Whispers by Julie Swan

Julie Swan’s background is as an electronics engineer and mathematician. She has been enjoying writing short stories and articles, some of which have been published, for over ten years after joining a local class. She is now part of a local ladies writing group, Pink Ink. Julie has a husband and twin daughters and lives in a lovely spot between the New Forest and the sea.

 

She had been sure that the house had whispered to her. You should live here. Buy me. Buy me.

Ellie sighed as she looked out at the view. It certainly was a wonderful view. She wished she had someone to share it with. Not just anyone, of course. It had to be someone special, someone companionable to remark on the different types of vessel making their way along the Channel, to speculate where they had come from or where they were going. Someone to be comfortable with.

A guardian angel must have been guiding her when she’d found the cottage. She’d been idly perusing property websites on the internet, mainly trying to find a value for her own property, when something inspired her to enter the search parameters for something with a sea view in the price range she was prepared to pay. She didn’t care where it was but she’d hankered after a home by the sea since she’d been a child.

She’d been determined to move. Since she worked from home, location didn’t really matter, although the southern part of England was surely to be favoured over the northern part of Scotland. Not because Scotland wasn’t beautiful but being within easy reach of London was preferable. There was the odd circumstance when face‑to‑face meetings were inevitable for her work, there were occasional special deliveries to be made and there were the theatres, museums and galleries which she didn’t want to do without.

And when she was ready, she had a lot of friends in London. They would probably visit her on the south coast but not in the wilds of Scotland.

So, much as she liked the cabin on the loch and the croft by the sea she’d made a short list of properties on the south coast. And it had been a short list. She would get much more for her money as she travelled north.

The list comprised a tiny fisherman’s cottage in Cornwall, a town flat in Dorset — with marvellous views over Poole harbour it must be admitted — and a small dilapidated three‑bedroomed cottage in West Sussex. They all had sea views. She tried to find each of them on Google Earth and found the Cornish and Dorset offerings but, although she could find the Sussex cottage on the aerial views it couldn’t be seen on street view as it was hidden away from any made‑up road, a distinct point in its favour.

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