The Cliff House: A beautiful and addictive story of loss and longing
The Cliff House: A beautiful and addictive story of loss and longing
Amanda Jennings
‘Haunting and evocative.’ Clare Mackintosh‘A beautiful, stirring story of loss and obsession’ Lisa JewellSome friendships are made to be brokenCornwall, summer of 1986.The Davenports, with their fast cars and glamorous clothes, living the dream in a breathtaking house overlooking the sea.If only… thinks sixteen-year-old Tamsyn, her binoculars trained on the perfect family in their perfect home.If only her life was as perfect as theirs.If only Edie Davenport would be her friend.If only she lived at The Cliff House…Amanda Jennings weaves a haunting tale of obsession, loss and longing, set against the brooding North Cornish coastline, destined to stay with readers long after the final page is turned.What readers are saying about Amanda Jennings:'Yet another novel by Amanda Jennings that once you start you can’t put down.''I'm so pleased that this is another gem. The tension throughout is palpable and I couldn't put it down.''Such a brilliant book and so well written.''I was very disappointed to emerge from it and discover that I was not, in fact, in Cornwall.''It is atmospheric of the place it's set, Cornwall, and together with an intriguing storyline this was a fabulous read.''I can't tell you how much I enjoy Amanda Jennings' novels. This is no exception. The intriguing characters keep the pages turning and I couldn't put it down.'
Also by Amanda Jennings (#uc469db01-dd31-5871-9121-0bcd0aea8dcf)
In Her Wake
The Judas Scar
Sworn Secret
Copyright (#uc469db01-dd31-5871-9121-0bcd0aea8dcf)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Amanda Jennings 2018
Amanda Jennings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008248901
Version: 2018-10-23
Praise for The Cliff House (#uc469db01-dd31-5871-9121-0bcd0aea8dcf)
‘Haunting and evocative.’
Clare Mackintosh
‘The Cliff House is a beautiful, stirring story of loss and obsession. The setting is dazzlingly described and the ending completely knocked my socks off. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming!’
Lisa Jewell
‘Immensely atmospheric, with vividly drawn characters and a set-up fraught with tension. Jennings portrays the intensity, danger and vulnerability of teenage girls brilliantly and the 80s detail feels so authentic.’
Lucy Atkins
‘The Cliff House is completely addictive and utterly compelling. Jennings writes with great insight about the obsessive nature of teenage female friendship and the quiet tragedies within dysfunctional families. It’s a clever, thoughtful and page-turning novel that should rightfully take Jennings to a very wide readership.’
Hannah Beckerman
‘This book made me whimper out loud for fear of what was going to happen to the characters. Hugely enjoyable, well written and gripping and clever.’
Jane Casey
‘Beautifully written, richly evocative, with characters and a setting that creep into your very bones.’
Tammy Cohen
‘Haunting, stylish, intoxicating. Beautifully paced and a brilliant ending. Superb.’
Will Dean
‘A beautifully written, atmospheric and tense tale of obsession. I was gripped from the first page to the heart-stopping ending. Brilliant.’
Claire Douglas
‘Hauntingly good.’
Sarah Hilary
‘An atmospheric and deeply satisfying treat.’
Emma Kavanagh
‘A beautifully written tale of jealousy, envy and possession. Jennings leads the reader along a twisted path filled with subtle dread and unease, to a wonderfully shocking ending - absolutely first-class story telling.’
Lisa Hall
‘With a page-turning plot, brilliant sense of place and beautifully-drawn characters The Cliff House deserves to be one of the biggest hits of the summer.’
Cass Green
‘I’ve been a fan of Amanda Jennings’ work for some time, but The Cliff House takes this hugely talented author to another level. It’s going to be one of the biggest, most talked about books of the summer and it’s a fabulous read.’
Louise Douglas
‘Amanda Jennings’ portrayal of time and place is exquisite. The Cliff House is chilling, stylish – and impossible to put down.’
Isabel Ashdown
‘Mesmerizing and nostalgic with a dark undercurrent that will leave you reeling.’
Susi Holliday
‘Wonderfully evocative and refreshingly different.’
Louise Voss
‘A haunting story with the moral ambiguity of du Maurier. Sea scented air filled with sunlight and menace… brilliant.’
Liz Fenwick
‘Hot, hazy and dangerous days against a stunning Cornish sky. A story of obsession that leaps to life from the page.’
Lucy Dawson
‘An addictive and insightful book about how grief can devastate and corrupt, full of the looming beauty of Cornwall.’
Katie Marsh
‘A heart-breaking, page-turning exploration of the pursuit and elusiveness of happiness.’
Julia Crouch
‘Unsettling, ominous and disturbingly brilliant – I couldn’t put it down.’
Laura Kemp
‘A beautiful, haunting portrait of obsession…Tamsyn and Edie are perfectly drawn, flawed yet painfully relatable characters who carry you across every page of The Cliff House, all the way to its heart-wrenching conclusion. I couldn’t put this book down.’
Beth Lewis
To Mum and Dad
With love as always.
‘If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.’
Maya Angelou
Contents
Cover (#uf9e1cc6f-7473-5aeb-86be-697ea07f5673)
Booklist (#u4d9a6baa-702b-58d6-9aa7-6219ca139e3a)
Title Page (#u56c66565-ab27-5af1-a8f9-6660892299ef)
Copyright (#ud84fd7b6-e2dc-568f-bf85-d81e98c281b1)
Praise (#u440f3e35-32fd-5246-bd02-fa57314ee8b2)
Dedication (#u7711e47f-07e9-5cfa-98e6-48c56804a1df)
Prologue (#ulink_a2773ab6-1780-5a56-b5a1-768f243453af)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_29df503a-3e2c-5ca7-8871-ad7ebd14bf1c)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_5e45f7ea-59b5-5c6d-95c1-2e4bf7df6bde)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2c8ae66e-10be-5340-b402-fadbe1ed4d0f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_586ec42c-1a58-538d-8f93-477ece49693c)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_55460f3f-f07a-595e-ad90-f5e28cea2baa)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_34dd21d6-a750-569c-939c-93890df5ea7f)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_4afb2519-4a38-5b72-8311-f8ffb027449c)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_3599e5fd-1cdf-58b0-b783-cfe2fb53fb15)
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_0ecf99a6-7806-50fe-9d17-4c0b1dda2a56)
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_c4a3d533-8ec9-5267-bc21-5aa9adb0f784)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_e1fc7c58-6e18-542e-9a3f-dac289afa7aa)
You sit and watch them from the same place you always do.
I spy.
With my little eye.
The grass is flattened where your weight rests. A patch of earth revealed where your feet have kicked back and forth to pass the time. The purple foil of a chocolate bar you ate a week ago glints from where it nestles amid the sandy thatch of vegetation beside you. Seagulls cry mournfully, wheeling high in the sky above you, above the breaking waves and the reach of their salty spray, no more than specks.
The house rises up from the windswept cliffs like a chalk monolith. You imagine somebody, God perhaps, has carved it from a giant block of marble, smooth and white with bold lines and straight edges and expansive sheets of glass that reflect the sea and sky like cinema screens. It stands proud and defiant, alien in this coastal place, a place of weathered cottages, ruined mine shafts and precarious birds’ nests made of dried seaweed and discarded fishing twine. Its heart beats rhythmically. Drums your ears. Deafens you as you watch them shift like wraiths from one room to another, then outside onto the terrace, their clothes and hair ruffled by a playful onshore breeze.
He sits at the iron table. You hold your breath as you watch him swill his drink around a squat glass with facets cut into it which flash as they catch the light. You are certain you can hear the clink of ice cubes even though you know it’s not possible. Your mind is playing tricks. You aren’t close enough to hear ice on glass.
Though, of course, you wish you were.
She adjusts her sunglasses and angles her face towards the sun. Her eyes close like a cat as she luxuriates in the heat. You watch her lower herself backwards onto the sun lounger. She stretches her leg out to kiss the edge of the black-tiled swimming pool. Her skin is tanned and silky. It reminds you of toffee and you briefly imagine touching it with the tip of your tongue to taste its creamy sweetness. You feel the chill as she dips her toe into the water. Gentle ripples spread out through the inky darkness which matches the time-blackened rocks that fringe the coast of Cornwall.
You scan the house. The binoculars press hard against your face. You raise your gaze to the top floor windows. Up to the slate roof patched with a yellow mist of lichen. Down to the huge gunnera leaves which loom over a garden awash with vibrant colours, an oasis on the rugged, salt-spritzed clifftop.
I spy.
You focus the binoculars on him again. Run your eyes along the slope of his shoulder. You study the tilt of his head. The way his fingers seem to caress his glass as he concentrates on the newspaper he reads. His legs are crossed. One ankle resting on one knee. Blue leather shoes – the ones you love – cradle his feet like Cinderella’s slippers.
Something beginning with P.
She moves and steals your attention. Shifts her weight as she stretches her body and arches her back. One arm reaches over her head. Her fingers rest lightly, stroking something invisible. Waves crash on the rocks below you and the scent of brine hangs in the warm dry air. Two adolescent kittiwakes, new feathers pushing through a haze of down, jostle and screech a safe distance away. You watch them for a few moments then return to the terrace.
To her and to him.
To the white-walled house.
‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with P,’ you say under your breath.
The man lifts his drink and sips. The woman runs her hand through her honey-blonde hair.
Perfection.
‘I spy perfection.’
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_472a82a5-c378-58e6-9215-d456f16967a0)
Present Day
I lean against the worktop and watch her. Her hands rest lightly on the table. She stares at me, unmoving, impassive. If I didn’t know her so well it would be unnerving.
There’s a chill in the air and I rub my arms to warm myself. It’s good to see her looking so beautiful, her hair shining, skin flawless and eyes bright. Neither of us speak. The silence isn’t uncomfortable but I know it won’t last. There’s a reason she’s here.
There always is.
I am unable to hold my tongue any longer. ‘Say it then.’
She raises an eyebrow, amused at the sharpness of my tone. ‘I was thinking back.’ Her voice never fails to take me by surprise, soft and melodic, close to singing.
‘To that summer?’
‘Yes.’ Her face is like a millpond, her expression placid and calm. This is misleading, of course. Beneath the veneer lies a tangle of questions and emotions. ‘But my memories are hazy, like half-remembered dreams.’
I turn away from her. Look out of the window. A crack runs diagonally across the glass. Dusty cobwebs are collected in the corners. The paintwork on the frame is peeling and patches of rot caress the edge of the pane. I long to open it. There’s a thick smell of mildew in the kitchen and it’s catching the back of my throat, but I’m not certain fresh air would be enough to get rid of it, so I leave it closed.
Outside the sky is the colour of a ripened bruise. It hangs low and heavy, threatening thunder. Raindrops spatter the window, run downwards in random paths, merging and barrelling as they grow heavier. I close my eyes and hear the distant echo of Edie’s laugh. Remembering her brings with it the smell of seaweed drying in the farthest reach of a spring tide, the tang of salt carried on a summer breeze, the feel of the sun-warmed terrace beneath my feet. My own memories are crystal clear. Each one as crisp and complete as if it happened just hours before.
We met, Edie and I, on the first day of the summer holidays in 1986. Until that moment I didn’t know her name or what she looked like. I didn’t even know she existed.
But I knew the place she lived.
I knew The Cliff House.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_102485dd-6fa1-5ee7-b934-744d69ae458c)
Tamsyn
July 1986
I sprang out of bed as soon as I woke. It was the first day of the holidays and I couldn’t wait to escape.
The house was still. It hung with a silence as thick as pea soup. Mum was at work. My brother was in his bedroom. Door closed. I didn’t need to go in to know he was still asleep. Sleeping was pretty much all he’d done since the tin mine shut down. Granfer was also in his room. Although it wasn’t really his room. It was Mum and Dad’s, but Mum had moved to a fold-up bed in the sitting room when Granfer came to live with us. She wanted him to be comfortable, what with the state of his lungs, she said. I remember when the man from the tip came to pick up the double bed. Jago had dragged it on to the street and the three of us watched as the man and his friend hefted it onto the back of a truck in exchange for a six-pack of beer. Though Mum didn’t say, I could tell by her face she was sad to see it go, but, as she said, Granfer needed the space and a chair was more use to him than a bed for two.
His door was open a crack and there he was, in his chair, leaning forward to study the mess of jigsaw pieces scattered on the small table in front of him. I watched him for a minute or two, ready to smile if he noticed me, but he didn’t move a muscle, just stared down at the table.
I turned and walked over to the airing cupboard on the landing. Mum used it to keep her stuff in. She’d put the spare sheets and towels in a cardboard box in the corner of Granfer’s room, then removed the shelves and put up a hanging rail which she made from a length of pine doweling she picked up from the hardware shop in Penzance. She had to cut it to size with our rusted hacksaw and I remember thinking how well she’d done it despite her not being Dad.
I opened the cupboard door and stared at the clothes inside with her shoes lined up below them in happy pairs. There was a variety of boxes with belts and earrings and her winter hat and scarf on a high shelf above. I ran my finger along clothes on their hangers, enjoying the feel of the different fabrics as I looked for something pretty. Something suitable.
My eyes settled on her rainbow dress and I smiled.
‘Perfect.’
A shiver of excitement ran through my body as I took the dress into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I let my dressing gown fall to the floor and slipped on the dress, smoothing it over my hips and waist, the crepe fabric rough against my skin. Mum kept her make-up in a flowery wash-bag on a wire vegetable rack below the basin along with her shower cap, a soap-on-a-rope we’d never used, and a pot of Oil of Ulay which Jago and I gave her for her last birthday. Inside the wash-bag was a pressed powder she’d had forever, a drying mascara and her lipstick. I took out the lipstick and removed the lid, then turned the base to reveal the scarlet innards. Lifting it to my nose I breathed in. The smell conjured memories of when I was younger, my parents dressed up to go out, perhaps – if it was a special occasion – to the Italian restaurant in Porthleven they loved so much. I pictured her turning a circle for him. Saw him smile, eyes alight, as he leant in to kiss her cheek. It was painful remembering how it was back then. Back then when our house felt like a home.
Home.
Just a memory. Vague and fading. I stared at myself in the mirror above the basin and searched for the ten-year-old girl who’d lived in that happy place. But she was long gone. I drew in a deep breath and touched the tip of my finger to the blood-coloured lipstick, dabbing first its waxy surface and then my lips to add a blush of colour. I dropped the lipstick back into the wash-bag and zipped it up. Then, looking down, I swung left and right to make the rainbow dress swish, imagining my father watching on and smiling.
I went downstairs and glanced into the sitting room as I passed. Her bed was stored neatly behind the settee. The folded duvet and pillow lay on top of it, struck through by a line of sunlight from a gap between the curtains. As I walked into the kitchen I saw two mugs on the table, one with a smudge of lipstick on it, the other without. A sudden sweep of anger washed over me and I snatched them up and marched them to the sink where I turned the tap on, squirted washing-up liquid into the mugs, and reached for the scouring pad. I attacked the one without the red smear the hardest. How had he squirmed his way into the kitchen? I scrubbed, wanting all trace of him gone, then dried the mugs and returned them to the cupboard before squeezing bleach on the table and meticulously cleaning every inch of it, rubbing all the way into the corners and along the edges.
The kitchen hung with the pungent tang of bleach and my mind returned to thoughts of getting out. I stood on tiptoes and reached for the battered biscuit tin on top of the fridge. Inside was a collection of odds and sods, as Mum called them: safety pins, pencil stubs, an assortment of rusted screws and nails, and a variety of keys. Excitement wriggled along my arm and down to the pit of my stomach as I pulled out the key with the green fob. I slipped it into the pocket of the rainbow dress, replaced the tin, then grabbed my bag from the hook in the hallway.
As the front door closed behind me every muscle in my body began to relax. I turned out of our road and headed down towards the Cape, smiling as the breeze took my hair and tossed it playfully about my face. That day the sea was the very same navy as Granfer’s favourite knitted Gansey sweater and sprinkled with diamonds of sunlight. High above my head, a handful of seagulls flew in sweeping circles, their distant cries jubilant. An almost perfect day.
As ever my thoughts drifted to Dad. It was impossible to walk down this stretch of road to the Cape without remembering the feel of his hand gripping mine. Or how I’d had to half-run to keep up with his stride. I could still picture the book folded into his back pocket, dog-eared, marked on the cover with a single perfect tea-ring. I recalled him reaching for it when he spotted a bird, leafing quickly through the pages before pulling me in close.
Do you see it?
My cheek rested against his stubbled face as he pointed. I didn’t care much about the bird. All that mattered was being in his arms.
A golden plover.
Then I’d listen quietly as he told me all about it. That its name came from the word for rain in Latin – or maybe it was Greek – because plovers flock when the weather draws in. After he died, any smidgen of interest I might have had in seabirds waned, but sometimes, when I missed him the most, I’d pretend I loved them and would watch them through the binoculars as they balanced on ledges or dive-bombed for fish, trying to recall their names, population numbers, and the colour of their eggs.
There were only four cars in the car park at Cape Cornwall. It was early though. Later in the day it would be full, vehicles jammed bumper to bumper, with National Trust stickers on their windscreens and woollen picnic rugs folded beneath raincoats in their boots. I joined the coastal path and walked up onto the clifftop where the wind was stronger and my skin spread with goosebumps. I wrapped my arms around my body and told myself off for not bringing a sweater.
The footpath was well worn by walkers who strode from Botallack to Cape Cornwall and on to Sennen Cove in their special boots with canvas sides and long laces double-knotted for safety. My body tingled with excitement as the fields of lush grazing on my left changed to unruly moorland. Pillows of heather and fern stretched away from me in a carpet of green and purple patched with spiky yellow gorse. If I stood still and closed my eyes, I’d be able to hear the rustling of voles and mice which hid from the sparrowhawk circling on the thermals above.
When the footpath bent sharply to the left my body fizzed with anticipation. Four steps until the heart-stone. I counted them. Eyes fixed on the ground in front of me.
One. Two. Three.
Four.
Then there was the stone. The shape of a perfect heart. Grey and polished, with grass kissing its edges like the sea surrounding an island. I placed both feet on top of it then looked up.
My breath caught.
The house gleamed white in the sunshine. A beacon on the cliffs. As always its beauty jolted me like a slap on the face. I saw my father ahead of me, his long legs pounding the path, arms swinging with purpose at his sides. He turned and smiled. Beckoned to me.
Hurry up!
The wind blew his hair and made his eyes glint with weather-tears.
Isn’t it beautiful?
‘Yes, Dad. It is.’
As he turned to walk onwards, I smiled, then broke into a run to catch up with him.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2a312a65-4083-56ab-86d2-035949ea92d3)
Tamsyn
July 1986
I scrambled up the grassy slope that led from the path to the lichen-coated rock on the point. I opened my bag and pulled out my father’s binoculars, looping the leather strap over my head and caressing the cool metal with the edge of my thumb.
This was our spot. It was where he took me to watch the sea and the birds. A protrusion of cliff with rocks to shelter us from the wind and weather, and views out to the horizon a thousand miles away, with Sennen Cove to the left and The Cliff House to our right.
It was here that my memories of him were the strongest. Sitting in this spot I could recall him in such Technicolor detail. The patches of sweat which darkened his T-shirt. The individual beads of moisture glistening on his forehead. I could hear his voice telling me to make the most of the sunshine. Warning me the weather wouldn’t last. That storms were coming. As I sat and watched the house I felt him beside me.
Isn’t it beautiful, Tam?
He jumped to his feet and grabbed my hand, pulling me down to the path and the iron railing which encircled the garden. When he reached over to open the latch on the gate I pulled back.
Are we allowed?
Nobody’s home.
Are you sure?
I raised the binoculars to my face and scanned the house and the driveway. There was no movement, no lights or opened windows, no car parked outside. I didn’t rush. I gave myself time to make certain nobody was home. When I was sure, I unhooked the strap from my neck and wrapped it around the binoculars and tucked them back in my bag, then stood and walked down to rejoin the footpath.
The white-painted railings were patched with rust, which bled down the uprights in autumnal orange smears. I walked along the edge of the boundary until I reached the gate, then pushed it open enough for me to squeeze through, but not past the point where the hinges creaked. The lawn was the colour of emeralds, soft and mown into stripes by a gardener who came on a Wednesday afternoon and peed in the bushes unaware I was watching. The grass ran from the gate up to the house and was bordered by lush flowerbeds which held plants of every colour and insects that flitted busily between flower heads. I’d looked some of them up in a book of Dad’s – The Comprehensive Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Cornwall and Devon – and learnt lots of their names by heart. Cordyline, sea pinks, red and lilac poppies, phormium, flowering sea kale, and others I couldn’t remember grew amongst copses of bamboo and blue hydrangea. There were ornamental ferns which should have been in the jungle and agapanthus and towering gunnera with giant leaves straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
When I reached the terrace I stopped and looked up at the house. It wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket. The air crackled with electricity and the cry of curlews rang in my ears as I drank in its salt-stained white and the soft slips of cloud moving like ghosts across ginormous windows. According to Dad it was something called ‘Art Deco’, built between the Wars by the heir to an enormous tobacco fortune as a gift for his American wife who’d taken a shine to Cornwall. It was hard to believe that an actual American once lived in St Just. I imagined her walking across this very same terrace, talking American, dressed in pressed white slacks with a silver cigarette case, the spit of Lauren Bacall.
Most of the terrace was taken up by the glorious swimming pool. Rectangular, with semi-circular steps at one end, it was lined with mosaic tiles as black as coal. I walked to the edge of it and trod on my plimsolls to take them off. I heard my mother’s voice lecturing me.
Don’t break the backs. Undo the laces. No money for more.
The paving stones were warm underfoot. I placed my bag beside my shoes and stared down at the pool. The surface was still. Not even a ripple. It shone like a sheet of black mirror, reflecting the sky like the windows that punctured the house. I bent to put my finger to it and heard the echo of his voice. Saw him smile at me. Saw the glint in his eye. Wavelets spread outwards from my touch and faded to nothing but a shift of light on the disturbed water.
One of her scarves was draped over the sun lounger nearest me. I reached for it. The silk was soft in my fingers. I brought it up to my face and breathed in. It smelt of her perfume, rich and thick, with a hint of coconut suntan oil beneath. I wrapped the scarf around my neck as I’d seen her do a hundred times.
I’d been watching the house on and off since the Davenports bought it two years earlier from an elderly couple who moved to Spain. I don’t know exactly why I first walked up to the point to see the house. Up until that moment I’d avoided it. I’d found the thought of going back to the place too painful. Too much of a reminder of what I’d lost when my father died. But something made me curious. Maybe it was the rumours which had spread through St Just like wildfire. A famous writer. His glamorous wife. Londoners bringing their fancy ways to West Penwith. Or perhaps it was hearing the house in overheard conversations, each mention of it bringing a vibrant memory back to me. But whatever the reason for that first visit, I knew within moments it wouldn’t be the last. As soon as the house loomed into view it was like a spell had been cast. The connection was undeniable. And then, when I began to watch them – Mr and Mrs Davenport – the connection deepened. As I became increasingly sucked into their lives, going to the house became a heady mix of both memory of my father and dreamy escapism.
I knew their routine well. They only ever came on weekends, arriving late afternoon on a Friday and leaving before noon on the Monday. On as many Fridays as I could manage I’d walk to the point and wait, binoculars primed, praying for the roar of the Jaguar as it careened down the lane. They didn’t always appear. There was no way of knowing. Even though Mum went in every week – whether they were coming or not – they never thought to tell her which weekends they’d be there. On the days when they didn’t appear I’d feel so let down it physically hurt, deflated by disappointment. It was following one of these no-shows that I braved creeping into the garden, just like I’d done with my dad all those years before.
Adrenalin coursed through me as I walked across the lawn towards the house. I didn’t make it all the way to the terrace before nerves got the better of me and I turned and hared out of the gate to the safety of the footpath. As I paused to catch my breath, my whole body trembled and a bout of excited laughter rippled through me. The thrill of it became an addiction, and while the other kids at school sniffed glue or drank snakebite and black to get their kicks, I walked up to The Cliff House, either to watch the Davenports or explore, depending on the mood which took me.
I stood in front of the window and cupped my hands around my eyes, peering in to double-check it was empty. The sitting room was as spotless as always, not a magazine or an ornament or a picture frame out of place. I thought of my mother dusting and polishing, arranging everything just so, wanting it to be perfect for when they arrived. I felt for the key with the green tag in my pocket and pushed it into the lock. I held my breath as I turned it. There was a loud click. I opened the door and paused to listen. The only sound was the hum of the enormous fridge in the kitchen so I stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind me.
The inside of the house was what I imagined an art gallery would look like. It was cool and quiet with paintings on white walls, unusual pottery dotted about, and a large hunk of grey stone in one corner which was carved into a vague human form. The paintings were oversized canvases with no frames or glass, splashes of colour daubed over them as if someone had poured the paint from a tin instead of brushing it. All were signed in the corner with the name Etienne scrawled in an extravagant blue flourish. Truth be told, I didn’t think they were that good, but what did I know? There was no way people like the Davenports would put anything on their walls that wasn’t the very best. I preferred the photographs, black-and-white close-ups of body parts made to look like the landscape. A woman’s breast turned into a hill. A tummy button filled with water to resemble a pool in the desert.
My feet made a soft padding sound as I crossed the room. The polished floorboards shone as if coated with syrup. I walked through the door leading into the kitchen where a central worktop held a neat stack of recipe books, the titles of which I now knew by heart – Robert Carrier, Elizabeth David, The F Plan, The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet – and a pepper mill which was at least a foot tall and the same shade of red as my mother’s movie-star lipstick. I struck a pose against the worktop, flicked back my hair, swished my dress.
‘Darling?’ My voice fractured the stillness. ‘Yes, my love? Oh, darling, do bring me a Martini. Stirred, if you will. Of course, my love. I’ll fetch you one now. Shall I put one of those green things in it, too? I know how you love them so.’
I gave a trill, mimicking the laugh I was sure she’d have.
‘Darling, you’re right. I do love them. And, oh, goodness me, isn’t it hot today? Baking hot. Thank goodness we have the swimming pool. What on earth would we do if we didn’t? We’d boil, darling. We’d absolutely boil.’
He smiled.
My stomach tightened as he reached out for my hand, then lifted it to his mouth and pressed his lips against my skin.
I smiled and went to the cupboard for a glass, which I filled from the tap. I turned the tap off and the last drips fell against the stainless steel sink with the beat of a slowing clock. As I drank I held my little finger up in a delicate salute. I also took the tiniest sips because people like the Davenports never gulped their water. After I’d rinsed the glass and dried it on my dress, I returned it to the cupboard before walking back through the sitting room and out onto the terrace, where the heat seemed to have intensified.
I walked like a model on a catwalk, swinging my hips from side to side, one foot in front of the other, chin held high. Then I untied the silk scarf and pulled it away from my neck, enjoying the way it caressed my skin. I laid it over the sun lounger exactly as I had found it, watching for a moment as a slight wind ruffled the material and made it dance. I walked over to the swimming pool steps and looked into the water. The blackness was like a dead television screen and for a moment or two I stared at my reflected face, imagined I was floating beneath the surface looking up at the sky. I reached for the zip on my mother’s dress and undid it and let it fall to the ground, enjoying the breeze on my sweat-dampened skin.
It was then I felt somebody watching me.
I turned quickly but the terrace was empty and the house still.
I waited. Scanned the house. Searched every window. I’d imagined it.
Nobody’s home.
Remembering my father’s words reassured me and I turned my attention back to the pool. I took a step into the water. It was heated but not enough to stop goosebumps leaping up across my skin. I rubbed my arms as I waited for the water to settle and when it did, when the ripples had faded to flatness, I stepped down again. Between each step I allowed the wavering surface to still and savoured the growing feeling of calm that enveloped me.
I pushed off the wall and held my head clear of the water, swimming like she did with her swan’s neck straight and tall. My strokes were long and slow and as I pulled through the water I focused on the way it soothed my skin. I turned when I reached the end then dived beneath the water and closed my eyes as the silence wrapped around me. I held my breath and waited for the familiar burn in my lungs. As always I allowed the indulgent thought of opening my mouth to pass through my mind.
One breath. Swift and silky. And then…
When the raking pain became too much to bear, I pushed off the floor of the pool and propelled myself upwards. My head broke the surface and I drew a breath in, dragging oxygen deep into my body.
