A SUMMER TO REMEMBER
Sue Moorcroft

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Sue Moorcroft 2019

Cover design © Head Design 2019

Cover illustration © Carrie May 2019

Sue Moorcroft asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of 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 ebook 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.

Source ISBN: 9780008321765

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008321772

Version: 2019-06-20

Dedication

For my fantastic friends

Pia Fenton and Myra Kersner

(readers may know them as Christina

Courtenay and Maggie Sullivan)

for their unstinting friendship and support,

meals in Italian restaurants, writing retreats

and a lot of laughter.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

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

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue
Six years ago

At the front of Thornham church, best man Aaron stood beside his bridegroom brother, Lee, who gently vibrated with nerves. The church organist floated background music onto the still summer air above the congregation, the vicar looked thoughtful, and they all awaited the bride, Alice.

Lee was welcome to high-maintenance Princess Alice, spoiled to death by her long-widowed mother, Sally, Aaron thought. Personally, he preferred her down-to-earth, brightly intelligent cousin Clancy, the only bridesmaid Alice had wanted. To joke Lee out of his obvious state of nerves he leaned in close to murmur, ‘I hope all the stories about the best man and bridesmaid are true, by the way.’

Lee managed a smile. ‘Your tongue’s been hanging out since last weekend.’

‘Guilty.’ Aaron had been in a constant state of awareness since Clancy had hopped out of her car, one that looked too red and sporty for the tiny Norfolk village of Nelson’s Bar.

‘Alice and Clancy’s mums are identical twins.’ Lee moved the conversation to his favourite subject: Alice. ‘It’s why the girls look more like sisters than cousins.’

It was true that they shared chestnut hair and green eyes, but, as Aaron was quick to point out, ‘They’re really different personalities.’ He and Clancy had been flirting all week, sharing jokes about the pre-wedding hoopla, and after last night’s rehearsal dinner hosted by Aaron’s parents at De Silva House, the flirting had culminated in a long, deep, hot kiss in the dark reaches of the garden. Her body, wedged against his, had driven him crazy as she nibbled along his jawline. Then Lee had come looking for him with some annoying best-man task – there seemed to be thousands – and Clancy had made a silent-scream face, before whispering, ‘Tomorrow. After the wedding.’

Aaron could not wait for this wedding to be over …

A stir at the back of the church and the vicar in his white robes stepped forward expectantly. Finally! Aaron turned, his gaze filled with the sight of Clancy Moss walking up the aisle towards him, her dress of muted green flowing around her like water.

He began to smile … until, beside him, Lee made a strangled noise of distress. Then Aaron realised that everything about the picture Clancy made was wrong. She scurried instead of taking stately, bridesmaid steps. There was no bouquet. No bride. And no answering smile as she arrived breathlessly in front of the vicar.

She glanced at Aaron, before laying her hand on his brother’s arm, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘I’m sorry, Lee. I can’t find Alice. Her mum had left for the church and Alice and I both went to our rooms for last-minute things but … when I looked for her, her wedding dress was back on its hanger. And her car was gone.’

Aaron swung around to look at his brother.

And Lee crumbled right before his eyes.

Chapter One
Now

Clancy had driven for three hours and it felt like someone else’s hands on the steering wheel. Someone dream-driving her BMW away from London and the apartment in Chalk Farm she’d shared with Will. She hadn’t paused for a cup of coffee or a comfort break, not wanting to leave the car unattended. It was stuffed with her possessions and she’d lost so much she just couldn’t lose anything else.

Now she took a left from the A149 at the sign for Nelson’s Bar, which might sound like a pub but was named for Horatio, Lord Nelson, born along the coast in Burnham Thorpe. The bar of land on which the village stood bisected the salt marshes as it thrust out to sea.

The car purred through a belt of pinewood, the land rising like a ski slope until she burst out into sunlight, feeling for an instant as if all she could see was blue sky. Then the road plunged and cornered between two hedgerows. And she was there.

She drew up at the side of Long Lane and switched off the engine. Silence. Through a smeared windscreen she gazed at the homes peeping at her over hedges clothed in early summer green.

Nelson’s Bar. She’d been here only once before, for the week of Alice’s wedding – or not-wedding, as it turned out – but Roundhouse Row was just as she remembered it. Alice and Lee had lived in number one, the Roundhouse itself, a cylinder of white and red chalk stone with an occasional accent of flint, wearing its conical terracotta roof like a hat with windows.

Clancy climbed from the car and stretched. The salt-scented breeze filled her lungs so easily that it was as if a giant rubber band had dropped from around her chest.

She clicked open the garden gate and fished out the Roundhouse key. It turned smoothly and her footsteps echoed on worn red quarry tiles as she stepped inside the enclosed porch and then through the inner door. She paused to take in the ground floor, its central staircase cradled by hefty oak beams and posts.

Almost as the front door clunked shut behind her she caught the opening of the door in the opposite wall. ‘Hello?’ called a man’s voice, and Aaron De Silva rounded the stairs, dark curls longer than she remembered and tousled around his face, the line of his jaw shaded more heavily with stubble, T-shirt and jeans speckled with grass clippings.

Six-plus years shrank to nothing.

He stopped short. ‘Clancy?’ He sounded stunned.

Silent seconds passed and Clancy was aware of more between them than the empty floor space. One fevered kiss. One blazing row. Years of carefully polite emails.

Aaron blinked. ‘Am I supposed to understand what’s going on? Your last email said you had someone for the caretaker job. Did you feel the need to escort her here personally?’ He glanced behind her, as if expecting to see another person.

She had to strangle a laugh at his almost comical expression of dismay. ‘No.’ She made her voice firm. ‘Because I’m taking the job myself. I need a change of scene.’

His dark brows snapped together. ‘You?’ There was nothing comical about his expression now. It was more … horrified.

