Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Thirty-four

The first storm, the storm that had taken Alexei’s music, had been sneaky. It had threaded its watery fingers beneath the roads, through the cracks in the rocks. It had weakened the roots that held the earth together; even as the rain had dried away and everything looked like it had gone back to normal and the sky had shown up blue; as all those things had happened, beneath the earth water gathered and did what water always does, even slowly: destroyed everything that got in its way, invisible and unnoticed.

When the first storm had hit mostly dry land it had run off. When the second storm arrived, it had nowhere left to go.

The darkness was oppressive and heavy as the first fat raindrops started to fall. Marisa sat out looking at the balcony to get a good view. She was aiming to feel as she had before; to be at one with the elements, to practise her breathing.

It took her about five minutes to start playing Candy Crush instead, and she told herself off and reminded herself what Anita kept saying to her: don’t push your feelings away. Let them engulf you. Feel them and acknowledge them, know that they will pass, that they’re just feelings and feelings aren’t everything.

It was easier said than done when there was a good Facebook argument going on she wanted to look at, but she did her best.

And in fact, Storm Brian was starting to put on a pretty good show. The thunder was constant, and she could see lightning glance, as if someone was flicking a light on and off outside, even if she didn’t always catch the forks. The rain crashed against her windows so hard it sounded like hail. She went forwards to watch it more closely. The sea was foaming hard, a maelstrom of white, foaming like a washing machine. She shivered, thinking of boats out there on the sea. But they wouldn’t be out, would they? Everyone knew this storm was coming. They would have found safe harbour, wouldn’t they?

Even as she thought this, she caught the very distant outline of a huge container ship on the horizon. Goodness, she thought, concerned. Those things never fell over, did they? But even so she thought how frightening it must be, facing the great walls of crashing waves. Or perhaps they were used to it.

The thunder grew louder, if anything. But having been through the last storm she found she didn’t mind quite so much; was feeling rather cosy, if anything. She even started thinking about what she would make for supper – was considering a little aubergine parmigiana and had got those precise ingredients in, even if, sadly, just for one. She turned on the oven, then glanced out the back window. Already the little road was turning into a stream once more, with nowhere for the water to drain properly. Well. She could batten down the hatches and wait it out. And all the while knowing that if she had to get out, she could. She couldn’t believe how much better she felt than the last time.

She noticed that the oven had turned on, but the extractor hadn’t, just as she heard another, more distant, crack. She frowned, turned on the kitchen light. Nothing. Oh goodness. There was a power cut. She checked her phone, which was charged, because it was always charged. Even when she used to go out, Marisa was the kind of person who always kept her phone charged.

Okay, she thought. Okay. Don’t panic. She had 4G on her phone. She had charge. She had . . . She frowned. Did she have candles? Of course she did! In her bathroom!

Lighting all her scented candles at once gave a very distinctive pong to the room but did it give the place a rosy glow. Marisa added an extra jumper, and set about eating what was in her freezer. Thank goodness the oven was gas.

She should probably go and see Alexei, she thought. He almost certainly didn’t have a candle – what man had candles just lying around the place, unless they were trying to seduce someone, which as far as she could tell he absolutely never tried to do.

She wondered about his love life. Another musician maybe? A cellist, with hair to her knees. A great Amazon of a person, who could look him in the eye. A girl or a boy? Oh, a girl, he had said. An Amazon girl, she decided, with big long lily-white arms that were absolutely hypnotising as they swayed to and fro: beautiful Valkyrie legs either side of the cello. He would have been completely hypnotised, playing along with the orchestra – did they have a piano in orchestras? Marisa wasn’t a hundred per cent sure – and then he’d had to come to Britain to get this job and he’d had to leave her behind and he was full of powerful jealousy and that’s what made him so angry and making such crashing music all the time . . . Ooh, perhaps she was married to the chief of the orchestra, and he had a passionate Russian desire for her that could never be assuaged and therefore he’d had to flee his mother country to try and forget her, even though he never ever could. Marisa would have liked to have been the kind of terrifying girl no man could ever forget but she wasn’t quite sure how that would work.

So he’d gone to the furthest spot in the world to get away from a doomed love affair and now he was being regularly propositioned by the women in the village but his heart was true only to the cellist and—

Her reverie was interrupted by a steady banging on the door.

‘Marisa! Marisa!’

It was him.