When I heard her voice I screamed.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_6ca8a5c1-7a78-5977-b48f-86095b5db25b)
Tamsyn
July 1986
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
My stomach turned over.
There was a figure silhouetted against the sun, features obscured in shadow, standing at the edge of the pool.
My heart pounded as I heaved myself through the water towards the steps.
‘I’m… I… Sorry…’ The words wouldn’t form and my voice stumbled as I clambered out of the swimming pool. I tried to hide my underwear with my hands. Why hadn’t I worn a proper swimsuit? Why had I swum in my bra and pants, which were old and baggy and turned see-through with water? ‘I’m… I…’
Panic muddied my thoughts. The voice had been female. Who was she? It was a Thursday. The Davenports never came on a Thursday. Was it her? Mrs Davenport? Blinded by the sun, it was hard to be certain, but surely that was the only person it could be?
‘Answer my question.’
I bent to pick up my dress from the ground and drew it up to my chin to hide my body.
‘I’ll leave,’ I whispered. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’
She didn’t speak. A soft, rhythmic tapping echoed across the terrace. I glanced at the house. The back door was ajar, a breeze worrying it gently against the frame. Everything inside me screamed run. I looked down towards the gate and path, my route to freedom.
‘Don’t even think about it.’
As I looked back at her she blurred like an out-of-focus picture. I swallowed. My throat was dry and my palms sweating, my body numbed by guilt and fear. When she stepped towards me, I readied myself for Mrs Davenport to shriek at me, demand an explanation before calling the police and firing my mum.
But she didn’t shriek.
As the figure stepped out of the glare of the sun her face became visible. It wasn’t Mrs Davenport. It was a girl, about my own age, maybe a year or two older. She stared at me with her hands on her hips, head cocked to one side. Her eyes were heavily made up with thick black eyeliner dragged upwards into arrowheads. She wore a black skirt that trailed the floor, a black top with holes worn into the sleeves, and a thin leather chord encircling her neck which threatened to throttle her. Her dyed white-blonde hair was cut into an aggressively short bob, framing her elfin face and razor-sharp cheekbones. She radiated an aristocratic confidence that made my breath catch. My mother would have disagreed. She would have hated her make-up and the fact she was so painfully thin. She’d think she looked like an addict. But this girl’s skin was too perfect – too porcelain – for that. Eyes too clear. I knew which kids from school did drugs. Their acne, gaunt faces, and wide staring eyes gave them away.
This girl was nothing like them.
Her eyes scanned me as if I were something she was thinking of buying. I cringed beneath her scrutiny, painfully aware of how spongy and uncared for my body was. Shame swept over me and I desperately tried to arrange the fabric of the dress so it covered more of me.
On her wrists she wore a collection of silver bangles like Madonna and when she crossed her arms they jangled tunefully.
‘Who said you could swim here?’
My mouth opened and closed as I grappled to find a reason – any reason – to justify me being there. I thought of my dad. Tried to imagine what flawless excuse he’d have given for our trespassing. Somewhere above me I could have sworn I heard a raven cry and a shiver wriggled through me.
‘For God’s sake,’ she said, tapping her toe against the paving impatiently. ‘Put the dress back on if you’re that cold.’
I didn’t move for a moment or two, but then turned my back and shook out the dress, biting back tears of humiliation as I felt her eyes on my body as I bent to step into it. The fabric clung to my damp skin so I had to tug hard at it, risking tearing the delicate material. I pulled the zip up and faced her. My wet hair dripped down my back as I bit my lower lip to stop myself crying.
The girl raised a single dark and perfectly plucked eyebrow. ‘If you don’t say something soon, I’m going to call the police and have you locked up.’ Her voice oozed with money. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’
Mum was going to lose her job. I felt sick as I pictured her sitting at the kitchen table, a ragged piece of toilet roll clutched in her fist, red-topped bills surrounding her.
‘I’m… I...’ My voice stuttered and waned.
The girl looked irritated. ‘Well?’
Something caught my eye. Eleanor Davenport’s silk scarf fluttering in a gust of wind, half-lifting off the sun lounger as if, like me, it was desperate to escape. I glanced at the girl. Her eyes narrowed. Her patience was visibly running out.
‘My… mother…’
‘What? Speak up, for God’s sake.’
‘My mother,’ I said more loudly. ‘She… She cleans here. She’s the cleaner. I think… I mean, she said… She left her scarf here. She gave me the key.’ I pulled the key with the green tag out of my slightly soggy pocket and held it aloft as if this small piece of metal was my passport to being here. ‘I looked for it. The scarf. But couldn’t see it. I was leaving. And, well, I was hot…’ My voice wilted as the little bravery I’d mustered evaporated. ‘And the pool… I thought nobody… I’m… I’m sorry.’
For what felt like a century the girl with peroxide hair didn’t speak. I shifted on my feet, willing her to send me away with nothing more than a sharp warning never to show my face there again.
‘Who were you speaking to?’
‘What?’ My throat was dry and tight and trapped my voice so it came out in a rasp.
‘When you broke in to look for this scarf. I heard you having a conversation. Is there someone else here?’ Her eyes flicked from me to the house and back again.
My cheeks burst into flame. ‘No… I… I was… Talking to myself.’
‘How strange.’
She turned and walked back towards the door. Was this my signal to go? Was I free? I hesitated, about to turn away, but she glanced back with narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t even think about leaving. If you move an inch, you’ll be sorry.’
My stomach hardened to a tight ball. Who was she? Why was she here? As I did what I was told and stood stock still, water collecting at my feet, I was hit with the sudden idea that perhaps she might also be trespassing and that in a remarkable twist of fate we’d both arrived at the house, uninvited, at the same time. Perhaps I wasn’t the only girl who watched this place from an out-of-sight vantage point and snuck in when nobody was home.
This thought bought a little clarity with it. My mind seemed to de-mist. Whoever she was, whatever reason she had to be here, the most important thing was to convince her not to tell the Davenports. If Mum lost her job she’d have to do more hours at the bloody chip shop or, worse still, sign on, something I knew full well she’d rather die than do.
The girl walked back out of the door. She held two bottles in her hand and an opener in the other.
‘I like your dress,’ she said as she neared me.
I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly so didn’t say anything in return.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘My dress?’
She made a face like I was stupid. ‘Er, yeah, your dress.’
‘It’s my mum’s. From the Sixties. She wore it to a Rolling Stones concert.’
‘Retro?’ Her eyes blinked slowly. ‘Très fashionable.’
I let my breath go with a nervous laugh. I was struck again by how pretty she was. Not pretty like Alice Daley or Imogen Norris – who were universally acknowledged to be the prettiest girls in school, all pushed-up boobs and bum-skimming skirts. No, this girl was graceful and poised and pretty like Princess Di, if Princess Di wore black make-up, a hundred bangles and had a silver stud in her nose.
‘Très… cool,’ she said.
I managed to nod.
‘You’re very lucky to have a cool mother. Mine,’ she said deliberately, ‘is very, very, uncool.’
I thought of the photograph of my parents, the one that had his writing on the back:
Angie and Me. Odeon Theatre, Guildford, March 1965.
In the picture my mum wore the rainbow dress. She was seventeen, not long engaged, delirious with love. Her hair was held back by a thick red scarf, feline eyes outlined with liner, her lips and skin pale as was the fashion. My dad wore a white shirt and a thin black tie. His hair was slicked back and he held a cigarette loosely in his fingers. I closed my eyes for a second, caught a flash of him singing me to sleep, smelt the cigarettes stuck to his skin.
‘Would you like a drink?’ She gestured to the bottles in her hand. Coca-Cola – the real thing, in curvaceous glass bottles like the ones I’d seen shiny, happy Americans with white-toothed smiles selling on the television.
‘Who are you?’
She gave no indication of having heard me. Maybe I’d spoken too quietly. She walked over to the table and put the bottles down, then using the opener she flicked the caps off each in turn, the cola fizzing loudly as she threw them onto the table. One bounced across the iron fretwork and fell with a tinny clink against the paving stones.
‘I think I should go.’
‘If you leave, I’ll tell my mother you broke into our house and I found you rifling through her jewellery box.’
Horror mushroomed inside me so violently I thought I might be sick.
‘Your mother?’ I didn’t understand. They didn’t have a daughter. Mum had never mentioned one. There was nothing in the house that indicated they had children − no photos, no clothes, no posters in any bedrooms. Was she lying?
‘Yes. My mother. More’s the pity.’ She sat on one of the chairs and lifted her bare feet onto the table and crossed them at the ankle. I’d never seen toenails painted purple before and never heard of people wearing rings on their toes, but she wore three and her nails were the colour of autumn plums.
‘Are they here?’ My voice quivered. Why had I been so careless? How stupid could I be?
‘My mother’s shopping while my father gets something fixed on the Jag. A tyre or, God, I don’t know, something dull. My mother will already be in a filthy mood because she won’t have found anything worth buying and will be moaning about Cornwall being stuck in the Dark Ages and wondering why anybody ever leaves Chelsea.’
‘My mum can’t lose her job,’ I whispered.
She stared at me for a moment or two, her expression flat, but then her body seemed to soften.
‘Relax.’ Her voice had lost its sharpness. ‘You don’t need to worry. I’m not going to tell them. I don’t give a shit about you swimming in the pool. I mean, why wouldn’t you? It’s hot as hell today.’
I could have cried with relief.
‘Go on. Stay for a bit. I’m literally dying of boredom. You can leave before they get back.’ She pushed one of the bottles towards me. ‘Have a Coke.’
‘I’ve never had a real Coke, only the one they do at Wimpy.’ And even then I’d only tried it once, though I didn’t tell her that.
She furrowed her brow and a bemused smile flashed across her face as she reached for the bottle nearest her and tipped it up to her lips. I inhaled sharply, shocked by how much she resembled Mrs Davenport in that split second. As I stared at her I noticed other similarities between her and her parents. Her face was the same shape as his. The sweeping curve of her neck was identical to hers. How stupid not to see these things immediately. Stupid not to have guessed who she was. Their daughter. Her house. A surge of irrational jealousy shuddered through me like an electric charge.
The girl looked up at me whilst shielding her eyes from the sun. ‘For God’s sake sit down.’ She kicked the empty chair and it scraped against the paving.
The movement jolted me into action and I walked towards her. I hesitated as I reached the table, wondering if it might be a trap and when I sat down she’d laugh and say, ‘Ha! Idiot! As if someone like you could actually sit with someone like me?’
But she didn’t. She smiled.
From nowhere a waft of her perfume swept over me. I had a vivid recollection of Truro. The shopping centre. My mother rummaging through the bottles and sprays in The Body Shop. Taking lids off. Pumping scent onto her wrists. Then mine. Ignoring the hard stares of the lady behind the counter.
‘White Musk.’
‘Sorry?’
Had I said that aloud? ‘Your perfume,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s White Musk.’
‘You’re quite unusual, aren’t you? Not that it’s a bad thing. I like unusual.’ She blew upwards over her forehead. ‘Christ, it’s hot.’ She took hold of her top and flapped it.
We were silent. She didn’t seem to mind but it made me itch. When the awkwardness became unbearable I turned my head to look out over the sea. The wind had painted dashes of white across its surface and a small boat sat out near the horizon. So far away. Little more than a dot. I thought of the day my dad died. How quickly the squall had rolled in, turning sunshine and blue skies to driving rain and treacherous waves within moments. A crack of thunder echoed in my ears as I recalled snatching hopelessly at his legs to stop him leaving the safety of our house.
‘My name’s Edie, by the way.’
She waited expectantly but when I didn’t reply I saw her expression fade to boredom.
For God’s sake speak.
‘I like it.’
‘What?’
‘Your name. I like it.’
She stared at me for a moment then burst into laughter which sounded like sleigh bells. She tipped her head back. Exposed her throat. Pale and delicate. It struck me how vulnerable that part of her was and I hurriedly banished the thought of my hands encircling it and squeezing until her white skin bruised.
I thought she might let me in on the joke but she didn’t. ‘My mother chose it,’ she said. ‘It’s short for Edith. Piaf. Eleanor thinks it’s glamorous. Anything – and everything – à la France est très glamoureux, cherie according to Maman.’
The accent she used on some of her words reminded me of my French teacher, Madame Thomas, who came from Widemouth Bay but turned puce with rage if we failed to pronounce her surname ‘Toh-maah’. Thinking of ridiculous Madame Toh-maah made me braver and I ventured a smile in return.
‘And yours?’ Edie Davenport lifted her bottle and studied the Coke inside as she tipped it from side to side like a pendulum.
I hesitated. Should I make something up? Re-christen myself something très glamoureux? Esmerelda perhaps? Or maybe Ruby or Anastasia?
‘God,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s not a difficult question. Someone tells you their name then asks you yours and you reply. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners between cleaning jobs?’
Edie brushed something, a fly perhaps, off one of her knees. I noticed how smooth and free of blemishes her legs were. Hairless with skin as white as a china doll except for the soles of her feet which were soft and pink like the inside of a kitten’s ear. I thought of my own legs covered ankle to thigh in fine hairs bleached by the sun, the skin peppered with scratches from brambles and mysterious bruises, my feet hardened and cracked and my toenails uneven and in need of a trim.
Edie cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows as she sipped her drink. Her eyes were bolted on to me.
Speak.
‘Tamsyn.’
‘Tamsyn.’ She rolled my name around her tongue like the Coke she swilled in the bottle. ‘Yes. It’s the perfect name for a thief.’
My stomach pitched. ‘No! I’m not a thief! I was here to find—’
‘Yes, yes.’ Edie gave a dismissive flick of her hand. ‘The cleaner’s scarf. You said.’
‘I should go.’ My voice trembled and when I lowered my eyes, I saw the tremble mirrored in my quivering hem.
‘You can’t. I’ve already taken the lid off the Coke.’ Edie gestured at the second bottle on the table. ‘You’re being rude again.’
‘Rude?’
‘Yes. Rude. I invited you to sit down with me and you haven’t. That’s rude.’
So I sat quickly because the last thing I wanted to be was rude. She flashed me a half-smile and tipped the Coca-Cola to her lips. I’d have given anything to have a fraction of her confidence and swagger, to have what she had, her father’s casual indifference, her mother’s grace and sophistication.
Even though the silence bore down on us like ten tonnes of lead, Edie didn’t seem to care one bit. But I did. I was desperate to speak but it was as if my lips were sewn together with fishing twine which looped through my skin. I imagined wrenching my mouth open so I could say something, the stitches ripping my lips to blood and tatters.
I ran my finger down the length of the bottle, traced the ridges, the gathered condensation wetting my skin.
‘Try it.’
I raised the bottle and sipped. Bubbles exploded on my tongue and the cloying sweetness made me smile involuntarily.
She shifted in her chair and tucked her legs beneath her body. ‘Have you swum here before?’
‘No.’ My dishonesty flared hot beneath my skin. I thought of my father and I in the pool. His arms wrapped around me. His eyelashes laced with droplets of water like tiny pearls. ‘I didn’t know they had a daughter,’ I said, wanting to steer away from the subject of my trespassing. Talking about Edie was safer. I just had to keep her talking about anything other than me.
She seemed amused by this. ‘Do you know much about them then?’
I shook my head. Another lie. I knew lots. I knew what newspaper he read, what clothes they wore, the position he sat in when he wrote at his typewriter. I knew she turned her sun lounger to follow the arc of the sun and when, every now and then, a sparrowhawk cried out he’d look up and search the sky for it. I knew they let food go to waste. That vegetables were left to blacken in the fridge beside sour milk, and that abandoned bread grew mould in the shiny steel bread bin. I knew they left their bed unmade when they left for London and I knew where they kept the sheets my mother would change for them. I knew what books were piled up on his bedside table and what her night cream smelt like and how soft her silk dressing gown felt against my cheek.
Edie lifted the Coke bottle and drained the last inch. ‘To be honest, I wouldn’t expect anyone to know they have a daughter. They’re barely aware of it themselves. They keep me in a boarding school so they don’t have to think about it.’
‘A boarding school?’
Edie nodded.
I had visions of great Gothic buildings and Malory Towers, hockey sticks and midnight feasts and huge panelled dining rooms where hundreds of these girls, identikit clones, gathered to sip soup from round silver spoons.
‘That must be amazing.’
‘It’s the pits. I loathe it. Every single girl there is a bitch and the teachers are idiots. Literally everybody there hates me and I hate them.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘The head says I’m trouble. Rude and difficult. But,’ and here she paused and leant forward, ‘what the flying fuck does she fucking know about anything anyway?’
I couldn’t help but smile, and as I did the tension I’d been feeling since we first laid eyes on each other finally started to fade.
Then she needled her eyes at me and pointed. ‘You don’t hate me, do you?’
‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘Not at all.’
She sat back. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s probably a good thing the ’rents keep me in a boarding school. If they didn’t I’d be tempted to murder them. Maybe not him but definitely her.’
She smiled at me and I smiled back and as I did invisible strands of friendship began to stretch out between us.
‘Where do you go to school?’
‘The local comp. It’s a dump.’
‘I’d give anything to go to a comprehensive. Boarding school is so lame. Being at a comprehensive is cool, isn’t it? I bet you don’t even have to work. Our teachers are obsessed with results and the girls spend most of their time bingeing and chucking up. You’re actually really lucky.’
I thought about my school – teachers drowned out by constant chatting, blocked toilets with permanent Out of Order signs on them, the stench of the canteen – and shrugged.
‘Anyway, I’m imprisoned here for the holidays which is beyond dull. Are you in Cornwall for the summer too?’
I wondered where she thought I might be going. France, maybe? On one of those exchanges where you swap families? Or New York or Tokyo or India? I didn’t answer immediately, allowing myself to enjoy a few precious seconds where as far as Edie Davenport was concerned I was someone who could have a life beyond St Just.
When the pause grew uncomfortable I nodded. ‘Yes, I’m here the whole time.’
‘And presumably you have no friends?’
Her assumption took the wind out of me. I opened my mouth to protest but then decided not to. She was, after all, correct.
‘Good,’ she said emphatically. ‘Then you and I will hang out. We’ll be holiday friends. It’ll be fun.’
Holiday friends? The thought made my skin tingle.
‘I mean, Jesus,’ she said. ‘The thought of being stuck in this place with nobody to talk to for six weeks is unbearable.’
I looked up at the house and wondered if there was anywhere on this planet I’d prefer to be stuck.
Edie gave an impatient sigh. ‘Well then?’ Her question was laced with irritation. It dawned on me she might be reading my silence as lack of enthusiasm so I nodded quickly.
From nowhere a gust of wind blew. Dust and bits of last year’s leaves were lifted off the terrace in a flurry. Eleanor Davenport’s scarf again caught my eye as it was scooped up and tumbled through the air. The wind dropped as suddenly as it had picked up and the scarf fell. It floated downwards to settle on the surface of the pool. The material darkened as it sucked in the water and sank slowly until it hung suspended as if trapped in aspic.
As I stared at the scarf, the stillness was torn in two by a screech. The noise was instantly recognisable. I jumped and grabbed the table instinctively, catching the edge of one of the bottles with my hand. It fell and Coke spilled through the fretwork and collected on the paving slabs below the table.
‘Oh, I’m… sorry…’ I reached for the bottle and quickly righted it whilst casting my eyes about in search of the raven, which I knew was lurking somewhere close.
My skin prickled. I scoured the lawn, the trees, the railings, but there was no sign.
‘I have to go.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. My grandad. I need to get back to see him. He isn’t well.’ I glanced up and scanned the sky and the roof of the house. I let out a breath. There it was. The raven. Perched on the guttering of the roof. Black feathers buffeted by the wind coming off the sea. It screeched again and the sound cut through me like a shard of glass.
I had a vivid flash of the raven on the path. The one Dad and I had seen that day as we hurried home beneath a darkening sky, the first drops of rain spattering our faces.
My lungs tightened.
It’s just a bird.
I could feel the heat of its eyes on me. Polished black marbles. Charcoal beak shining.
‘Will you tell your parents about me?’ I said as I stood.
She didn’t answer immediately.
‘Please don’t.’
‘I said I wouldn’t,’ she said a little crossly. ‘So I won’t.’ Then she gave me a teasing smile. ‘Not today anyway.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_a70286b3-2c11-5fb8-a27e-418419396d46)
Edie
July 1986
Edie reached out of her window and struck a red-tipped match against the wall. The head burst into flame with a sputter and she held it to the end of her cigarette, the tobacco crackling as it caught. She inhaled then hung her hand out of the window to allow the smoke to curl upwards into the sky rather than into her room. Not that she cared if her parents smelt it. What were they going to do? Send her back to London? Hardly a punishment.
She could still see Tamsyn on the cliffs in the distance. She leant against the window frame as she smoked, her eyes fixed on the girl’s retreating figure, knotted red hair trailing behind her like a knight’s pennant.
The blazing sun had disappeared behind light grey clouds and it had started to rain. The relief from the heat was welcome. The rain wasn’t normal rain but that particular drizzly nothingness Edie only ever saw in Cornwall. More mist than rain. Cornwall had its own weather system as far as she could tell. There was nothing predictable about it at all. She watched the fine spots of water marking the cigarette, tiny dots turning its whiteness a translucent grey, the same grey, in fact, as Tamsyn’s childish cotton bra.
Edie had never met anybody that innocent before. That sheltered. It was so striking she wondered if perhaps it was put on. A well-rehearsed act designed to elicit sympathy and ward off punishment for breaking into houses. Clever if it was. Unnecessary though. Edie didn’t give a shit about her being in the house. When she’d heard noises downstairs her first thought was she was going to be kidnapped by someone who’d then send her father a ransom note made from newspaper cuttings demanding thousands of pounds, so it was quite a relief to discover a girl her own age as terrified as a rabbit in a snare. Plus she’d literally been about to kill herself with boredom and Tamsyn was a perfect distraction.
When Tamsyn finally disappeared out of view, Edie took a last drag then roughly stubbed her cigarette out on the wall below the window, which stained the paintwork with another charcoal smudge and sent out a shower of tiny sparks. She flicked it and it skimmed through the air and landed on the terrace below. She watched the cigarette end smoulder until it burnt out, a thin trail of smoke wending its way upwards and dissolving to nothing. She lifted her head and looked out over the sea. A handful of boats dotted the blue, and the horizon lay in the distance with exciting lands beyond, each of them offering a different adventure, like chocolates in a box.
She closed the window and shut out the sounds of the waves and gulls, then cast her eyes around the bedroom with disdain. Stuck here for the whole damn summer. Jesus. It was no better than a prison cell. Nothing more than essential furniture – a bed, a wardrobe, a bedside table – and grim cream and grey striped curtains at the window. There were no pictures. No plants in pots. The only thing of mild interest were the four white walls, which changed shade as the sun moved through the day. Edie thought of Tamsyn in the house, her wild hair and regional accent contaminating the designer emptiness which Edie’s parents believed to be the height of sophistication. Minimalism they called it – all the rage in New York, darling – which as far as Edie could tell meant echoing rooms with too much white and expensive pieces of statement furniture chosen to be coveted not used. But in this room, her room, the minimalism wasn’t a design feature. This was just a room that didn’t matter.
Edie lay back on the bed. She’d had a dismal end of term. Everything had spiralled from bad to worse and now she’d had enough of every single person she knew. If life were a poker game, she’d swap her whole hand of cards. Her father barely knew she existed. Her mother was forever gummed up with pills – pills to wake up, pills to calm down, pills for energy, pills for sleep – all liberally washed down with whatever booze was closest to hand. Edie had been in Cornwall for four days and was already climbing the walls. Most of her time was spent daydreaming about escape. Shoving a few things into a bag and leaving in the dead of night, walking down the moonlit lane to the main road and hitching a lift to anywhere. But of course she wouldn’t do it. Everybody knew girls like her who hitchhiked alone got raped or strangled.
Maybe Tamsyn would be enough to get her through the summer. She was certainly interesting. Unusual. Different to the people Edie usually met. She was the daughter of a cleaner for starters. The people Edie knew were all the offspring of doctors or barristers or duller-than-dull bores who ran boring companies doing boring things with numbers. Her own father was something of an anomaly, a well-known restaurant critic turned New York Times bestseller. Whilst her mother was a tragic cliché. A failed model turned socialite wife with a penchant for getting off her face. Between them they didn’t have one friend who was a cleaner or a shopkeeper or anything remotely normal. They’d sealed themselves in a bubble and floated about in a manufactured world of braying voices, nauseating opinions, and a universal lack of morals. It made Edie’s stomach heave. Having no friends was better than having fake ones.
She reached for her Walkman and slipped the headphones on. Yes. Hanging out with Tamsyn, the trespassing daughter of a cleaner, with unkempt red hair and a look of adoration, would hopefully make the purgatory more bearable.
At the very least it would seriously piss Eleanor off.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_b3a45f27-3852-5dda-ad83-28b8cadab891)
Present Day
‘Are you still scared of ravens?’
My hands instinctively ball tightly. Where did that question come from?
I check my rear-view mirror, indicate, turn the wheel. The back seat of the car is piled up with shopping bags. She sits in the passenger seat. Her hands rest on her lap, motionless, ankles crossed, skirt risen above her knees. Her legs are blemish-free; nothing, not even a freckle marks them. It’s as if she’s been airbrushed.
We skirt Hayle. Drive past the mudflats revealed by the tide. Sea birds pick over the exposed silt in search of razor clams and worms and the remains of dead fish.
‘I remember how you were back then. Terrified, weren’t you?’
I don’t answer. I can’t. The familiar dread gathers in my stomach like a sponge soaking up tar. I glance at her. She’s staring at me, eyes fixed, challenging me. She won’t let this go. She’ll push and push. I have no choice but to answer.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Because of the one you saw the day he died?’
I don’t reply.
‘Tell me.’
‘You know.’
‘Tell me again.’ Her voice has dropped to a low angry rumble and my stomach tightens.
‘It was on the path,’ I whisper. Tears prick the backs of my eyes. I don’t want to think about it. ‘Black all over. Calm. It had eyes like tiny lacquered marbles. The sky was getting darker and darker, pressing down on us. In its beak…’ My voice is choked by a knot of emotion. ‘Long thin strands. Like spaghetti. I grabbed his hand. “It’s just a raven,” he said. Granfer says ravens make bad things happen, I whispered. He saw one at the mine once and the next day the tunnel collapsed and two men were crushed.’
I see my father’s face then. He’s laughing at me. Telling me not to believe such superstitious nonsense. I try hard to recall the sound of his laughter but it’s elusive. If only I’d known it would be the last time I’d hear that noise I’d have listened harder, sucked the sound of it right into myself, etched it on to my brain forever.
‘Don’t be daft, Tam, he said. Granfer’s an old fool. Ravens are just birds. Species genus Corvus. He’s trying to scare you. Too much of the Hitchcock in that one. Don’t you worry.’
‘But you were right to worry.’
‘Yes.’
We round the bend and I slow to a halt to let a farmer cross with his cows. Their underbellies swing as they walk, hip bones pushing against black-and-white hides, tails chasing away the flies. The farmer raises his hand in thanks. Then he does a double take. Stares. Brow furrowed in vague – or perhaps judgemental – recognition.
I put the car into gear and drive onwards. The farmer lifts the iron gate into place, stick resting against the dry-stone wall, his fleeting interest in me gone.
‘What was in the raven’s beak?’
I recall how I pressed myself tight into my father, wary eyes bolted on to the bird, my body flooding with building horror.
‘A chick,’ I say softly. My hands grip the steering wheel. Knuckles white. ‘The entrails of a dead chick.’
Flashes of that small pink body batter me. Flecked with newly emerging feathers. Sodden and bloodied. Its stomach ripped open. Entrails, tiny and thin, spewing from the ragged hole. Its baby head twisted unnaturally, spindly legs broken, wings spread-eagled. One eye bulging beneath a translucent membrane. The other pecked out.
‘A kittiwake. A day or two old, Dad said.’
Then without warning the raven had taken flight. Startled me so I squeezed my father tighter. The bird beat the air with powerful wings, dark feathers outstretched, body rising like a phoenix into the bruising sky.
I take a breath and shift my weight as I change gear. I glance out of the window to my right. The sea is silver today. Touched white in places where the wind annoys it. Foreboding wraps around me like a cloak. I pull in to a lay-by. A caravan passes, its driver red-faced, stressed as he negotiates the narrow Cornish lanes and unforgiving locals who speed around corners primed and ready to shake their fists at the tourists.
‘You saw a raven the day I left, didn’t you?’
