Two weeks in a lighthouse in beautiful Mull?
Hillwalker’s delight… three Dalmatians in Snowdonia need you!
Reliable horse lover wanted for month in Dorset – allowance paid.
‘Wow, people actually do this,’ Jo says, sipping her wine. ‘Well, I have no idea how to look after horses,’ she says to herself, eyes fixed on the screen as she clicks on another property.
Jo taps in more detailed search criteria. Dogs, check. Cats, check. Small pets, check. Light cleaning duties, check. General house security, check. Lawn care and weeding… she hovers over this one, checking the box and unchecking it. Since Will went, she’s struggled to keep up with their garden. It’s only a small patch at the back of their terraced house, but the grass always seems to need cutting and the weeds somehow multiply faster than she can pull them out. For now, she leaves it ticked. Then she clicks a few other boxes: general errands, taking deliveries, and suchlike. But when it comes to location, she’s stumped.
She doesn’t really want to go anywhere. What if Will comes back while she’s away?
‘Brighton is nice,’ Jo says, pretending she’s talking to herself but really it’s to Will. It’s the kind of vibrant place she could get lost in. Better to have the buzz of people around her so she doesn’t drown in her own thoughts, plus she knows Will liked it there. And he loved – loves – the coast. But then it’ll just be full of happy couples, she thinks, deciding that, if she’s really considering doing this, rural might be better. No one at all around apart from cows, sheep and whatever animals she’d be in charge of. The solitude might be good for her.
She clicks on a few counties on the interactive map: Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cornwall, Devon, Somerset… all beautiful places. But she can’t think of a single reason to go to any of them. Jo idly clicks on a few of the properties that come up on her search list. Some are requesting house-sitters with a review count of at least ten. Some are for a month or more. Some look like properties she couldn’t possibly cope with and one or two frankly look as though they want pulling down.
‘Not much of a holiday to be had there,’ she says, wide-eyed at the pictures of the shack-like place. ‘And what about the owner’s personal stuff?’ she says to herself, sipping her wine and scrolling other properties. ‘I wouldn’t want a stranger rooting through my belongings,’ she adds, shaking her head and glancing up as if Will is there.
‘Oh,’ she says, clicking on an image of a thatched cottage. ‘This looks nice…’ She imagines Will already there when she arrives, standing at the stove, apron on, candles lit, music playing, the spicy scent of his Caribbean cooking in the air.
She whips round, grabbing the back of the chair, tears in her eyes. ‘Where the hell did you go?’ she says, almost shouting as she stares around the empty kitchen. ‘How could you just leave me?’ she yells. She wants to cry, but can’t any more. In the early days, the tears came hot and fast, burning her cheeks, streaking her eye make-up down her cheeks.
Now, she’s just plain angry.
Found anywhere?
I’m looking, Jo texts back.
The nightly cry used to release the chemical build-up of the day, helping her stay asleep – albeit a fitful sleep. Now, if she does drop off before midnight, she’s usually awake again at 2 a.m. Then at three, four, five. Staring at the ceiling, wondering, thinking. The alarm is set for seven but she never needs it.
‘Must like reptiles,’ Jo says, unable to help the smile. ‘That’s no holiday.’ She winces at the photos of the two snakes that would be her charges. She shudders, returning to the main list.
What about Hastings?
Jo looks up at the sound of his voice. In her mind, Will is standing there, the tea towel wrapped around his big dark hands. We were thinking of going to that B & B there, do you remember? he says.
Jo stares at him, not wanting to speak, not wanting to destroy the magic of him, have him dissolve again. Yes, yes I remember, she thinks. The rooms looked so cosy, the open fires, the views, the beach walks. But we never made it…
Go on, have a look, Will says as Jo takes another sip of her wine. When she looks up again, he’s gone.
‘Hastings,’ she types in the search box, not even remembering which county it’s in. They’d wanted an escape, needed a long weekend away, with Will suggesting the area, telling her that someone had given him the idea. Even though Will hadn’t got the part he’d recently auditioned for and money would be tight for a couple of months, the voucher website had a deal they could just afford. But when they’d finally got round to planning it, the only dates they could manage had been booked up. Instead, they’d made do with a lock-in weekend by their own fire at home. Phones switched off, their favourite food in the fridge, a stack of movies with the wine bottle beside them. They spent most of it on the sofa or in bed… just being.
Now neither of them was being. One gone, one barely existing.
‘Ten sixty-six and all that,’ Jo mutters, remembering, as the search list pops up. ‘Good place for a seamstress, you said,’ she reminds Will, glancing up to where she’d imagined him standing. ‘OK… what have we got here?’ She turns back to the screen, scanning the results. ‘This one’s not bad. Two Labradors need long daily walks,’ Jo reads. ‘And because our house is isolated, we don’t like to leave it empty.’ Jo quickly clicks off the property, perturbed by the bars on the windows, and that it’s set in the middle of nowhere.
A few other properties look vaguely interesting, with one in a village not far from where she and Will had planned to go. ‘This one’s really nice,’ Jo says, clicking on the property.
She reads out the description. ‘Someone caring and kind needed to look after my elderly cat and crazy spaniel. Ten days mid-May. Light housekeeping and some gardening, but feel free to use my home as yours. I travel a lot so I’m quite used to house-sitters. Non-smokers only and a love of houseplants essential!’
Promising, Jo thinks, clicking through the photographs. Fifteen in total. Everything from a close-up of the sleeping cat to the bouncy dog… the kitchen, the garden, the bedrooms, the living room, the garden. The local area.
The living room.
Jo clicks back, freezing. Staring at the picture.
Then she looks up slowly, looking for Will, waiting for her mind to play tricks on her.
When he doesn’t appear, she stares down at her laptop screen again. Blinking.
Her eyes drifting in and out of focus.
The living room.
She looks up again, hardly daring to breathe. Will is back briefly, smiling. Making that silly face of his. What are you waiting for?
Jo turns back to her laptop, her shaking finger accidentally clicking on another photograph – the bedroom with its painted wooden floor and pretty white bed linen.
‘Oh my God…’ she says, panting, breathless, her finger suddenly useless on the mouse as she tries to go back. She shakes her head, knowing she must be seeing things again, that it can’t possibly be real.
‘Living room, living room…’ she mutters, fumbling, clicking back one more picture, then another and another. She leans in closer, zooming in on the mantelpiece.