The urge to laugh vanished. Instead, Clancy suddenly felt clammy and unsteady. She blinked to clear her vision. Maybe her earlier dream-like sensations had been something to do with a failure to eat today. And possibly yesterday. She swallowed and her voice sank to a whisper. ‘Sorry. I should have checked with you.’ She tried to think of somewhere else she could go but her thoughts refused to co-operate. She’d found herself struggling with decisions recently. That’s what the others at IsVid had said, Monty, Asila, Tracey – even Will. It was the shock. She wasn’t functioning, they’d told her in varying degrees of kindness when she’d risen in the middle of a meeting with a client and gone home. In Monty’s opinion it had constituted ‘a breakdown’ and he’d wanted her to get psychiatric help.

Enraged, she’d snapped a refusal. ‘I simply recognised the reaching of a personal limit. I’ve emailed the client and apologised. They understand.’

‘And what did you think you were doing when you sent out that newsletter making your personal relationship with Will public? It made us a laughing stock,’ Monty had thundered on.

Clancy had hardly been able to believe her ears. ‘Don’t you think what Will did and your shitty, callous reaction was more to the point? I know IsVid is important to you, Monty, but don’t I deserve any support?’

Asila and Tracey had tried to cut across Monty’s reply, beginning a gentler conversation about whether Clancy should take time out. She closed her eyes, remembering how Monty had brushed them aside with, ‘Frankly, I’m not sure how we can go on working together after your chaotic reaction to what’s happened, Clancy.’

As the others had fallen silent Clancy had gasped, ‘You want me to leave?’ Will had stood by, looking haunted, but hadn’t contradicted Monty. And neither had Asila or Tracey, though their eyes had filled with compassion. The scene had grown ugly with rage and pain, and Clancy had stormed home. Except that it was no longer home. It was an apartment she’d shared for three years with Will and where she’d spent untold hours planning the wedding they’d now never have with its colour theme of grey and duck-egg blue. She’d already agreed to move out.

Then Aaron’s email had arrived on her phone with a ting!

Clancy,

Did you get my message about the caretaker at the cottages? In case it went astray:

Evelyn, who’s lived at the Roundhouse in exchange for administering the two tenanted cottages and servicing the three holiday lets has left suddenly and we need to fill her position.

Shall I advertise?

Aaron

The relief had been astronomical. Without questioning the wisdom of her impulsive action, the fact that she’d parted from Aaron on bad terms and had never been back to Nelson’s Bar, her reply had flown from her typing fingers.

I know someone who wants the job with the accommodation, which will save you the bother of advertising. She’ll arrive tomorrow.

Clancy

For the past six years, since Alice had jilted Lee and Aaron had bought Lee out of the property, she’d looked after Alice’s half of Roundhouse Row with a tiny fragment of her capabilities. A part-time caretaking job would be a breeze; a summer in Norfolk would help her heal. She’d wilfully ignored Aaron’s astounded reply: TOMORROW??? What about references??? Or me being able to chat with this person? And, later, Clancy! Please reply! She’d put her phone on ‘do not disturb’ in case he broke the tacit agreement of only communicating via email, and rang.

And that’s how she’d ended up sitting amongst boxes last night, packing recklessly for a low-effort life change and a place to lick her wounds. She’d been able to look into Will’s mortified face and say with manufactured indifference, ‘I have somewhere to go. You needn’t worry.’ She’d handed him the white leather file emblazoned with September Wedding in silver. ‘You’ll find everything in here that you need to cancel our wedding. It’s only fair that you take responsibility as you’re the one to find someone new.’ Then she’d completed her packing with the images of wedding dresses and morning suits swimming in the tears in her eyes, remembering, now she was about to return to Nelson’s Bar, Alice’s wedding day.

Clancy was getting an agonising taste of what Lee must have felt. Surely Alice couldn’t truly have imagined Lee’s pain at being left at the altar like that? Or she would have arranged some gentler way of withdrawing from the marriage.

Now, with Lee’s brother Aaron looking on, she swallowed convulsively against empty-stomach nausea. The fluttering in her ears grew louder and cold sweat gathered on her face. Ever the pragmatist, she murmured, ‘I think I should sit down.’

And she did. The room rushed past her and the floor flew up to hit her, hard.

She heard Aaron exclaim, then a warm hand guided her head down towards her knees and his voice seemed to come from far away. ‘Are you ill?’

Politely, she replied, ‘I’m OK. I just missed breakfast.’ Cautiously, she eased away from him and lifted her head. The room only spun slightly. And that might have been because she’d been suddenly engulfed in the memory of the last time Aaron had touched her. It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d still affect her.

‘How about you come and sit on the bench outside for some fresh air,’ he suggested gruffly. ‘I brought coffee stuff. I’ll make some.’

‘Perfect, thank you.’ She managed to roll to her knees and then to her feet, aware of him hovering at her elbow as she struggled across to the back door and out to a black-painted bench on the edge of the circular patio. Vaguely, she took in a cardboard box half full of weeds and a spade and fork lying on the grass beside a dog bowl of water. A mower waited on a half-cut lawn speckled with daisies, the scent of new-mown grass increasing her nausea. She lowered herself until the wooden slats felt firm beneath her as a big, dark grey dog jumped up from a sun-splashed patch of lawn, beating his tail and holding his head awkwardly cocked as he regarded her.

‘Oh, bless, he only has one eye!’ she said, automatically extending her hand to be sniffed.

‘He’s a rescue. I took him because I could call him Nelson and he’d fit right in here. Will you be all right for two minutes?’ Aaron was already stepping away.

She nodded carefully and the myriad colours of the garden made her vision spin like a colour wheel. Shutting her eyes helped, especially when Nelson lodged his head on her leg as if in comfort, and when Aaron returned she was able to half-open her eyes again.