I look across at her. She is staring straight ahead. My breathing grows tight as if my lungs are silting up. A gull cries and the shadow of a cloud passes over us.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I saw a raven that day too.’
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_19a40de4-97db-5f5c-91bf-f268f7a41157)
Tamsyn
July 1986
I knocked on Granfer’s door as I pushed it open and walked in. My whole body was buzzing from my morning. The raven on the roof was forgotten, blanked out so I was free to relish every moment I’d spent at the house.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I made you a sandwich.’
Granfer hadn’t moved and was still sitting in the worn leather chair he’d had forever. I never understood how he could spend so long staring at the same muddle of jigsaw pieces. It would have driven me mad. But Granfer could sit at the table for hours on end, happy in his own world, poring over the spread of shapes on the table Mum got for him a few years earlier. She’d found the table in the Salvation Army shop in Penzance and brought it back on the bus as proud as could be. It looked like junk to me, with its sun-bleached flimsy laminate top and legs riddled with woodworm, and sure enough, as she set it down in the kitchen, she’d beamed and announced it only cost a pound.
It took her three evenings, a yard of green felt from the haberdashers in Hayle, and a staple gun she borrowed from school to transform it into what she grandly called a card table, perfect, she’d said with a wide smile, for holding a jigsaw.
It wasn’t perfect, but Granfer loved it. Told her it reminded him of one they’d had when Robbie was small, which they’d use for games of Gin Rummy and Snap.
Granfer’s attention switched from the jigsaw to me as I neared him. I put the sandwich on the table, and kissed him on his hair, which was thick and white with a yellow tinge and in need of a wash.
‘Fish paste on white sliced.’
‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘I was feeling a… bit peckish.’
‘How’s it going?’ I gestured at the puzzle.
‘Got the corners... and that far... edge. But… blimey… it’s a bugger.’
‘I’ll give you a hand.’
I sat on the small stool beside him and leant over the table, resting my chin on one hand to stare at the pieces. His breathing was loud in my ears. Each inhalation a fight to draw air into his lungs which had been ruined by dust from the mines. I tuned out his painful rasping by reliving my encounter with Edie Davenport. I savoured every detail, from the warmth of the paving stones beneath my feet, to the look of admiration she gave my dress, to each delicious elongated vowel which dripped from her lips. It was all so unreal, too unreal perhaps. If it wasn’t for the syrupy taste of Coca-Cola lingering in my mouth, I’d worry the whole episode was a figment of my imagination.
A triumphant holler from Granfer intruded on my thoughts. He patted my knee with excitement and launched forward to slot the piece of puzzle he’d found into the space that matched it in the jigsaw. It was a section of sky, half-cloud, half-blue, and he jabbed it vigorously into place.
‘Well… that’s one step… closer to finishing. Only another two… hundred and fifty-seven… to go.’ He beamed at me, revealing his crooked stained teeth, and a glint of gold from an ancient filling. ‘I’ll have… it done in a… jiffy.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Ta, love.’ His eyes drifted back to the pieces again. ‘With two and a half… please.’
‘Mum says no more than one.’
He made a face.
‘So don’t tell her, okay?’
He winked and tapped the side of his nose. As he did he erupted into a fit of coughing. Though I’d seen this a hundred times – coughing, spluttering, fingers bent into claws as they dug into the arms of his chair – it still shocked me. You’d have thought I’d got used to it, but each time, with each attack, I was terrified it wasn’t going to stop until his oxygen-starved body collapsed dead on the floor.
I reached for his hand and rubbed it helplessly. His eyes widened and the whites turned bloodshot as the effort of pulling air into his ravaged lungs popped capillaries in tiny scarlet explosions. He struggled to get his handkerchief from his sleeve and to his mouth.
I jumped up and went to the bed. Dragged the oxygen tank close enough to get the mask over his head. As I moved his hand out of the way to position it over his nose and mouth, I tried not to look at the blood on the cotton of his handkerchief.
‘Breathe, Granfer.’ His body was rigid as if somebody was sending an electric charge through him. ‘Breathe.’ The plastic mask misted and cleared with the breaths he managed to draw in. I chewed my lip, wondering if I should leave him to shake Jago awake, but just as I was about to stand up, the tortured gasps seemed to abate and Granfer’s face lost its violent purple hue. I glanced down at the smear of dark blood on the handkerchief. He caught me looking and balled it up to hide it.
When I was younger I used to daydream he had a transplant, that his black and shrivelled lungs were cut out and fresh pink ones sewn into their place. I’d imagine him waking from the anaesthetic with silent breathing, air slipping in and out of him discreetly and without pain. I’d see him flying kites on Sennen Beach with me and Jago, or rowing us out to catch mackerel and ling which we’d later bake into a stargazy pie, little fish heads poking out from the pastry with their eyes cooked to a cloudy grey.
‘I’ve met a friend,’ I said, when his body lost the last of its rigidity. ‘She lives in the white house on the cliff. You know the one? The one Dad loved.’
He gestured for me to lift up his mask and I did, leaving it on his forehead like a jaunty Christmas party hat. ‘Is she as nice… as Penny?’
Granfer had only met Penny once. It was a few years ago when she knocked on our door with a school sweater of mine.
This is Tamsyn’s.
My heart had skipped when I recognised her voice. Someone from my school at our house? It felt dangerous and unsafe, as if two planets had veered off orbit and crashed into each other.
She’s here… Do you… want to see… her?
No, it’s fine—
Tamsyn!
Then he’d collapsed into one of his fits and I’d run out from my hiding place behind the door in the sitting room to make sure he was okay. Penny was eyeing my grandad with thinly veiled revulsion. I noticed he had a globule of mucus threaded with blood on his sweater. I wiped it off with my sleeve then slipped my hand into his and squeezed. I faced her, pushing back my shoulders and raising my chin. She thrust out my sweater.
I picked it up by mistake.
I gave her the evils as I took it but she didn’t notice because she’d gone back to staring at Granfer.
Thanks then.
Penny forced a tight smile and stepped backwards off the doorstep.
Mum said to say hi to yours.
Then she was gone like a dog from the traps. Penny was the only person from school who’d ever come to our house and because of this Granfer had decided she was my best friend.
‘She’s nicer than Penny,’ I said.
‘Must be… a cracker then.’ He smiled and lowered the mask and went back to the jigsaw pieces, with the sound of oxygen hissing softly in the background.
I left his room and stood outside Jago’s door. I paused to listen. I wanted to wake him so he could tell me not to worry about Granfer’s fit. He always managed to calm me. But I knew if I dragged him from sleep he’d be cross and would probably refuse to talk to me, so instead I went back into my box. I called it my box because that’s what it was. A room with only enough space for a bed and a small bedside table. The door didn’t open fully and hit the bed before it was even halfway. There was a shelf that ran around the top of the room which Dad had made before I was born when they decided to use the box room for my cot rather than make Jago share with a baby. It held my clothes and although I could only get to it if I stood on my bed it was fine as long as I kept them in neat folded piles. My underwear was under the bed in a wooden crate that had once held oranges from Spain, and beside it was another box which contained all my other bits and pieces including my scrapbook.
I slid the box out and retrieved the scrapbook then sat cross-legged on the bed and slowly leafed through it. There was the yellowed newspaper cutting that made the announcement of the date and time his memorial plaque was to be unveiled at the RNLI station in Sennen. Then the small red flower I’d picked from a bush at the churchyard on the day we buried him, which was now dry and crispy. There were photographs too. One of me on his shoulders, his hands clasping my ankles, the remains of an ice cream smudged over my face. My favourite was the one of me and Jago, arms around each other, heads tipped close with Dad behind us, all posing beside the sandcastle we’d built and smiling at Mum behind the camera. Three sets of happy eyes squinting into the sunshine.
I made the scrapbook when I was twelve. Nineteen months and twenty-three days after he died. Mum had taken me to the Cape surgery, desperate for anything which might help me sleep through the night.
She has nightmares.
Mum had paused and rubbed her face hard, tears welling in her exhausted, bloodshot eyes.
The doctor glanced at the clock on the wall and cleared his throat impatiently. He leant forward, elbows on knees, close enough to suffocate me with his nasty aftershave and told me to fill a scrapbook with things which reminded me of Dad. Happy things. Memories. Mum was unconvinced and grumbled about the quack doctor all the way to Ted’s as I jogged to keep up with her. But she did as she was told and bought a scrapbook made of coloured sugar-paper and a glue stick. It didn’t stop my nightmares but I loved making it and when I felt tense it definitely calmed me. I was glad the doctor suggested it.
My brother’s door creaked open and I heard his footsteps going towards the bathroom. I closed the book and slipped it beneath my pillow for later, then went into his room. I sat on his unmade bed – still warm from his body and smelling of cigarettes and unwashed sheets – to wait for him.
‘Morning, half-pint,’ he said as he came back in, hair ruffled, eyes gummed up with sleep.
‘You know it’s after lunchtime, don’t you?’
He ignored my comment. ‘First day of the holidays?’
I nodded.
‘Bored already?’
‘No.’ I reached for the copy of Playboy which lay on the chest of drawers beside his bed and idly flicked through it while he dressed. I paused to look at a dark-haired girl with wet lips the colour of bubblegum who splayed her legs to reveal her privates without any shame at all.
‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘Not leaving much to the imagination is she?’
‘Get off that,’ he snapped, as his head emerged from his faded AC/DC T-shirt. He snatched it from me then opened his top drawer and stuffed it under his pants and socks.
‘Why do you want to look at pictures like that anyway?’
‘I don’t look at the pictures. I buy it for the stories and articles.’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’
His irritation slipped for a second or two to reveal a brief smile. He smiled so rarely these days which was such a shame because when he did it made his eyes sparkle and he looked even more handsome. His eyes were definitely one of his best features. They were hazel, and the exact same shade as his hair. Colour-coordinated, according to Mum. But they were nearly always dulled by sadness. Laughter replaced by melancholy. His spirit sucked out, leaving just the pretty packaging. Dad dying was bad enough, but then the mine closed and took his job and in the months since then he hadn’t been able to find work. The guilt bore down on him. Dad had been big on work and responsibility, believed with passion that everybody should pay their own way in the world.
Graft, he called it.
Graft. That’s all I expect. You can’t hold your head up if you’re not willing to graft.
Mum had tried to hide her fear when Jago told her the mine was done for. White faced, she’d sat at the table and leafed through the red-topped bills to work out which ones needed paying soonest.
It’ll be okay, love. You’ll get another job soon. I know you will.
Wracked by the weight of responsibility, his face had fallen. I’d seen that look on him before. The day after our father died. I’d walked into the kitchen and found him huddled on the floor with his arms clutched around his legs and his cheeks stained with dirty tear-tracks. I was ten, mad with hunger, and even though I’d knocked and knocked, Mum hadn’t come out of her room. I told him I was starving but he didn’t reply. He didn’t even move, not a muscle, and it scared me. It was as if he and Mum had stopped working. As if their batteries had run out.
Jago?
I knelt down next to him and put my hand on his knee.
Jago? Can you hear me? It’s like rats gnawing my belly up.
Maybe it was because I used Dad’s words – what he used to say to us when we were starving hungry – because Jago seemed to click back on. He turned to look at me and I could see his brain whirring behind his eyes. Then he gave a purposeful nod and stood. I sat on the floor, stomach rumbling, and watched him silently walk to the cupboard and get out a pan. Then he took a wooden spoon from the drawer and three eggs from the rack, and set about scrambling them, cracking each into a mug and whisking them with the fork. After he’d heated the eggs on the gas he tipped them onto a slice of toast on a plate and put the plate on the table with a fork beside it. Then he walked back to me, reached for my hand and led me to the table. I stared at the eggs. Two tiny bits of shell decorated the top.
He noticed me looking and picked them out with his fingers.
Eat up, Tam.
The eggs weren’t bad, but I couldn’t take more than a mouthful. I think my tummy was hurting because of crying not hunger, because the food was too hard to swallow and got stuck in my throat like lumps of rock. Jago squeezed my hand and we both sat and stared at the cold egg.
I’m the dad now, aren’t I?
His whispered voice had cracked the silence in two.
I often look back and wish I’d told him, No, of course not, you’re a child who’s lost his father. But I didn’t. I was frightened and sad and missed my dad so much I could hardly breathe. Right at that moment, having Jago as my dad was a better prospect than having no dad at all. So I looked at him and nodded solemnly.
Yes, you are. You’re the dad now.
Jago and I heard the front door open then close, and then Mum call up to tell us she was home.
‘Right, I’ll see you later, half-pint. If she asks just say I’m doing a shift at the yard, okay?’ He grabbed his jacket and pouch of tobacco from the chest of drawers.
‘When are you going to tell her?’
‘Tell her what?’
‘That you don’t actually have a job at the yard.’
He stopped dead, defences up as if I’d flicked a switch. He glared at me. ‘You serious?’
‘You shouldn’t lie to her.’
‘I’m not lying to her.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘I’m giving her money, aren’t I? She doesn’t need to know where it comes from.’
I didn’t reply, hoping my silence would convey my disapproval.
‘Jesus, Tam. What? You’re the honesty police all of a sudden?’ He gave me a look. ‘I know you lie too, so don’t get all high and mighty.’
I had a flash of the key with the green tag which I’d slipped back into the tin and the rainbow dress that hung in her wardrobe, still damp from my swim, so I relented, nodding, and said,‘Sure, if she asks me, I’ll tell her.’
Mum’s footfalls sounded on the stairs and he swore under his breath. The door opened and he moved to go past her with muttered words I couldn’t decipher.
She stepped in front of him. ‘Can I have a quick chat?’
‘I’m late.’
‘Jago—’
But he was gone, feet hammering down the stairs, ears closed to her. The front door slammed and the walls around us shuddered.
‘Don’t slam the door!’ she shouted. Then she turned to me and forced a light smile. ‘What’s he late for?’ Mum was trying her hardest to sound casual and disinterested.
‘The yard.’ I fixed my eyes on the floor.
‘Again? That’s good. Maybe Rick’ll offer him something full-time.’
I nodded, knotting my fingers into the duvet on his bed, then glanced up at her. She stared at me for a moment or two, waiting, I think, for more information, but then she took a weary breath and gave a quick nod.
‘Cup of tea?’ she asked as she scooped up an empty mug and a sausage roll wrapper from his chest of drawers.
‘That would be nice.’ I was relieved we were safely off the subject of Jago and Rick. Tea was safe. ‘I said I’d get Granfer one, but I haven’t made it yet.’
I followed her out of his room but as we reached the stairs she glanced back at me briefly with a sudden air of awkwardness. ‘Gareth dropped me home. He’s come in for a cup too.’
My stomach leapt up my throat and I stopped dead. ‘But why?’
‘It seemed rude not to ask him in.’ Her eyes flickered from side to side avoiding mine as her lips twitched with obvious discomfort.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been so shocked. Gareth had spent years trying to wheedle his way into our house and he’d clearly succeeded in wearing her down.
‘Oh, love, no need to look like that. It’s not for long.’
‘You know, I don’t want the tea now. I fancy a walk. Will you put two sugars in Granfer’s tea?’ Emotion sprung up and choked my words so I had to fight to stop from crying. ‘I know you don’t like him having more than one, but I promised. And he… he had a pretty bad turn earlier so—’
‘Tamsyn—’
‘It’s fine. I need some air, that’s all.’ I tried to move past her but she grabbed my arm. We looked at each other, neither of us said anything for a moment or two, until finally her eyebrows knotted and she forced a weak smile.
‘It’s just a cup of tea,’ she said softly.
Biting back tears, I eased my arm out of her grip, and ran down the stairs. As I passed the kitchen, I caught the shape of him out of the corner of my eye, and bolted my gaze to the floor as I grabbed my bag off the hook.
‘Tamsyn!’ Mum called.
As soon as I was safely out of sight of the house, I leant back against the wall and kicked it a couple of times with my heel.
It’s just a cup of tea.
Irritation needled through me. I’d been so excited coming back from The Cliff House and now all I felt was angry. Gareth bloody Spence in our bloody kitchen having a-bloody-nother cup of tea.
I pushed myself off the wall and walked back to the corner of our road. Our front door was closed with no sign of Mum looking for me and Gareth’s crappy car was still parked outside. They were probably sitting at the kitchen table having a good old laugh about teenagers and hormones and slamming doors.
‘Get out of our house, Gareth bloody Spence,’ I whispered through gritted teeth.
I wasn’t going to go back. Not while he was there. No, I was going back to The Cliff House.
The car park was now filled with vehicles parked in obedient rows. I made sure to keep my eyes on the floor as I passed people. I had neither the time nor desire to exchange pleasantries with idiot visitors whose only concern was whether they’d prefer a pub lunch or pasties on the beach.
Relief flooded me the moment I pressed the binoculars against my face. Gareth bloody Spence was gone and she was there, Eleanor, on the terrace of The Cliff House.
‘Hello,’ I whispered. ‘I met your daughter this morning. Isn’t she beautiful? Just like you.’
Eleanor was lying on her sun lounger with a glass beside her and a glossy magazine in her hand. I twisted the dial to make her bigger, then refocused on her outstretched legs, which were scattered with beads of water like glitter. Her scarf was wrapped around her body and I felt the phantom touch of the silk against my skin. I imagined lying beside her, my leg bent like hers, my toe stroking the lacquered surface of the pool.
A movement over by the house caught my attention. It was him. Max Davenport. My stomach knotted as I watched him stroll over to her. He wore a pink collared shirt, beige shorts, and his blue shoes, and he carried a newspaper tucked under one arm. He stood above her, speaking words I couldn’t hear. She tilted her head to look at him, raised her sunglasses on top of her head.
‘You look comfortable, darling,’ I said under my breath. ‘Oh, I am, darling. Isn’t it bliss? Would you like me to fetch you anything? No, my love, I’m perfectly happy. I do love you so. Oh darling! I love you too. Who in the world could be happier than us?’
Eleanor Davenport lowered her sunglasses and returned to her magazine and he crossed the terrace to sit at the table where he shook open his newspaper.
Then I remembered Edie.
I lifted my sights to the windows on the first floor. Scanned them from left to right. Which was hers? I knew the one with the largest window on the far left was her parents’, but which of the other three rooms was Edie’s?
I moved the binoculars across and inhaled sharply. She was there. Standing at the window two along from theirs. Her palm rested against the glass. Was she looking at me? I dropped the binoculars as if the metal was molten and threw myself forward to flatten my body against the grass. I held my breath and, keeping myself hidden, I slowly lifted my head and raised the binoculars up again. I parted the grasses and manoeuvred so I could see through the vegetation for a better view of her window. I focused on her face. I exhaled. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking down at her parents on the terrace below. Her gaze fixed. Face blank. As I watched she turned away from the window and slipped backwards into the shadows behind her.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the sky. White clouds raced across the blue. I rested the binoculars on my stomach and coiled my fingers into the grass. I closed my eyes and the sun danced in patterns on my eyelids as I listened to the seagulls and insects scurrying in amongst the heat-dried grasses. I conjured Edie and allowed my mind to drift into daydream. I pictured her back at the window and instead of slipping into the darkness she caught sight of me and waved. Then she opened the window and leant out to call my name. My chest swelled with joy as I waved back at her. Then she beckoned to me. I heard myself laughing as I skipped down the grassy slope and ran along the path to the gate. I threw it open and strode up the lawn. Edie burst out of the house and ran down to greet me whilst Mr and Mrs Davenport stood arm in arm, her with the silk scarf wrapped around her, him in his soft blue leather shoes. They were telling me to hurry up. Telling me how pleased they were to see me. Then in the background I saw my father. He was sitting at the table on the terrace. He held a cigarette in his long slim fingers, a ghostly trail of smoke wending its way upwards, the sun draping him, lighting him up like an angel.
He smiled at me and, as I approached, he nodded his approval.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_674bbbb6-c8e1-5b90-be05-df11f7c0892a)
Tamsyn
July 1986
All I could think about was going back to The Cliff House to see Edie again. Reasons to go tumbled over and over in my mind as I lay in bed and stared at the cracks that fractured the ceiling.
Perhaps I could tell her the green-tagged key had fallen out of my pocket and my mother was furious and had ordered me to retrace my steps? Or I could tell her I’d lost a ring, or a bracelet, or a pair of socks. Maybe I could offer to show her around? Be her guide. Take her to Porthcurno and the Minack, to St Ives and Logan’s Rock, to Land’s End, or to Penzance to buy paper bags of penny sweets and watch the helicopters take off on their way to the Scilly Isles. I imagined walking her around St Just, our postcard-pretty town. Imagined my patter: Population four thousand, most westerly settlement in mainland Britain, until recently home to a thriving mining industry…
But even if I found the perfect excuse I still couldn’t go. It was Friday morning and on Friday mornings Mum cleaned at The Cliff House in preparation for their possible arrival. Of course, she had no idea they were already there, that they’d arrived early and with a daughter she didn’t know they had.
I lay on my bed and watched her through my open door as she got dressed on the landing. She took her cleaning clothes out of the airing cupboard, her stone-washed denim jeans, white T-shirt, a grey sweatshirt over the top. For work she always tied her hair into a tight ponytail, high enough to be out of her way, and her earrings were simple gold hoops. She didn’t wear any make-up, just some briskly applied Oil of Ulay.
‘You okay?’ she asked with a warm smile as she caught me watching her.
I turned on my side on the pillow and nodded.
‘You look happy snuggled up there,’ she said. ‘I wish I could come and jump in with you. But’ —she sighed— ‘no rest for the char lady.’
I was desperate to share the fact they had a daughter. A girl with white-blonde hair who was called Edie after très glamoureux Edith Piaf. But I stayed quiet. If I told her, she’d ask questions and I might let slip I’d been taking the key and letting myself in, which I knew would send her mental.
She closed the front door and I listened to her footsteps ringing on the pavement until they faded to nothing. My immediate thought was to get out to the rock with my binoculars and watch her in the house with them, but it wasn’t worth the risk. She knew about the spot where Dad used to take me. He’d taken her there too. Even as a boy it had been his favourite place to watch the sun set over the sea and spy on the gulls and kittiwakes and choughs. The chances of her glancing in the direction of the point were significant and if she saw me I’d have to explain why I was there. So I tried to ignore the gnawing lure of the house by keeping myself busy. I cleaned the kitchen, washed-up and dried, changed the sheets on Granfer’s bed then sat with him a while, listening to him attempting to breathe whilst grumbling about the godforsaken government who murdered the tin mines and this being the hardest jigsaw he’d ever tried to do. Then I made him a cup of tea with two and a half sugars in which made him wink and flash me his gap-toothed smile.
When I finally heard the latch click and the front door open, I ran to the top of the stairs, desperate to hear about the house and the Davenports and Edie.
She was hanging her coat on the hook.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Good time?’
‘Cleaning?’ She raised her eyebrows and wiped her forehead with her hand. ‘It’s hot today. And I nearly missed the bus and had to run.’ She paused, stared up at me, her brow knotted. ‘The Davenports were there.’
It was then I noticed she held an envelope.
‘What’s that in your hand?’
She looked down as if confused by it. ‘It’s for you.’
‘For me?’
She hesitated. ‘Their daughter asked me to give it to you.’
‘What?’ I squealed and ran down the stairs taking them two at a time and when I got to the bottom I thrust out my hand.
She didn’t give it to me. Instead her hand moved fractionally closer towards her body.
‘Can I have it then?’
She furrowed her brow. ‘I didn’t even know they had—’
But I didn’t let her finish. ‘I can’t believe she wrote to me!’ As I grabbed the letter from her an electric charge shot through me. I stared down at my name which was written across it in the neatest writing I’d ever seen, all the letters even and rounded and perfectly joined up. I beamed at Mum but my smile faded when I saw her expression.
‘How do you know each other?’ she asked with forced indifference.
I gripped the letter hard as my brain turned over and over.
‘Oh. Well, yesterday…’ I hesitated. ‘You know… when you were working at the chip shop? It was a really nice day so I went for a walk. On the cliffs. And, well, I ended up going past their house, and, this girl – their daughter, it turns out – was on the terrace. And I smiled at her. Like you always tell me to. I mean, you’re always saying I should smile more, aren’t you? Anyway, I did smile and she said something. Hello, I think. Then she said something about the weather. Isn’t it sunny? Or maybe something about rain coming. Anyway, we sort of got talking and then she asked me to come in for a drink. A Coke. One of the fancy American ones from the adverts. I think her name’s Edie. Something like that.’
Mum nodded vaguely, her face slick with mild confusion.
‘She’s here for the whole summer,’ I said.
‘Yes, Mrs Davenport told me today. Christ, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I opened the door and the woman was sitting there. I wish I’d known. I’d have worn something a little nicer. You should have seen the way she looked me up and down. Snooty cow. I hated cleaning with her there. So much nicer when it’s just me. Can you believe she actually followed me round? I swear she ran her finger along a windowsill after I’d cleaned it. I mean, even though I know I cleaned it I was terrified it would come up covered in grime.’ She sighed. ‘She said Mr Davenport is finishing a book. Can’t be in London, she said, because it’s too noisy or too crowded or something like that. So they’re here until the end of August. Anyway…’ She took a breath and smiled. ‘Whatever the reason, she’s given me more hours. Three times a week plus more on the weekend if they have guests.’
‘That’s good,’ I said, relieved she seemed happy enough with my garbled account of meeting Edie.
‘It’s come just when we needed it, to be honest. I don’t think we’ve ever had this little money.’ She rubbed her face. ‘Maybe Gareth will advance me some this month.’
The letter throbbed in my hand. All I wanted to do was tear it open and I willed her to let me go.
‘Mrs Davenport said they need some help in the garden. Painting the railings. She asked if I knew any local tradesmen who might be able to do it. I was cheeky and suggested your brother. Obviously he’d have to fit it in around the yard, but he’s only there every now and then, so it would be ideal. She wants to meet him first to make sure he’s suitable. Whatever that means. Is he still asleep?’
‘I don’t think so. I saw him up earlier.’ A lie. He hadn’t emerged from his room yet but she hated him sleeping past eleven and I didn’t want her to storm up there and wake him just so they could fight about it.
I stroked the envelope with my thumb.
‘How’s Granfer doing?’
‘Nearly finished the sky.’
‘He’ll be pleased about that.’
We stood in silence for a few minutes. She glanced down at the envelope with an expectant look on her face. I held it behind my back and she nodded imperceptibly then turned to go into the kitchen.
Clutching the letter to my chest I shot up the stairs like a bullet from a rifle. With the door to my box closed, I fell onto my bed, tore open the envelope and unfolded the single piece of heavy cream notepaper.
Dear Tamsyn
Can you come over later? Max is doing a barbecue for supper. I asked if I could invite a friend and he said YES. Your mother didn’t know if you were busy or not.
I REALLY hope you aren’t!!
Please say you’ll come! I am LITERALLY going out of my mind with the boredom. I think I might DIE of it soon!
Call me on Penzance 3483 to arrange.
Edie x
To make sure I hadn’t misread a word of it, I read it three times over. Then I held the notepaper up to my face and kissed it. This was the single most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. Had she really called me a friend? I read the note a fourth time to make sure while a heat burnt inside me like a bonfire. An invite to a barbecue? I couldn’t believe it. I’d never even had a barbecue. But there I was – me! – with a proper invitation in blue fountain pen on watermarked paper. No more sneaking around. No more fear of getting caught. I was going to The Cliff House as an invited and welcome guest. It was – as Edie would say – literally a dream come true.
‘Mum! Mum!’ I called as I ran down the stairs. ‘Can I borrow ten pence?’
I grabbed her bag from the hook and took out her purse then hared out of the front door. She called something after me, but I didn’t hear what she’d said so I lifted a hand and shouted, ‘Back in a sec!’
When I reached the telephone box on the corner I yanked open the door, recoiling a little from the smell inside. Jago said it was where drunk men peed after the pub closed. So disgusting. Breathing through my mouth and not my nose, I pushed my hair off my face and blew sharply upwards against my sweating brow, whilst retrieving a coin from Mum’s purse.
My hand shook as I picked up the receiver and placed it between my shoulder and cheek. Holding the letter up to read the telephone number, I carefully turned the dial for each digit. As I waited for the numbers to click though I had the sudden fear that this was an elaborate practical joke, that perhaps the number she gave me was made up and she was hiding nearby, watching me make a fool of myself with tears of laughter pouring down her cheeks. My stomach churned so ferociously I nearly slammed the receiver down. But then it began to ring. Two rings in my ear. Two in The Cliff House. Two in my ear…
I pictured their phone on the hall table. Black and new-fangled with buttons like a calculator. I imagined its ring echoing around the house and Edie walking towards it with her hand outstretched. Nerves catapulted around my body. What on earth was I going to say? I had to keep calm. I’d been invited for tea. If I wanted to go – and, oh God, I did – then I had to get through this.
