The sea appeared between two warehouses while Delia was waiting at a red light.
She had expected a grander arrival. A curve in the road, perhaps, and an expanse of water that would require her to stop the car. Instead there was a delivery van ahead of her, a man eating an apple beside a loading bay, and beyond them a narrow strip of gray.
She lowered the passenger window. Cold air lifted the folded directions from the seat.
The light changed. Someone behind her sounded a horn.
“I’m going,” she said, to nobody.
Three hours of driving had left a sore place between her shoulders. For the first hour she had listened to a woman explain how to grow tomatoes in containers. For the second she had turned the radio off. During the third she had eaten the sandwich she bought at a gas station, dropping lettuce into the space beside the handbrake. She had not cried. She had been rather proud of that until she realized she was keeping score.
The cottage stood at the end of a gravel lane above the beach. It was smaller than the photograph suggested, with a white door and a window box containing plants flattened by wind. Alma Rusk waited on the path in a red fleece, a brass key looped around one finger.
“Delia?”
“Yes. Sorry, am I late?”
“By about four minutes. I think we’ll survive.”
Alma showed her where to park and held the door while Delia wrestled the dark green suitcase over the threshold. Inside, the brown sofa faced the sea. The lamp from the photograph stood beside it. Everything was exactly where she had expected it to be, which somehow made things worse.
“Hot water takes a moment,” Alma said. “Don’t keep turning the dial or you’ll get a surprise. Recycling’s outside the side gate. If the wind catches that gate, lift it slightly before you close it.”
Delia nodded with the serious attention she usually gave emergency procedures.
“The path down is public. Steps can be slippery. I wouldn’t use them in the dark.”
“All right.”
Alma laid the key on the kitchen counter. “My number’s on the card. I live just beyond the other cottage, but calling is easier than knocking. I’m out a fair bit.”
She paused at the bedroom door.
“Ah. I asked for one set of towels to be left out.”
Two white bath towels lay folded on the bed, facing each other. Between them sat a small wrapped bar of soap.
“It’s fine,” Delia said quickly.
“I can take one.”
“No. Really.”
Alma looked at her for a second, then moved on to explain the heater. She did not ask about the missing guest. Delia was grateful until the front door closed, when she wished the woman had found one more thing to explain.
She stood in the middle of the room with her coat on.
The sea filled the window. It moved continuously, indifferent to being looked at. A gull landed on the low wall outside and inspected her through the glass.
“Don’t start,” she told it.
She unpacked the suitcase because leaving it closed would make departure too easy. Clothes into drawers, shoes beneath the chair, books on the bedside table. She put one towel in the bathroom and the other in the linen cupboard. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and discovered that she had nothing to do.
At home there would have been laundry, messages, someone arriving with food or concern. Here the hours belonged entirely to her, and she had brought no instructions for them.
She checked her phone. Yasmin had sent a photograph of a paint-smeared desk with the words Living the dream. Her mother had sent Have you arrived? followed four minutes later by Call me when you can.
Delia replied to both, assuring her mother she had arrived safely and would call tomorrow. She did not want to describe the cottage yet. Description would lead to questions about how she felt, and she was still trying to find a feeling she could say aloud without alarming anyone.
She tried the sofa. It was comfortable in an undistinguished way, firm enough to read on, with a knitted throw folded over one arm. She opened her book to the receipt and read the same paragraph three times.
On the fourth attempt she realized she was listening for another person in the bedroom.
She closed the book.
The window latch was stiff. She worked it upward and pushed the window out a few inches. The sound of the sea came into the room, rougher and louder than it had been through the glass. Down on the beach, a child dragged a long branch behind him while an adult followed carrying his shoes. The branch left a crooked line that the next wave erased.
Delia watched until they moved out of sight.
She had imagined this window at night, their reflections overlapping in the dark. She had imagined waking here married. The thought was so precise that she could almost feel a ring on the finger she had left bare.
She pulled the window shut too hard. The latch struck the frame with a sharp crack.
“Careful,” she said aloud.
There was no damage. She checked anyway, running her finger along the painted wood, then stood looking at her own hand as if it had done something without consulting her.
In the bathroom she splashed water over her face. The mirror showed her travel-flattened curls, a crease from the seat belt at the neck of her shirt, eyes that looked tired rather than transformed. She wet her fingers and coaxed the front of her hair back into shape.
Then she picked up the second book from the bedside table. It was heavier, with a cracked spine, a collection of accounts from people who had lived through changes they hadn’t chosen. She had bought it for work months ago and never finished it. Tonight she couldn’t bear the idea of learning anything.
She put both books on the table and went to see what else the cottage offered. A drawer held a deck of cards missing its box. Another held a corkscrew, a screwdriver, and three batteries of different sizes. Beside the kettle was a pencil sharpened down to a stub.
On the counter was a basket of local leaflets. Boat trips, a small history collection, a restaurant whose photographs made every plate look enormous. Beneath them lay a narrow cinema schedule printed on yellow paper.
THE LANTERN. ONE SCREEN. GOOD STORIES.
Someone had crossed out GOOD in pen beside that evening’s title and written questionable.
The movie was an old monster film Delia had watched years ago on a television with terrible reception. A giant creature attacked a seaside town by knocking over what were plainly cardboard buildings. She remembered loving it. Russell had watched twelve minutes, announced it was unwatchable, and gone to bed.
The screening began at six.
She looked at the clock. Five fifteen.
She could stay and listen to the refrigerator, or she could watch a man in a rubber suit destroy a miniature pier.
She picked up the brass key.
The Lantern occupied a narrow brick building between a closed hair salon and a shop selling fishing equipment. Its sign needed paint at one corner. A glass display case held a poster so lurid that Delia could see the monster’s teeth from across the street.
