Page 4 of Coming Home to Sturcombe Bay
“She’ll have come to see her grandmother. They were always close.”
“Not close enough that she couldn’t make it home for ten years.”
If she caught the acid note in his voice, she didn’t make an issue of it. “No . . . Well . . .” She got to the end of the row and stopped to count the number of stitches to decrease. “The old lady’s pretty much coming to the end now. Ninety-three — not a bad innings. Still, it’s sad to see her go. First Molly Marston, now Edie Channing. Not many left of that generation.”
“Except old Arthur Crocombe.” Liam laughed. “He’ll go on for ever. He’s planning to reach his century.” He finished his coffee and rose to his feet. “I’m just going to look in on Robyn, then I think I’ll have a bath.”
“OK, love. There’s plenty of hot water.”
The house was big and old, with thick granite walls and a slate roof — it had been thatched in his grandfather’s time. It was effectively three houses linked together, with two staircases and several rambling corridors. His brother Luke lived with his family in one wing, but Liam and Robyn lived in the main house. He had been more than grateful for that these past few years.
He climbed the stairs and turned down the passage to his right. His small daughter’s room was at the end, next to his own, the door slightly ajar the way she liked it, the soft glow of a pink night-light keeping all the shadows away. A room fit for a princess. Robyn was all girl — everything had to be pink, preferably with sparkles.
On silent feet he crossed to her small pink-covered bed. He had read her a bedtime story earlier, and watched her fall asleep. That was always the best part of his day. She was sleeping now, her breathing soft and steady, her pale blonde hair drifting on the pillow, long dark lashes brushing her round cheeks.
On the bedside table — painted pink, of course — was a photograph in a silver frame. He picked it up, smiling sadly at the image. Robyn, on her mother’s lap. One of the last photos of them together.
The were sitting on a sun lounger beside the pool of their hotel in Greece. Robyn, two years old, in a yellow swimsuit — that was before the pink obsession had kicked in. Smiling into the camera as her daddy had taken the picture — a smile so like her mother’s.
Natalie was squinting slightly in the sun — she had taken her sunglasses off for the picture. Holding back her blonde hair with one slim hand, the other was wrapped around her small daughter’s middle, trying to stop her wriggling.
So happy — no idea that she only had a few hours to live. That was probably a good thing, he mused — there had been nodarkness. He was the one who had been left with the darkness, from the moment the paramedic in her blue uniform had knelt beside the broken, bloodied body in the dusty street, shaking her head. He had already known that there was nothing that was going to bring her back.
He put the photo down, touched a light kiss to his sleeping daughter’s forehead, and crept from the room.
In his own room he peeled off his clothes and strolled into the bathroom to fill the bath. As his mother had promised, there was plenty of hot water and the room was soon filled with steam.
The mirror was misted up. He rubbed his hand over it to clear it and stared at his reflection. It was three years now that Natalie had been gone, and the darkness had mostly faded. He had even tried a few dates — there were plenty of opportunities online to meet attractive women — but none of them had clicked.
And now Cassie Channing was coming home. There had been darkness there too, but that was ten years ago. And it had faded quickly. He had been young, resilient, and if she had bruised his heart when she had chosen adventure over a life with him, he had soon come to realise that she had probably been right. They had both been too young, they had had different dreams.
And now? No, there would be no going back there. If he only had himself to consider, maybe . . . A brief fling before she jetted off again to some exotic location. Casual, fun, no strings. But now he had a little girl to consider, a little girl who had lost her mother. There would be no going back.
* * *
Cassie sat on the cushioned bench seat in the dormer window of her bedroom, her feet tucked beneath her, Barney curled up beside her. His small brown head was resting against her thigh, and he was snoring quietly.
From up here she could see the whole wide expanse of the bay. The moon was waxing towards the full, tracing a silver path across the inky water, and the stars twinkled in the velvet sky like diamonds scattered by a careless hand. Far out on the invisible horizon, the lights of a large ship glowed as it made its way slowly out towards the wide Atlantic.
It was the view she had known for the first eighteen years of her life. The rather grandly named Esplanade curved in a wide crescent above the beach, strings of coloured lights swinging from lamppost to lamppost.
She could make out the windows of the Smugglers — the most popular pub in town — lit up with a warm amber glow. A little further on was the flashing red, blue and green of the amusement arcade on the corner. And at the far end, perched on top of a low cliff of reddish sandstone, was the elegant white facade of the Carleton Hotel, bathed in uplights from its lush gardens.
With one finger she traced the edge of the window frame. When she was fifteen she’d painted the walls and the sloping ceiling a dramatic shade of purple, the door and the window frame black. She’d been immensely proud of herself, though there were quite a few wobbles where she hadn’t been quite accurate when cutting in with the paint brush.
This room, with so many memories. All the familiar items: the narrow single bed with its purple-and-black duvet cover, the pale oak dressing table where she had conducted her first experiments with makeup, the big wardrobe where some of her old jeans and tops still hung.
On the table beside the bed was the illuminated globe of the Earth — a Christmas present from her mum and dad when she was ten. She had loved to turn it slowly, tapping with her fingertip all the places she longed to visit, imagining that she could fly to them in a magic bubble whenever she wanted.
And the bookshelves jammed with the books she had loved reading far into the night, with a torch under the covers — ready to swiftly switch it off and lie still at the warning sound of a parental footfall outside her door.
Lord of the RingsandThe Hobbit. A whole stack of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series with their colourful phantasmagorical covers.
Maybe it was those books which had first ignited the spark of wanderlust in her. It had been a secret she had hugged to herself, afraid that people would think it was a stupid dream. You didn’t live your life like a fantasy tale.
The only person she’d ever told had been Nanna — she would understand. And Nanna had encouraged her to believe in her dream. She’d even bought her a scuba-diving course for her seventeenth birthday.
Dancing her fingers along the spines, she came to the anthology of poetry which she had reluctantly bought for her English A level and had fallen in love with.