‘Here,’ he murmured, proffering a mug of milky coffee and a cereal bar.

Shakily, she took them. ‘Thank you.’

Clancy sipped and nibbled her way through the small repast, Aaron beside her in not-very-companionable silence.

Aaron had seated himself so he could observe Clancy until her coffee cup was empty and Nelson was nosing the wrapper from the cereal bar on the lawn. The breeze stirred her streaky chestnut fringe and flipped the ends of her hair from her shoulders. What had happened to her? She looked like a pale echo of the sleek, beautiful, mythical creature who’d once flashed into his life and out again.

He’d never apologised for the things he’d said – shouted – when Alice had all but destroyed his brother. He’d been too taken up with Lee, who’d stopped eating, acting, at only twenty-eight years old, as if his life was over.

‘I’m surprised you want to move here,’ he said, trying to focus on the present. ‘Nelson’s Bar’s a far cry from London. I can’t imagine wanting to live in a city, the sky only showing between the huge buildings you spend your life in, breathing stale air and looking out of windows that don’t open, but it’s what you’re used to.’

She shrugged.

‘The caretaker’s job involves changing beds and cleaning up after guests,’ he persisted. Then, though he knew because she’d once told him all about it, eyes shining with enthusiasm, and it was in her email sign-off, he asked, ‘What is it you usually do?’

Her lips barely moved. ‘All the hard shit.’

‘Oh.’ Odd answer. ‘I thought it was film making.’

A robin flew down to perch on the handle of his spade and tilt its head to inspect them before flitting off again. Clancy watched it go. ‘IsVid provides video content and video-based services. Websites. YouTube. Raw footage. Editing. Effects. Five of us built it up. The others are the creatives and the people people. I excel at what nobody else wants to do, like writing privacy policies and terms and conditions for us and our clients, working on their internet safety, adhering to law and legislation, writing agreements and contracts.’

‘Oh,’ he repeated. ‘That does sound like hard shit.’

‘There were compensations, like money and satisfaction. But I’ve left the agency. Or I’m taking time out.’ Then she added, ‘But nobody expects me back.’

He managed not to say ‘oh’, this time. ‘OK,’ he said instead, as Clancy wasn’t showing any immediate signs of turning tail for London. ‘As you know, numbers two and three Roundhouse Row have long-term tenants, Dilys and Ernie. For them the caretaker acts as agent to the landlord – arranging maintenance and checking the rent arrives, paying whatever bills the landlord’s responsible for and negotiating any rent rises. Numbers four, five and six, the holiday cottages, can be let out for any number of nights from two up. The caretaker changes bed linen and towels and does the laundry, cleans the houses and does the gardens.’

‘Why don’t you do the garden? You’re a gardener.’ She’d turned to look at him, her head tilted much as the inquisitive robin’s had been.

‘Because I work full time for my landscape gardening business.’ He knew she knew that. It was as if making the polite enquiries of strangers would erase the night they’d got hot and heavy.

Her turn to reply, ‘Oh.’ She scooped back her hair as the breeze tried to blow it into her face and she turned her gaze to the circular flower beds he’d been working on. Alice had thought it amusing to create as many circles in and around her circular house as possible. Even the garden shed was circular because Lee, besotted, had made it for her. ‘You’re doing this garden now,’ Clancy pointed out.

‘Because Evelyn found a boyfriend and hightailed it to live with him in Wales.’ He went on with the caretaker’s job description. ‘You’d also handle bookings. A lot come through a tourism website; they ring you with the details. A few come directly by post or phone. You sort out guests’ gripes, answer questions, solve problems and basically do whatever comes up. I’m afraid that if you’re at home, tenants and guests consider you on duty. Evelyn left the book inside the Roundhouse. I’ll show it to you.’

‘Book?’

‘The one with bookings in.’ It was a fat, dog-eared volume Evelyn had kept up-to-date and in which she’d left copious notes for her successor.

‘You make bookings in an actual book?’ She almost smiled. ‘There’s no booking software?’

Slowly, he relaxed. This was it. Her sticking point. The indisputable fact he could share with her in good conscience and let it send her back to the city. He stretched his legs and crossed them at the ankle. ‘No booking software. The village is an internet “not spot” with ancient phone lines and poor-to-non-existent mobile signal. Look,’ he said, feeling magnanimous now he realised there was no way a city girl used to being permanently plugged in could exist in an environment where information technology was rendered virtually – ha, ha – useless. ‘I suppose being involved with the cottages peripherally hasn’t given you a clear picture of life in Nelson’s Bar.’

He encompassed the row of cottages joined to the Roundhouse with a wave of his arm. ‘The rental cottages are the only real holiday homes in the entire village, though there is a B&B, which has a bar about six feet by six and, outside, a few tables with umbrellas. We have no church, no shop, no pub or coffee shop. The Norfolk Coast Path bypasses us and although north Norfolk is popular with walkers, most don’t tackle the hill climb to get up here.’ He sat back, giving her the opportunity to hum and haw, to backtrack on her intention to live in the back of beyond.

But then Clancy’s breath left her in a long, slow, peaceful sigh. ‘Sounds perfect,’ she said.

Chapter Two

Clancy knew her answer had surprised Aaron from the way his brows clicked down over his eyes. ‘Seriously?’ he asked stiffly. From within the Roundhouse, a phone began to ring and he rose from the bench, disappearing indoors to answer it. Then he reappeared. ‘That was my girlfriend. She knew I was working here and I’m late to meet her.’ He paused, checking his watch. ‘I’ll come back in a couple of hours. We need to finish this conversation.’

‘Fine.’ Clancy wondered whether he was expecting her to think twice in his absence.

She watched him pack the garden tools into the shed and click his fingers to his enormous dog. Every word Aaron had spoken had increased Clancy’s belief that Nelson’s Bar was exactly what she needed. He might as well have said, ‘Here’s a quiet, safe backwater where you can get your head straight. The job’s a doddle for someone with organisational skills.’