Someone picked up the phone. Then the phone beeped demanding its money. I swallowed and pushed in the coin. It dropped into the box and the beeps silenced.
‘Penzance three four eight three?’ said the poshest voice I’d ever heard. It wasn’t Edie. It must be her. Mrs Davenport with her creamy skin and honeyed hair. My stomach pitched.
‘Erm, hello…’ My throat constricted, forcing my words into a strangled squeak. ‘It’s… Tamsyn.’
‘Who?’
‘Can I… speak to Edie?’
There was talking in the background. Muffled. The receiver must have been smothered by a hand as the voices became faint. Then distant footsteps. A muted ‘It’s for you.’
Then Edie’s voice. ‘Tamsyn?’
‘Hi. I… got your… letter.’ My finger went to my mouth and I chewed on my nail, now certain this couldn’t be real and she was about to explode with cruel laughter.
But she didn’t.
‘Can you come?’ she said.
I closed my eyes as relief flooded me. ‘Yes,’ I breathed.
‘That’s great.’
‘I’d love to. I really would. And I’ve got nothing planned. Nothing at all.’ I was aware I was speaking too fast, tripping over my words in my desperation to get them out.
‘Excellent. Max thinks he’s God’s gift to barbecuing, so I apologise in advance for any weirdness. And bring your swimming costume. I’m not sure your bra and knickers are appropriate.’
She laughed and a prickling heat swept over my neck and cheeks as I relived hauling myself out of the pool in my translucent underwear while she looked on, clothed and beautiful.
‘Come as soon as you can, will you? I wasn’t lying when I said I was dying of boredom. I have no idea how you exist down here. God, I miss London.’
The beeps signalling the end of my ten pence began to chirrup. ‘Okay. I’m walking, but I’ll leave now.’
‘When you get here we—’
The line clicked dead so I missed the end of her sentence.
Despite being delirious with happiness, the claustrophobic atmosphere in our dark cramped house closed in around me in an instant. I hated it. There used to be a time when this house felt like the safest place in the world. When the air rang with laughter not devastated silence. It had been a place of bedtime stories and playing Snakes and Ladders in front of the fire. Now it was cold and unwelcoming, any joy snuffed out by loss and worry.
My mother stepped out of the kitchen as I came in. She held a packet of Jaffa Cakes. ‘Want one?’
‘Jaffa Cakes? What are we celebrating?’
‘My extra hours.’
‘Maybe later,’ I said, as casually as I could manage. ‘I’m going to the Davenports’ for a barbecue supper.’
‘A what?’
‘Supper.’
‘Supper?’ Her face clouded in confusion again.
‘Tea. A barbecue tea. Edie asked me. That was what was in the letter. I checked. Just now on the phone.’ Saying the words aloud made it all seem even more thrilling and I beamed. ‘She said bring a swimsuit.’
A look crossed my mother’s face which I couldn’t read. ‘Why?’
‘For a swim.’
‘No, I mean why’s she asked you for tea?’
‘Supper not tea. And I already told you. We met yesterday and she likes me.’
My mother shook her head. Her brow knotted. ‘She likes you?’
The way she kept repeating everything I said whilst looking so bloody suspicious made me want to scream, but I took a breath and kept my voice level. ‘It is possible for people to like me, you know.’
‘I know. I’m not saying… It’s just…’
My irritation boiled over like a forgotten milk pan. ‘What?’
‘Well, they’re… I don’t know. It’s…’
‘It’s what?’
‘They’re different. To us.’
‘What are you talking about? They’re not royalty.’
‘They might as well be when it comes to the likes of you and me.’ She sighed and rested her hand on her forehead. ‘Look, he’s rich and famous, in and out of the papers, and they’ve got so much money.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything anymore. Things aren’t like they used to be. People aren’t so stuck in their places.’
‘I’m their cleaner.’ My mother looked down at her hands and regarded them as if she wished they weren’t her own. ‘I’m not sure about it.’
‘Edie knows what you do and she doesn’t care. So why should we?’ I crossed my arms and jutted a hip out.
She sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right. She’s bound to be bored being an only child in that big empty house. I can see why she’d want to spend time with someone her own age. But be careful, okay? I’m not sure about any of them, if I’m honest. Especially Mrs Davenport.’ She put the packet of Jaffa Cakes on the side, then smiled at me. ‘I’ll save a couple for you. Granfer and Jago will be on those like weevils. Will you tell her – Mrs Davenport – that I’ll send your brother up in a bit? Remind her it’s about the painting. And say nice things about him, that he works hard and he’s suitable.’
When she said the word suitable she wrinkled her nose. I could tell she was implying something, that there was some sort of meaning hidden beneath the words she spoke, but I decided not to pick up on it. I didn’t have time. I had to find something to wear for a barbecue at The Cliff House. I wished more than anything I hadn’t already worn Mum’s rainbow dress. It would have been perfect, but I’d read a copy of Cosmopolitan in the doctor’s waiting room once which said you could never wear the same dress twice, so I’d have to search out something else.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_2d73179d-0c41-5da4-8f78-73043609570b)
Edie
July 1986
Edie walked through the double doors that led out to the terrace and pulled her cigarettes from her pocket. She removed one from the box and paused to light it, shielding it from the breeze with a cupped hand.
The lawn was soft underfoot and the flowers flanking it teemed with bees and butterflies which flew busily from one bloom to the next. The wind was too slight to dilute the dry heat. She leant over the railings and the sun beat down on her, reflecting off the surface of the sea so it shone like a polished silver salver. The gulls were so high they were no more than specks on the cloudless sky and their incessant screeching was barely audible. Edie watched the path and chain-smoked until Tamsyn finally appeared round the bend. As soon as she saw her she stubbed her cigarette out on the railing and dropped the end into the spiky thatch of gorse on the other side of the boundary.
Tamsyn hadn’t seen her and Edie noticed she was walking with a strange sense of purpose, like a soldier marching towards the front line. The wind was clearly stronger on the brow of the cliff and buffeted her hair in a glorious knot of red as if the strands were fighting their tethers in an attempt to escape. Edie waited for her to notice her, but she was too intent on striding the path, concentrating as if she were counting her steps.
When Tamsyn pushed open the gate, Edie called down to her.
The girl looked momentarily surprised but then her face cracked a shy smile and she waved, using her whole arm like a flag, a childish gesture which accentuated how immature she appeared in her denim shorts and shirt tied at the waist. The outfit could have been sexy and grown-up but the shorts were too baggy and there was something wrong in the way she’d knotted the shirt. Too innocent. More Jackie mag than Daisy Duke. Edie made a mental note to tell her that if she tied it tighter and higher to reveal more stomach, and undid an extra button to show some cleavage, she’d look a hundred times better.
‘My father hasn’t even lit the barbecue yet so I thought we could listen to some music in my room,’ she said as soon as Tamsyn was near enough.
Before Tamsyn could answer Edie turned to walk inside. She checked over her shoulder and was pleased to see the girl following like an obedient puppy.
‘What music do you like?’ Edie said as they walked up the stairs.
‘Anything.’
Tamsyn didn’t follow Edie into her room, but hovered at the doorway, her fingers twisting around each other, eyes glued to the floor. Her reticence was annoying and Edie wondered if she’d made a mistake and spending time with this girl was going to be more tedious than diverting. Where was the girl who’d broken into the house and stripped off to swim in their pool? That was the girl Edie liked. This timid version didn’t interest her at all. She picked up her Walkman from her bedside table and sat on her bed, crossing her feet at her ankles, deliberately not looking at the girl in the doorway.
‘I like your room,’ Tamsyn said then. ‘Mine’s tiny.’
Edie looked up. ‘Smaller than this?’
Tamsyn nodded. ‘Way smaller. Only room for my bed. I can’t even open the door properly.’
Edie shifted over on the bed. Tamsyn seemed to take the hint and walked over and sat down beside her. Edie pressed play on the Walkman, then pulled each of the foam headphones off in turn. She pressed one against her ear and offered the other to Tamsyn.
‘Do you know The Cure?’
Tamsyn shook her head.
‘You’ll love them. Robert Smith is a total sex god. Sexy in a way that isn’t really sexy but is, if you know what I mean? This track is “Killing an Arab”.’
Tamsyn held the headphone to her ear.
‘What do you think?’ Edie asked, watching her face carefully.
‘I like it,’ Tamsyn replied, sounding as if she was telling the truth. ‘I haven’t heard anything like it before but it’s brilliant.’
Edie rested her head against the back wall, pulled her knees up and draped her arms over them. Tamsyn copied her, adopting exactly the same position, except with her head turned towards Edie. The girl’s eyes were bolted to her. Edie tried to ignore it for a bit, assuming she’d eventually look away, but she didn’t and it became irritating.
Edie pressed the stop button on the Walkman and the music quietened with a loud click.
‘Are you all right?’ She turned to face Tamsyn.
‘Sorry?’ Tamsyn’s lips twitched nervously.
‘You’re staring. It’s unnerving. And a bit weird, if I’m truthful.’
Tamsyn’s face flushed fuchsia, clashing horribly with her hair. Edie was hoping she would laugh and say something cool or even combative, but she didn’t, she just clammed up and mumbled apologetically. Dull. Boring and dull.
Edie knelt up and shuffled to the end of her bed and climbed off. She wrapped the headphone wires around her Walkman then faced Tamsyn with crossed arms. She was going to tell her to leave. This wasn’t fun. This was worse than being alone. She’d tell her the barbecue was off and her plans for the summer had changed and didn’t include her anymore.
But as she opened her mouth, Tamsyn swung her legs off the bed and looked up at her, eyes fixed and unwavering. ‘My dad died.’
Edie raised her eyebrows. A dead father definitely made her interesting again.
‘I think I come over a bit weird because of it.’
Edie didn’t say anything.
‘Sorry. Maybe I should have told you sooner. I—’
‘How old were you?’
‘Ten.’
Edie felt a small twist in her stomach. Ten years old. A little younger than the age she’d been when she first found her mother passed out on the floor, pale and still. For a while she’d been convinced she was dead and it terrified her. She’d sat beside her for ages, holding her hand, stroking her, begging her to wake up. Then her father appeared and sent her out of their bedroom. As she left she heard him muttering crossly, saying ‘at this rate she’d be dead before Christmas.’ Shortly afterwards Edie returned to school and every night she went to bed convinced she’d get a message in the morning that this time her mother hadn’t woken up.
‘What happened to him?’ she asked, sitting down beside Tamsyn on the bed.
‘He drowned.’
Edie rested her hand on Tamsyn’s knee.
‘He was a volunteer with the RNLI.’ She hesitated and glanced at Edie. ‘The lifeboats? He was called out in a storm that had come in too fast. There were a couple of tourists who’d got caught in a dinghy. Idiots. They died too. His body was washed up the next morning a few miles down the coast.’ She paused and blinked slowly, then whispered: ‘Sometimes it hurts so much I can’t breathe. I miss him every day.’
Tamsyn became animated as she talked about her father’s death. Her shyness evaporated. Her raw grief was palpable, but so was the inner strength which Edie had seen a flash of the day before.
‘That’s dreadful. I’m so sorry,’ Edie said. And she meant it. ‘You poor thing.’
Without thinking she put her arm around Tamsyn and for a while they sat like that, peaceful, no sound except the lilt of the breaking waves which rolled in through the slightly open window.
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_a9caaf66-1ae7-5a98-ae98-42370fa60839)
Tamsyn
July 1986
There had been a moment in Edie’s room, when she caught me staring at her, that I’d thought I’d ruined it all. I’d been distracted by her. Carefully studying the slope of her nose, the tiny silver stud that glinted in one nostril, her flawless eyeliner drawn into extravagant sweeps on each eyelid. But when she challenged me I noted the sudden cooling in her. I’d seen the look she gave me before, many times, on the girls and boys at school. It generally came with a dismissive sneer and a silent promise not to be seen dead with me.
When I saw it on Edie’s face I panicked.
Offering up my father’s death as an excuse was risky. It could have easily scared her off. She might not have seen it as an explanation. She might not have cared. I was trading information for a second chance. But the gamble paid off and within seconds her face softened and her body opened up like a flower in water, arms uncrossing, fists unclenching, eyes widening.
I’m so sorry. You poor thing.
Then she held me and let me rest my head on her shoulder. Of course, I froze like a marble statue. There was no way I was going to move for fear of spoiling the moment. Nobody had ever shown me sympathy like that. Especially not people my age. At school his death was a topic to be avoided in case it made me cry or shout or punch a wall.
Eventually she stood up. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m hungry.’
As I followed her down the stairs the reality of where I was, and how I’d come to be there as an invited guest, made me light-headed. I was so used to being in the house illegally with the constant threat of being discovered hanging over me. Being there legitimately was suddenly a little overwhelming and for a moment I had to pause, grip hold of the banister, and take three deep breaths to steady myself.
We walked through the living room and towards the back door. The windows were open and the gauzy curtains danced like ghosts in the billowing breeze. A wall of late afternoon heat hit me as we stepped outside. I gasped when I saw the table. I hadn’t noticed when I arrived, too intent, I suspected, on following Edie up to her room to listen to music. I’d never seen anything like it. The iron table was laid up as if for a banquet. A white tablecloth had been laid over it and there was a large glass bowl in the centre which was piled high with a rainbow of exotic fruit I’d never even seen before. There was a small dish of butter which had softened in the sun and rolled-up serviettes encircled with silver rings and a silver bucket on a stand which held ice cubes and two bottles. The table had been set for four places and my stomach turned over with the thrill of realising one of them was for me.
‘Typical. Wine but no water,’ Edie said. ‘Wait here. I’ll go and get some.’
As she left a movement caught my eye. I looked across the gleaming surface of the pool and saw Max Davenport. He stood with his back to me in front of the brick barbecue in the far corner of the terrace, poking a pile of smoking charcoal which sent clouds of sparks into the air with each prod.
I decided to try to talk to him. My stomach fizzed as I neared him and I focused on the voice in my head which was telling me to be brave, be brave, be brave.
He must have heard me and turned, face broken in half by a smile, and raised his tongs in greeting. A film of sweat coated his forehead and there were two patches of damp in the armpits of his snow-white shirt, which was open to his stomach revealing white skin with a light thatch of greying chest hair. He wore long red shorts with a crease ironed down the centres of the legs and on his feet the soft blue shoes. I’d seen them a hundred times through the lenses of my dad’s binoculars, but had never noticed the two gold coins slipped into slots in the leather on the tops of the shoes.
He must have seen me staring at them. ‘They’re penny loafers,’ he said, with an unmistakable glint of amusement. ‘You’re supposed to put a penny in them, but I put pound coins in mine.’
‘Like a wallet?’
He laughed. ‘For decoration.’
I hadn’t realised money could be used for decoration. When I looked back down at the coins they seemed to shine like the beams from a lighthouse.
‘Mum’s not sure about the new coins,’ I said. ‘She likes money you can fold, not pockets weighed down with shrapnel.’
‘Your mother sounds supremely sensible.’
I smiled. His voice was different to how I’d imagined it. Posher and gravelly as if he’d swallowed a handful of sand before talking.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Tamsyn Tresize.’ I hoped he wouldn’t notice me blushing.
‘A good Cornish name.’ He smiled again. ‘And pretty too.’
‘It’s nice to meet you, Mr Davenport,’ I said, remembering my manners.
‘Max,’ he said. ‘You must call me Max.’
As he spoke I was hit by the peculiar sensation of being separated from my body and sitting up by the rock, watching Max Davenport talking to a girl with long red hair who looked identical to me.
‘Max? Are you ready to cook yet?’
The voice catapulted me back onto the terrace. I turned to see Mrs Davenport walking out through the door. She was dressed in a voluminous kaftan in peacock greens and blues, which was edged with gold and wafted out behind her as she moved. Oversized white-framed sunglasses concealed most of her face and her hair was piled into a bun on the top of her head, revealing heavy pearl and gold earrings at each ear.
‘You must be Tamsyn,’ she said.
Her voice was soft with a slight slur as if her words had melted into each other. She smiled and showed perfect white teeth and when she sashayed over to me with her hand outstretched, I almost didn’t take it, worrying that if I did I’d make it dirty.
‘Lovely to meet you. Your mother is an absolute godsend. I have literally no idea how we’d survive sans elle.’
‘Her mother?’ Max asked.
Mrs Davenport smiled. ‘The cleaner, darling.’
I swallowed as my reality bit at my ankles like a vicious dog. My eyes flicked over to Max. I watched for his reaction. Wondered if he now thought my name less pretty.
‘Amazing woman,’ he said and I beamed.
Edie came out of the house holding a green bottle and sat down. She beckoned to me and I went to her, though part of me wanted to stay and talk to Max about his shoes.
A short while later we were all sitting at the table and my cheeks ached with smiling. It was all I could do to stop myself laughing out loud. I thought of all those times I’d hidden myself in the sandy grass on the cliff and watched the Davenports eating – either out on the terrace or inside at the round white table in the sitting room – and sucked up every movement, every mouthful, every sip of every drink. It was all so familiar, the way she placed her knife and fork down precisely as she chewed, how he leant back in his chair to look out over the ocean, how he poured wine and she tipped her face to the sun. It was like I’d fallen into my favourite film.
‘Your mother was kind enough to lay up for us this morning. Of course, she did it for three not four. Edie didn’t tell us you were coming until just before you arrived so I had to lay the extra place myself.’
Edie rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not exactly hard to put out another knife and fork, Eleanor.’
‘It’s really nice to be here, Mrs Davenport,’ I said quickly, sensing something between them.
Eleanor smiled at me as she lifted a bottle of wine from the ice bucket and topped up her glass, though I could tell that she was annoyed, and I wished Edie hadn’t mentioned the cutlery.
Max Davenport stood and excused himself quietly before walking back to the barbecue. He picked up the tongs and waved them about like a sword as he turned steaks as thick as the Bible.
‘So, Tamsyn,’ said Eleanor Davenport, dragging my attention away from Max and the barbecue. ‘Are you pleased it’s the school holidays?’
‘Oh, yes. Very. I’ve just had exams so last term was pretty hard work.’ I thought back to all the hours I’d stared blindly at my books whilst daydreaming and then the exams in which the words had swum and I’d struggled to even remember my name let alone how to long divide.
‘O levels?’
‘CSEs.’
‘CSEs?’ Eleanor placed her glass down on the table. ‘The ones you take if you aren’t bright enough to do O levels? How many did you take?’
I swallowed and a wave of hot shame swept over my body. ‘Just five.’
‘Do we have to talk about school, Eleanor? I mean, God, that’s the last thing Tamsyn and I want to think about.’
‘My apologies,’ Eleanor said. ‘I was interested, that’s all. Aren’t you always saying I need to be more interested?’
I wracked my brain to think of something to say. ‘I really like this tablecloth.’
‘The tablecloth?’ Eleanor laughed. ‘Thank you. It’s an old one we don’t need in London anymore.’
‘I’ve never eaten at a table with a cloth before. I don’t think we even own one.’
‘Really?’
‘Mum would worry about staining something so pretty.’ I fingered the cloth, which was made of fine white cotton with exquisitely embroidered daisies dotted across it. I imagined my mum lifting it up into the sky so the sun lit its whiteness and the wind caught hold of it like a ship’s sail before allowing it to float back down to the table. I saw her hands smoothing it. Saw the care she’d have taken to make sure it was centred properly, everything perfect, wanting to please Mrs Davenport. Then I heard her voice.
They’re different to us.
And she was right, she and Eleanor were as different as two people could be. Eleanor reached for the salad bowl and I studied her hands. Soft. Blemish-free. Unlike my mother’s which were blotched red and rough, unpainted nails trimmed short for practicality. Mum might have been right about her being different but she was wrong about me. Sitting at that table I didn’t feel out of place or as if I shouldn’t be there. I felt as if I belonged.
‘Do you want some water, Tamsyn?’
Edie was holding the green glass bottle and without waiting for my reply she leant over to pour some in my glass. The water fizzed as it went in. I didn’t even know they made water fizzy and wondered briefly if it came up from the ground that way. Before Edie had finished filling my glass, however, Eleanor reached over and lifted the neck of the bottle with her finger to stop the flow.
‘Champagne surely, girls? What do you think, Tamsyn?’ Eleanor retrieved the second bottle from the ice bucket and tore off the gold foil then untied the wire caging. ‘Do you like champagne?’
‘I’ve never had it before.’
‘Never?’
I shook my head.
‘Then you absolutely must try some.’ She eased the cork out and it popped like an air rifle.
She poured the sparkling pale liquid into a tall, thin glass and passed it to me. I lifted it up to the light and watched the bubbles race to the surface in a million effervescent pinpricks.
‘I can’t believe your mother hasn’t let you have half a glass before. It’s not right you’ve got to this age and not even tasted it.’
‘I don’t think she’s ever had it either.’
Eleanor looked genuinely horrified.
‘Vile stuff,’ Edie said then.
‘Ah, my darling daughter,’ Eleanor said, whilst sipping from her glass. ‘The very measure of sophistication.’
Edie rolled her eyes and made a face, and I looked away quickly, not wanting to be caught in collusion. Edie’s chair scraped back on the terrace with a loud screech and she disappeared inside the house.
Eleanor drank most of her champagne in one go then topped up her glass. We sat in silence until Edie arrived back at the table with a carton of orange juice. She poured a glass for herself and offered it to me, but I shook my head and sipped the champagne, which wasn’t as nice as I’d hoped it would be, too acrid and not very thirst-quenching.
‘By the way, Edith, if you have to smoke, can you at least put your cigarette ends in the bin? I found three on the terrace morning.’
How could Edie say Eleanor Davenport wasn’t cool? Letting her smoke? That was definitely a cool mother. I tried to imagine what mine would have said if she’d found out I’d been smoking.
‘The wait is over!’ Max called over. ‘The steaks are done!’
He returned to the table and with an air of triumph he placed the white serving plate down. The four steaks bled their red and brown juices all over the china. I grinned. Steak for tea. Granfer wasn’t going to believe his ears.
Someone’s birthday?
No!
Just any old tea?
Yes. Any old tea. Steak and champagne. Can you believe it?
‘I hope it’s cooked as you like it,’ Max said, as he lifted a whole steak onto my plate.
‘Thank you. Yes.’
Max began to vigorously cut into his steak. ‘I must say, it’s lovely to have you with us, Tamsyn. A real treat to have a proper local as our guest. Especially such a lovely one.’
Then he smiled at me and I smiled back because it was possibly the nicest thing he could have said.
Eleanor reached for her champagne glass and drained it.
‘Be careful not to drink too much in this heat, darling,’ he said to her.
Eleanor ignored him and took a mouthful of steak. She grimaced. ‘Christ, I can’t eat this,’ she opened her mouth and pulled out the piece of meat which she put on the side of her plate. ‘It’s tougher than leather.’
‘Why don’t you have half of mine,’ Max said coolly as he took a sip of wine. ‘It’s incredibly tender.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
I momentarily considered asking if I could take it home to give to my grandad, but decided against it. Eleanor rapidly tapped her perfectly painted fingernail against the table as if punching out Morse code, then she reached for the carton beside her plate. She opened the lid to reveal cigarettes inside which were unlike any I’d ever seen before. Each one a different colour with a filter of shiny gold foil. She selected a red one and lit it.
Eleanor drew on her cigarette then turned to look at me before leaning forward and jabbing my shoulder a couple of times.
‘If you sat up straight and pushed your shoulders back you’d look much more elegant at the table.’
This drew a sharp glance from Edie. ‘For God’s sake,’ she muttered.
‘Don’t be silly. I’m helping, that’s all.’ She smiled at me. ‘You don’t mind do you, Tamsyn?’
I shook my head. I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I was grateful to Eleanor. Yes, her manner was a little brusque, but I was happy to have her point out the things I did wrong. I glanced at Edie who was looking fixedly out to sea, then sat up in my seat, straightening my back and pushing out my shoulders, aware of my chest rising.
Eleanor smiled and sipped her drink. ‘You see, Edie? Now your friend doesn’t look completely like le Bossu de Notre Dame.’
Max cleared his throat. ‘So, Edith, tell me.’ He pressed his serviette to his mouth then placed it carefully on the table. ‘While I’m finishing this magnus opus of mine and your mother is enjoying our little piece of Cornish heaven, how are you planning to use your time while we’re here?’
‘Well, Max.’ She drew out his name and leant towards him. ‘How about I shut myself in my room all day to avoid my family like you do and enjoy a triple vodka for breakfast like she does. That sound okay?’
I inhaled sharply and glanced at Edie in horror. If I used that tone with my mother I’d be sent upstairs before I’d finished my sentence, but Eleanor Davenport merely ignored her so I could only assume she hadn’t heard properly.
Edie stood then picked up a couple of plates and left the table.
It turned out Eleanor Davenport had heard her daughter. ‘Tell me, Tamsyn,’ she said. ‘Do you speak to your mother like that?’
I had no idea what to say. ‘I, well, I—’
‘Of course she does, Ellie.’ Max grinned at me again. ‘She’s a teenage girl. That’s how they speak to their mothers. You wouldn’t want a wallflower for a daughter, now would you?’
Eleanor stared at Max over the rim of her glass. ‘And you’d know all about teenage girls, wouldn’t you?’
There was a jagged edge to Eleanor’s comment and I watched Max’s eyes narrow with anger for the briefest of moments.
Eleanor turned to address me. ‘Tamsyn, do forgive me.’ She stood, stumbling as she did, then steadying herself on the table. ‘I’ve a headache. Max was right about wine in the sunshine. I need to go indoors.’
Max and I watched her retreat back to the house. Without Eleanor or Edie an awkwardness crept over us and I wondered if I should also excuse myself and try to find Edie. I glanced at Max and forced a smile.
‘I’m sure Edith will be back soon.’ He reached across the table to the bowl. His fingers lightly traced the fruit and then settled on a large red apple. He placed it on a small plate to the side of him, then took the knife he’d used for his steak and ran it through the folds of his serviette, leaving a greasy brown mark on the white. He carefully sliced the apple into quarters, then held each piece in turn, made two cuts to remove a triangle of core, and one lengthways to divide each piece in two.
He placed his knife down and held the plate out towards me.
‘Have some,’ he said. ‘They’re delicious. Bought from the farm shop yesterday. Sweetest apples I’ve ever tasted.’
I hesitated but he nodded so I reached for a slice and bit into it.
Max looked at me expectantly. ‘Well?’
He was right. The apple was the sweetest and juiciest I’d ever tried. I smiled at him and took another.
‘What’s your book about?’ I asked as I broke the second slice of apple in two and put half in my mouth.
‘I never talk about my novels until they’re finished. I’m convinced that if I do, I won’t ever finish them. Superstitious nonsense, I know.’
‘You must really like writing.’
This made him laugh though I had no idea why. ‘Hemingway said there’s nothing to writing, all you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed. It’s an obsession. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t do it. But then again, I know I’m lucky to earn so much money doing something I love and not have to tread the hamster wheel for peanuts in an office somewhere. Plus,’ he said, taking another piece of apple and gesturing at me with it, ‘writers have fictional worlds to escape to, which I’m certain stops us all going completely batty.’
I knew exactly what he meant.
‘Here’s a pearl of wisdom for you. In life always remember you’re the author of your own story.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t let life be something that happens to you. Write it yourself.’
It was the type of thing my dad would probably have said to me. Edie was lucky to have her father still. To have him alive and eating apples, not drowned and buried in a coffin in the ground.
Max patted the table then stood. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Enough of that nonsense. My book calls.’
‘Thank you for supper,’ I said, pleased I’d remembered it was supper not tea.
