Red Window Shutters

Jancy loved the old house on the bluff with its red window shutters. She was seven, her brother Teddy five, when they first saw the house, a converted fisherman’s cottage, with a hull shaped shingle roof. That was thirty years ago. Her mother, a practical woman, had rented the house for two summers, before deciding to buy. The price was modest and affordable then. The house, with its wide view of the estuary, healed her mother’s shattered life.

Neither Jancy nor Teddy, recalled much about their father. John Robbins war in the Far East had marked him. Jancy’s mother said she met a stranger when he returned. She had tried to make the marriage work. After the divorce, they moved to the house on the bluff. The rhythm of their childhood, flowed with the work of the house, their mother had converted the front sitting room into a small tearoom. She served cream teas to factory workers on their summer holidays.

Jancy retained sweet memories of long, lazy summers with Teddy, swimming, sailing, and flying home made kites above the sand dunes. When more people came to the estuary, the tearoom flourished, her mother could afford to extend the house. Soon after that she put up a bed and breakfast sign. She hired a girl from the village, Betsy was fifteen then, a fast worker and smart. Jancy liked hanging around with Betsy, who seemed wiser in the ways of the world, than her mother.