Clancy Moss, however temporarily exhausted, thrived on challenges, and the ability to adapt had been bred into her. With engineers for parents, she’d been brought up in Belize, various parts of Africa, Dubai, Hong Kong … sometimes in company compounds or city apartments but also in remote villages. She’d attended company schools, boarding school, local schools and international schools. She’d even, at times, attended Alice’s school, and had loved the feeling of having a settled home with Alice and Aunt Sally while her parents vanished into a part of Africa considered unsuitable for their daughter. Boarding school and its dull routines and restrictions came a poor second to sharing escapades with Alice and being spoiled by her aunt.

Once she’d come to the UK for uni she’d tried to re-create that feeling of belonging. She’d thought she’d found it with Will but now … Now she’d been pushed into the painful break from Will and her colleagues – she wasn’t sure whether it was still logical to call them friends – she needed to regroup.

OK, so, food first. Just to confirm what Aaron had said, she took out her phone. No service. So she’d just drive to Hunstanton and find a supermarket. Then she’d—

‘Yoohoo!’ came a creaky female voice. ‘Do you mind if I come into the garden? Hope not, because I’m in.’ The voice trembled a laugh.

Surprised into rising and facing the direction the voice had come from, Clancy had to grab the back of the bench as her head swam anew. A short, rotund woman with a dandelion clock of white hair and a sweet smile shuffled around the house. ‘Are you are our new Evelyn? I’m Dilys, from number two. I thought I’d say hello.’ By now Dilys was standing in front of Clancy, daisy-strewn wellies peeping from beneath a rose-splashed skirt. Her eyebrows bobbed enquiringly.

‘I’m taking the caretaker’s job, yes.’ It was impossible not to return Dilys’s smile; it was so twinkly and warm. ‘I was just wondering where I could find a supermarket. Or furniture shops. Aaron had to rush off before he could tell me.’ She supposed she was lucky that she had money in the bank but she hadn’t really bargained for the hassle of furnishing the Roundhouse when she decided to launch herself towards Nelson’s Bar.

Dilys’s grey eyes twinkled as she turned and let herself down stiffly onto the bench beside Clancy. ‘Furniture? I expect he’ll just bring the other stuff back. They stored it up at De Silva House – Aaron’s parents’ place – because Evelyn had her own.’

Clancy suppressed a wriggle of hurt that Aaron hadn’t mentioned something that, clearly, would make her life easier. Evidently, he didn’t want her here. So what? She’d been unwanted by people much closer and more important to her than Aaron De Silva. Her ex-fiancé and work colleagues, for example. And with her parents it had always only been fifty-fifty.

She shoved those negative thoughts away with a bright, ‘Was it Alice and Lee’s furniture? I’m Alice’s cousin, Clancy.’

Dilys beamed. ‘Her cousin! How is Alice? I never hear from her.’

‘I think she’s OK,’ Clancy answered carefully. After jilting Lee, Alice had made no bones about preferring to be invisible to anyone at Nelson’s Bar and had wheedled unashamedly to get Clancy to represent Alice’s interest in Roundhouse Row. ‘I’m on the move all the time anyway and you’re so good at stuff. Don’t make me interact with judgy big bro Aaron, puhleeeeease, Clancee.’ Clancy had sighed and said yes. People often said yes to Alice. Maybe it was because she just seemed to expect it, but also it was her pretty smile, the swish of her stylishly cut hair, or the way she had of linking arms as if to demonstrate how much she liked you.

And, wherever Clancy had been in the world, Alice had always sent letters, cards, messages, demands to know where Clancy was and what she was doing, requests for postcards or photos or to know when Clancy was going to come and live with them again. Whatever Alice’s faults, she and Clancy had a bond.

These days it was Alice’s travelling the bond had to survive, rather than Clancy’s. The only time they’d seen each other in the last six years was when Aunt Sally had died suddenly four years ago. Alice had reappeared for the funeral, white-faced and red-eyed over the loss of her mother. Then she’d sold the family home in Warwickshire and vanished again, her travel fund firmly bolstered by her inheritance.

None of this needed to be shared with Clancy’s new neighbour, so she just said, ‘Dilys, could you point me at a supermarket, please? I need supplies.’

Dilys’s face shifted its wrinkles into a delighted grin. ‘Can I show you instead? I don’t drive any more so it’s a boon for me to get a ride into Hunstanton. Tell you what,’ she swept on. ‘How about I trade you lunch? I’ve made vegetable soup and I was just about to have some.’

Warmth stole into Clancy’s heart at such a friendly offer. ‘What a brilliant trade. Thank you.’

She followed her to the next-door cottage, assailed by a deliciously oniony fragrance as Dilys opened the door. ‘Welcome to number two,’ she said. ‘It’s not as big as the Roundhouse but it’s been my home since I’ve been on my own. Take a seat at the table, lovie, and I’ll dish up.’

It seemed only seconds before Clancy was dipping chunks of bread into thick vegetable soup and sipping tea, looking around her. Dilys’s kitchen was full of … stuff. Heaps of fabric and wool teetered, jars of buttons or bowls of beads glowed with colour.

‘I’m a crafter,’ Dilys explained, following Clancy’s gaze. ‘Whatever I see or find I make into something else. It used to drive my poor husband mad. Still, it doesn’t concern him, not now he’s gone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Clancy said automatically.

‘I still see him of course,’ Dilys continued, slurping up a soup-sodden square of bread.

Clancy paused. ‘Oh?’ She considered herself far too down-to-earth to believe in the supernatural but Dilys sounded so confident that she asked, ‘Where?’

Dilys put down her spoon in her empty bowl with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘In the garden. He lives next door.’ She burst out laughing.