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Amanda Jennings
‘Haunting and evocative.’ Clare Mackintosh‘A beautiful, stirring story of loss and obsession’ Lisa JewellSome friendships are made to be brokenCornwall, summer of 1986.The Davenports, with their fast cars and glamorous clothes, living the dream in a breathtaking house overlooking the sea.If only… thinks sixteen-year-old Tamsyn, her binoculars trained on the perfect family in their perfect home.If only her life was as perfect as theirs.If only Edie Davenport would be her friend.If only she lived at The Cliff House…Amanda Jennings weaves a haunting tale of obsession, loss and longing, set against the brooding North Cornish coastline, destined to stay with readers long after the final page is turned.What readers are saying about Amanda Jennings:'Yet another novel by Amanda Jennings that once you start you can’t put down.''I'm so pleased that this is another gem. The tension throughout is palpable and I couldn't put it down.''Such a brilliant book and so well written.''I was very disappointed to emerge from it and discover that I was not, in fact, in Cornwall.''It is atmospheric of the place it's set, Cornwall, and together with an intriguing storyline this was a fabulous read.''I can't tell you how much I enjoy Amanda Jennings' novels. This is no exception. The intriguing characters keep the pages turning and I couldn't put it down.'
Also by Amanda Jennings (#uc469db01-dd31-5871-9121-0bcd0aea8dcf)
In Her Wake
The Judas Scar
Sworn Secret
Copyright (#uc469db01-dd31-5871-9121-0bcd0aea8dcf)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Amanda Jennings 2018
Amanda Jennings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008248901
Version: 2018-10-23
Praise for The Cliff House (#uc469db01-dd31-5871-9121-0bcd0aea8dcf)
‘Haunting and evocative.’
Clare Mackintosh
‘The Cliff House is a beautiful, stirring story of loss and obsession. The setting is dazzlingly described and the ending completely knocked my socks off. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming!’
Lisa Jewell
‘Immensely atmospheric, with vividly drawn characters and a set-up fraught with tension. Jennings portrays the intensity, danger and vulnerability of teenage girls brilliantly and the 80s detail feels so authentic.’
Lucy Atkins
‘The Cliff House is completely addictive and utterly compelling. Jennings writes with great insight about the obsessive nature of teenage female friendship and the quiet tragedies within dysfunctional families. It’s a clever, thoughtful and page-turning novel that should rightfully take Jennings to a very wide readership.’
Hannah Beckerman
‘This book made me whimper out loud for fear of what was going to happen to the characters. Hugely enjoyable, well written and gripping and clever.’
Jane Casey
‘Beautifully written, richly evocative, with characters and a setting that creep into your very bones.’
Tammy Cohen
‘Haunting, stylish, intoxicating. Beautifully paced and a brilliant ending. Superb.’
Will Dean
‘A beautifully written, atmospheric and tense tale of obsession. I was gripped from the first page to the heart-stopping ending. Brilliant.’
Claire Douglas
‘Hauntingly good.’
Sarah Hilary
‘An atmospheric and deeply satisfying treat.’
Emma Kavanagh
‘A beautifully written tale of jealousy, envy and possession. Jennings leads the reader along a twisted path filled with subtle dread and unease, to a wonderfully shocking ending - absolutely first-class story telling.’
Lisa Hall
‘With a page-turning plot, brilliant sense of place and beautifully-drawn characters The Cliff House deserves to be one of the biggest hits of the summer.’
Cass Green
‘I’ve been a fan of Amanda Jennings’ work for some time, but The Cliff House takes this hugely talented author to another level. It’s going to be one of the biggest, most talked about books of the summer and it’s a fabulous read.’
Louise Douglas
‘Amanda Jennings’ portrayal of time and place is exquisite. The Cliff House is chilling, stylish – and impossible to put down.’
Isabel Ashdown
‘Mesmerizing and nostalgic with a dark undercurrent that will leave you reeling.’
Susi Holliday
‘Wonderfully evocative and refreshingly different.’
Louise Voss
‘A haunting story with the moral ambiguity of du Maurier. Sea scented air filled with sunlight and menace… brilliant.’
Liz Fenwick
‘Hot, hazy and dangerous days against a stunning Cornish sky. A story of obsession that leaps to life from the page.’
Lucy Dawson
‘An addictive and insightful book about how grief can devastate and corrupt, full of the looming beauty of Cornwall.’
Katie Marsh
‘A heart-breaking, page-turning exploration of the pursuit and elusiveness of happiness.’
Julia Crouch
‘Unsettling, ominous and disturbingly brilliant – I couldn’t put it down.’
Laura Kemp
‘A beautiful, haunting portrait of obsession…Tamsyn and Edie are perfectly drawn, flawed yet painfully relatable characters who carry you across every page of The Cliff House, all the way to its heart-wrenching conclusion. I couldn’t put this book down.’
Beth Lewis
To Mum and Dad
With love as always.
‘If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.’
Maya Angelou
Contents
Cover (#uf9e1cc6f-7473-5aeb-86be-697ea07f5673)
Booklist (#u4d9a6baa-702b-58d6-9aa7-6219ca139e3a)
Title Page (#u56c66565-ab27-5af1-a8f9-6660892299ef)
Copyright (#ud84fd7b6-e2dc-568f-bf85-d81e98c281b1)
Praise (#u440f3e35-32fd-5246-bd02-fa57314ee8b2)
Dedication (#u7711e47f-07e9-5cfa-98e6-48c56804a1df)
Prologue (#ulink_a2773ab6-1780-5a56-b5a1-768f243453af)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_29df503a-3e2c-5ca7-8871-ad7ebd14bf1c)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_5e45f7ea-59b5-5c6d-95c1-2e4bf7df6bde)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2c8ae66e-10be-5340-b402-fadbe1ed4d0f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_586ec42c-1a58-538d-8f93-477ece49693c)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_55460f3f-f07a-595e-ad90-f5e28cea2baa)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_34dd21d6-a750-569c-939c-93890df5ea7f)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_4afb2519-4a38-5b72-8311-f8ffb027449c)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_3599e5fd-1cdf-58b0-b783-cfe2fb53fb15)
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_0ecf99a6-7806-50fe-9d17-4c0b1dda2a56)
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_c4a3d533-8ec9-5267-bc21-5aa9adb0f784)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_e1fc7c58-6e18-542e-9a3f-dac289afa7aa)
You sit and watch them from the same place you always do.
I spy.
With my little eye.
The grass is flattened where your weight rests. A patch of earth revealed where your feet have kicked back and forth to pass the time. The purple foil of a chocolate bar you ate a week ago glints from where it nestles amid the sandy thatch of vegetation beside you. Seagulls cry mournfully, wheeling high in the sky above you, above the breaking waves and the reach of their salty spray, no more than specks.
The house rises up from the windswept cliffs like a chalk monolith. You imagine somebody, God perhaps, has carved it from a giant block of marble, smooth and white with bold lines and straight edges and expansive sheets of glass that reflect the sea and sky like cinema screens. It stands proud and defiant, alien in this coastal place, a place of weathered cottages, ruined mine shafts and precarious birds’ nests made of dried seaweed and discarded fishing twine. Its heart beats rhythmically. Drums your ears. Deafens you as you watch them shift like wraiths from one room to another, then outside onto the terrace, their clothes and hair ruffled by a playful onshore breeze.
He sits at the iron table. You hold your breath as you watch him swill his drink around a squat glass with facets cut into it which flash as they catch the light. You are certain you can hear the clink of ice cubes even though you know it’s not possible. Your mind is playing tricks. You aren’t close enough to hear ice on glass.
Though, of course, you wish you were.
She adjusts her sunglasses and angles her face towards the sun. Her eyes close like a cat as she luxuriates in the heat. You watch her lower herself backwards onto the sun lounger. She stretches her leg out to kiss the edge of the black-tiled swimming pool. Her skin is tanned and silky. It reminds you of toffee and you briefly imagine touching it with the tip of your tongue to taste its creamy sweetness. You feel the chill as she dips her toe into the water. Gentle ripples spread out through the inky darkness which matches the time-blackened rocks that fringe the coast of Cornwall.
You scan the house. The binoculars press hard against your face. You raise your gaze to the top floor windows. Up to the slate roof patched with a yellow mist of lichen. Down to the huge gunnera leaves which loom over a garden awash with vibrant colours, an oasis on the rugged, salt-spritzed clifftop.
I spy.
You focus the binoculars on him again. Run your eyes along the slope of his shoulder. You study the tilt of his head. The way his fingers seem to caress his glass as he concentrates on the newspaper he reads. His legs are crossed. One ankle resting on one knee. Blue leather shoes – the ones you love – cradle his feet like Cinderella’s slippers.
Something beginning with P.
She moves and steals your attention. Shifts her weight as she stretches her body and arches her back. One arm reaches over her head. Her fingers rest lightly, stroking something invisible. Waves crash on the rocks below you and the scent of brine hangs in the warm dry air. Two adolescent kittiwakes, new feathers pushing through a haze of down, jostle and screech a safe distance away. You watch them for a few moments then return to the terrace.
To her and to him.
To the white-walled house.
‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with P,’ you say under your breath.
The man lifts his drink and sips. The woman runs her hand through her honey-blonde hair.
Perfection.
‘I spy perfection.’
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_472a82a5-c378-58e6-9215-d456f16967a0)
Present Day
I lean against the worktop and watch her. Her hands rest lightly on the table. She stares at me, unmoving, impassive. If I didn’t know her so well it would be unnerving.
There’s a chill in the air and I rub my arms to warm myself. It’s good to see her looking so beautiful, her hair shining, skin flawless and eyes bright. Neither of us speak. The silence isn’t uncomfortable but I know it won’t last. There’s a reason she’s here.
There always is.
I am unable to hold my tongue any longer. ‘Say it then.’
She raises an eyebrow, amused at the sharpness of my tone. ‘I was thinking back.’ Her voice never fails to take me by surprise, soft and melodic, close to singing.
‘To that summer?’
‘Yes.’ Her face is like a millpond, her expression placid and calm. This is misleading, of course. Beneath the veneer lies a tangle of questions and emotions. ‘But my memories are hazy, like half-remembered dreams.’
I turn away from her. Look out of the window. A crack runs diagonally across the glass. Dusty cobwebs are collected in the corners. The paintwork on the frame is peeling and patches of rot caress the edge of the pane. I long to open it. There’s a thick smell of mildew in the kitchen and it’s catching the back of my throat, but I’m not certain fresh air would be enough to get rid of it, so I leave it closed.
Outside the sky is the colour of a ripened bruise. It hangs low and heavy, threatening thunder. Raindrops spatter the window, run downwards in random paths, merging and barrelling as they grow heavier. I close my eyes and hear the distant echo of Edie’s laugh. Remembering her brings with it the smell of seaweed drying in the farthest reach of a spring tide, the tang of salt carried on a summer breeze, the feel of the sun-warmed terrace beneath my feet. My own memories are crystal clear. Each one as crisp and complete as if it happened just hours before.
We met, Edie and I, on the first day of the summer holidays in 1986. Until that moment I didn’t know her name or what she looked like. I didn’t even know she existed.
But I knew the place she lived.
I knew The Cliff House.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_102485dd-6fa1-5ee7-b934-744d69ae458c)
Tamsyn
July 1986
I sprang out of bed as soon as I woke. It was the first day of the holidays and I couldn’t wait to escape.
The house was still. It hung with a silence as thick as pea soup. Mum was at work. My brother was in his bedroom. Door closed. I didn’t need to go in to know he was still asleep. Sleeping was pretty much all he’d done since the tin mine shut down. Granfer was also in his room. Although it wasn’t really his room. It was Mum and Dad’s, but Mum had moved to a fold-up bed in the sitting room when Granfer came to live with us. She wanted him to be comfortable, what with the state of his lungs, she said. I remember when the man from the tip came to pick up the double bed. Jago had dragged it on to the street and the three of us watched as the man and his friend hefted it onto the back of a truck in exchange for a six-pack of beer. Though Mum didn’t say, I could tell by her face she was sad to see it go, but, as she said, Granfer needed the space and a chair was more use to him than a bed for two.
His door was open a crack and there he was, in his chair, leaning forward to study the mess of jigsaw pieces scattered on the small table in front of him. I watched him for a minute or two, ready to smile if he noticed me, but he didn’t move a muscle, just stared down at the table.
I turned and walked over to the airing cupboard on the landing. Mum used it to keep her stuff in. She’d put the spare sheets and towels in a cardboard box in the corner of Granfer’s room, then removed the shelves and put up a hanging rail which she made from a length of pine doweling she picked up from the hardware shop in Penzance. She had to cut it to size with our rusted hacksaw and I remember thinking how well she’d done it despite her not being Dad.
I opened the cupboard door and stared at the clothes inside with her shoes lined up below them in happy pairs. There was a variety of boxes with belts and earrings and her winter hat and scarf on a high shelf above. I ran my finger along clothes on their hangers, enjoying the feel of the different fabrics as I looked for something pretty. Something suitable.
My eyes settled on her rainbow dress and I smiled.
‘Perfect.’
A shiver of excitement ran through my body as I took the dress into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I let my dressing gown fall to the floor and slipped on the dress, smoothing it over my hips and waist, the crepe fabric rough against my skin. Mum kept her make-up in a flowery wash-bag on a wire vegetable rack below the basin along with her shower cap, a soap-on-a-rope we’d never used, and a pot of Oil of Ulay which Jago and I gave her for her last birthday. Inside the wash-bag was a pressed powder she’d had forever, a drying mascara and her lipstick. I took out the lipstick and removed the lid, then turned the base to reveal the scarlet innards. Lifting it to my nose I breathed in. The smell conjured memories of when I was younger, my parents dressed up to go out, perhaps – if it was a special occasion – to the Italian restaurant in Porthleven they loved so much. I pictured her turning a circle for him. Saw him smile, eyes alight, as he leant in to kiss her cheek. It was painful remembering how it was back then. Back then when our house felt like a home.
Home.
Just a memory. Vague and fading. I stared at myself in the mirror above the basin and searched for the ten-year-old girl who’d lived in that happy place. But she was long gone. I drew in a deep breath and touched the tip of my finger to the blood-coloured lipstick, dabbing first its waxy surface and then my lips to add a blush of colour. I dropped the lipstick back into the wash-bag and zipped it up. Then, looking down, I swung left and right to make the rainbow dress swish, imagining my father watching on and smiling.
I went downstairs and glanced into the sitting room as I passed. Her bed was stored neatly behind the settee. The folded duvet and pillow lay on top of it, struck through by a line of sunlight from a gap between the curtains. As I walked into the kitchen I saw two mugs on the table, one with a smudge of lipstick on it, the other without. A sudden sweep of anger washed over me and I snatched them up and marched them to the sink where I turned the tap on, squirted washing-up liquid into the mugs, and reached for the scouring pad. I attacked the one without the red smear the hardest. How had he squirmed his way into the kitchen? I scrubbed, wanting all trace of him gone, then dried the mugs and returned them to the cupboard before squeezing bleach on the table and meticulously cleaning every inch of it, rubbing all the way into the corners and along the edges.
The kitchen hung with the pungent tang of bleach and my mind returned to thoughts of getting out. I stood on tiptoes and reached for the battered biscuit tin on top of the fridge. Inside was a collection of odds and sods, as Mum called them: safety pins, pencil stubs, an assortment of rusted screws and nails, and a variety of keys. Excitement wriggled along my arm and down to the pit of my stomach as I pulled out the key with the green fob. I slipped it into the pocket of the rainbow dress, replaced the tin, then grabbed my bag from the hook in the hallway.
As the front door closed behind me every muscle in my body began to relax. I turned out of our road and headed down towards the Cape, smiling as the breeze took my hair and tossed it playfully about my face. That day the sea was the very same navy as Granfer’s favourite knitted Gansey sweater and sprinkled with diamonds of sunlight. High above my head, a handful of seagulls flew in sweeping circles, their distant cries jubilant. An almost perfect day.
As ever my thoughts drifted to Dad. It was impossible to walk down this stretch of road to the Cape without remembering the feel of his hand gripping mine. Or how I’d had to half-run to keep up with his stride. I could still picture the book folded into his back pocket, dog-eared, marked on the cover with a single perfect tea-ring. I recalled him reaching for it when he spotted a bird, leafing quickly through the pages before pulling me in close.
Do you see it?
My cheek rested against his stubbled face as he pointed. I didn’t care much about the bird. All that mattered was being in his arms.
A golden plover.
Then I’d listen quietly as he told me all about it. That its name came from the word for rain in Latin – or maybe it was Greek – because plovers flock when the weather draws in. After he died, any smidgen of interest I might have had in seabirds waned, but sometimes, when I missed him the most, I’d pretend I loved them and would watch them through the binoculars as they balanced on ledges or dive-bombed for fish, trying to recall their names, population numbers, and the colour of their eggs.
There were only four cars in the car park at Cape Cornwall. It was early though. Later in the day it would be full, vehicles jammed bumper to bumper, with National Trust stickers on their windscreens and woollen picnic rugs folded beneath raincoats in their boots. I joined the coastal path and walked up onto the clifftop where the wind was stronger and my skin spread with goosebumps. I wrapped my arms around my body and told myself off for not bringing a sweater.
The footpath was well worn by walkers who strode from Botallack to Cape Cornwall and on to Sennen Cove in their special boots with canvas sides and long laces double-knotted for safety. My body tingled with excitement as the fields of lush grazing on my left changed to unruly moorland. Pillows of heather and fern stretched away from me in a carpet of green and purple patched with spiky yellow gorse. If I stood still and closed my eyes, I’d be able to hear the rustling of voles and mice which hid from the sparrowhawk circling on the thermals above.
When the footpath bent sharply to the left my body fizzed with anticipation. Four steps until the heart-stone. I counted them. Eyes fixed on the ground in front of me.
One. Two. Three.
Four.
Then there was the stone. The shape of a perfect heart. Grey and polished, with grass kissing its edges like the sea surrounding an island. I placed both feet on top of it then looked up.
My breath caught.
The house gleamed white in the sunshine. A beacon on the cliffs. As always its beauty jolted me like a slap on the face. I saw my father ahead of me, his long legs pounding the path, arms swinging with purpose at his sides. He turned and smiled. Beckoned to me.
Hurry up!
The wind blew his hair and made his eyes glint with weather-tears.
Isn’t it beautiful?
‘Yes, Dad. It is.’
As he turned to walk onwards, I smiled, then broke into a run to catch up with him.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2a312a65-4083-56ab-86d2-035949ea92d3)
Tamsyn
July 1986
I scrambled up the grassy slope that led from the path to the lichen-coated rock on the point. I opened my bag and pulled out my father’s binoculars, looping the leather strap over my head and caressing the cool metal with the edge of my thumb.
This was our spot. It was where he took me to watch the sea and the birds. A protrusion of cliff with rocks to shelter us from the wind and weather, and views out to the horizon a thousand miles away, with Sennen Cove to the left and The Cliff House to our right.
It was here that my memories of him were the strongest. Sitting in this spot I could recall him in such Technicolor detail. The patches of sweat which darkened his T-shirt. The individual beads of moisture glistening on his forehead. I could hear his voice telling me to make the most of the sunshine. Warning me the weather wouldn’t last. That storms were coming. As I sat and watched the house I felt him beside me.
Isn’t it beautiful, Tam?
He jumped to his feet and grabbed my hand, pulling me down to the path and the iron railing which encircled the garden. When he reached over to open the latch on the gate I pulled back.
Are we allowed?
Nobody’s home.
Are you sure?
I raised the binoculars to my face and scanned the house and the driveway. There was no movement, no lights or opened windows, no car parked outside. I didn’t rush. I gave myself time to make certain nobody was home. When I was sure, I unhooked the strap from my neck and wrapped it around the binoculars and tucked them back in my bag, then stood and walked down to rejoin the footpath.
The white-painted railings were patched with rust, which bled down the uprights in autumnal orange smears. I walked along the edge of the boundary until I reached the gate, then pushed it open enough for me to squeeze through, but not past the point where the hinges creaked. The lawn was the colour of emeralds, soft and mown into stripes by a gardener who came on a Wednesday afternoon and peed in the bushes unaware I was watching. The grass ran from the gate up to the house and was bordered by lush flowerbeds which held plants of every colour and insects that flitted busily between flower heads. I’d looked some of them up in a book of Dad’s – The Comprehensive Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Cornwall and Devon – and learnt lots of their names by heart. Cordyline, sea pinks, red and lilac poppies, phormium, flowering sea kale, and others I couldn’t remember grew amongst copses of bamboo and blue hydrangea. There were ornamental ferns which should have been in the jungle and agapanthus and towering gunnera with giant leaves straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
When I reached the terrace I stopped and looked up at the house. It wrapped itself around me like a warm blanket. The air crackled with electricity and the cry of curlews rang in my ears as I drank in its salt-stained white and the soft slips of cloud moving like ghosts across ginormous windows. According to Dad it was something called ‘Art Deco’, built between the Wars by the heir to an enormous tobacco fortune as a gift for his American wife who’d taken a shine to Cornwall. It was hard to believe that an actual American once lived in St Just. I imagined her walking across this very same terrace, talking American, dressed in pressed white slacks with a silver cigarette case, the spit of Lauren Bacall.
Most of the terrace was taken up by the glorious swimming pool. Rectangular, with semi-circular steps at one end, it was lined with mosaic tiles as black as coal. I walked to the edge of it and trod on my plimsolls to take them off. I heard my mother’s voice lecturing me.
Don’t break the backs. Undo the laces. No money for more.
The paving stones were warm underfoot. I placed my bag beside my shoes and stared down at the pool. The surface was still. Not even a ripple. It shone like a sheet of black mirror, reflecting the sky like the windows that punctured the house. I bent to put my finger to it and heard the echo of his voice. Saw him smile at me. Saw the glint in his eye. Wavelets spread outwards from my touch and faded to nothing but a shift of light on the disturbed water.
One of her scarves was draped over the sun lounger nearest me. I reached for it. The silk was soft in my fingers. I brought it up to my face and breathed in. It smelt of her perfume, rich and thick, with a hint of coconut suntan oil beneath. I wrapped the scarf around my neck as I’d seen her do a hundred times.
I’d been watching the house on and off since the Davenports bought it two years earlier from an elderly couple who moved to Spain. I don’t know exactly why I first walked up to the point to see the house. Up until that moment I’d avoided it. I’d found the thought of going back to the place too painful. Too much of a reminder of what I’d lost when my father died. But something made me curious. Maybe it was the rumours which had spread through St Just like wildfire. A famous writer. His glamorous wife. Londoners bringing their fancy ways to West Penwith. Or perhaps it was hearing the house in overheard conversations, each mention of it bringing a vibrant memory back to me. But whatever the reason for that first visit, I knew within moments it wouldn’t be the last. As soon as the house loomed into view it was like a spell had been cast. The connection was undeniable. And then, when I began to watch them – Mr and Mrs Davenport – the connection deepened. As I became increasingly sucked into their lives, going to the house became a heady mix of both memory of my father and dreamy escapism.
I knew their routine well. They only ever came on weekends, arriving late afternoon on a Friday and leaving before noon on the Monday. On as many Fridays as I could manage I’d walk to the point and wait, binoculars primed, praying for the roar of the Jaguar as it careened down the lane. They didn’t always appear. There was no way of knowing. Even though Mum went in every week – whether they were coming or not – they never thought to tell her which weekends they’d be there. On the days when they didn’t appear I’d feel so let down it physically hurt, deflated by disappointment. It was following one of these no-shows that I braved creeping into the garden, just like I’d done with my dad all those years before.
Adrenalin coursed through me as I walked across the lawn towards the house. I didn’t make it all the way to the terrace before nerves got the better of me and I turned and hared out of the gate to the safety of the footpath. As I paused to catch my breath, my whole body trembled and a bout of excited laughter rippled through me. The thrill of it became an addiction, and while the other kids at school sniffed glue or drank snakebite and black to get their kicks, I walked up to The Cliff House, either to watch the Davenports or explore, depending on the mood which took me.
I stood in front of the window and cupped my hands around my eyes, peering in to double-check it was empty. The sitting room was as spotless as always, not a magazine or an ornament or a picture frame out of place. I thought of my mother dusting and polishing, arranging everything just so, wanting it to be perfect for when they arrived. I felt for the key with the green tag in my pocket and pushed it into the lock. I held my breath as I turned it. There was a loud click. I opened the door and paused to listen. The only sound was the hum of the enormous fridge in the kitchen so I stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind me.
The inside of the house was what I imagined an art gallery would look like. It was cool and quiet with paintings on white walls, unusual pottery dotted about, and a large hunk of grey stone in one corner which was carved into a vague human form. The paintings were oversized canvases with no frames or glass, splashes of colour daubed over them as if someone had poured the paint from a tin instead of brushing it. All were signed in the corner with the name Etienne scrawled in an extravagant blue flourish. Truth be told, I didn’t think they were that good, but what did I know? There was no way people like the Davenports would put anything on their walls that wasn’t the very best. I preferred the photographs, black-and-white close-ups of body parts made to look like the landscape. A woman’s breast turned into a hill. A tummy button filled with water to resemble a pool in the desert.
My feet made a soft padding sound as I crossed the room. The polished floorboards shone as if coated with syrup. I walked through the door leading into the kitchen where a central worktop held a neat stack of recipe books, the titles of which I now knew by heart – Robert Carrier, Elizabeth David, The F Plan, The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet – and a pepper mill which was at least a foot tall and the same shade of red as my mother’s movie-star lipstick. I struck a pose against the worktop, flicked back my hair, swished my dress.
‘Darling?’ My voice fractured the stillness. ‘Yes, my love? Oh, darling, do bring me a Martini. Stirred, if you will. Of course, my love. I’ll fetch you one now. Shall I put one of those green things in it, too? I know how you love them so.’
I gave a trill, mimicking the laugh I was sure she’d have.
‘Darling, you’re right. I do love them. And, oh, goodness me, isn’t it hot today? Baking hot. Thank goodness we have the swimming pool. What on earth would we do if we didn’t? We’d boil, darling. We’d absolutely boil.’
He smiled.
My stomach tightened as he reached out for my hand, then lifted it to his mouth and pressed his lips against my skin.
I smiled and went to the cupboard for a glass, which I filled from the tap. I turned the tap off and the last drips fell against the stainless steel sink with the beat of a slowing clock. As I drank I held my little finger up in a delicate salute. I also took the tiniest sips because people like the Davenports never gulped their water. After I’d rinsed the glass and dried it on my dress, I returned it to the cupboard before walking back through the sitting room and out onto the terrace, where the heat seemed to have intensified.
I walked like a model on a catwalk, swinging my hips from side to side, one foot in front of the other, chin held high. Then I untied the silk scarf and pulled it away from my neck, enjoying the way it caressed my skin. I laid it over the sun lounger exactly as I had found it, watching for a moment as a slight wind ruffled the material and made it dance. I walked over to the swimming pool steps and looked into the water. The blackness was like a dead television screen and for a moment or two I stared at my reflected face, imagined I was floating beneath the surface looking up at the sky. I reached for the zip on my mother’s dress and undid it and let it fall to the ground, enjoying the breeze on my sweat-dampened skin.
It was then I felt somebody watching me.
I turned quickly but the terrace was empty and the house still.
I waited. Scanned the house. Searched every window. I’d imagined it.
Nobody’s home.
Remembering my father’s words reassured me and I turned my attention back to the pool. I took a step into the water. It was heated but not enough to stop goosebumps leaping up across my skin. I rubbed my arms as I waited for the water to settle and when it did, when the ripples had faded to flatness, I stepped down again. Between each step I allowed the wavering surface to still and savoured the growing feeling of calm that enveloped me.
I pushed off the wall and held my head clear of the water, swimming like she did with her swan’s neck straight and tall. My strokes were long and slow and as I pulled through the water I focused on the way it soothed my skin. I turned when I reached the end then dived beneath the water and closed my eyes as the silence wrapped around me. I held my breath and waited for the familiar burn in my lungs. As always I allowed the indulgent thought of opening my mouth to pass through my mind.
One breath. Swift and silky. And then…
When the raking pain became too much to bear, I pushed off the floor of the pool and propelled myself upwards. My head broke the surface and I drew a breath in, dragging oxygen deep into my body.
When I heard her voice I screamed.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_6ca8a5c1-7a78-5977-b48f-86095b5db25b)
Tamsyn
July 1986
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
My stomach turned over.
There was a figure silhouetted against the sun, features obscured in shadow, standing at the edge of the pool.
My heart pounded as I heaved myself through the water towards the steps.
‘I’m… I… Sorry…’ The words wouldn’t form and my voice stumbled as I clambered out of the swimming pool. I tried to hide my underwear with my hands. Why hadn’t I worn a proper swimsuit? Why had I swum in my bra and pants, which were old and baggy and turned see-through with water? ‘I’m… I…’
Panic muddied my thoughts. The voice had been female. Who was she? It was a Thursday. The Davenports never came on a Thursday. Was it her? Mrs Davenport? Blinded by the sun, it was hard to be certain, but surely that was the only person it could be?
