The last tealight
By three in the afternoon the light had already gone the colour of old newspaper. I locked the barn one last time for the year, palm flat on the cold padlock, then stepped back to take in the yard and its rambling arrangement of lean-to roofs, sheds, and the caravan huddled beside them. Beyond the corrugated edges, Tommo’s fields fell away in shallow folds, hedge-lines blurring into the low mist so that distances were hard to judge and the far gate never seemed quite in the same place twice. Someone had strung a length of tinsel between a section of fence near the yard edge — one of Tommo’s lads, most likely; it sagged between two staples, glittering half-heartedly where the lamps picked it out of the mist.
Murphy snuffled at the usual corners while I set aside the last of Ronnie’s December offcuts — future fuel for the wood burner I keep threatening to install. A gust lifted the tarp and slapped it against the barn wall; I weighed it down with an old length of timber and checked the padlock again out of habit.
The Land Rover waited by the open gates, a faint drip darkening the concrete beneath the front diff. Honest, I decided. You wouldn’t trust a truck that didn’t mark its spot.
If I stayed any longer I’d talk myself into “just one more job.” Enough. I called Murphy, who appeared from behind the pallet stack carrying half a chewed tennis ball. I swung the yard gates shut, dropped the bolt, gave the Landy’s wing a reflex pat, and climbed in. The V8 turned twice, caught, and settled with its familiar uneven kindness.
We nosed out through the hedgerows, the lane narrowing and widening as it always does, winter branches knitting overhead in places and breaking apart in others. Every bend felt a shade different in the dusk, as if the fields beyond had shifted a step closer. I flicked the radio on more from habit than hope: static, then a burst of something cheerful about snow. The local station offered a presenter with far too much energy for late December, counting down “the biggest moments of the year” over clips of politicians and pop hooks. I lasted a minute before hitting the off switch. The cab felt better with just the heater fan and Murphy’s breath fogging the side window.
Back in town, rolling along the seafront, the tide was on the turn. Foam worried at the shingle, advancing a little further each set, pulling back reluctant. The air carried diesel, salt and chip fat in equal measure. Somewhere beyond the breakwater a horn sounded — one long note, almost bored. For a second it lined up exactly with a memory of the shipping forecast from months back: that odd intrusion, trawler Esmerelda dropped like a stone into the sea areas.
Closer to home, the supermarket car park was already thinning; a few stragglers pushed trolleys through the dusk, bags thumping their legs. As we rumbled down the rows of Victorian terraces I saw the first scatter of lights: fairy lights looped round balcony railings, a string sagging across the Anchor’s frontage. Somewhere fireworks would be stockpiled in back bedrooms and understairs cupboards, waiting for midnight optimism.
The house was warm before I even reached the door — Emma’s habit: heating on early “just this once,” repeated through the winter until the bill arrived. From outside I could see the yellow glow of the bay window, her shape passing behind it. Murphy whined, impatient now, paws drumming the mat.
She opened the door before I found the keys.
“You’re cutting it fine,” she said, stepping back to let Murphy barrel past. He made straight for his bed, performed two ceremonial spins, then collapsed with a groan that sounded like relief.
“Workshop is looking almost respectable,” I said, hanging my jacket on the new hook she’d bought because the old one “looked like it belonged in a bus depot.” “Thought I’d better leave before I found something else to take apart.”
She wiped her hands on a tea towel, leaving little constellations of flour. The kitchen smelled of onions, garlic, something slow in the oven. A mismatched line of tealights burned along the sill, their reflections wavering in the window like a parallel street.
“Ronnie texted,” she said. “Says he’ll raise a glass ‘to continued structural integrity in the face of bureaucratic decay’.”
“High praise,” I said. “Did he specify whose integrity?”
“Yours. The building’s. Possibly his van’s. Hard to tell from the spelling.”
I followed her into the living room. She’d gone for subtle festivity: warm-white lights looped along the curtain pole, a small fir branch in a jar on the mantel, two paper stars taped above the television. On the low table stood a bottle of cheap fizz and two mismatched glasses — the same ones we’d used the year the boiler died and we’d drunk warm prosecco in coats.
