The Cliff House: A beautiful and addictive story of loss and longing

Also by Amanda Jennings

In Her Wake

The Judas Scar

Sworn Secret

Copyright

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

‘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

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Prologue

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Prologue

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

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

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

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.