‘Answer my question.’
I bent to pick up my dress from the ground and drew it up to my chin to hide my body.
‘I’ll leave,’ I whispered. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’
She didn’t speak. A soft, rhythmic tapping echoed across the terrace. I glanced at the house. The back door was ajar, a breeze worrying it gently against the frame. Everything inside me screamed run. I looked down towards the gate and path, my route to freedom.
‘Don’t even think about it.’
As I looked back at her she blurred like an out-of-focus picture. I swallowed. My throat was dry and my palms sweating, my body numbed by guilt and fear. When she stepped towards me, I readied myself for Mrs Davenport to shriek at me, demand an explanation before calling the police and firing my mum.
But she didn’t shriek.
As the figure stepped out of the glare of the sun her face became visible. It wasn’t Mrs Davenport. It was a girl, about my own age, maybe a year or two older. She stared at me with her hands on her hips, head cocked to one side. Her eyes were heavily made up with thick black eyeliner dragged upwards into arrowheads. She wore a black skirt that trailed the floor, a black top with holes worn into the sleeves, and a thin leather chord encircling her neck which threatened to throttle her. Her dyed white-blonde hair was cut into an aggressively short bob, framing her elfin face and razor-sharp cheekbones. She radiated an aristocratic confidence that made my breath catch. My mother would have disagreed. She would have hated her make-up and the fact she was so painfully thin. She’d think she looked like an addict. But this girl’s skin was too perfect – too porcelain – for that. Eyes too clear. I knew which kids from school did drugs. Their acne, gaunt faces, and wide staring eyes gave them away.
This girl was nothing like them.
Her eyes scanned me as if I were something she was thinking of buying. I cringed beneath her scrutiny, painfully aware of how spongy and uncared for my body was. Shame swept over me and I desperately tried to arrange the fabric of the dress so it covered more of me.
On her wrists she wore a collection of silver bangles like Madonna and when she crossed her arms they jangled tunefully.
‘Who said you could swim here?’
My mouth opened and closed as I grappled to find a reason – any reason – to justify me being there. I thought of my dad. Tried to imagine what flawless excuse he’d have given for our trespassing. Somewhere above me I could have sworn I heard a raven cry and a shiver wriggled through me.
‘For God’s sake,’ she said, tapping her toe against the paving impatiently. ‘Put the dress back on if you’re that cold.’
I didn’t move for a moment or two, but then turned my back and shook out the dress, biting back tears of humiliation as I felt her eyes on my body as I bent to step into it. The fabric clung to my damp skin so I had to tug hard at it, risking tearing the delicate material. I pulled the zip up and faced her. My wet hair dripped down my back as I bit my lower lip to stop myself crying.
The girl raised a single dark and perfectly plucked eyebrow. ‘If you don’t say something soon, I’m going to call the police and have you locked up.’ Her voice oozed with money. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’
Mum was going to lose her job. I felt sick as I pictured her sitting at the kitchen table, a ragged piece of toilet roll clutched in her fist, red-topped bills surrounding her.
‘I’m… I...’ My voice stuttered and waned.
The girl looked irritated. ‘Well?’
Something caught my eye. Eleanor Davenport’s silk scarf fluttering in a gust of wind, half-lifting off the sun lounger as if, like me, it was desperate to escape. I glanced at the girl. Her eyes narrowed. Her patience was visibly running out.
‘My… mother…’
‘What? Speak up, for God’s sake.’
‘My mother,’ I said more loudly. ‘She… She cleans here. She’s the cleaner. I think… I mean, she said… She left her scarf here. She gave me the key.’ I pulled the key with the green tag out of my slightly soggy pocket and held it aloft as if this small piece of metal was my passport to being here. ‘I looked for it. The scarf. But couldn’t see it. I was leaving. And, well, I was hot…’ My voice wilted as the little bravery I’d mustered evaporated. ‘And the pool… I thought nobody… I’m… I’m sorry.’
For what felt like a century the girl with peroxide hair didn’t speak. I shifted on my feet, willing her to send me away with nothing more than a sharp warning never to show my face there again.
‘Who were you speaking to?’
‘What?’ My throat was dry and tight and trapped my voice so it came out in a rasp.
‘When you broke in to look for this scarf. I heard you having a conversation. Is there someone else here?’ Her eyes flicked from me to the house and back again.
My cheeks burst into flame. ‘No… I… I was… Talking to myself.’
‘How strange.’
She turned and walked back towards the door. Was this my signal to go? Was I free? I hesitated, about to turn away, but she glanced back with narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t even think about leaving. If you move an inch, you’ll be sorry.’
My stomach hardened to a tight ball. Who was she? Why was she here? As I did what I was told and stood stock still, water collecting at my feet, I was hit with the sudden idea that perhaps she might also be trespassing and that in a remarkable twist of fate we’d both arrived at the house, uninvited, at the same time. Perhaps I wasn’t the only girl who watched this place from an out-of-sight vantage point and snuck in when nobody was home.
This thought bought a little clarity with it. My mind seemed to de-mist. Whoever she was, whatever reason she had to be here, the most important thing was to convince her not to tell the Davenports. If Mum lost her job she’d have to do more hours at the bloody chip shop or, worse still, sign on, something I knew full well she’d rather die than do.
The girl walked back out of the door. She held two bottles in her hand and an opener in the other.
‘I like your dress,’ she said as she neared me.
I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly so didn’t say anything in return.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘My dress?’
She made a face like I was stupid. ‘Er, yeah, your dress.’
‘It’s my mum’s. From the Sixties. She wore it to a Rolling Stones concert.’
‘Retro?’ Her eyes blinked slowly. ‘Très fashionable.’
I let my breath go with a nervous laugh. I was struck again by how pretty she was. Not pretty like Alice Daley or Imogen Norris – who were universally acknowledged to be the prettiest girls in school, all pushed-up boobs and bum-skimming skirts. No, this girl was graceful and poised and pretty like Princess Di, if Princess Di wore black make-up, a hundred bangles and had a silver stud in her nose.
‘Très… cool,’ she said.
I managed to nod.
‘You’re very lucky to have a cool mother. Mine,’ she said deliberately, ‘is very, very, uncool.’
I thought of the photograph of my parents, the one that had his writing on the back:
Angie and Me. Odeon Theatre, Guildford, March 1965.
In the picture my mum wore the rainbow dress. She was seventeen, not long engaged, delirious with love. Her hair was held back by a thick red scarf, feline eyes outlined with liner, her lips and skin pale as was the fashion. My dad wore a white shirt and a thin black tie. His hair was slicked back and he held a cigarette loosely in his fingers. I closed my eyes for a second, caught a flash of him singing me to sleep, smelt the cigarettes stuck to his skin.
‘Would you like a drink?’ She gestured to the bottles in her hand. Coca-Cola – the real thing, in curvaceous glass bottles like the ones I’d seen shiny, happy Americans with white-toothed smiles selling on the television.
‘Who are you?’
She gave no indication of having heard me. Maybe I’d spoken too quietly. She walked over to the table and put the bottles down, then using the opener she flicked the caps off each in turn, the cola fizzing loudly as she threw them onto the table. One bounced across the iron fretwork and fell with a tinny clink against the paving stones.
‘I think I should go.’
‘If you leave, I’ll tell my mother you broke into our house and I found you rifling through her jewellery box.’
Horror mushroomed inside me so violently I thought I might be sick.
‘Your mother?’ I didn’t understand. They didn’t have a daughter. Mum had never mentioned one. There was nothing in the house that indicated they had children − no photos, no clothes, no posters in any bedrooms. Was she lying?
‘Yes. My mother. More’s the pity.’ She sat on one of the chairs and lifted her bare feet onto the table and crossed them at the ankle. I’d never seen toenails painted purple before and never heard of people wearing rings on their toes, but she wore three and her nails were the colour of autumn plums.
‘Are they here?’ My voice quivered. Why had I been so careless? How stupid could I be?
‘My mother’s shopping while my father gets something fixed on the Jag. A tyre or, God, I don’t know, something dull. My mother will already be in a filthy mood because she won’t have found anything worth buying and will be moaning about Cornwall being stuck in the Dark Ages and wondering why anybody ever leaves Chelsea.’
‘My mum can’t lose her job,’ I whispered.
She stared at me for a moment or two, her expression flat, but then her body seemed to soften.
‘Relax.’ Her voice had lost its sharpness. ‘You don’t need to worry. I’m not going to tell them. I don’t give a shit about you swimming in the pool. I mean, why wouldn’t you? It’s hot as hell today.’
I could have cried with relief.
‘Go on. Stay for a bit. I’m literally dying of boredom. You can leave before they get back.’ She pushed one of the bottles towards me. ‘Have a Coke.’
‘I’ve never had a real Coke, only the one they do at Wimpy.’ And even then I’d only tried it once, though I didn’t tell her that.
She furrowed her brow and a bemused smile flashed across her face as she reached for the bottle nearest her and tipped it up to her lips. I inhaled sharply, shocked by how much she resembled Mrs Davenport in that split second. As I stared at her I noticed other similarities between her and her parents. Her face was the same shape as his. The sweeping curve of her neck was identical to hers. How stupid not to see these things immediately. Stupid not to have guessed who she was. Their daughter. Her house. A surge of irrational jealousy shuddered through me like an electric charge.
The girl looked up at me whilst shielding her eyes from the sun. ‘For God’s sake sit down.’ She kicked the empty chair and it scraped against the paving.
The movement jolted me into action and I walked towards her. I hesitated as I reached the table, wondering if it might be a trap and when I sat down she’d laugh and say, ‘Ha! Idiot! As if someone like you could actually sit with someone like me?’
But she didn’t. She smiled.
From nowhere a waft of her perfume swept over me. I had a vivid recollection of Truro. The shopping centre. My mother rummaging through the bottles and sprays in The Body Shop. Taking lids off. Pumping scent onto her wrists. Then mine. Ignoring the hard stares of the lady behind the counter.
‘White Musk.’
‘Sorry?’
Had I said that aloud? ‘Your perfume,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s White Musk.’
‘You’re quite unusual, aren’t you? Not that it’s a bad thing. I like unusual.’ She blew upwards over her forehead. ‘Christ, it’s hot.’ She took hold of her top and flapped it.
We were silent. She didn’t seem to mind but it made me itch. When the awkwardness became unbearable I turned my head to look out over the sea. The wind had painted dashes of white across its surface and a small boat sat out near the horizon. So far away. Little more than a dot. I thought of the day my dad died. How quickly the squall had rolled in, turning sunshine and blue skies to driving rain and treacherous waves within moments. A crack of thunder echoed in my ears as I recalled snatching hopelessly at his legs to stop him leaving the safety of our house.
‘My name’s Edie, by the way.’
She waited expectantly but when I didn’t reply I saw her expression fade to boredom.
For God’s sake speak.
‘I like it.’
‘What?’
‘Your name. I like it.’
She stared at me for a moment then burst into laughter which sounded like sleigh bells. She tipped her head back. Exposed her throat. Pale and delicate. It struck me how vulnerable that part of her was and I hurriedly banished the thought of my hands encircling it and squeezing until her white skin bruised.
I thought she might let me in on the joke but she didn’t. ‘My mother chose it,’ she said. ‘It’s short for Edith. Piaf. Eleanor thinks it’s glamorous. Anything – and everything – à la France est très glamoureux, cherie according to Maman.’
The accent she used on some of her words reminded me of my French teacher, Madame Thomas, who came from Widemouth Bay but turned puce with rage if we failed to pronounce her surname ‘Toh-maah’. Thinking of ridiculous Madame Toh-maah made me braver and I ventured a smile in return.
‘And yours?’ Edie Davenport lifted her bottle and studied the Coke inside as she tipped it from side to side like a pendulum.
I hesitated. Should I make something up? Re-christen myself something très glamoureux? Esmerelda perhaps? Or maybe Ruby or Anastasia?
‘God,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s not a difficult question. Someone tells you their name then asks you yours and you reply. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners between cleaning jobs?’
Edie brushed something, a fly perhaps, off one of her knees. I noticed how smooth and free of blemishes her legs were. Hairless with skin as white as a china doll except for the soles of her feet which were soft and pink like the inside of a kitten’s ear. I thought of my own legs covered ankle to thigh in fine hairs bleached by the sun, the skin peppered with scratches from brambles and mysterious bruises, my feet hardened and cracked and my toenails uneven and in need of a trim.
Edie cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows as she sipped her drink. Her eyes were bolted on to me.
Speak.
‘Tamsyn.’
‘Tamsyn.’ She rolled my name around her tongue like the Coke she swilled in the bottle. ‘Yes. It’s the perfect name for a thief.’
My stomach pitched. ‘No! I’m not a thief! I was here to find—’
‘Yes, yes.’ Edie gave a dismissive flick of her hand. ‘The cleaner’s scarf. You said.’
‘I should go.’ My voice trembled and when I lowered my eyes, I saw the tremble mirrored in my quivering hem.
‘You can’t. I’ve already taken the lid off the Coke.’ Edie gestured at the second bottle on the table. ‘You’re being rude again.’
‘Rude?’
‘Yes. Rude. I invited you to sit down with me and you haven’t. That’s rude.’
So I sat quickly because the last thing I wanted to be was rude. She flashed me a half-smile and tipped the Coca-Cola to her lips. I’d have given anything to have a fraction of her confidence and swagger, to have what she had, her father’s casual indifference, her mother’s grace and sophistication.
Even though the silence bore down on us like ten tonnes of lead, Edie didn’t seem to care one bit. But I did. I was desperate to speak but it was as if my lips were sewn together with fishing twine which looped through my skin. I imagined wrenching my mouth open so I could say something, the stitches ripping my lips to blood and tatters.
I ran my finger down the length of the bottle, traced the ridges, the gathered condensation wetting my skin.
‘Try it.’
I raised the bottle and sipped. Bubbles exploded on my tongue and the cloying sweetness made me smile involuntarily.
She shifted in her chair and tucked her legs beneath her body. ‘Have you swum here before?’
‘No.’ My dishonesty flared hot beneath my skin. I thought of my father and I in the pool. His arms wrapped around me. His eyelashes laced with droplets of water like tiny pearls. ‘I didn’t know they had a daughter,’ I said, wanting to steer away from the subject of my trespassing. Talking about Edie was safer. I just had to keep her talking about anything other than me.
She seemed amused by this. ‘Do you know much about them then?’
I shook my head. Another lie. I knew lots. I knew what newspaper he read, what clothes they wore, the position he sat in when he wrote at his typewriter. I knew she turned her sun lounger to follow the arc of the sun and when, every now and then, a sparrowhawk cried out he’d look up and search the sky for it. I knew they let food go to waste. That vegetables were left to blacken in the fridge beside sour milk, and that abandoned bread grew mould in the shiny steel bread bin. I knew they left their bed unmade when they left for London and I knew where they kept the sheets my mother would change for them. I knew what books were piled up on his bedside table and what her night cream smelt like and how soft her silk dressing gown felt against my cheek.
Edie lifted the Coke bottle and drained the last inch. ‘To be honest, I wouldn’t expect anyone to know they have a daughter. They’re barely aware of it themselves. They keep me in a boarding school so they don’t have to think about it.’
‘A boarding school?’
Edie nodded.
I had visions of great Gothic buildings and Malory Towers, hockey sticks and midnight feasts and huge panelled dining rooms where hundreds of these girls, identikit clones, gathered to sip soup from round silver spoons.
‘That must be amazing.’
‘It’s the pits. I loathe it. Every single girl there is a bitch and the teachers are idiots. Literally everybody there hates me and I hate them.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘The head says I’m trouble. Rude and difficult. But,’ and here she paused and leant forward, ‘what the flying fuck does she fucking know about anything anyway?’
I couldn’t help but smile, and as I did the tension I’d been feeling since we first laid eyes on each other finally started to fade.
Then she needled her eyes at me and pointed. ‘You don’t hate me, do you?’
‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘Not at all.’
She sat back. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s probably a good thing the ’rents keep me in a boarding school. If they didn’t I’d be tempted to murder them. Maybe not him but definitely her.’
She smiled at me and I smiled back and as I did invisible strands of friendship began to stretch out between us.
‘Where do you go to school?’
‘The local comp. It’s a dump.’
‘I’d give anything to go to a comprehensive. Boarding school is so lame. Being at a comprehensive is cool, isn’t it? I bet you don’t even have to work. Our teachers are obsessed with results and the girls spend most of their time bingeing and chucking up. You’re actually really lucky.’
I thought about my school – teachers drowned out by constant chatting, blocked toilets with permanent Out of Order signs on them, the stench of the canteen – and shrugged.
‘Anyway, I’m imprisoned here for the holidays which is beyond dull. Are you in Cornwall for the summer too?’
I wondered where she thought I might be going. France, maybe? On one of those exchanges where you swap families? Or New York or Tokyo or India? I didn’t answer immediately, allowing myself to enjoy a few precious seconds where as far as Edie Davenport was concerned I was someone who could have a life beyond St Just.
When the pause grew uncomfortable I nodded. ‘Yes, I’m here the whole time.’
‘And presumably you have no friends?’
Her assumption took the wind out of me. I opened my mouth to protest but then decided not to. She was, after all, correct.
‘Good,’ she said emphatically. ‘Then you and I will hang out. We’ll be holiday friends. It’ll be fun.’
Holiday friends? The thought made my skin tingle.
‘I mean, Jesus,’ she said. ‘The thought of being stuck in this place with nobody to talk to for six weeks is unbearable.’
I looked up at the house and wondered if there was anywhere on this planet I’d prefer to be stuck.
Edie gave an impatient sigh. ‘Well then?’ Her question was laced with irritation. It dawned on me she might be reading my silence as lack of enthusiasm so I nodded quickly.
From nowhere a gust of wind blew. Dust and bits of last year’s leaves were lifted off the terrace in a flurry. Eleanor Davenport’s scarf again caught my eye as it was scooped up and tumbled through the air. The wind dropped as suddenly as it had picked up and the scarf fell. It floated downwards to settle on the surface of the pool. The material darkened as it sucked in the water and sank slowly until it hung suspended as if trapped in aspic.
As I stared at the scarf, the stillness was torn in two by a screech. The noise was instantly recognisable. I jumped and grabbed the table instinctively, catching the edge of one of the bottles with my hand. It fell and Coke spilled through the fretwork and collected on the paving slabs below the table.
‘Oh, I’m… sorry…’ I reached for the bottle and quickly righted it whilst casting my eyes about in search of the raven, which I knew was lurking somewhere close.
My skin prickled. I scoured the lawn, the trees, the railings, but there was no sign.
‘I have to go.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. My grandad. I need to get back to see him. He isn’t well.’ I glanced up and scanned the sky and the roof of the house. I let out a breath. There it was. The raven. Perched on the guttering of the roof. Black feathers buffeted by the wind coming off the sea. It screeched again and the sound cut through me like a shard of glass.
I had a vivid flash of the raven on the path. The one Dad and I had seen that day as we hurried home beneath a darkening sky, the first drops of rain spattering our faces.
My lungs tightened.
It’s just a bird.
I could feel the heat of its eyes on me. Polished black marbles. Charcoal beak shining.
‘Will you tell your parents about me?’ I said as I stood.
She didn’t answer immediately.
‘Please don’t.’
‘I said I wouldn’t,’ she said a little crossly. ‘So I won’t.’ Then she gave me a teasing smile. ‘Not today anyway.’
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_a70286b3-2c11-5fb8-a27e-418419396d46)
Edie
July 1986
Edie reached out of her window and struck a red-tipped match against the wall. The head burst into flame with a sputter and she held it to the end of her cigarette, the tobacco crackling as it caught. She inhaled then hung her hand out of the window to allow the smoke to curl upwards into the sky rather than into her room. Not that she cared if her parents smelt it. What were they going to do? Send her back to London? Hardly a punishment.
She could still see Tamsyn on the cliffs in the distance. She leant against the window frame as she smoked, her eyes fixed on the girl’s retreating figure, knotted red hair trailing behind her like a knight’s pennant.
The blazing sun had disappeared behind light grey clouds and it had started to rain. The relief from the heat was welcome. The rain wasn’t normal rain but that particular drizzly nothingness Edie only ever saw in Cornwall. More mist than rain. Cornwall had its own weather system as far as she could tell. There was nothing predictable about it at all. She watched the fine spots of water marking the cigarette, tiny dots turning its whiteness a translucent grey, the same grey, in fact, as Tamsyn’s childish cotton bra.
Edie had never met anybody that innocent before. That sheltered. It was so striking she wondered if perhaps it was put on. A well-rehearsed act designed to elicit sympathy and ward off punishment for breaking into houses. Clever if it was. Unnecessary though. Edie didn’t give a shit about her being in the house. When she’d heard noises downstairs her first thought was she was going to be kidnapped by someone who’d then send her father a ransom note made from newspaper cuttings demanding thousands of pounds, so it was quite a relief to discover a girl her own age as terrified as a rabbit in a snare. Plus she’d literally been about to kill herself with boredom and Tamsyn was a perfect distraction.
When Tamsyn finally disappeared out of view, Edie took a last drag then roughly stubbed her cigarette out on the wall below the window, which stained the paintwork with another charcoal smudge and sent out a shower of tiny sparks. She flicked it and it skimmed through the air and landed on the terrace below. She watched the cigarette end smoulder until it burnt out, a thin trail of smoke wending its way upwards and dissolving to nothing. She lifted her head and looked out over the sea. A handful of boats dotted the blue, and the horizon lay in the distance with exciting lands beyond, each of them offering a different adventure, like chocolates in a box.
She closed the window and shut out the sounds of the waves and gulls, then cast her eyes around the bedroom with disdain. Stuck here for the whole damn summer. Jesus. It was no better than a prison cell. Nothing more than essential furniture – a bed, a wardrobe, a bedside table – and grim cream and grey striped curtains at the window. There were no pictures. No plants in pots. The only thing of mild interest were the four white walls, which changed shade as the sun moved through the day. Edie thought of Tamsyn in the house, her wild hair and regional accent contaminating the designer emptiness which Edie’s parents believed to be the height of sophistication. Minimalism they called it – all the rage in New York, darling – which as far as Edie could tell meant echoing rooms with too much white and expensive pieces of statement furniture chosen to be coveted not used. But in this room, her room, the minimalism wasn’t a design feature. This was just a room that didn’t matter.
Edie lay back on the bed. She’d had a dismal end of term. Everything had spiralled from bad to worse and now she’d had enough of every single person she knew. If life were a poker game, she’d swap her whole hand of cards. Her father barely knew she existed. Her mother was forever gummed up with pills – pills to wake up, pills to calm down, pills for energy, pills for sleep – all liberally washed down with whatever booze was closest to hand. Edie had been in Cornwall for four days and was already climbing the walls. Most of her time was spent daydreaming about escape. Shoving a few things into a bag and leaving in the dead of night, walking down the moonlit lane to the main road and hitching a lift to anywhere. But of course she wouldn’t do it. Everybody knew girls like her who hitchhiked alone got raped or strangled.
Maybe Tamsyn would be enough to get her through the summer. She was certainly interesting. Unusual. Different to the people Edie usually met. She was the daughter of a cleaner for starters. The people Edie knew were all the offspring of doctors or barristers or duller-than-dull bores who ran boring companies doing boring things with numbers. Her own father was something of an anomaly, a well-known restaurant critic turned New York Times bestseller. Whilst her mother was a tragic cliché. A failed model turned socialite wife with a penchant for getting off her face. Between them they didn’t have one friend who was a cleaner or a shopkeeper or anything remotely normal. They’d sealed themselves in a bubble and floated about in a manufactured world of braying voices, nauseating opinions, and a universal lack of morals. It made Edie’s stomach heave. Having no friends was better than having fake ones.
She reached for her Walkman and slipped the headphones on. Yes. Hanging out with Tamsyn, the trespassing daughter of a cleaner, with unkempt red hair and a look of adoration, would hopefully make the purgatory more bearable.
At the very least it would seriously piss Eleanor off.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_b3a45f27-3852-5dda-ad83-28b8cadab891)
Present Day
‘Are you still scared of ravens?’
My hands instinctively ball tightly. Where did that question come from?
I check my rear-view mirror, indicate, turn the wheel. The back seat of the car is piled up with shopping bags. She sits in the passenger seat. Her hands rest on her lap, motionless, ankles crossed, skirt risen above her knees. Her legs are blemish-free; nothing, not even a freckle marks them. It’s as if she’s been airbrushed.
We skirt Hayle. Drive past the mudflats revealed by the tide. Sea birds pick over the exposed silt in search of razor clams and worms and the remains of dead fish.
‘I remember how you were back then. Terrified, weren’t you?’
I don’t answer. I can’t. The familiar dread gathers in my stomach like a sponge soaking up tar. I glance at her. She’s staring at me, eyes fixed, challenging me. She won’t let this go. She’ll push and push. I have no choice but to answer.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Because of the one you saw the day he died?’
I don’t reply.
‘Tell me.’
‘You know.’
‘Tell me again.’ Her voice has dropped to a low angry rumble and my stomach tightens.
‘It was on the path,’ I whisper. Tears prick the backs of my eyes. I don’t want to think about it. ‘Black all over. Calm. It had eyes like tiny lacquered marbles. The sky was getting darker and darker, pressing down on us. In its beak…’ My voice is choked by a knot of emotion. ‘Long thin strands. Like spaghetti. I grabbed his hand. “It’s just a raven,” he said. Granfer says ravens make bad things happen, I whispered. He saw one at the mine once and the next day the tunnel collapsed and two men were crushed.’
I see my father’s face then. He’s laughing at me. Telling me not to believe such superstitious nonsense. I try hard to recall the sound of his laughter but it’s elusive. If only I’d known it would be the last time I’d hear that noise I’d have listened harder, sucked the sound of it right into myself, etched it on to my brain forever.
‘Don’t be daft, Tam, he said. Granfer’s an old fool. Ravens are just birds. Species genus Corvus. He’s trying to scare you. Too much of the Hitchcock in that one. Don’t you worry.’
‘But you were right to worry.’
‘Yes.’
We round the bend and I slow to a halt to let a farmer cross with his cows. Their underbellies swing as they walk, hip bones pushing against black-and-white hides, tails chasing away the flies. The farmer raises his hand in thanks. Then he does a double take. Stares. Brow furrowed in vague – or perhaps judgemental – recognition.
I put the car into gear and drive onwards. The farmer lifts the iron gate into place, stick resting against the dry-stone wall, his fleeting interest in me gone.
‘What was in the raven’s beak?’
I recall how I pressed myself tight into my father, wary eyes bolted on to the bird, my body flooding with building horror.
‘A chick,’ I say softly. My hands grip the steering wheel. Knuckles white. ‘The entrails of a dead chick.’
Flashes of that small pink body batter me. Flecked with newly emerging feathers. Sodden and bloodied. Its stomach ripped open. Entrails, tiny and thin, spewing from the ragged hole. Its baby head twisted unnaturally, spindly legs broken, wings spread-eagled. One eye bulging beneath a translucent membrane. The other pecked out.
‘A kittiwake. A day or two old, Dad said.’
Then without warning the raven had taken flight. Startled me so I squeezed my father tighter. The bird beat the air with powerful wings, dark feathers outstretched, body rising like a phoenix into the bruising sky.
I take a breath and shift my weight as I change gear. I glance out of the window to my right. The sea is silver today. Touched white in places where the wind annoys it. Foreboding wraps around me like a cloak. I pull in to a lay-by. A caravan passes, its driver red-faced, stressed as he negotiates the narrow Cornish lanes and unforgiving locals who speed around corners primed and ready to shake their fists at the tourists.
‘You saw a raven the day I left, didn’t you?’
I look across at her. She is staring straight ahead. My breathing grows tight as if my lungs are silting up. A gull cries and the shadow of a cloud passes over us.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I saw a raven that day too.’
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_19a40de4-97db-5f5c-91bf-f268f7a41157)
Tamsyn
July 1986
I knocked on Granfer’s door as I pushed it open and walked in. My whole body was buzzing from my morning. The raven on the roof was forgotten, blanked out so I was free to relish every moment I’d spent at the house.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I made you a sandwich.’
