The House in the Dunes

As the summer slowly draws to a close, I wanted to share a short story I wrote for Best Magazine (11th July issue). Set within the fictional world of Porthpella, I had fun imagining a holidaymaker’s relationship with Ally’s Shell House. The story was inspired by a walk I took in the dunes the last time I was in Gwithian, and the feeling of not wanting to rejoin the real world. Anyone else get that end-of-holiday melancholy?

THE HOUSE IN THE DUNES

Laura quietly closes the door to the caravan, her steps quickening as she heads for the beach path. She’s left a note for Jack and Cassie – Gone for one last walk. Back in time for breakfast – but she doubts they’ll wake before she returns. The days when her children jumped on her bed at first light, buckets and spades at the ready, are long gone. But Laura has come to see it as a gift, this early morning solitude. When she slips away over the dunes it’s as if time is suspended: she’s as ageless as the ocean; as careless as a freewheeling, chip-stealing gull.

She first came to Porthpella when she was nine years old. By the week’s end her plaits were two salt-lashed ropes and the sun had joined up all her freckles. Nan spent most days snoozing in her deckchair, a straw hat on her head. But Mum, Mum was her partner in crime, the two of them exploring rockpools, chasing each other in the water, playing endless games of bat and ball.

It was a perfect week. They did it again the next year, the one after that too, always staying in the same static caravan.

The year Mum died, Laura was 12, and she didn’t want to go to Porthpella that summer. But Nan said that Mum would have wanted it. It’s our place, isn’t it? she said.

By the time Nan left her too, Laura was a mum herself. And it was still their place.

There aren’t any benches with plaques in Porthpella, it’s too small for a seaside promenade, but once Laura traced their names in the sand: In memory of Mum and Nan who loved it here. Jack and Cassie chased each other, scuffing all the letters, with that comforting obliviousness that small children have. Then the tide came in anyway.

Laura reaches the point in the dunes where the bay opens wide. She takes the deepest breath she can, as if she can pull this place inside her and keep it there. The sky, so immaculately blue she can hardly believe it. The sea, its perfect lines creasing the fabric of the surface, the lacy trim as the waves break on the sugar-white beach. The island lighthouse, like something out of a storybook. How’s that for a view? Mum said the first time, I mean, how’s that?

Laura suddenly wants to cry. Not just because of all the memories but also because it’s the last day of her holiday. Which, she knows, makes her sound like she’s nine years old again. Only a nine-year-old with a mortgage she can barely manage and a boss she hates and two teenagers who, some days, seem to blame her for all that’s wrong in the world. But it’s never just been a holiday for her.

Porthpella is her happy place. And after every week she spends here, Laura vows to live her own life back home just that little bit better – like making New Year’s resolutions in midsummer. She hopes Jack and Cassie carry Porthpella forward in their lives too. Even if this year they slept through sunrise and scrolled through sunset, they’ve shared enough golden moments together to make Laura think they might.

She walks on, her feet moving along a path that’s well-trodden only to her. Then she stops in the same place she always stops.

It’s the last house in the dunes and is set apart from all the others. It’s made of wood and is painted pale blue, with a wide veranda. A little garden bursts with subtropical plants, strings of sun-bleached buoys and lobster pots. There are about a thousand and one seashells set into the low stone wall.

Laura can remember the three of them seeing the house for the first time. Laden with beach kit, they’d stood for a moment, transfixed. The Shell House, said Mum, well, that’s a bit special. Nan let out a low whistle. Back home, they talked about it; imagined living there. Laura imagines it still.

It’s not a holiday house, which to her mind makes it even more magical. There used to be a child running around, a little girl, who must have grown up and moved away long ago. A handful of times Laura saw a man in a police uniform, kicking off his shoes on the veranda, a beer glass in his hand. Then last year she saw the woman sitting on her own, her hands sunk in her lap. She was maybe in her early 60s but, in that moment, she appeared a lot older.

Laura’s always been subtle about her spying. She doesn’t want to seem like a nosy tourist, peering in windows, marvelling at the quaintness of somebody else’s everyday life. But every year, at least once, she’ll cut through the dunes and slow her steps, in order to top up her memory. On the grey days back home, this is how Porthpella shows up for her: a blue house in the dunes, with the sea, the sky, unfurling beyond.

