Page 16 of Beautiful Ugly
“Lying to him about what?” she asks.
“Everything.”
MODESTLY AMBITIOUS
GRADY
On the envelope, I scribble my agent’s name and her office address. Then I seal it, and it feels as though the deed is done. I can’t call or email her—there’s no phone signal or internet—but I have put the writing paper and envelopes I found inside the desk to good use. It’s late afternoon now, the sun already a little low in the sky. I could wait until tomorrow, but then I fear I might change my mind. I need to send the letter before I can talk myself out of doing what I have decided to do. So I grab the envelope addressed to Kitty, and Columbo’s lead, and prepare to head out into the woods.
I open the cabin door and take a step back. It’s as though the trees have crept closer overnight, surrounding the cabin and leaning toward it. It’s eerily quiet as we trudge through the forest. Too quiet. An unnatural silence seems to permeate the space between the trees. A light breeze rustles the leaves of the branches high above my head almost as though the trees are whispering in a language I don’t understand. Columbo repeatedly runs ahead then circles back, wagging his tail and panting so that it looks like he’s smiling. His joy used to be contagious, but I’m completely exhausted having barely slept the last two nights.
The sunlight twinkles through the canopy of leaves, and I think Ican see every shade of green. The forest floor is a carpet of moss and exposed roots and I soon learn to watch my step. I see what I think might be the entrance to a foxhole next to an enormous tree trunk and wonder what other creatures might be living here. The trees glitter with cobwebs decorated in droplets of dew, but something other than insects must have made this place their home. It’s truly beautiful, butsomethingfeels not quite right. Almost as though the forest is holding its breath. Or hiding something. I remember the bones in the cabin but choose to forget them again. There is a reason why people paper over the cracks in their lives, or in this case, hide things beneath the floorboards. It’s far easier to pretend your problems away if you can’t see them. I feel as though I’ve been gifted the opportunity of a lifetime—I know I won’t get another like it—and I can’t let anything, or anyone, spoil this for me.
The sky darkens and the temperature seems to noticeably drop. The wind picks up and a sprinkling of tiny leaves fall from the sky like confetti. I watch one of them twist and turn and float on the breeze, an unwitting hostage to its surroundings. My own journey comes to a brief standstill while I check the compass and map Sandy gave me. As I stand in silence trying to see if I’m heading in the right direction, I finally figure out what is so strange about this forest. There are no birds. I haven’t seen or heard a single one. But when I look up I do see another glimpse of blue sky, and note that Sandy wasn’t kidding about the island’s microclimate. The weather here alternates between sun, rain, and cloud, and none of them take their turn for long.
Columbo and I carry on until we emerge from the trees and reach a road I recognize from yesterday. It’s the main road—though little more than a single-lane track hugging the coast—connecting one end of Amberly to the other. There are views of the island that I couldn’t see from the truck yesterday. Tetris-like layers of pale gray rock guard this corner of the coast, like tall, uneven stepping stones, bleached by the sun and battered by thesea. The sort of thing children might want to play on but would fill me with dread. Funny how fear is something life teaches us. If we stick to the road we’ll be safe enough, and eventually reach the village.
When we do, I stand on the ancient little stone bridge that crosses the pale gray ribbon of a river, and stare at the view. The map I’ve been using is almost an exact replica of what I can see now, and I look down at it again. The buildings are all drawn to scale and neatly labeled. Everything from Saint Lucy’s church to the little thatched cottages is there. Even the landscape is remarkably accurate. When I look up at the real island the whole place has a feeling of... home. Somewhere I might like to stay. Despite being picture-perfect there arenopeople. No signs of life at all, which seems strange.