Inside smelled of warm dust and popcorn. A man behind the counter was trying to persuade a roll of ticket paper to fit into a machine. He had dark blond hair, a short beard, and the expression of someone losing an argument to an object.
“One or two?” he asked without looking up.
Delia’s hand tightened around her purse.
“One.”
He glanced at her then, briefly. Hazel eyes, a crease between his eyebrows.
“Sorry. It thinks the roll’s empty.” He lifted the paper. “Evidence suggests otherwise.”
“I don’t need a ticket.”
“I need it to admit defeat.”
The machine made a grinding noise and produced six inches of blank paper.
“There. Humiliated me instead.”
She smiled despite herself.
He took her payment and tore a ticket by hand from a small emergency pad. His fingers were long, the nails short and clean. A faint white scar crossed one knuckle.
“Anywhere you like. There are about twelve people in, so competition’s fierce.”
“Is it as bad as I remember?”
“Worse on a large screen.”
“Excellent.”
He looked at her again, this time properly.
“You’ve seen it?”
“A long time ago.”
“Then you know about the lighthouse.”
“I’ve never forgotten the lighthouse.”
“The director probably wishes everyone would.”
She bought a small bag of popcorn because her sandwich had been hours ago. He offered salt; she declined, then changed her mind, and he passed it across without comment.
The auditorium had dark red seats and small wall lights shaped like shells. Delia chose a place halfway back, leaving her coat on the empty seat beside her before remembering nobody would be coming to claim it. She moved it onto her lap.
A couple in the row ahead argued quietly about whether they had locked their car. An older man opened a packet of sweets with prolonged determination. Somewhere near the front, a teenager laughed before anything had happened.
The lights dimmed.
For twenty minutes Delia forgot the cottage.
The monster emerged from the sea with what appeared to be a bath mat attached to its head. A scientist explained the danger using a drawing that looked nothing like the creature. The mayor refused to close the beach. Delia knew every decision would be disastrous and found herself leaning forward anyway.
Then the screen went black.
The sound continued: screaming, an explosion, a man shouting about the harbor. In the darkness someone said, “That improves it.”
A light came on at the back.
“Sorry,” the man from the counter called. “Give us a minute.”
His voice carried without strain. He crossed the aisle to a side door, a flashlight held between his teeth while he searched for a key. The older man with the sweets advised him to switch it off and on again.
“That’s the advanced procedure,” he replied around the flashlight.
Several people laughed. Delia watched him disappear through the door.
The interruption lasted long enough for embarrassment to begin settling over the room. He came back without the flashlight in his mouth.
“We’ve got a connection problem. I can refund you if you need to leave. Otherwise, five minutes and I’ll wind back to before the creature ate the radio tower.”
“It didn’t eat it,” the teenager said. “It stepped on it.”
The man nodded gravely. “Important distinction. Before that.”
Nobody left.
Delia went out to the foyer for water. At the counter he was speaking quietly to another employee, a young person in a gray sweatshirt. His easy manner had gone; he looked irritated and intent.
“The spare’s in the top drawer. No, the other cabinet. I’ll come.”
He noticed Delia waiting and stopped.
“Water?” she asked.
“Help yourself to the jug there. Cups underneath.”
He was already turning away when he added, “Sorry about the delay.”
“It happens.”
“Usually when I promise myself it’ll be a quiet evening.”
He followed the assistant through the side door. Delia poured a cup and drank it beside a framed photograph of the cinema from decades earlier. In the photograph, people queued around the corner in coats and hats. Someone had drawn a mustache on a smiling face near the edge, then tried unsuccessfully to erase it.
When the film resumed, the monster ate nothing. It stepped on the tower, as promised, and the audience applauded.
Delia laughed so suddenly that popcorn caught in her throat. She coughed into her sleeve, eyes watering, while the woman in front turned to check she was all right. Delia nodded, mortified and still laughing.
By the time the lighthouse collapsed, she was waiting for it with the delighted dread of someone expecting a terrible joke.
Outside the auditorium, the man stood by the exit collecting empty cups. He had pushed his sleeves up. A small streak of dust marked his forearm.
“Worth the technical ordeal?” he asked her.
“The lighthouse was even better than I remembered.”
“It leans before the monster touches it.”
“The lighthouse was afraid.”
He laughed, a full laugh that changed his face more than she expected.
“That’s my defense from now on.”
She dropped her cup into the bin and stepped outside. The evening was still light, the street washed pale by the low sun. She had reached the display case when a rectangle of paper fluttered against her shoe.
A ticket.
She picked it up and went back to the door.
“Someone dropped this.”
He looked at it. “Seat unrestricted, handwritten number. That’s yours.”
“Oh.”
“Unless there’s another person here who lost an argument with the ticket machine.”
She looked down at her coat pocket, which was turned partly inside out.
“Apparently I needed proof.”
“You can keep it. We don’t have a strict return policy on those.”
She folded it and put it safely into her purse.
He held out another yellow schedule.
“If you’re around tomorrow, the seven o’clock is good. Properly good. No cardboard property damage.”
She studied the title. A small film about a family arguing over an inherited house. She had wanted to see it when it first came out. Russell had said it sounded depressing, and they had gone to something with car chases instead.
“Is the ending any good?”
“I think so.”
“That wasn’t very confident.”
“It annoys some people.”
“Now I’m interested.”
“I’m Soren, by the way.”
“Delia.”
He repeated it once, as though fixing it in his mind, then turned when the assistant called from inside.
“See you tomorrow, maybe.”
She walked back toward the cottage with the schedule in her pocket. At the corner she stopped beneath a streetlamp and took it out again, checking the time.
Seven. She would come at seven.