Jannes had warned her that he wouldn’t be there when she arriv
ed and so she followed the instructions he’d sent her to get into the key safe. She hadn’t seen his Harbourside house before. He visited Mormor so often that he had a room there, and it made more sense for them to meet up in London and hang out at her place. Which meant that she had never seen a space that was entirely Jannes’s. She couldn’t help but be secretly pleased that he couldn’t meet her until later. It gave her a chance to see his place without him in it. She wasn’t sure why exactly that appealed so much: if there was something she wanted to know about him then she could just ask.
But this was different, she thought.
The hallway was bright and clean and sparse, with just a couple of pairs of shoes stored neatly by the door, a couple of jackets she recognised on the hooks. She dropped the key into a bowl on the shelf above the radiator and walked through to the kitchen. Ah, so here was Jannes. Glass doors covered the whole of the back of the house, offering unbroken views of the sea, all the way out to the horizon. A host of boats bobbed in the water, sails billowing in the breeze, and she wondered how often Jannes sat here, watching people out on the water. Every seat in the open-plan room—from the great big corner sofa to the pale wood chairs arranged around a circular table—faced towards the sea.
And there were touches of the ocean inside too: the woven blanket tossed haphazardly on the sofa, with a mix of blues and greens, aquas and azures, and sky and stormy grey. The artwork on the walls all captured a part of life on the shore or the sea: shells, and fishing boats, and always the rich blue-green of deep water.
She wandered along the bookshelves that held Jannes’s trophies and, across the facing wall, the ones with actual books. She pulled a few out and looked at the titles, curious. There were books on travel and nature and woodwork. Sports biographies and sailing, and more sailing, of course.
She walked back through to the kitchen and found the coffee machine, made herself a double espresso and slid the glass doors open. A wide deck spanned the width of the house, with a glass barrier the only thing breaking the view from the deck to the sea. Lara sat on a wicker chair, eyes drawn to the white caps and sunlight glinting on the water and felt the stress and anxiety of her working week fall away. She could get used to this. Well, maybe she would, she considered, depending on how long she and Jannes kept up their pretence.
She watched the yachts out on the water and listened to the rattle of wires in masts from the marina. With every lungful of sea air, her body felt looser and heavier. If Jannes didn’t call soon and let her know that his meeting was finished then she might decide that she was never leaving this deck.
As if on cue, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Jannes. She hit answer and tried to hide the smile in her voice.
‘All done schmoozing?’ she asked.
‘For now. If you want to join me here, we can do some more together if you like. You know you’re much more charming than I am.’
‘Sure,’ she said, stretching out in the chair. If she didn’t move soon she would definitely fall asleep here. ‘I need to earn my keep.’
She could practically hear his frown. ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’
‘I know. I’m kidding.’ It was adorable, how seriously he took her sometimes.
‘I’ll walk back up and meet you. Shouldn’t take more than ten minutes if you’re ready to head out.’
‘I am, but there’s no need to walk back up here. I’ll mooch through the town and meet you at the yacht club,’ she told him. She’d never visited Harbourside before, and wanted to explore in her own time.
She said goodbye, pulled the glass doors closed and gathered up her bag and her sunglasses and hat. Pocketing the key, she pulled the door closed behind her and followed Jannes’s directions to the main street of the town. Bunting was strung between the shops, across the cobbled street, and the sun was fierce on the heads and shoulders of pinkened tourists.
Ahead of her, a toddler sat down abruptly, striped pinafore dress gathering around her chunky legs as she sobbed and declared she wouldn’t walk another step. Lara gave the parents a smile as she passed the family, and stopped to look in the window of a boutique. There was vintage furniture, clothes and jewellery of all her Instagram dreams. She took a couple of photos through the window and made a mental note to stop in before she went back to London. The next window was filled with second-hand books, and if it wasn’t for the knowledge that Jannes was waiting for her at the entrance of the marina she was in danger of losing the whole afternoon in the little row of independent shops that led down to the seafront.
She followed the sound of the music and found Jannes waiting for her by the entrance to the marina, ice cream melting down his wrist.
She laughed as he licked a trickle of cream that was making its way around the circle of his wrist bone. Laughter was definitely the right response to that, she told herself, eyes still fixed on his wrist. She definitely shouldn’t offer to lick it off for him. She licked her lips involuntarily as he held the cone out to her.
‘I got you ice cream. Probably should have waited until you were actually here.’
‘You’re sweet,’ she said, reaching up to press a kiss to his cheek, just a friendly thing to do, and took the ice cream from him.
‘How are things going?’ she asked as they walked down steps into the marina and along the row of yachts moored there. She tucked a free strand of hair behind her ear before it got stuck in the ice cream.
‘Not bad,’ Jannes said, slipping his hands in his pockets as they walked. His sunglasses hid his eyes, making it hard to read his expression. She was distracted, anyway, by the glint of sunlight on the pale hair on the back of his legs, bare skin between his shorts and his deck shoes.
‘Lara?’
‘Hmm, what was that?’ She tried to cover her embarrassment, not sure how long she’d been distracted.
‘Nothing—I just asked you if you found the house okay. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you arrived but they changed the meeting at the last minute.’
‘Like I said on the phone, it was absolutely fine. And I love the house. You do know you might never get rid of me now? I think I could live here for ever.’
Even with the sunglasses on there was no hiding the flash of panic across Jannes’s face. ‘I was kidding, Jannes. I’m not really about to move in.’
‘I didn’t panic.’