She thinks of The Shell House when her bus is late. When Cassie slams a door or when Jack grunts his replies. She thinks of it when her boss sends terse emails because her best is never good enough and she apparently gets more migraines than is ‘humanly possible.’ When the dishes pile up and another thing breaks and there’s never enough left at the end of the month. When Mike finds new ways to let his own kids down. When her doctor sets the blood pressure monitor going and says, ‘think of a relaxing image.’

Always The Shell House.

Now, Laura stops. It’s barely seven o’clock in the morning but the woman is already out on her veranda. Her small red dog is at her feet and, for a second, the dog catches Laura’s scent and looks towards her. Then the woman, and the dog, go back inside.

Laura moves closer. She hears voices, and strains to catch them. She feels like a total ear-wigger. But her teenagers are more than a mile away and fast asleep: it’s a treat to embarrass herself without their judgement.

‘So, he’s got motive, means and opportunity,’ says a male voice; young, lightly Northern.

‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ says the woman. ‘Not for murder.’

‘Well, the police don’t agree. It’s an open shut and case for them, I reckon.’

‘So, what can we do?’

‘Try to find someone who’ll talk.’

Laura’s holding her breath. If she’s ever imagined eavesdropping on a conversation at The Shell House, it hasn’t gone like this. As the voices grow louder, she carries on down the narrow path, pretending to look at something on her phone. She glances behind, sees the woman and a tall, young man wander out to the veranda together. They’re carrying coffee cups; their heads together as they talk.

‘It could be dangerous, Jayden.’

‘Exactly. No heroics this time, Al.’

‘That goes for you too.’

Laura knows she must walk on, but her mind’s thrumming with what she’s heard. For the first time ever on the last day of her holiday, she feels a prickle of excitement.

Laura’s first through the door of Hang Ten. The girl with the pink hair smiles as she takes her order: coffee for her, brownies for Jack and Cassie as a final morning’s treat. Emboldened because she’s going home anyway, Laura asks, ‘Do you know who lives at the last house in the dunes, the one called The Shell House?’

The girl tips her head. ‘Ally Bright.’

Ally Bright. Laura can’t believe it's taken her all these years to ask.

‘Does she live there on her own?’

‘She’ll never sell, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Oh no, I’m not asking … I mean, I wish. But no. I’m just …’

‘Oh, you’ve got a case then?’

‘A case?’

The girl froths milk loudly, says over the top of the machine, ‘A case for the Shell House Detectives?’

‘What?’

She laughs, ‘Oh sorry. It’s just there’s been so many asking since the spring.’ She seems to look more closely at Laura. ‘How come you’re curious?’

‘I love it here,’ says Laura simply.

And it doesn’t sound like nearly enough. But the girl starts talking, Laura hanging on her every word: Ally and Jayden; the Lewis Pascoe and Helena Hunter case, and how it was the start of everything.

‘Ally was married to the local police sergeant, but he died about a year and a half ago. Then Jayden moved here from Leeds, and he was kind of adrift too. He used to be a cop, but he’d lost a friend in the line of duty, and I don’t think he was loving being in Porthpella. They bonded, right here in Hang Ten and that was it: the Shell House Detectives were born. Not that anyone knew it back then.’

She hands over the coffee and the box of brownies.

‘Now, Ally and Jayden take the cases the police don’t want or can’t figure out. They help people that need it.’ Her face beams with pride as she says, ‘They’re my friends.’

Laura walks the long way home to the caravan park. It’s still early, and the beach at low tide is quiet. Her feet leave soft prints in the wet sand. In a few hours they’ll be on the A30, bumper to bumper, trundling back towards their regular lives. Will her children even want to come next summer? Jack will be 19, Cassie 17, and Laura knows better than anyone that nothing in life is guaranteed.

She looks back up over the dunes, where she can just about see the gable of The Shell House. It’ll mean something different to her now: The Shell House Detectives. New beginnings and reinvention; a little bit of murder and mayhem. Laura only has fragments of Ally and Jayden’s story, but she holds onto them like shoreline treasures. Maybe next year she’ll learn more. And oh, how she’d love to tell Mum and Nan.

As Laura walks on, she makes quiet resolutions, just as she does at the end of every week here. Usually, she vows to improve her swimming, wear more sun-cream, nag the kids less. But today her thoughts run in a different direction and, even though she’s leaving, her heart swells.

She tells herself that if she ever feels stuck, it’s never too late to start over.

If she ever feels unlucky, she’ll remember that life is loss – but it’s hope too.

And if she ever needs someone to help her, if she’s ever really in trouble, then she can always come to Porthpella.

She can walk over the dunes to The Shell House. And this time she’ll knock.