No Place Like Home

with a twenty-three-year-old man? How did he feel about that?’
‘Of course he didn’t know. I used to sneak out to see Owen. Easy enough, living in a bungalow. I used to get in and out through my bedroom window.’
‘From what Scott said, I thought David knew. About you and Owen.’
‘Well, he found out, obviously, after Owen went missing and the police started picking his life apart. He found out then.’
‘I can imagine his reaction.’
She grimaced, and swivelled her chair back to face the screen. ‘Sorry, but I need to get this done.’
‘You don’t want to talk about Owen. I get that. But if this is connected–’
‘You’re tilting at windmills, Bram.’
Exactly the words Scott had used. How likely was that to be a coincidence? They had known each other forever. Of course Scott would have got off the phone to Bram and immediately called Kirsty. And said what? That Bram seemed to be losing it? He wouldn’t put it past him.
He gave Kirsty’s shoulders a squeeze and dropped a kiss on the top of her head, but she didn’t respond. He patted her shoulders and left the room.
The day before Kirsty’s nineteenth birthday, Bram had turned up at the halls of residence in a rented car and told her to pack a bag – they were off for a birthday weekend extravaganza to a mystery destination.
Kirsty’s face lit up, and she looked around her room, obviously wondering what to take, but then she sort of drooped. ‘I don’t know, Bram.’
‘Hey, don’t worry, I’m not going to get any ideas! Separate bedrooms!’ He made his tone hearty and upbeat and cheery. Bram the best friend, not Bram the wannabe lover.
The smile crept back into Kirsty’s face, and then it became a wide grin, and she was clapping her hands like a little kid. He wanted to take her in his arms right there and then. Poor Kirsty! Over the summer, she’d gone home for only a few days. She’d spent the rest of the holiday in the halls and got a job in a pub. She’d probably told her family she was off interrailing with a group of friends. He was beginning to think that Kirsty staying in the halls over the holidays was about more than just pretending to her family that she was happy; it must be difficult for her, being home, with all those traumatic memories of Owen to face.
So she didn’t get out of London much.
No wonder she was excited to be going away. It was nothing to do with Bram himself.
Smugglers’ Cottage on the North Devon coast turned out to be as perfect as Bram had been hoping. He’d scrutinised the photos and made sure it was a suitably cute period property with beams and a real fire, and there was direct access to a beach along the coastal path that went right past the garden gate.
‘I want to stay here forever!’ Kirsty shouted when they’d dumped their bags in their separate rooms and gone straight down to the beach, wrapped up in coats and scarves against the wind coming off the sea.
They collected shells and stones and watched hermit crabs in a pool, and then they ate pizza and ice cream and watched crap on TV in front of a roaring fire, Kirsty lying on the sofa, Bram sitting on the rug by the fire, not saying much, just smiling at each other from time to time.
The next day, Kirsty’s birthday, she had a long conversation with her mum, and Bram persuaded her to do a bit of early morning meditation, sitting in the cottage’s tiny sunroom overlooking the sea. Then he took her fossil-hunting along the rocky shore, as he used to as a kid with Pap. Kirsty was thrilled when she found her first ammonite amongst the pebbles and hurried to show Bram, her palm extended proudly: a perfect bronze spiral, wetly glinting in the pale sunlight.
‘What is it made of? I mean, the type of stone? It almost looks like metal!’
‘Iron pyrites, I think. Fool’s gold. If it was polished up it would look like actual gold, but I like them as they are.’
‘Me too.’
They had lunch in a café in Ilfracombe, the ammonite sitting on the table between them. Kirsty tried to explain to Bram that the ammonite’s shell was a perfect logarithmic spiral with self-similarity. ‘See, this tiny central part has the same form as the whole thing.’
Bram pretended to get it.
In the afternoon they did a walk along the coastal path – an old smugglers’ path, according to the guidebooks – and scrambled down to a cave that was apparently used by the smuggler ‘Old Worm’ Williams in the 1700s when he was on the run from the coastguard. They sat for a while in the gloom right at the back of the cave, where it was surprisingly dry and warmer than out on the beach. Kirsty explained that this was because of geothermal energy stored in the surrounding rock, which meant that caves maintained the same temperature all year round. ‘Usually equal to the annual average temperature at the cave’s entrance, so inside a cave is warmer than outside in winter.’
Back at the cottage, Bram cooked Kirsty’s birthday meal, even though he was vegetarian: her favourite food, roast chicken with oatmeal stuffing, bread sauce, roast potatoes and sprouts. He drew the line at eating it, though, and made a nut roast for himself, although they shared the sprouts. Then there was apple crumble, and coffee and posh mint chocolates, and Bram presented her with her present, a colourful velvet and silk scarf made by a friend of his mother’s who used recycled scraps in her creations.
‘Oh, Bram, I love it!’ Kirsty looped it round her neck and looked at herself in the mirror in the hall. ‘The colours are amazing – like a stained-glass window. And it feels so luxurious! It’s gorgeous!’
‘Not as gorgeous as you,’ Bram couldn’t help himself mutter, as the thought came to him that she