I see an old-fashioned red telephone box and feel a rush of excitement. I had forgotten about landlines in this age of mobile phones. I can call Kitty from the phone box! I rush over and pull open the red door, confused and dismayed when I see rows of shelves crammed full of secondhand books and a little wooden sign sayingTHE LIBRARY. There is still a phone, but when I lift the receiver there’s no dial tone, only silence. I stab some of the redundant silver buttons but nothing happens, so I close the door and head across the road to Christie’s Corner Shop. I remember Sandy saying it was also the post office, and I could do with getting a few supplies while I am here. A little bell tinkles above the entrance when I step inside.
“Hello again,” says a woman I know must be Cora from the name badge pinned to her shopkeeper’s apron. I guess she remembers me from our brief meeting yesterday when I thought I’d seen my wife walk into the shop. Cora Christie is old and a little frail-looking, and I wonder how she manages to run this place all by herself. She has a good crop of gray hair with corkscrew curls spilling out in all directions, and is dressed in green from head totoe, including green spectacles on the end of her upturned nose. Her eyes seem to sparkle with mischief, nestled beneath barely there eyebrows, and they are trained on me.
“There are no working phones on the island, I’m afraid,” she says. “Not even the old-fashioned variety. A fishing trawler accidentally took out the communications cable on the ocean floor a few months ago; we’ve been even more cut off than normal since then while we wait for it to be repaired. But we’re all verycommunity minded. Anything you need, you just say the word,” she adds with a smile. The old woman was clearly spying on me and doesn’t even mind if I know it.
“I was hoping to stock up on a few things.”
“Of course, be my guest.”
She must have a hundred other badges pinned to her apron, and another catches my eye:
IT TOOK 80 YEARS TO LOOK THIS GOOD.
She sees me staring at it.
“Age is just a number!” she says with another grin.
I smile back, take a metal basket, and look around the shop. It doesn’t take long. I grab a few essentials while I meander down the aisles—bread, butter, cheese, milk, eggs, potatoes—then I see the fridge full of “homemade” ready meals. The lamb hotpot looks tasty, so I put a couple in my basket. One thing I do need in order to write is food. Nobody wrote anything worth reading on an empty stomach. I add a couple of bags of ready-salted crisps and an extra-large bar of chocolate, which I intend to share with no one. I get some dog treats for Columbo too.
Cora tuts when I return to the till. “None of your five-a-day in there. We’ve got lots of lovely fresh fruit and veg, only came in on the ferry yesterday. How will you write well if you don’t eat well?” I frown at this stranger, wondering how she can possibly know who I am and what I do. “You arethe author, aren’t you?” she asks.
I guess news travels fast in a place like this.
I used to be modestly ambitious, but I don’t tend to volunteer what I do for a living these days. People are either overimpressed or completely underwhelmed when they meet me, and neither reaction is great for my fragile ego.
“I am an author, yes, and you’re quite right; we are what we eat,” I say, grabbing a bag of apples I don’t want.
“I guess that makes you a lamb,” Cora says, scanning the hotpot. She chuckles and two dimples make themselves at home on her face, which reminds me of my nana, the woman who raised me. She was the only person I considered family and I still miss her, even though it has been decades since she passed away. Nana would have been around Cora’s age had she not died so young. They are the same height too, and I find myself staring at this stranger as though she might be something more than that. Cora looks sad all of a sudden, a pattern of concern decorating her features. I realize that her face might be mirroring my own and tell myself to snap out of it. “Also, someone mentioned that this was the place to come if I wanted to post something...”
“It is indeed,” she says, putting my purchases into a tote bag, something else I didn’t want but seem to have been charged for. It saysI LOVE AMBERLYon the side. “Do you want to send whatever it is first class or second?”
“First class please. It’s just a letter,” I say, taking it out of my pocket.
Cora snatches it from me, and I see that even her fingernails are painted green. She places the envelope on a small set of scales—despite it being a standard size and weighing almost nothing—then holds up a contraption with different-size holes. She slides the envelope through each one, starting with the “large parcel” opening first, even though it is obvious that the envelope will fit through the slimmest slot.
“Is it important?” she asks.
It might help me get my life back.