Clancy laughed too, laying down her spoon, though she’d eaten only half her lunch. ‘I thought you meant he was a ghost!’

‘Not him.’ Dilys was still grinning. ‘We can’t share a house but we can’t do without each other completely.’

Finishing the industrial-strength tea and feeling ten times better for food inside her and the hand of friendship Dilys seemed to have no hesitation in extending, Clancy went out to empty her car boot ready for their shopping.

They set off for the supermarket, Dilys exclaiming over the comfort of the car’s leather interior. Clancy was instantly plunged into a host of memories of Will helping her choose the car less than a year ago. It had been a symbol of the success of IsVid and now she was glad she’d chosen to spend the money that way rather than doing something sensible like paying a chunk off the mortgage. Resolutely, she shoved the thought away. ‘I forgot to look how big the freezer at the Roundhouse is.’ She slowed the car as she turned right onto the A149 and immediately came up behind a car towing a caravan.

‘There’s a good, capacious freezer,’ pronounced Dilys. ‘Capacious was the answer to the nine-letter word puzzle in the paper yesterday.’

Clancy tried not to be distracted by the energetic pinging of the phone in her pocket now they’d left the village and, presumably, picked up a signal. ‘Are you a puzzler? I like Sudoku and crosswords.’ They passed the rest of the journey amicably chatting about why cryptic crosswords were so much more fun than the ‘easy’ counterparts, which neither of them actually found easy, until they reached Hunstanton, where, entranced by the dancing blue sea on their right, Clancy had to concentrate to follow Dilys’s directions past the formal gardens and through the busy traffic to the centre of town.

When she’d parked at Tesco’s, she stole a quick look at the alerts now showing on the screen of her phone: Tracey and Asila both asking if she was OK. After a moment’s deliberation, she tucked the phone away again because she didn’t know how to reply. Was she OK? She could’ve said, Fine except for my relationship ending and my co-directors wanting me out of the business, but as they were two of those directors it would be a) aggressive b) whiney c) pointless. It would be more fruitful to devote her time to providing herself with what she needed in order to be OK.

As well as filling a trolley with food and household items, she discovered that seaside supermarkets sold things like wetsuits for children, buckets and spades … and airbeds. Just in case Aaron truly intended leaving her without a bed for the night, she bought a lilac-coloured one for less than a tenner and Dilys offered to lend her a duvet. She hadn’t wanted to bring constant reminders of Will in the form of things they’d shared so new bedclothes would be on her shopping list once she had a permanent bed sorted.

It was late afternoon when they arrived back at the Roundhouse. Clancy helped Dilys into number two with her shopping and collected in return a single duvet in a bold, bright patchwork cover, then carried her own purchases indoors to join the bags and boxes she’d brought from London.

She halted. London was no longer her home.

The echoing emptiness of the Roundhouse seemed to catch her suddenly beneath the breastbone, the only sounds her own breathing and muted birdsong outdoors. ‘You can do this,’ she told herself aloud. ‘This is not the first time you’ve moved house and begun again.’ So she set to, dividing the shopping between fridge, freezer and cupboards. Kitchen units had been fitted along a section of the curved wall and into an island unit too. As she worked, she wished she’d asked Aaron exactly when he’d be back. Dilys probably had his landline number but there was no reply when Clancy popped out to knock on her door.

OK. Back to the Roundhouse. She walked a slow circle around the ground floor, remembering how Alice and Lee had set the space out in segments: sofas, a coffee table and footstools beside the panelling screen; then a circular dining table with chairs, and the space beneath the stairs filled with oak and glass cabinets built by Lee.

Next, she trod up the wooden staircase to the three wedge-shaped bedrooms and two bathrooms on the first floor. All three bedrooms were carpeted so it felt less echoey. In the master bedroom she stood on tiptoe to catch glimpses of a hazy blue-grey sea between trees and houses. Woolly white clouds dotted a paintbox-blue sky. Nelson’s Bar was high above the waves on its headland but she remembered Alice showing her the way down to a small beach.

She turned to survey the master bedroom without much enthusiasm. It had been Alice and Lee’s. Across the landing, the second bedroom’s view was of the lane and the house across the road. She turned and strode up the next flight of stairs to the loft, where she’d slept on her only visit, opening the door with a teeny-tiny – but welcome – sense of familiarity.

The space she walked into was conical with room to stand straight only in the middle or by the window dormers. Beyond the rooftops, she could see the sea from one window and the pinewoods from the other. She stood for a long time, gazing over the village. Gardens and trees between the houses. The peaceful sound of seagulls and the occasional car engine.

The sun lit the room, danced on the distant sea and warmed her heart.

Feeling something approaching enthusiasm, she ran downstairs for the airbed and duvet. By the time the bed was inflated she was red-faced and puffing, but she smiled as she cast the patchwork quilt over it.

Her temporary bed in her new room and new home. So there was no real furniture! Nobody who really knew her would think she’d be put off by a little thing like that.

Chapter Three

In the morning, Aaron’s conscience prodded him awake ridiculously early, considering it was Sunday.

He hadn’t meant to leave Clancy Moss alone in an unfurnished house yesterday.

He’d met Genevieve at his end-terrace flint cottage in Potato Hall Row on the edge of the village near the cliffs, and found her worrying aloud about where to go while builders repaired her own cottage. It was a tricky subject. He was all too aware that she was fishing to move in with him and he was beginning to resent it. They might have been together for a year or so but he liked his life in Nelson’s Bar as it was. He was content with his own company, creating gardens, soil between his fingers, the scent of grass on the air, blossom in spring, crinkling leaves and the promise of frost when autumn came. Nature’s glorious, ever-changing landscape. OK, he didn’t have much of a relationship history – serial monogamy interspersed with happy singledom – maybe his brother’s public dumping had had something to do with that.

But that was his choice.