Granfer hadn’t moved and was still sitting in the worn leather chair he’d had forever. I never understood how he could spend so long staring at the same muddle of jigsaw pieces. It would have driven me mad. But Granfer could sit at the table for hours on end, happy in his own world, poring over the spread of shapes on the table Mum got for him a few years earlier. She’d found the table in the Salvation Army shop in Penzance and brought it back on the bus as proud as could be. It looked like junk to me, with its sun-bleached flimsy laminate top and legs riddled with woodworm, and sure enough, as she set it down in the kitchen, she’d beamed and announced it only cost a pound.
It took her three evenings, a yard of green felt from the haberdashers in Hayle, and a staple gun she borrowed from school to transform it into what she grandly called a card table, perfect, she’d said with a wide smile, for holding a jigsaw.
It wasn’t perfect, but Granfer loved it. Told her it reminded him of one they’d had when Robbie was small, which they’d use for games of Gin Rummy and Snap.
Granfer’s attention switched from the jigsaw to me as I neared him. I put the sandwich on the table, and kissed him on his hair, which was thick and white with a yellow tinge and in need of a wash.
‘Fish paste on white sliced.’
‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘I was feeling a… bit peckish.’
‘How’s it going?’ I gestured at the puzzle.
‘Got the corners... and that far... edge. But… blimey… it’s a bugger.’
‘I’ll give you a hand.’
I sat on the small stool beside him and leant over the table, resting my chin on one hand to stare at the pieces. His breathing was loud in my ears. Each inhalation a fight to draw air into his lungs which had been ruined by dust from the mines. I tuned out his painful rasping by reliving my encounter with Edie Davenport. I savoured every detail, from the warmth of the paving stones beneath my feet, to the look of admiration she gave my dress, to each delicious elongated vowel which dripped from her lips. It was all so unreal, too unreal perhaps. If it wasn’t for the syrupy taste of Coca-Cola lingering in my mouth, I’d worry the whole episode was a figment of my imagination.
A triumphant holler from Granfer intruded on my thoughts. He patted my knee with excitement and launched forward to slot the piece of puzzle he’d found into the space that matched it in the jigsaw. It was a section of sky, half-cloud, half-blue, and he jabbed it vigorously into place.
‘Well… that’s one step… closer to finishing. Only another two… hundred and fifty-seven… to go.’ He beamed at me, revealing his crooked stained teeth, and a glint of gold from an ancient filling. ‘I’ll have… it done in a… jiffy.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Ta, love.’ His eyes drifted back to the pieces again. ‘With two and a half… please.’
‘Mum says no more than one.’
He made a face.
‘So don’t tell her, okay?’
He winked and tapped the side of his nose. As he did he erupted into a fit of coughing. Though I’d seen this a hundred times – coughing, spluttering, fingers bent into claws as they dug into the arms of his chair – it still shocked me. You’d have thought I’d got used to it, but each time, with each attack, I was terrified it wasn’t going to stop until his oxygen-starved body collapsed dead on the floor.
I reached for his hand and rubbed it helplessly. His eyes widened and the whites turned bloodshot as the effort of pulling air into his ravaged lungs popped capillaries in tiny scarlet explosions. He struggled to get his handkerchief from his sleeve and to his mouth.
I jumped up and went to the bed. Dragged the oxygen tank close enough to get the mask over his head. As I moved his hand out of the way to position it over his nose and mouth, I tried not to look at the blood on the cotton of his handkerchief.
‘Breathe, Granfer.’ His body was rigid as if somebody was sending an electric charge through him. ‘Breathe.’ The plastic mask misted and cleared with the breaths he managed to draw in. I chewed my lip, wondering if I should leave him to shake Jago awake, but just as I was about to stand up, the tortured gasps seemed to abate and Granfer’s face lost its violent purple hue. I glanced down at the smear of dark blood on the handkerchief. He caught me looking and balled it up to hide it.
When I was younger I used to daydream he had a transplant, that his black and shrivelled lungs were cut out and fresh pink ones sewn into their place. I’d imagine him waking from the anaesthetic with silent breathing, air slipping in and out of him discreetly and without pain. I’d see him flying kites on Sennen Beach with me and Jago, or rowing us out to catch mackerel and ling which we’d later bake into a stargazy pie, little fish heads poking out from the pastry with their eyes cooked to a cloudy grey.
‘I’ve met a friend,’ I said, when his body lost the last of its rigidity. ‘She lives in the white house on the cliff. You know the one? The one Dad loved.’
He gestured for me to lift up his mask and I did, leaving it on his forehead like a jaunty Christmas party hat. ‘Is she as nice… as Penny?’
Granfer had only met Penny once. It was a few years ago when she knocked on our door with a school sweater of mine.
This is Tamsyn’s.
My heart had skipped when I recognised her voice. Someone from my school at our house? It felt dangerous and unsafe, as if two planets had veered off orbit and crashed into each other.
She’s here… Do you… want to see… her?
No, it’s fine—
Tamsyn!
Then he’d collapsed into one of his fits and I’d run out from my hiding place behind the door in the sitting room to make sure he was okay. Penny was eyeing my grandad with thinly veiled revulsion. I noticed he had a globule of mucus threaded with blood on his sweater. I wiped it off with my sleeve then slipped my hand into his and squeezed. I faced her, pushing back my shoulders and raising my chin. She thrust out my sweater.
I picked it up by mistake.
I gave her the evils as I took it but she didn’t notice because she’d gone back to staring at Granfer.
Thanks then.
Penny forced a tight smile and stepped backwards off the doorstep.
Mum said to say hi to yours.
Then she was gone like a dog from the traps. Penny was the only person from school who’d ever come to our house and because of this Granfer had decided she was my best friend.
‘She’s nicer than Penny,’ I said.
‘Must be… a cracker then.’ He smiled and lowered the mask and went back to the jigsaw pieces, with the sound of oxygen hissing softly in the background.
I left his room and stood outside Jago’s door. I paused to listen. I wanted to wake him so he could tell me not to worry about Granfer’s fit. He always managed to calm me. But I knew if I dragged him from sleep he’d be cross and would probably refuse to talk to me, so instead I went back into my box. I called it my box because that’s what it was. A room with only enough space for a bed and a small bedside table. The door didn’t open fully and hit the bed before it was even halfway. There was a shelf that ran around the top of the room which Dad had made before I was born when they decided to use the box room for my cot rather than make Jago share with a baby. It held my clothes and although I could only get to it if I stood on my bed it was fine as long as I kept them in neat folded piles. My underwear was under the bed in a wooden crate that had once held oranges from Spain, and beside it was another box which contained all my other bits and pieces including my scrapbook.
I slid the box out and retrieved the scrapbook then sat cross-legged on the bed and slowly leafed through it. There was the yellowed newspaper cutting that made the announcement of the date and time his memorial plaque was to be unveiled at the RNLI station in Sennen. Then the small red flower I’d picked from a bush at the churchyard on the day we buried him, which was now dry and crispy. There were photographs too. One of me on his shoulders, his hands clasping my ankles, the remains of an ice cream smudged over my face. My favourite was the one of me and Jago, arms around each other, heads tipped close with Dad behind us, all posing beside the sandcastle we’d built and smiling at Mum behind the camera. Three sets of happy eyes squinting into the sunshine.
I made the scrapbook when I was twelve. Nineteen months and twenty-three days after he died. Mum had taken me to the Cape surgery, desperate for anything which might help me sleep through the night.
She has nightmares.
Mum had paused and rubbed her face hard, tears welling in her exhausted, bloodshot eyes.
The doctor glanced at the clock on the wall and cleared his throat impatiently. He leant forward, elbows on knees, close enough to suffocate me with his nasty aftershave and told me to fill a scrapbook with things which reminded me of Dad. Happy things. Memories. Mum was unconvinced and grumbled about the quack doctor all the way to Ted’s as I jogged to keep up with her. But she did as she was told and bought a scrapbook made of coloured sugar-paper and a glue stick. It didn’t stop my nightmares but I loved making it and when I felt tense it definitely calmed me. I was glad the doctor suggested it.
My brother’s door creaked open and I heard his footsteps going towards the bathroom. I closed the book and slipped it beneath my pillow for later, then went into his room. I sat on his unmade bed – still warm from his body and smelling of cigarettes and unwashed sheets – to wait for him.
‘Morning, half-pint,’ he said as he came back in, hair ruffled, eyes gummed up with sleep.
‘You know it’s after lunchtime, don’t you?’
He ignored my comment. ‘First day of the holidays?’
I nodded.
‘Bored already?’
‘No.’ I reached for the copy of Playboy which lay on the chest of drawers beside his bed and idly flicked through it while he dressed. I paused to look at a dark-haired girl with wet lips the colour of bubblegum who splayed her legs to reveal her privates without any shame at all.
‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘Not leaving much to the imagination is she?’
‘Get off that,’ he snapped, as his head emerged from his faded AC/DC T-shirt. He snatched it from me then opened his top drawer and stuffed it under his pants and socks.
‘Why do you want to look at pictures like that anyway?’
‘I don’t look at the pictures. I buy it for the stories and articles.’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’
His irritation slipped for a second or two to reveal a brief smile. He smiled so rarely these days which was such a shame because when he did it made his eyes sparkle and he looked even more handsome. His eyes were definitely one of his best features. They were hazel, and the exact same shade as his hair. Colour-coordinated, according to Mum. But they were nearly always dulled by sadness. Laughter replaced by melancholy. His spirit sucked out, leaving just the pretty packaging. Dad dying was bad enough, but then the mine closed and took his job and in the months since then he hadn’t been able to find work. The guilt bore down on him. Dad had been big on work and responsibility, believed with passion that everybody should pay their own way in the world.
Graft, he called it.
Graft. That’s all I expect. You can’t hold your head up if you’re not willing to graft.
Mum had tried to hide her fear when Jago told her the mine was done for. White faced, she’d sat at the table and leafed through the red-topped bills to work out which ones needed paying soonest.
It’ll be okay, love. You’ll get another job soon. I know you will.
Wracked by the weight of responsibility, his face had fallen. I’d seen that look on him before. The day after our father died. I’d walked into the kitchen and found him huddled on the floor with his arms clutched around his legs and his cheeks stained with dirty tear-tracks. I was ten, mad with hunger, and even though I’d knocked and knocked, Mum hadn’t come out of her room. I told him I was starving but he didn’t reply. He didn’t even move, not a muscle, and it scared me. It was as if he and Mum had stopped working. As if their batteries had run out.
Jago?
I knelt down next to him and put my hand on his knee.
Jago? Can you hear me? It’s like rats gnawing my belly up.
Maybe it was because I used Dad’s words – what he used to say to us when we were starving hungry – because Jago seemed to click back on. He turned to look at me and I could see his brain whirring behind his eyes. Then he gave a purposeful nod and stood. I sat on the floor, stomach rumbling, and watched him silently walk to the cupboard and get out a pan. Then he took a wooden spoon from the drawer and three eggs from the rack, and set about scrambling them, cracking each into a mug and whisking them with the fork. After he’d heated the eggs on the gas he tipped them onto a slice of toast on a plate and put the plate on the table with a fork beside it. Then he walked back to me, reached for my hand and led me to the table. I stared at the eggs. Two tiny bits of shell decorated the top.
He noticed me looking and picked them out with his fingers.
Eat up, Tam.
The eggs weren’t bad, but I couldn’t take more than a mouthful. I think my tummy was hurting because of crying not hunger, because the food was too hard to swallow and got stuck in my throat like lumps of rock. Jago squeezed my hand and we both sat and stared at the cold egg.
I’m the dad now, aren’t I?
His whispered voice had cracked the silence in two.
I often look back and wish I’d told him, No, of course not, you’re a child who’s lost his father. But I didn’t. I was frightened and sad and missed my dad so much I could hardly breathe. Right at that moment, having Jago as my dad was a better prospect than having no dad at all. So I looked at him and nodded solemnly.
Yes, you are. You’re the dad now.
Jago and I heard the front door open then close, and then Mum call up to tell us she was home.
‘Right, I’ll see you later, half-pint. If she asks just say I’m doing a shift at the yard, okay?’ He grabbed his jacket and pouch of tobacco from the chest of drawers.
‘When are you going to tell her?’
‘Tell her what?’
‘That you don’t actually have a job at the yard.’
He stopped dead, defences up as if I’d flicked a switch. He glared at me. ‘You serious?’
‘You shouldn’t lie to her.’
‘I’m not lying to her.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘I’m giving her money, aren’t I? She doesn’t need to know where it comes from.’
I didn’t reply, hoping my silence would convey my disapproval.
‘Jesus, Tam. What? You’re the honesty police all of a sudden?’ He gave me a look. ‘I know you lie too, so don’t get all high and mighty.’
I had a flash of the key with the green tag which I’d slipped back into the tin and the rainbow dress that hung in her wardrobe, still damp from my swim, so I relented, nodding, and said,‘Sure, if she asks me, I’ll tell her.’
Mum’s footfalls sounded on the stairs and he swore under his breath. The door opened and he moved to go past her with muttered words I couldn’t decipher.
She stepped in front of him. ‘Can I have a quick chat?’
‘I’m late.’
‘Jago—’
But he was gone, feet hammering down the stairs, ears closed to her. The front door slammed and the walls around us shuddered.
‘Don’t slam the door!’ she shouted. Then she turned to me and forced a light smile. ‘What’s he late for?’ Mum was trying her hardest to sound casual and disinterested.
‘The yard.’ I fixed my eyes on the floor.
‘Again? That’s good. Maybe Rick’ll offer him something full-time.’
I nodded, knotting my fingers into the duvet on his bed, then glanced up at her. She stared at me for a moment or two, waiting, I think, for more information, but then she took a weary breath and gave a quick nod.
‘Cup of tea?’ she asked as she scooped up an empty mug and a sausage roll wrapper from his chest of drawers.
‘That would be nice.’ I was relieved we were safely off the subject of Jago and Rick. Tea was safe. ‘I said I’d get Granfer one, but I haven’t made it yet.’
I followed her out of his room but as we reached the stairs she glanced back at me briefly with a sudden air of awkwardness. ‘Gareth dropped me home. He’s come in for a cup too.’
My stomach leapt up my throat and I stopped dead. ‘But why?’
‘It seemed rude not to ask him in.’ Her eyes flickered from side to side avoiding mine as her lips twitched with obvious discomfort.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been so shocked. Gareth had spent years trying to wheedle his way into our house and he’d clearly succeeded in wearing her down.
‘Oh, love, no need to look like that. It’s not for long.’
‘You know, I don’t want the tea now. I fancy a walk. Will you put two sugars in Granfer’s tea?’ Emotion sprung up and choked my words so I had to fight to stop from crying. ‘I know you don’t like him having more than one, but I promised. And he… he had a pretty bad turn earlier so—’
‘Tamsyn—’
‘It’s fine. I need some air, that’s all.’ I tried to move past her but she grabbed my arm. We looked at each other, neither of us said anything for a moment or two, until finally her eyebrows knotted and she forced a weak smile.
‘It’s just a cup of tea,’ she said softly.
Biting back tears, I eased my arm out of her grip, and ran down the stairs. As I passed the kitchen, I caught the shape of him out of the corner of my eye, and bolted my gaze to the floor as I grabbed my bag off the hook.
‘Tamsyn!’ Mum called.
As soon as I was safely out of sight of the house, I leant back against the wall and kicked it a couple of times with my heel.
It’s just a cup of tea.
Irritation needled through me. I’d been so excited coming back from The Cliff House and now all I felt was angry. Gareth bloody Spence in our bloody kitchen having a-bloody-nother cup of tea.
I pushed myself off the wall and walked back to the corner of our road. Our front door was closed with no sign of Mum looking for me and Gareth’s crappy car was still parked outside. They were probably sitting at the kitchen table having a good old laugh about teenagers and hormones and slamming doors.
‘Get out of our house, Gareth bloody Spence,’ I whispered through gritted teeth.
I wasn’t going to go back. Not while he was there. No, I was going back to The Cliff House.
The car park was now filled with vehicles parked in obedient rows. I made sure to keep my eyes on the floor as I passed people. I had neither the time nor desire to exchange pleasantries with idiot visitors whose only concern was whether they’d prefer a pub lunch or pasties on the beach.
Relief flooded me the moment I pressed the binoculars against my face. Gareth bloody Spence was gone and she was there, Eleanor, on the terrace of The Cliff House.
‘Hello,’ I whispered. ‘I met your daughter this morning. Isn’t she beautiful? Just like you.’
Eleanor was lying on her sun lounger with a glass beside her and a glossy magazine in her hand. I twisted the dial to make her bigger, then refocused on her outstretched legs, which were scattered with beads of water like glitter. Her scarf was wrapped around her body and I felt the phantom touch of the silk against my skin. I imagined lying beside her, my leg bent like hers, my toe stroking the lacquered surface of the pool.
A movement over by the house caught my attention. It was him. Max Davenport. My stomach knotted as I watched him stroll over to her. He wore a pink collared shirt, beige shorts, and his blue shoes, and he carried a newspaper tucked under one arm. He stood above her, speaking words I couldn’t hear. She tilted her head to look at him, raised her sunglasses on top of her head.
‘You look comfortable, darling,’ I said under my breath. ‘Oh, I am, darling. Isn’t it bliss? Would you like me to fetch you anything? No, my love, I’m perfectly happy. I do love you so. Oh darling! I love you too. Who in the world could be happier than us?’
Eleanor Davenport lowered her sunglasses and returned to her magazine and he crossed the terrace to sit at the table where he shook open his newspaper.
Then I remembered Edie.
I lifted my sights to the windows on the first floor. Scanned them from left to right. Which was hers? I knew the one with the largest window on the far left was her parents’, but which of the other three rooms was Edie’s?
I moved the binoculars across and inhaled sharply. She was there. Standing at the window two along from theirs. Her palm rested against the glass. Was she looking at me? I dropped the binoculars as if the metal was molten and threw myself forward to flatten my body against the grass. I held my breath and, keeping myself hidden, I slowly lifted my head and raised the binoculars up again. I parted the grasses and manoeuvred so I could see through the vegetation for a better view of her window. I focused on her face. I exhaled. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking down at her parents on the terrace below. Her gaze fixed. Face blank. As I watched she turned away from the window and slipped backwards into the shadows behind her.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the sky. White clouds raced across the blue. I rested the binoculars on my stomach and coiled my fingers into the grass. I closed my eyes and the sun danced in patterns on my eyelids as I listened to the seagulls and insects scurrying in amongst the heat-dried grasses. I conjured Edie and allowed my mind to drift into daydream. I pictured her back at the window and instead of slipping into the darkness she caught sight of me and waved. Then she opened the window and leant out to call my name. My chest swelled with joy as I waved back at her. Then she beckoned to me. I heard myself laughing as I skipped down the grassy slope and ran along the path to the gate. I threw it open and strode up the lawn. Edie burst out of the house and ran down to greet me whilst Mr and Mrs Davenport stood arm in arm, her with the silk scarf wrapped around her, him in his soft blue leather shoes. They were telling me to hurry up. Telling me how pleased they were to see me. Then in the background I saw my father. He was sitting at the table on the terrace. He held a cigarette in his long slim fingers, a ghostly trail of smoke wending its way upwards, the sun draping him, lighting him up like an angel.
He smiled at me and, as I approached, he nodded his approval.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_674bbbb6-c8e1-5b90-be05-df11f7c0892a)
Tamsyn
July 1986
All I could think about was going back to The Cliff House to see Edie again. Reasons to go tumbled over and over in my mind as I lay in bed and stared at the cracks that fractured the ceiling.
Perhaps I could tell her the green-tagged key had fallen out of my pocket and my mother was furious and had ordered me to retrace my steps? Or I could tell her I’d lost a ring, or a bracelet, or a pair of socks. Maybe I could offer to show her around? Be her guide. Take her to Porthcurno and the Minack, to St Ives and Logan’s Rock, to Land’s End, or to Penzance to buy paper bags of penny sweets and watch the helicopters take off on their way to the Scilly Isles. I imagined walking her around St Just, our postcard-pretty town. Imagined my patter: Population four thousand, most westerly settlement in mainland Britain, until recently home to a thriving mining industry…
But even if I found the perfect excuse I still couldn’t go. It was Friday morning and on Friday mornings Mum cleaned at The Cliff House in preparation for their possible arrival. Of course, she had no idea they were already there, that they’d arrived early and with a daughter she didn’t know they had.
I lay on my bed and watched her through my open door as she got dressed on the landing. She took her cleaning clothes out of the airing cupboard, her stone-washed denim jeans, white T-shirt, a grey sweatshirt over the top. For work she always tied her hair into a tight ponytail, high enough to be out of her way, and her earrings were simple gold hoops. She didn’t wear any make-up, just some briskly applied Oil of Ulay.
‘You okay?’ she asked with a warm smile as she caught me watching her.
I turned on my side on the pillow and nodded.
‘You look happy snuggled up there,’ she said. ‘I wish I could come and jump in with you. But’ —she sighed— ‘no rest for the char lady.’
I was desperate to share the fact they had a daughter. A girl with white-blonde hair who was called Edie after très glamoureux Edith Piaf. But I stayed quiet. If I told her, she’d ask questions and I might let slip I’d been taking the key and letting myself in, which I knew would send her mental.
She closed the front door and I listened to her footsteps ringing on the pavement until they faded to nothing. My immediate thought was to get out to the rock with my binoculars and watch her in the house with them, but it wasn’t worth the risk. She knew about the spot where Dad used to take me. He’d taken her there too. Even as a boy it had been his favourite place to watch the sun set over the sea and spy on the gulls and kittiwakes and choughs. The chances of her glancing in the direction of the point were significant and if she saw me I’d have to explain why I was there. So I tried to ignore the gnawing lure of the house by keeping myself busy. I cleaned the kitchen, washed-up and dried, changed the sheets on Granfer’s bed then sat with him a while, listening to him attempting to breathe whilst grumbling about the godforsaken government who murdered the tin mines and this being the hardest jigsaw he’d ever tried to do. Then I made him a cup of tea with two and a half sugars in which made him wink and flash me his gap-toothed smile.
When I finally heard the latch click and the front door open, I ran to the top of the stairs, desperate to hear about the house and the Davenports and Edie.
She was hanging her coat on the hook.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Good time?’
‘Cleaning?’ She raised her eyebrows and wiped her forehead with her hand. ‘It’s hot today. And I nearly missed the bus and had to run.’ She paused, stared up at me, her brow knotted. ‘The Davenports were there.’
It was then I noticed she held an envelope.
‘What’s that in your hand?’
She looked down as if confused by it. ‘It’s for you.’
‘For me?’
She hesitated. ‘Their daughter asked me to give it to you.’
‘What?’ I squealed and ran down the stairs taking them two at a time and when I got to the bottom I thrust out my hand.
She didn’t give it to me. Instead her hand moved fractionally closer towards her body.
‘Can I have it then?’
She furrowed her brow. ‘I didn’t even know they had—’
But I didn’t let her finish. ‘I can’t believe she wrote to me!’ As I grabbed the letter from her an electric charge shot through me. I stared down at my name which was written across it in the neatest writing I’d ever seen, all the letters even and rounded and perfectly joined up. I beamed at Mum but my smile faded when I saw her expression.
‘How do you know each other?’ she asked with forced indifference.
I gripped the letter hard as my brain turned over and over.
‘Oh. Well, yesterday…’ I hesitated. ‘You know… when you were working at the chip shop? It was a really nice day so I went for a walk. On the cliffs. And, well, I ended up going past their house, and, this girl – their daughter, it turns out – was on the terrace. And I smiled at her. Like you always tell me to. I mean, you’re always saying I should smile more, aren’t you? Anyway, I did smile and she said something. Hello, I think. Then she said something about the weather. Isn’t it sunny? Or maybe something about rain coming. Anyway, we sort of got talking and then she asked me to come in for a drink. A Coke. One of the fancy American ones from the adverts. I think her name’s Edie. Something like that.’
Mum nodded vaguely, her face slick with mild confusion.
‘She’s here for the whole summer,’ I said.
‘Yes, Mrs Davenport told me today. Christ, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I opened the door and the woman was sitting there. I wish I’d known. I’d have worn something a little nicer. You should have seen the way she looked me up and down. Snooty cow. I hated cleaning with her there. So much nicer when it’s just me. Can you believe she actually followed me round? I swear she ran her finger along a windowsill after I’d cleaned it. I mean, even though I know I cleaned it I was terrified it would come up covered in grime.’ She sighed. ‘She said Mr Davenport is finishing a book. Can’t be in London, she said, because it’s too noisy or too crowded or something like that. So they’re here until the end of August. Anyway…’ She took a breath and smiled. ‘Whatever the reason, she’s given me more hours. Three times a week plus more on the weekend if they have guests.’
‘That’s good,’ I said, relieved she seemed happy enough with my garbled account of meeting Edie.
‘It’s come just when we needed it, to be honest. I don’t think we’ve ever had this little money.’ She rubbed her face. ‘Maybe Gareth will advance me some this month.’
The letter throbbed in my hand. All I wanted to do was tear it open and I willed her to let me go.
‘Mrs Davenport said they need some help in the garden. Painting the railings. She asked if I knew any local tradesmen who might be able to do it. I was cheeky and suggested your brother. Obviously he’d have to fit it in around the yard, but he’s only there every now and then, so it would be ideal. She wants to meet him first to make sure he’s suitable. Whatever that means. Is he still asleep?’
‘I don’t think so. I saw him up earlier.’ A lie. He hadn’t emerged from his room yet but she hated him sleeping past eleven and I didn’t want her to storm up there and wake him just so they could fight about it.
I stroked the envelope with my thumb.
‘How’s Granfer doing?’
‘Nearly finished the sky.’
‘He’ll be pleased about that.’
We stood in silence for a few minutes. She glanced down at the envelope with an expectant look on her face. I held it behind my back and she nodded imperceptibly then turned to go into the kitchen.
Clutching the letter to my chest I shot up the stairs like a bullet from a rifle. With the door to my box closed, I fell onto my bed, tore open the envelope and unfolded the single piece of heavy cream notepaper.
Dear Tamsyn
Can you come over later? Max is doing a barbecue for supper. I asked if I could invite a friend and he said YES. Your mother didn’t know if you were busy or not.
I REALLY hope you aren’t!!
Please say you’ll come! I am LITERALLY going out of my mind with the boredom. I think I might DIE of it soon!
Call me on Penzance 3483 to arrange.
Edie x
To make sure I hadn’t misread a word of it, I read it three times over. Then I held the notepaper up to my face and kissed it. This was the single most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. Had she really called me a friend? I read the note a fourth time to make sure while a heat burnt inside me like a bonfire. An invite to a barbecue? I couldn’t believe it. I’d never even had a barbecue. But there I was – me! – with a proper invitation in blue fountain pen on watermarked paper. No more sneaking around. No more fear of getting caught. I was going to The Cliff House as an invited and welcome guest. It was – as Edie would say – literally a dream come true.
‘Mum! Mum!’ I called as I ran down the stairs. ‘Can I borrow ten pence?’
I grabbed her bag from the hook and took out her purse then hared out of the front door. She called something after me, but I didn’t hear what she’d said so I lifted a hand and shouted, ‘Back in a sec!’
When I reached the telephone box on the corner I yanked open the door, recoiling a little from the smell inside. Jago said it was where drunk men peed after the pub closed. So disgusting. Breathing through my mouth and not my nose, I pushed my hair off my face and blew sharply upwards against my sweating brow, whilst retrieving a coin from Mum’s purse.
My hand shook as I picked up the receiver and placed it between my shoulder and cheek. Holding the letter up to read the telephone number, I carefully turned the dial for each digit. As I waited for the numbers to click though I had the sudden fear that this was an elaborate practical joke, that perhaps the number she gave me was made up and she was hiding nearby, watching me make a fool of myself with tears of laughter pouring down her cheeks. My stomach churned so ferociously I nearly slammed the receiver down. But then it began to ring. Two rings in my ear. Two in The Cliff House. Two in my ear…
I pictured their phone on the hall table. Black and new-fangled with buttons like a calculator. I imagined its ring echoing around the house and Edie walking towards it with her hand outstretched. Nerves catapulted around my body. What on earth was I going to say? I had to keep calm. I’d been invited for tea. If I wanted to go – and, oh God, I did – then I had to get through this.
Someone picked up the phone. Then the phone beeped demanding its money. I swallowed and pushed in the coin. It dropped into the box and the beeps silenced.
‘Penzance three four eight three?’ said the poshest voice I’d ever heard. It wasn’t Edie. It must be her. Mrs Davenport with her creamy skin and honeyed hair. My stomach pitched.
