The gilt lettering of 'The Salt & Spine' is peeling, curling away from the glass like dead skin. Iris stands on the narrow pavement, her suitcase handle digging into a palm that hasn't seen hard work in decades. The Cornish air is thick with the scent of damp slate and frying fish, a sharp departure from the sterile lavender of her Surrey hallway. She looks at the bow-fronted window, half-expecting to see David peering out from behind a stack of Thomas Hardy, but there is only the grey reflection of the Atlantic.
Everything about the shop feels smaller than the photos in the solicitor's packet. It is a huddle of timber and stone, leaning tiredly against its neighbours as if exhausted by the weight of thirty hidden years. She touches the brass key in her pocket, the metal still cold from the car ride. He was here while I was there, she thinks, the betrayal a dull, familiar ache in her chest. She hasn't even stepped inside, yet the silence of the street feels like an accusation.
Movement flutters behind the display of weather-beaten paperbacks. A shadow blocks the frosted glass of the shop door, and a key begins to turn in the lock from the inside.