As it happened, while he’d been trying hard not to tackle the issue of where Genevieve was going to spend the months the builder needed to underpin her house, Aaron’s mum Yvonne had telephoned. ‘Aunt Norma’s broken her ankle on a day trip to King’s Lynn, and bumped her head. She’s got to stay in hospital overnight. Your dad’s on shift at the hotel—’

Knowing his mother’s car control in times of stress, Aaron immediately offered, ‘I’ll drive you.’ His great-aunt had looked after him and Lee a lot when they were little so Yvonne could work. He’d apologised to Genevieve and was soon driving his mother out of the village, noticing the absence of Clancy’s car outside the Roundhouse and sparing a moment to wonder whether she’d decided to head home to London already.

He had little opportunity to examine his reaction to that possibility during the hassly fifty-minute journey as Yvonne alternately worried aloud about her aunt and reproved him for the disreputable interior of his double-cab pickup, littered with notes, plans of gardens and empty crisp packets.

Once at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, they found Aunt Norma had concussion. Queasy and quiet, she looked unlike her usual noisy, feisty self. Yvonne croaked, ‘Oh, Auntie! You poor thing!’ and became quite tearful.

They stayed on, requesting information of nurses and buying Aunt Norma magazines from the hospital shop. Her normally bright eyes were closed against queasiness and she didn’t tease anyone or ask awkward questions, so they knew she had to be feeling pretty rubbish.

Finally, after she’d fallen asleep, Aaron and Yvonne went out into a dark and breezy evening. Yvonne was inclined to sniff and Aaron gave her a reassuring hug before they got into his truck, her loose curls blowing into his face.

It wasn’t until he was nosing his pickup into the mad traffic on the huge roundabout on the outskirts of King’s Lynn that Clancy Moss returned to the forefront of his mind with an uncomfortable jolt. He should have made some effort to check whether she’d definitely left. He had the landline number of the house but the clock on the dash of his truck read 22:47 – too late to ring.

When, eventually, he’d driven his yawning mother past the Roundhouse, the place was in darkness, but the smart blue BMW was once again parked outside the front gate. He drove on, feeling like a git. Spending a night in an empty house couldn’t be comfortable.

As he was feeling no better about himself this morning, he let Nelson out into the garden, pausing to enjoy the view of the glittering, restless sea and wonder why anyone would live anywhere other than Nelson’s Bar, then passed half an hour strumming one of his favourite guitars on the garden bench. It always put his soul at peace.

When it was nine o’clock, mindful that yesterday Clancy hadn’t seemed to be looking after herself, he stuffed four cereal bars in his pockets, called Nelson and snicked on his lead, then stepped out into the early summer sunshine. He strode past the rest of Potato Hall Row, mainly flint cottages edged with red brick. Nelson’s feathery tail waved as the king-sized canine sniffed hedges and gateposts. They made their way down the curve of Long Lane to the Roundhouse.

The scent of clipped privet was strong on the air as he passed 3 Roundhouse Row where Ernie could be seen sweeping up hedge trimmings. ‘Aaron!’ Ernie hailed him at max volume. ‘Do we have a new Evelyn? Dilys says we have but nobody’s told me.’ He waved towards the blue BMW parked in the lane and leaned on the broom handle, shaggy grey eyebrows knitting above the bridge of his nose.

Aaron met Ernie’s scowl with a smile. There was no point trading Ernie grump for grump. He couldn’t help but attack every subject like a threat any more than Aunt Norma could help tripping on uneven pavements. ‘Possibly,’ he replied.

Ernie revolved on the spot as Aaron attempted to carry on by. ‘And she’s Alice’s cousin? Come to represent the family interests, has she?’

Aaron shrugged, managing to sidestep Ernie on the second attempt. ‘Hard to say. Hedge is looking great, Ernie.’ Ernie was instantly distracted, beaming with pride as he patted his manicured privet, and Aaron escaped. Dilys must have met Clancy, which was like telling the whole village, and Aunt Norma had the same knitting and sewing mates. It was no doubt only because she was in hospital that he hadn’t already received an indignant phone call about a member of Alice’s family living in the Roundhouse.

He broke into a jog, determined to pass Dilys’s cottage without being collared again but, thankfully, her red gingham curtains were drawn and he was able to slip through the gate to the Roundhouse.

It was no use checking for drawn curtains there as every window was presently bare. His conscience gave him another prod. He gave the outer front door a gentle knock. If she was upstairs asleep – on what? – she would be unlikely to be disturbed by it and—

A brisk rattle, then the porch door swung open and Clancy stood in the opening wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her chestnut hair fell poker-straight and glossy to her shoulders, the fringe framing those direct green eyes.

‘Oh, good, it’s you,’ she said, beckoning him in. The smell of coffee and the red mug and bowl he could see in the sink as he followed her suggested she’d had breakfast. ‘I’ve found the bookings book in a kitchen drawer,’ she began as she strode ahead. ‘Can I get access to the Roundhouse Row bank account? Or do I come through you to check payments received? Evelyn’s notes don’t cover that.’ By now she’d reached the place on the kitchen island where the bookings book and a few piles of paper were all neatly arranged. She glanced down at the big dog beside Aaron. ‘Morning, Nelson.’

Nelson waved his tail. Evidently, he didn’t know her well enough to perform his greeting dance.

‘But first—’ Aaron broke in, taken aback to realise the dreary, droopy ghost Clancy he’d met yesterday had vanished, leaving in its place a Clancy much more like the sparky woman he remembered.

‘“But first” let’s get the Roundhouse furniture out of storage?’ she finished for him, her honeyed tones belying her steely expression. ‘It’s high on my list, but not high on yours, evidently, as you didn’t bother coming back yesterday, regardless of whether I had anything to sleep on.’

