridges that span valleys and rivers and cross divides. Bridges that enable one to traverse air and water; bridges that take you closer to the sky or allow you to skim the sea. Bridges that join and unify places otherwise kept apart, that pacify areas previously hostile.’
Tess is struck, again, by his turn of phrase. She recalls that photo on the Welsh dresser. Perhaps it was San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge? She's embarrassed to ask. She knows nothing about bridges. In fact, she's probably always taken bridges for granted, having grown up in the shadow of Brunel's mighty Clifton Suspension Bridge. She decides she likes Joe's passion for his job, how it obviously enhances his life. She feels gently envious. She had similar passion once that she'd ploughed into a Small Business Loan, but that verve and the funds are long gone. Nothing remains. Nothing of anything apart from those bloody boxes in the back of the car and the weight of it all on her shoulders. She glances at her nails now and alters her grip on the buggy so she doesn't have to see them. The whites of her knuckles will have to do instead.
‘It's nice here,’ she says, priming her gaze outwards to blank out thoughts of London that have suddenly slid around her like a coarse scarf pulled too tight. They are walking downhill steeply; the street is residential but quiet, with grand Victorian buildings to their left, while lush and wooded land delves down sharply into a valley to the right, the land climbing up to the cliffs beyond. A little way ahead lies the North Sea, a motionless grey slab from this distance; on the horizon a tanker looking like a toy. Tess slows her pace, giving little tugs at the buggy. On the right, just before the woods roll downwards, a war memorial, a bandstand, a playground with a view. And an intriguing sign for Italian Gardens.
‘There's a miniature railway,’ Joe is saying. ‘It runs from the gardens to the sea.’ And then he tells her, just wait until the summer.
‘Hear that, Em,’ Tess leans forward awkwardly over the buggy, ‘a train to the sea.’ And to herself she says, hear that – he'd like me to house-sit until the summer.
She really likes his accent and she really likes what he's said.
‘You can also take a lift down to the pier.’
‘A lift?’
‘A water-balanced cliff lift. Eccentric Victorian ingenuity. You'll see.’
‘Did you grow up here, then?’
‘I did.’
‘And apart from your student days in London, you've lived here, you'll never leave.’ It is not a question. She says it as a statement, as if she wants it to be true.
‘Yup. I'm tied to the place all right,’ Joe says.
‘You make it sound a burden. I'd love to own a house half as beautiful and half the size as yours. Do you have family here too?’
But Joe has already bristled inwardly. Why is he doing this? Why is he walking with her? Why didn't he just give her the map and the info pack he'd prepared for house-sitters? In fact, why didn't he give it to her last night? Or leave it on the stairs when he realized she'd gone to bed. Why does she want to know about his family? Enough! A more