‘Erm, hello…’ My throat constricted, forcing my words into a strangled squeak. ‘It’s… Tamsyn.’
‘Who?’
‘Can I… speak to Edie?’
There was talking in the background. Muffled. The receiver must have been smothered by a hand as the voices became faint. Then distant footsteps. A muted ‘It’s for you.’
Then Edie’s voice. ‘Tamsyn?’
‘Hi. I… got your… letter.’ My finger went to my mouth and I chewed on my nail, now certain this couldn’t be real and she was about to explode with cruel laughter.
But she didn’t.
‘Can you come?’ she said.
I closed my eyes as relief flooded me. ‘Yes,’ I breathed.
‘That’s great.’
‘I’d love to. I really would. And I’ve got nothing planned. Nothing at all.’ I was aware I was speaking too fast, tripping over my words in my desperation to get them out.
‘Excellent. Max thinks he’s God’s gift to barbecuing, so I apologise in advance for any weirdness. And bring your swimming costume. I’m not sure your bra and knickers are appropriate.’
She laughed and a prickling heat swept over my neck and cheeks as I relived hauling myself out of the pool in my translucent underwear while she looked on, clothed and beautiful.
‘Come as soon as you can, will you? I wasn’t lying when I said I was dying of boredom. I have no idea how you exist down here. God, I miss London.’
The beeps signalling the end of my ten pence began to chirrup. ‘Okay. I’m walking, but I’ll leave now.’
‘When you get here we—’
The line clicked dead so I missed the end of her sentence.
Despite being delirious with happiness, the claustrophobic atmosphere in our dark cramped house closed in around me in an instant. I hated it. There used to be a time when this house felt like the safest place in the world. When the air rang with laughter not devastated silence. It had been a place of bedtime stories and playing Snakes and Ladders in front of the fire. Now it was cold and unwelcoming, any joy snuffed out by loss and worry.
My mother stepped out of the kitchen as I came in. She held a packet of Jaffa Cakes. ‘Want one?’
‘Jaffa Cakes? What are we celebrating?’
‘My extra hours.’
‘Maybe later,’ I said, as casually as I could manage. ‘I’m going to the Davenports’ for a barbecue supper.’
‘A what?’
‘Supper.’
‘Supper?’ Her face clouded in confusion again.
‘Tea. A barbecue tea. Edie asked me. That was what was in the letter. I checked. Just now on the phone.’ Saying the words aloud made it all seem even more thrilling and I beamed. ‘She said bring a swimsuit.’
A look crossed my mother’s face which I couldn’t read. ‘Why?’
‘For a swim.’
‘No, I mean why’s she asked you for tea?’
‘Supper not tea. And I already told you. We met yesterday and she likes me.’
My mother shook her head. Her brow knotted. ‘She likes you?’
The way she kept repeating everything I said whilst looking so bloody suspicious made me want to scream, but I took a breath and kept my voice level. ‘It is possible for people to like me, you know.’
‘I know. I’m not saying… It’s just…’
My irritation boiled over like a forgotten milk pan. ‘What?’
‘Well, they’re… I don’t know. It’s…’
‘It’s what?’
‘They’re different. To us.’
‘What are you talking about? They’re not royalty.’
‘They might as well be when it comes to the likes of you and me.’ She sighed and rested her hand on her forehead. ‘Look, he’s rich and famous, in and out of the papers, and they’ve got so much money.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything anymore. Things aren’t like they used to be. People aren’t so stuck in their places.’
‘I’m their cleaner.’ My mother looked down at her hands and regarded them as if she wished they weren’t her own. ‘I’m not sure about it.’
‘Edie knows what you do and she doesn’t care. So why should we?’ I crossed my arms and jutted a hip out.
She sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right. She’s bound to be bored being an only child in that big empty house. I can see why she’d want to spend time with someone her own age. But be careful, okay? I’m not sure about any of them, if I’m honest. Especially Mrs Davenport.’ She put the packet of Jaffa Cakes on the side, then smiled at me. ‘I’ll save a couple for you. Granfer and Jago will be on those like weevils. Will you tell her – Mrs Davenport – that I’ll send your brother up in a bit? Remind her it’s about the painting. And say nice things about him, that he works hard and he’s suitable.’
When she said the word suitable she wrinkled her nose. I could tell she was implying something, that there was some sort of meaning hidden beneath the words she spoke, but I decided not to pick up on it. I didn’t have time. I had to find something to wear for a barbecue at The Cliff House. I wished more than anything I hadn’t already worn Mum’s rainbow dress. It would have been perfect, but I’d read a copy of Cosmopolitan in the doctor’s waiting room once which said you could never wear the same dress twice, so I’d have to search out something else.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_2d73179d-0c41-5da4-8f78-73043609570b)
Edie
July 1986
Edie walked through the double doors that led out to the terrace and pulled her cigarettes from her pocket. She removed one from the box and paused to light it, shielding it from the breeze with a cupped hand.
The lawn was soft underfoot and the flowers flanking it teemed with bees and butterflies which flew busily from one bloom to the next. The wind was too slight to dilute the dry heat. She leant over the railings and the sun beat down on her, reflecting off the surface of the sea so it shone like a polished silver salver. The gulls were so high they were no more than specks on the cloudless sky and their incessant screeching was barely audible. Edie watched the path and chain-smoked until Tamsyn finally appeared round the bend. As soon as she saw her she stubbed her cigarette out on the railing and dropped the end into the spiky thatch of gorse on the other side of the boundary.
Tamsyn hadn’t seen her and Edie noticed she was walking with a strange sense of purpose, like a soldier marching towards the front line. The wind was clearly stronger on the brow of the cliff and buffeted her hair in a glorious knot of red as if the strands were fighting their tethers in an attempt to escape. Edie waited for her to notice her, but she was too intent on striding the path, concentrating as if she were counting her steps.
When Tamsyn pushed open the gate, Edie called down to her.
The girl looked momentarily surprised but then her face cracked a shy smile and she waved, using her whole arm like a flag, a childish gesture which accentuated how immature she appeared in her denim shorts and shirt tied at the waist. The outfit could have been sexy and grown-up but the shorts were too baggy and there was something wrong in the way she’d knotted the shirt. Too innocent. More Jackie mag than Daisy Duke. Edie made a mental note to tell her that if she tied it tighter and higher to reveal more stomach, and undid an extra button to show some cleavage, she’d look a hundred times better.
‘My father hasn’t even lit the barbecue yet so I thought we could listen to some music in my room,’ she said as soon as Tamsyn was near enough.
Before Tamsyn could answer Edie turned to walk inside. She checked over her shoulder and was pleased to see the girl following like an obedient puppy.
‘What music do you like?’ Edie said as they walked up the stairs.
‘Anything.’
Tamsyn didn’t follow Edie into her room, but hovered at the doorway, her fingers twisting around each other, eyes glued to the floor. Her reticence was annoying and Edie wondered if she’d made a mistake and spending time with this girl was going to be more tedious than diverting. Where was the girl who’d broken into the house and stripped off to swim in their pool? That was the girl Edie liked. This timid version didn’t interest her at all. She picked up her Walkman from her bedside table and sat on her bed, crossing her feet at her ankles, deliberately not looking at the girl in the doorway.
‘I like your room,’ Tamsyn said then. ‘Mine’s tiny.’
Edie looked up. ‘Smaller than this?’
Tamsyn nodded. ‘Way smaller. Only room for my bed. I can’t even open the door properly.’
Edie shifted over on the bed. Tamsyn seemed to take the hint and walked over and sat down beside her. Edie pressed play on the Walkman, then pulled each of the foam headphones off in turn. She pressed one against her ear and offered the other to Tamsyn.
‘Do you know The Cure?’
Tamsyn shook her head.
‘You’ll love them. Robert Smith is a total sex god. Sexy in a way that isn’t really sexy but is, if you know what I mean? This track is “Killing an Arab”.’
Tamsyn held the headphone to her ear.
‘What do you think?’ Edie asked, watching her face carefully.
‘I like it,’ Tamsyn replied, sounding as if she was telling the truth. ‘I haven’t heard anything like it before but it’s brilliant.’
Edie rested her head against the back wall, pulled her knees up and draped her arms over them. Tamsyn copied her, adopting exactly the same position, except with her head turned towards Edie. The girl’s eyes were bolted to her. Edie tried to ignore it for a bit, assuming she’d eventually look away, but she didn’t and it became irritating.
Edie pressed the stop button on the Walkman and the music quietened with a loud click.
‘Are you all right?’ She turned to face Tamsyn.
‘Sorry?’ Tamsyn’s lips twitched nervously.
‘You’re staring. It’s unnerving. And a bit weird, if I’m truthful.’
Tamsyn’s face flushed fuchsia, clashing horribly with her hair. Edie was hoping she would laugh and say something cool or even combative, but she didn’t, she just clammed up and mumbled apologetically. Dull. Boring and dull.
Edie knelt up and shuffled to the end of her bed and climbed off. She wrapped the headphone wires around her Walkman then faced Tamsyn with crossed arms. She was going to tell her to leave. This wasn’t fun. This was worse than being alone. She’d tell her the barbecue was off and her plans for the summer had changed and didn’t include her anymore.
But as she opened her mouth, Tamsyn swung her legs off the bed and looked up at her, eyes fixed and unwavering. ‘My dad died.’
Edie raised her eyebrows. A dead father definitely made her interesting again.
‘I think I come over a bit weird because of it.’
Edie didn’t say anything.
‘Sorry. Maybe I should have told you sooner. I—’
‘How old were you?’
‘Ten.’
Edie felt a small twist in her stomach. Ten years old. A little younger than the age she’d been when she first found her mother passed out on the floor, pale and still. For a while she’d been convinced she was dead and it terrified her. She’d sat beside her for ages, holding her hand, stroking her, begging her to wake up. Then her father appeared and sent her out of their bedroom. As she left she heard him muttering crossly, saying ‘at this rate she’d be dead before Christmas.’ Shortly afterwards Edie returned to school and every night she went to bed convinced she’d get a message in the morning that this time her mother hadn’t woken up.
‘What happened to him?’ she asked, sitting down beside Tamsyn on the bed.
‘He drowned.’
Edie rested her hand on Tamsyn’s knee.
‘He was a volunteer with the RNLI.’ She hesitated and glanced at Edie. ‘The lifeboats? He was called out in a storm that had come in too fast. There were a couple of tourists who’d got caught in a dinghy. Idiots. They died too. His body was washed up the next morning a few miles down the coast.’ She paused and blinked slowly, then whispered: ‘Sometimes it hurts so much I can’t breathe. I miss him every day.’
Tamsyn became animated as she talked about her father’s death. Her shyness evaporated. Her raw grief was palpable, but so was the inner strength which Edie had seen a flash of the day before.
‘That’s dreadful. I’m so sorry,’ Edie said. And she meant it. ‘You poor thing.’
Without thinking she put her arm around Tamsyn and for a while they sat like that, peaceful, no sound except the lilt of the breaking waves which rolled in through the slightly open window.
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_a9caaf66-1ae7-5a98-ae98-42370fa60839)
Tamsyn
July 1986
There had been a moment in Edie’s room, when she caught me staring at her, that I’d thought I’d ruined it all. I’d been distracted by her. Carefully studying the slope of her nose, the tiny silver stud that glinted in one nostril, her flawless eyeliner drawn into extravagant sweeps on each eyelid. But when she challenged me I noted the sudden cooling in her. I’d seen the look she gave me before, many times, on the girls and boys at school. It generally came with a dismissive sneer and a silent promise not to be seen dead with me.
When I saw it on Edie’s face I panicked.
Offering up my father’s death as an excuse was risky. It could have easily scared her off. She might not have seen it as an explanation. She might not have cared. I was trading information for a second chance. But the gamble paid off and within seconds her face softened and her body opened up like a flower in water, arms uncrossing, fists unclenching, eyes widening.
I’m so sorry. You poor thing.
Then she held me and let me rest my head on her shoulder. Of course, I froze like a marble statue. There was no way I was going to move for fear of spoiling the moment. Nobody had ever shown me sympathy like that. Especially not people my age. At school his death was a topic to be avoided in case it made me cry or shout or punch a wall.
Eventually she stood up. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m hungry.’
As I followed her down the stairs the reality of where I was, and how I’d come to be there as an invited guest, made me light-headed. I was so used to being in the house illegally with the constant threat of being discovered hanging over me. Being there legitimately was suddenly a little overwhelming and for a moment I had to pause, grip hold of the banister, and take three deep breaths to steady myself.
We walked through the living room and towards the back door. The windows were open and the gauzy curtains danced like ghosts in the billowing breeze. A wall of late afternoon heat hit me as we stepped outside. I gasped when I saw the table. I hadn’t noticed when I arrived, too intent, I suspected, on following Edie up to her room to listen to music. I’d never seen anything like it. The iron table was laid up as if for a banquet. A white tablecloth had been laid over it and there was a large glass bowl in the centre which was piled high with a rainbow of exotic fruit I’d never even seen before. There was a small dish of butter which had softened in the sun and rolled-up serviettes encircled with silver rings and a silver bucket on a stand which held ice cubes and two bottles. The table had been set for four places and my stomach turned over with the thrill of realising one of them was for me.
‘Typical. Wine but no water,’ Edie said. ‘Wait here. I’ll go and get some.’
As she left a movement caught my eye. I looked across the gleaming surface of the pool and saw Max Davenport. He stood with his back to me in front of the brick barbecue in the far corner of the terrace, poking a pile of smoking charcoal which sent clouds of sparks into the air with each prod.
I decided to try to talk to him. My stomach fizzed as I neared him and I focused on the voice in my head which was telling me to be brave, be brave, be brave.
He must have heard me and turned, face broken in half by a smile, and raised his tongs in greeting. A film of sweat coated his forehead and there were two patches of damp in the armpits of his snow-white shirt, which was open to his stomach revealing white skin with a light thatch of greying chest hair. He wore long red shorts with a crease ironed down the centres of the legs and on his feet the soft blue shoes. I’d seen them a hundred times through the lenses of my dad’s binoculars, but had never noticed the two gold coins slipped into slots in the leather on the tops of the shoes.
He must have seen me staring at them. ‘They’re penny loafers,’ he said, with an unmistakable glint of amusement. ‘You’re supposed to put a penny in them, but I put pound coins in mine.’
‘Like a wallet?’
He laughed. ‘For decoration.’
I hadn’t realised money could be used for decoration. When I looked back down at the coins they seemed to shine like the beams from a lighthouse.
‘Mum’s not sure about the new coins,’ I said. ‘She likes money you can fold, not pockets weighed down with shrapnel.’
‘Your mother sounds supremely sensible.’
I smiled. His voice was different to how I’d imagined it. Posher and gravelly as if he’d swallowed a handful of sand before talking.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Tamsyn Tresize.’ I hoped he wouldn’t notice me blushing.
‘A good Cornish name.’ He smiled again. ‘And pretty too.’
‘It’s nice to meet you, Mr Davenport,’ I said, remembering my manners.
‘Max,’ he said. ‘You must call me Max.’
As he spoke I was hit by the peculiar sensation of being separated from my body and sitting up by the rock, watching Max Davenport talking to a girl with long red hair who looked identical to me.
‘Max? Are you ready to cook yet?’
The voice catapulted me back onto the terrace. I turned to see Mrs Davenport walking out through the door. She was dressed in a voluminous kaftan in peacock greens and blues, which was edged with gold and wafted out behind her as she moved. Oversized white-framed sunglasses concealed most of her face and her hair was piled into a bun on the top of her head, revealing heavy pearl and gold earrings at each ear.
‘You must be Tamsyn,’ she said.
Her voice was soft with a slight slur as if her words had melted into each other. She smiled and showed perfect white teeth and when she sashayed over to me with her hand outstretched, I almost didn’t take it, worrying that if I did I’d make it dirty.
‘Lovely to meet you. Your mother is an absolute godsend. I have literally no idea how we’d survive sans elle.’
‘Her mother?’ Max asked.
Mrs Davenport smiled. ‘The cleaner, darling.’
I swallowed as my reality bit at my ankles like a vicious dog. My eyes flicked over to Max. I watched for his reaction. Wondered if he now thought my name less pretty.
‘Amazing woman,’ he said and I beamed.
Edie came out of the house holding a green bottle and sat down. She beckoned to me and I went to her, though part of me wanted to stay and talk to Max about his shoes.
A short while later we were all sitting at the table and my cheeks ached with smiling. It was all I could do to stop myself laughing out loud. I thought of all those times I’d hidden myself in the sandy grass on the cliff and watched the Davenports eating – either out on the terrace or inside at the round white table in the sitting room – and sucked up every movement, every mouthful, every sip of every drink. It was all so familiar, the way she placed her knife and fork down precisely as she chewed, how he leant back in his chair to look out over the ocean, how he poured wine and she tipped her face to the sun. It was like I’d fallen into my favourite film.
‘Your mother was kind enough to lay up for us this morning. Of course, she did it for three not four. Edie didn’t tell us you were coming until just before you arrived so I had to lay the extra place myself.’
Edie rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not exactly hard to put out another knife and fork, Eleanor.’
‘It’s really nice to be here, Mrs Davenport,’ I said quickly, sensing something between them.
Eleanor smiled at me as she lifted a bottle of wine from the ice bucket and topped up her glass, though I could tell that she was annoyed, and I wished Edie hadn’t mentioned the cutlery.
Max Davenport stood and excused himself quietly before walking back to the barbecue. He picked up the tongs and waved them about like a sword as he turned steaks as thick as the Bible.
‘So, Tamsyn,’ said Eleanor Davenport, dragging my attention away from Max and the barbecue. ‘Are you pleased it’s the school holidays?’
‘Oh, yes. Very. I’ve just had exams so last term was pretty hard work.’ I thought back to all the hours I’d stared blindly at my books whilst daydreaming and then the exams in which the words had swum and I’d struggled to even remember my name let alone how to long divide.
‘O levels?’
‘CSEs.’
‘CSEs?’ Eleanor placed her glass down on the table. ‘The ones you take if you aren’t bright enough to do O levels? How many did you take?’
I swallowed and a wave of hot shame swept over my body. ‘Just five.’
‘Do we have to talk about school, Eleanor? I mean, God, that’s the last thing Tamsyn and I want to think about.’
‘My apologies,’ Eleanor said. ‘I was interested, that’s all. Aren’t you always saying I need to be more interested?’
I wracked my brain to think of something to say. ‘I really like this tablecloth.’
‘The tablecloth?’ Eleanor laughed. ‘Thank you. It’s an old one we don’t need in London anymore.’
‘I’ve never eaten at a table with a cloth before. I don’t think we even own one.’
‘Really?’
‘Mum would worry about staining something so pretty.’ I fingered the cloth, which was made of fine white cotton with exquisitely embroidered daisies dotted across it. I imagined my mum lifting it up into the sky so the sun lit its whiteness and the wind caught hold of it like a ship’s sail before allowing it to float back down to the table. I saw her hands smoothing it. Saw the care she’d have taken to make sure it was centred properly, everything perfect, wanting to please Mrs Davenport. Then I heard her voice.
They’re different to us.
And she was right, she and Eleanor were as different as two people could be. Eleanor reached for the salad bowl and I studied her hands. Soft. Blemish-free. Unlike my mother’s which were blotched red and rough, unpainted nails trimmed short for practicality. Mum might have been right about her being different but she was wrong about me. Sitting at that table I didn’t feel out of place or as if I shouldn’t be there. I felt as if I belonged.
‘Do you want some water, Tamsyn?’
Edie was holding the green glass bottle and without waiting for my reply she leant over to pour some in my glass. The water fizzed as it went in. I didn’t even know they made water fizzy and wondered briefly if it came up from the ground that way. Before Edie had finished filling my glass, however, Eleanor reached over and lifted the neck of the bottle with her finger to stop the flow.
‘Champagne surely, girls? What do you think, Tamsyn?’ Eleanor retrieved the second bottle from the ice bucket and tore off the gold foil then untied the wire caging. ‘Do you like champagne?’
‘I’ve never had it before.’
‘Never?’
I shook my head.
‘Then you absolutely must try some.’ She eased the cork out and it popped like an air rifle.
She poured the sparkling pale liquid into a tall, thin glass and passed it to me. I lifted it up to the light and watched the bubbles race to the surface in a million effervescent pinpricks.
‘I can’t believe your mother hasn’t let you have half a glass before. It’s not right you’ve got to this age and not even tasted it.’
‘I don’t think she’s ever had it either.’
Eleanor looked genuinely horrified.
‘Vile stuff,’ Edie said then.
‘Ah, my darling daughter,’ Eleanor said, whilst sipping from her glass. ‘The very measure of sophistication.’
Edie rolled her eyes and made a face, and I looked away quickly, not wanting to be caught in collusion. Edie’s chair scraped back on the terrace with a loud screech and she disappeared inside the house.
Eleanor drank most of her champagne in one go then topped up her glass. We sat in silence until Edie arrived back at the table with a carton of orange juice. She poured a glass for herself and offered it to me, but I shook my head and sipped the champagne, which wasn’t as nice as I’d hoped it would be, too acrid and not very thirst-quenching.
‘By the way, Edith, if you have to smoke, can you at least put your cigarette ends in the bin? I found three on the terrace morning.’
How could Edie say Eleanor Davenport wasn’t cool? Letting her smoke? That was definitely a cool mother. I tried to imagine what mine would have said if she’d found out I’d been smoking.
‘The wait is over!’ Max called over. ‘The steaks are done!’
He returned to the table and with an air of triumph he placed the white serving plate down. The four steaks bled their red and brown juices all over the china. I grinned. Steak for tea. Granfer wasn’t going to believe his ears.
Someone’s birthday?
No!
Just any old tea?
Yes. Any old tea. Steak and champagne. Can you believe it?
‘I hope it’s cooked as you like it,’ Max said, as he lifted a whole steak onto my plate.
‘Thank you. Yes.’
Max began to vigorously cut into his steak. ‘I must say, it’s lovely to have you with us, Tamsyn. A real treat to have a proper local as our guest. Especially such a lovely one.’
Then he smiled at me and I smiled back because it was possibly the nicest thing he could have said.
Eleanor reached for her champagne glass and drained it.
‘Be careful not to drink too much in this heat, darling,’ he said to her.
Eleanor ignored him and took a mouthful of steak. She grimaced. ‘Christ, I can’t eat this,’ she opened her mouth and pulled out the piece of meat which she put on the side of her plate. ‘It’s tougher than leather.’
‘Why don’t you have half of mine,’ Max said coolly as he took a sip of wine. ‘It’s incredibly tender.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
I momentarily considered asking if I could take it home to give to my grandad, but decided against it. Eleanor rapidly tapped her perfectly painted fingernail against the table as if punching out Morse code, then she reached for the carton beside her plate. She opened the lid to reveal cigarettes inside which were unlike any I’d ever seen before. Each one a different colour with a filter of shiny gold foil. She selected a red one and lit it.
Eleanor drew on her cigarette then turned to look at me before leaning forward and jabbing my shoulder a couple of times.
‘If you sat up straight and pushed your shoulders back you’d look much more elegant at the table.’
This drew a sharp glance from Edie. ‘For God’s sake,’ she muttered.
‘Don’t be silly. I’m helping, that’s all.’ She smiled at me. ‘You don’t mind do you, Tamsyn?’
I shook my head. I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I was grateful to Eleanor. Yes, her manner was a little brusque, but I was happy to have her point out the things I did wrong. I glanced at Edie who was looking fixedly out to sea, then sat up in my seat, straightening my back and pushing out my shoulders, aware of my chest rising.
Eleanor smiled and sipped her drink. ‘You see, Edie? Now your friend doesn’t look completely like le Bossu de Notre Dame.’
Max cleared his throat. ‘So, Edith, tell me.’ He pressed his serviette to his mouth then placed it carefully on the table. ‘While I’m finishing this magnus opus of mine and your mother is enjoying our little piece of Cornish heaven, how are you planning to use your time while we’re here?’
‘Well, Max.’ She drew out his name and leant towards him. ‘How about I shut myself in my room all day to avoid my family like you do and enjoy a triple vodka for breakfast like she does. That sound okay?’
I inhaled sharply and glanced at Edie in horror. If I used that tone with my mother I’d be sent upstairs before I’d finished my sentence, but Eleanor Davenport merely ignored her so I could only assume she hadn’t heard properly.
Edie stood then picked up a couple of plates and left the table.
It turned out Eleanor Davenport had heard her daughter. ‘Tell me, Tamsyn,’ she said. ‘Do you speak to your mother like that?’
I had no idea what to say. ‘I, well, I—’
‘Of course she does, Ellie.’ Max grinned at me again. ‘She’s a teenage girl. That’s how they speak to their mothers. You wouldn’t want a wallflower for a daughter, now would you?’
Eleanor stared at Max over the rim of her glass. ‘And you’d know all about teenage girls, wouldn’t you?’
There was a jagged edge to Eleanor’s comment and I watched Max’s eyes narrow with anger for the briefest of moments.
Eleanor turned to address me. ‘Tamsyn, do forgive me.’ She stood, stumbling as she did, then steadying herself on the table. ‘I’ve a headache. Max was right about wine in the sunshine. I need to go indoors.’
Max and I watched her retreat back to the house. Without Eleanor or Edie an awkwardness crept over us and I wondered if I should also excuse myself and try to find Edie. I glanced at Max and forced a smile.
‘I’m sure Edith will be back soon.’ He reached across the table to the bowl. His fingers lightly traced the fruit and then settled on a large red apple. He placed it on a small plate to the side of him, then took the knife he’d used for his steak and ran it through the folds of his serviette, leaving a greasy brown mark on the white. He carefully sliced the apple into quarters, then held each piece in turn, made two cuts to remove a triangle of core, and one lengthways to divide each piece in two.
He placed his knife down and held the plate out towards me.
‘Have some,’ he said. ‘They’re delicious. Bought from the farm shop yesterday. Sweetest apples I’ve ever tasted.’
I hesitated but he nodded so I reached for a slice and bit into it.
Max looked at me expectantly. ‘Well?’
He was right. The apple was the sweetest and juiciest I’d ever tried. I smiled at him and took another.
‘What’s your book about?’ I asked as I broke the second slice of apple in two and put half in my mouth.
‘I never talk about my novels until they’re finished. I’m convinced that if I do, I won’t ever finish them. Superstitious nonsense, I know.’
‘You must really like writing.’
This made him laugh though I had no idea why. ‘Hemingway said there’s nothing to writing, all you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed. It’s an obsession. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t do it. But then again, I know I’m lucky to earn so much money doing something I love and not have to tread the hamster wheel for peanuts in an office somewhere. Plus,’ he said, taking another piece of apple and gesturing at me with it, ‘writers have fictional worlds to escape to, which I’m certain stops us all going completely batty.’
I knew exactly what he meant.
‘Here’s a pearl of wisdom for you. In life always remember you’re the author of your own story.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t let life be something that happens to you. Write it yourself.’
It was the type of thing my dad would probably have said to me. Edie was lucky to have her father still. To have him alive and eating apples, not drowned and buried in a coffin in the ground.
Max patted the table then stood. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Enough of that nonsense. My book calls.’
‘Thank you for supper,’ I said, pleased I’d remembered it was supper not tea.
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Amanda Jennings
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: ‘Haunting and evocative.’ Clare Mackintosh‘A beautiful, stirring story of loss and obsession’ Lisa JewellSome friendships are made to be brokenCornwall, summer of 1986.The Davenports, with their fast cars and glamorous clothes, living the dream in a breathtaking house overlooking the sea.If only… thinks sixteen-year-old Tamsyn, her binoculars trained on the perfect family in their perfect home.If only her life was as perfect as theirs.If only Edie Davenport would be her friend.If only she lived at The Cliff House…Amanda Jennings weaves a haunting tale of obsession, loss and longing, set against the brooding North Cornish coastline, destined to stay with readers long after the final page is turned.What readers are saying about Amanda Jennings:′Yet another novel by Amanda Jennings that once you start you can’t put down.′′I′m so pleased that this is another gem. The tension throughout is palpable and I couldn′t put it down.′′Such a brilliant book and so well written.′′I was very disappointed to emerge from it and discover that I was not, in fact, in Cornwall.′′It is atmospheric of the place it′s set, Cornwall, and together with an intriguing storyline this was a fabulous read.′′I can′t tell you how much I enjoy Amanda Jennings′ novels. This is no exception. The intriguing characters keep the pages turning and I couldn′t put it down.′