Aaron felt a smile tug at his mouth. He didn’t want it to, but something amused him about her obvious satisfaction in possessing knowledge he’d failed to share. ‘But first,’ he repeated firmly, ‘I need to apologise for abandoning you yesterday. There was a small family emergency.’ He explained about Aunt Norma.

Instantly, concern filled Clancy’s eyes. ‘Your family comes first, of course. I can manage on an airbed for another couple of nights if necessary.’

An airbed. He caught his mouth this time before it grinned at her resourcefulness. ‘I’m relieved you didn’t have to sleep on the floor. Can we sit down for a few minutes?’

She looked ostentatiously around the space about them, still devoid of furniture. ‘On what?’

This time he didn’t trouble to hide his smile, not minding points being scored over him when it was done with such elegance. ‘The garden bench worked perfectly yesterday.’

He led the way out, letting Nelson off to sniff around. Clancy sat down and waited for him to begin, apparently content to watch a blackbird hopping about a gnarly apple tree as if choosing the perfect perch from which to sing.

‘I’m glad you feel that family comes first,’ he began carefully, joining her on the bench, ‘because I don’t think you being here’s a good thing.’

Her hair swung around her face as she turned to regard him, the sun picking out glittering flecks of gold in her eyes. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Leaving aside the fact that I don’t think you realise what it’s like living in such a tiny, out-of-the-way place as Nelson’s Bar, you have to consider my family.’

She tilted her head. ‘Why’s that?’ she repeated.

Aaron began to feel less amused. It might be better – for her as well as him – if he was more direct. ‘Lee was nearly destroyed by Alice. He was heartsick for so long that we were afraid for him. As you know, Alice agreed that I could buy his half of the Roundhouse and Roundhouse Row to enable him to move away and make a new start, but he’s living in the village again and you’ll be a reminder.’ He paused, then went on, feeling she might as well know the truth. ‘To give you an idea of the level of antipathy in my family, they refer to Alice as “Awful Alice”.’ He sat forward, leaning his elbows on his thighs, giving her a level look. ‘There’s resentment, Clancy.’

Clancy leaned forward to prop her elbows on her thighs and give him a level look of her own. ‘You may be your brother’s keeper, but I’m afraid I’m not my cousin’s.’

‘I didn’t say I was Lee’s keeper,’ he interrupted, stung.

Clancy overrode him in the same level but firm voice. ‘What Awful Alice did was nothing to do with me, which I’m sure Lee’s mature enough to realise.’

He decided to become yet more direct. ‘Personally, I thought of your cousin as Princess Alice, not too worried about what anybody else wanted, expecting her wishes to be paramount even when she was crying for the moon.’ He ignored the way her eyes widened at this candid appraisal. ‘Even if you’re not like that, I’m pretty confident Lee would prefer you to consider his feelings in this and return to your life in London. And – friendly warning – he won’t be alone in that.’

Her gaze didn’t waver, though she made a tiny movement, as if somewhere deep inside she flinched. ‘You’re mixing up opinion with fact. Anyway, I can’t go back. Lee’s not the only one things have gone wrong for. My fiancé – ex, now – has got someone else, Renée, who I suspect he’s moving into our apartment pretty much as we speak. I’m being shoved out of the business I worked long and hard to help build so, as well as having nowhere to live, I have no job. I represent Alice’s interests and therefore I appoint myself as caretaker.’

Her voice softened. ‘I think Alice will want me to have the job. She and I – there’s a special relationship. I haven’t seen her for a while, but that doesn’t matter. That’s how it’s always been because my parents towed me around the world or they put me in boarding school or left me with Alice and Aunt Sally, when, despite your assessment of her character, she shared her home, her life, her friends and even her mother with me without hesitation. Now I’m based in the UK and she’s the one travelling I’m pretty certain she’d support my wish to come to Nelson’s Bar. But we can ask her, if you like.’ Her expression clouded. ‘I’m genuinely sorry you don’t want me here, and I can see you might think that with my history I should be inured to just cheerfully packing up and shoving off somewhere where I’m less of an inconvenience. But I need a new home, at least for now. And this is it.’ Her voice wavered and she clamped her lips shut on the end of the sentence.

In the silence, the blackbird began to sing beautifully fluting notes. Nelson lifted his head as if searching for the source of the sound with his one eye.

Aaron stared at Clancy, shaken to his plummeting core. He should have recognised the trouble he’d seen in her eyes yesterday. He’d watched Lee battling similar heart-wrenching grief. Now he understood why she had arrived looking so ill, why abandoning her in an empty house hadn’t made her turn tail. Clancy was in a mess. And, judging from the way her fingers were folded around each other so hard that her knuckles were white, her composure was only a very thin skin deep.

Aaron had never been able to kick people while they were down and rarely refused to give help where it was needed – leaving aside the current uncomfortable situation with Genevieve. Nelson was only one in a succession of badly off animals he’d adopted at one time or another. He dragged up a breath from the pit of his lungs and let it out in a gusty sigh. ‘OK. I’ll get my truck. We’ll fetch the furniture.’

A noisy swallow, then she replied, simply, ‘Thank you. May I walk along with you?’

‘Of course,’ he muttered.

She locked up the Roundhouse with city-dweller punctiliousness. They began up Long Lane through the dappled sunlight created by laburnum trees, the last of their yellow blossoms floating down around them. They headed into the village before swinging towards the north side of the headland. May was mild this year and the sunshine stroked Aaron’s skin with warm hands. ‘I live further up the lane in Potato Hall Row,’ he volunteered. Having made the decision not to hurl further impediments in Clancy’s way – though he wasn’t particularly looking forward to the little chat he’d soon need to have with his family – he went on: ‘Long Lane loops right around this side of the village as far as the B&B and The Green, towards the furthest point of the headland. Then Marshview Road takes over and comes back round.’ He swept his arm in a long U-shape.

