The Sea House

It was almost a relief to get on the little train that left from Steerborough, to stop looking and searching, and finally allow himself to relax.

‘Gertrude’ – the words, more than usual, made a hollow echo in his head – ‘was it Kaethe’s idea that you ask me to come?’ Gertrude looked at him for a moment. Of course. Of course it was Kaethe who’d asked her, made her promise right before the end. ‘No,’ she said, hoping it would help him. She smiled. ‘It was all my own plan.’

Lily stood for a long time in the phone box, her nose pressed against the pane. She knew it was a mistake not to have left a message and now she didn’t have any more change.

Gertrude’ – the words, more than usual, made a hollow echo in his head – ‘was it Kaethe’s idea that you ask me to come?’

But the truth was he was afraid of starting. It was so long since he’d painted anything at all

Folded into this first letter, dated 1931

Vast and blue and breathless, stretching to the edges of the world.

The sea was rolling just behind the skyline, calling her, magnetic in its roar

handful of Lehmann’s letters and set them on the table in a little time-worn pile. Letters from the architect Klaus Lehmann, written over twenty years, and collected by his wife. Where are her letters?

Upstairs there was a large bedroom, with a window that overlooked the Green, and there on the horizon, strangely high like a child’s drawing, sat a deep blue stripe of sea.