Opening section Of Strait Sets

 

 

 

 

Strait Sets takes place in a contemporary England where Covid-19 has never existed.

Everything is ‘old normal’ rather than ‘new normal’. Times are not unprecedented.

 

 

 

 

 

STRAIT SETS

 

Part 1

 

 

 

AD (After Divorce)

 

I moved my head closer to the window and peered through the large rain-splattered pane of glass, scanning the properties for sale – a selection of flats, chalet bungalows and houses – before spotting it. Exactly the same image as I had seen online, the photo stark and almost square on, cropped tight with zero artistic input. For once the camera hadn’t been trying to lie or distort. No fake news here, I thought, just a simple holiday snap of a simple holiday dwelling. I tilted my head slightly to one side, scrunching my face and wondering what else could be said of it to make it more appealing. Very little, I concluded. It was what it was. Where it was that was the crucial bit. Well, not exactly where it was, everybody knew where it was, the giveaway clue being in the description. It was where the where was that drove the desirability and with it the breath-taking, sharp-slap-around-the-face asking price. Location, coupled with the associated traditional quintessential Englishness of the structure, and there you had it. One hell of a price tag.

One hell of a price tag I might be willing to meet? It certainly looked like I was seriously considering it – given the one proviso of haggling a few grand off, an act of self-validation rather than anything to do with the money – seeing as I had made a viewing appointment and driven the best part of a hundred miles to be here. To view it in the flesh. In all its gloss-coated, lap boarded, veranda with twin pitched felt-tiled roof, lurking-by-the-shore glory.

Despite appreciating the absurdity of the numbers underneath the photo of the beach hut, I stoically viewed them with only mild animosity. I was over regarding sums of money with rage and frustration. What was the point? It hadn’t changed anything in the past and I didn’t want it to become an issue of the present. Time to move on from any number negativity and clamber free from the train-crash wreckage of my current situation.

I eased my head away from the window and turned to face the wind and horizontal rain howling in from the North Sea. The road, on whose pavement I stood, was the small seaside town’s main thoroughfare and home to many of its retail outlets and coffee shops. This morning it was completely empty and devoid of movement. No people. No cars. Not even a hateful seagull to splatter corrosive white guano on either. Nuclear/zombie apocalypse personified. And it was only two weeks until Easter. What the hell must it be like in January? What did everybody do over the winter in such a seasonal environment?

In answer to my mental conundrum, I pictured the indigenous population slipping into collective hibernation sometime around November, shortly after the excitement and high jinks of Halloween and Bonfire Night. Behind locked doors, in a host of bedrooms surprisingly resourced with ultra-sophisticated, hi-tech equipment, en masse and at the designated time, the town’s residents dutifully climbed into their assigned stasis pods to ride out the months of little daylight. Desolate and deserted, the small coastal town bided its time, waiting for its inhabitants to awaken in springtime.

Few things look as forlorn and desperate as the English seaside in the depths of winter – although a pathetic, mewling, just-dunked cat crawling sodden from cold water runs it a close second. It’s a scenario only the weather has the power to change. With a rise in temperature and lengthening days, gradually our seaside can morph from dull and dreary to bright and beautiful. Unfortunately, the massive flaw in that theory, as I stood chilled to the bone and battered by a ferocious north-easterly, was a winter weather system despite it being April. In my fantasy, I hadn’t made the obvious connection between the weather and the town’s inhabitants. That was the reason why no one was around. The pods hadn’t yet thermally triggered to open.

Dragging myself back in the moment, I fixated on the photo of the beach hut, the one I had found online only a few days ago, and questioned my true reasons for being here, bank details at the ready, strangely eager to see whether I might suffer buyer’s remorse. The brutal truth, even if it did make me uneasy, was evident. Essentially, I was here on a quest to seek out the happier times of my life and take solace in nostalgia. A fortifying hug from my past which I hoped would impact positively on my present and transform my future. Undoubtedly, the act of a divorcee buying a beach hut was a classic desperate gambler’s last punt. Stalled in my current social cul-de-sac, it felt a wager worth chancing.

The plan, if you could call it a plan, rested on any future shoreline base camp affording me the chance to recharge, re-energise, reorganise and recommence my newly-found single life. The majesty of the English seaside wiping my slate clean of all the blood, snot and gore currently pebble-dashed to it. Here, by the sea, away from all I had been through, I aspired to be as happy as I had been in childhood when holidaying on this section of coast with my mother and grandparents. Owning a beach hut was the first step in the next phase of my life. The phase devoid of her. The ex. The woman who had once been my wife.

Unlikely? Maybe. But from my viewpoint it looked worth a punt. Believe me, when your world’s been kicked from pillar to post and you’ve haemorrhaged money, self-worth, self-confidence and several vital organs – including a penis – anything, even the implausible, can look pretty compelling. The only downside I could foresee in my seaside nostalgia strategy was how it pulled the ongoing confrontation with my mother into focus, reminding me of the love I used to have for her which had now turned to contempt. Powerless to influence her, she seemed determined to pursue her new path with vigour, despite my endless protestations.

A curtain of water from the adjacent store’s awning suddenly showered me in a mini-deluge, cold-shocking me with icy wetness between my upturned collar and the nape of my neck. It reminded me of the time Chloe and I performed our ‘ice bucket challenge’ years ago, right at the start of our relationship, and posted the resulting videos on our respective Facebook feeds. Afterwards, laughing and giggling like small children, we peeled off our sodden clothes and in the rush of our nakedness made spontaneous love on the kitchen table. In the throes of my violent orgasm, as I rammed hard and deep into her, dumping my load, the salt cellar careened off the table and deposited its contents on the kitchen floor. Post coitus and ever superstitious, I surreptitiously bent down and, making sure Chloe wasn’t looking, grabbed a pinch of salt and threw it over my shoulder before sweeping the rest up.

With hindsight, as an act of warding off evil omens, that hadn’t proved especially successful.

Eyeing the rapidly refilling and now bulging awning with trepidation, I stood hunched against the bullying elements, shuffling from one sodden foot to another, running the premise over in my mind for one last last time. Buying the beach hut would eat up all my remaining cash. If I went ahead, my financial safety net would no longer be able to catch me. It would hang slashed to ribbons, holed and gaping, the gaps large enough for me to plunge through should any unforeseen disaster occur. I would be left having to live a more considered month-to-month existence, to budget sensibly and rein in any spendthrift tendencies.

The perversity of the moment steeled me and I finally made up my mind. 2018 had started all ‘Beast from the East’ and look how that had turned out. Oh to have owned a beach hut through that summer. More pertinently, why bother playing it safe? My whole life up until this juncture had been spent playing it safe. And where had it got me? Aged thirty-two, divorced, childless, living in a poky, rented flat and stuck in the same job I had been doing since leaving university. That’s where. I walked four brisk strides down the window pane to the estate agent’s door, opened it and stepped inside. And not to get out of the wind and the rain.