Her sketchbook lay open on the sofa arm. I glanced down. Today’s page was a quick pencil study of the harbour wall from memory: rough blocks, railings ghosted in, one spotlight haloing a patch of wet stone. In the corner she’d idly shaded a tiny boat, disproportionate, just a smudge with a mast. No name, but my mind supplied one anyway.
“Been up to anything interesting?” she asked.
“Just the usual,” I said. “Dog walk along the fields. Workshop. Looking at rust and oil leaks as a recreational activity.”
She tipped her head, weighing this, then nodded as if it passed.
“Dinner at seven. Fireworks at midnight, if we last that long. In between: sofa, daft television, minimal ambition.”
“In that order?”
“In all orders.”
We ate at the small table because it felt wrong, somehow, to end the year with plates on laps. Murphy arranged himself as close to my chair as the laws of physics allowed. Outside, the sky pressed against the window like damp felt; street-light halos blurred in a way that said mist gathering again.
Later, with plates soaking and the oven ticking itself cool, we migrated to the sofa under a shared blanket. Some channel was playing clips from years we half-remembered, songs we could hum but not name. Emma’s feet found my ankles under the blanket and settled there like a quiet claim.
“Strange year,” she said during an advert break, voice softer than the television deserved. “Feels like nothing changed and everything did.”
I thought of the fence edging closer in the yard, the cracked tarmac, council men talking about “managed retreat” as if the sea could be reasoned with. I thought of the bottle with H.T. on its base, foghorns sounding on clear nights, and Emma’s hand drawing boats she claimed not to have thought about in weeks.
“Sea’s still there,” I said. “Fish plant’s still standing. Landy still leaks. You’re still leaving charcoal fingerprints on everything.”
She held up her hands in mock offence, palms greyed from the earlier sketch. “We scrape through,” she said. “That can be the official verdict.”
Around eleven the programme abandoned retrospectives and settled into a countdown. We muted it. The muffled thumps of early fireworks began — test shots from the estate up the hill, echoing off gable ends. Murphy lifted his head each time, decided civilisation was intact, and flopped back down smelling faintly of gravy.
“Shall we go out for the last bit?” Emma asked. “Just to check the stars are still there.”
We pulled on coats over pyjamas and stepped onto the front path. The cold hit in the chest, clean and sharp. The mist had thickened, but the harbour lights were still visible as blurred chalk smudges. Fireworks burst above the rooftops — greens and reds briefly reflected in upstairs windows, then gone.
Somewhere offshore, a horn sounded again. Not loud, not dramatic. Just a long, level note hanging at the edge of hearing. I couldn’t swear it came from the same direction as the last time. Different vessel, perhaps. Different crew. But the air around it felt familiar, like catching the same phrase in a song months apart.
“Esmeralda’s back on shift,” I said, half to myself.
Emma glanced sideways. “Hmm?”
“Nothing. Just the sea doing what it does.”
We stood there as living rooms counted down, a distant cheer rising like steam. A cork popped a few doors down. A gold flare went up over the next cul-de-sac, startling a crow; it flapped once, then resettled, unimpressed.
Inside, someone’s television blared Auld Lang Syne. Our own set, still muted, showed a city square we’d never visit. Emma’s cold hand found mine inside my glove and gave a quick, firm squeeze.
“Happy new year,” she said. “Another twelve months of you covered in oil, then.”
“Tradition matters,” I said.
We went back in when our toes began to complain. The house swallowed us with its small shift in pressure, the faint rattle of the letterbox settling. I locked the door on the last fizz of fireworks and dropped the keys in their dish. In the kitchen, the tealights flickered along the sill, running low. One flared unexpectedly, then steadied.
Emma reclaimed her corner of the sofa; I heard the television click off, the room exhaling after it. The quiet wasn’t absolute — neighbours laughing through the wall, a car changing gear, Murphy shifting in his bed. Under it all, if I concentrated, I thought I could still hear the faintest echo of the horn, or maybe just the idea of it.
I sat at the kitchen table and opened my notebook for the last time that year, writing the date at the top. The pen hovered as the ink gathered in the nib. Outside, mist pressed against the glass; inside, candle wax pooled and thickened, throwing its small circle of light.
I left the line blank a moment, then wrote:
End of the year. House warm, sea still out there somewhere.
Underneath, almost without thinking:
Whatever moves next, we start from here.
Murphy snored, Emma sketched idly, and the last tealight guttered, righted itself, and kept on burning.