Clancy’s hair blew in a sudden gust of wind and she smiled faintly, as if enjoying the freshness of the air. ‘Alice took me around the village a couple of times when I was here before but I don’t remember much. Do your parents live somewhere near here?’

‘Frenchmen’s Way. This turning we’re coming up to.’

Neither of them said anything about the shared kiss in his parents’ garden one night, a long time ago, as they passed the opening to Frenchmen’s Way. Long Lane continued to bear right and slope upwards. Clancy strode out beside him. ‘Are your parents going to mind me being with you to pick up the furniture? Or Lee? Perhaps, to follow the alliterative style of Awful Alice,’ she went on ruminatively, ‘they’ll call me Crappy Clancy.’

‘They won’t be there,’ he admitted frankly, at the same time wishing he hadn’t told her about the Awful Alice thing. ‘Dad’s at work and Lee’s taken Mum shopping before my great-aunt comes home. Aunt Norma lives in an annexe at De Silva House.’

‘That’s nice.’ Clancy sounded genuinely touched at this sign of family love. ‘Oh, look! Those flint cottages are so pretty.’

‘That’s Potato Hall Row,’ he answered. ‘Mine’s the furthest one, the one with the workshop attached.’

She nodded absently. ‘How have you and I emailed so regularly if there’s no internet in the village?’

He was thrown by the sudden question and was sure, from the way she watched him out of the corner of her eye, that he was meant to be. ‘I have satellite broadband.’

‘Ah,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. ‘So the thing about no internet was fake news. How about no pub, no shop …?’

‘There is no pub or shop,’ he said defensively, though he wasn’t sure whether she was teasing him or was actually annoyed. ‘There are a few places in the village with satellite broadband, but you can’t get it everywhere because of the conservation area, listed buildings, and even preservation orders on trees that block the signal.’

‘Oh. I see the issue.’ She frowned. ‘As one of the owners of Roundhouse Row, couldn’t you share your internet access with the caretaker?’

‘I could,’ he admitted. ‘Evelyn wasn’t keen on learning to do things online so it didn’t come up. So many people ask to hook up with it that I suppose I’ve become wary of reaching my data limit before the end of the month. People are always asking to “just borrow” my connection. I change my password a lot.

‘Here’s the truck,’ he added unnecessarily as he stopped beside the big silver pickup with De Silva Landscaping on the side. He beeped it open.

‘But,’ Clancy began again. She was interrupted by Genevieve suddenly rounding the side of his house, waving energetically, the breeze making her long blonde hair wave too. Nelson yanked at his lead so Aaron let him bound over to fling himself at her, not sure how he felt about Gen’s unscheduled appearance. It was new and not particularly welcome for her to hang around him so much. Before she’d tried to solve her housing issue by moving their relationship up a level, she’d been a warm, fun, independent girlfriend who’d seemed as content as Aaron to include a relationship in her life but not make it the be-all and end-all.

‘There you are!’ Genevieve fussed Nelson but looked at Aaron as she spoke, as if she was talking to a little boy who’d wandered off. ‘You’re out early. I heard about your aunt and came to see if I could help.’ Then she looked at Clancy with a half-smile of enquiry.

‘The village grapevine hasn’t taken long with the news about Aunt Norma’s ankle,’ he said drily. ‘She’ll be OK. This is Clancy Moss. She’s going to move into the Roundhouse and take Evelyn’s job.’

Genevieve’s smile broadened. ‘Oh, the Clancy who’s Alice’s cousin? Maybe we met when you were here for … anyway, welcome to Nelson’s Bar. Are you moving from very far away?’

Clancy sent Aaron a glance, as if divining that Genevieve had been going to say for Lee’s wedding and noting that she’d thought better of it. ‘From London. We’re just going to pick up the furniture from Aaron’s parents’ house.’ Clancy smiled pleasantly and didn’t remark on Genevieve knowing Alice. Everyone knew everyone in Nelson’s Bar.

Genevieve immediately hurried to join them at the truck. ‘I’ll help you.’ And before Aaron could react, she’d ushered Nelson into the back seat of the cab and taken her customary spot in the front.

‘Thank you,’ said Clancy politely, climbing into the back alongside the dog. Aaron suspected that Clancy took refuge in absolute courtesy when she didn’t want people to read her too accurately.

He took the driver’s seat and Genevieve twisted round as Aaron turned in the road, telling Clancy about her favourite subject: waking up one day to a substantial crack in her kitchen wall and discovering the ground was subsiding around the foundations of her cottage. ‘There must have been water leaking underground for ages, the builder thinks.’

Reaching De Silva House in less than a minute, Aaron reversed up to the double doors in the storage area beneath Aunt Norma’s flat, and they all climbed out of the truck.

Aaron turned to Clancy. ‘You’ll appreciate that Lee long ago disposed of his half of their furniture.’ He hauled one of the doors open with a rumble and a creak to reveal a dim interior of sheets flung over large objects.

They began removing dust sheets – disturbing a lot of dust – and assessed what lay beneath. ‘Two beds, a sofa and chairs, a couple of tables and a cabinet. Might as well take it all.’ Aaron indicated a stack of boxes. ‘These came from the Roundhouse too.’ The boxes contained crockery and kitchen equipment, books and ornaments. Then came Alice’s things. Clothes and shoes. Dusty make-up. An outdated laptop and a jumble of pens and paperwork.

Clancy stared at it all. ‘I hadn’t thought about what happened to Alice’s things. I suppose I ought to take them rather than leave them to inconvenience your parents.’

Genevieve came to peer over her shoulder. ‘Where is Alice these days, anyway? Can’t you send them to her? We were quite friendly when she lived here but now I never hear from her at all.’

‘I have an email address. I don’t actually know where she is,’ said Clancy absently, folding the flaps of the box closed again. ‘She moves around a lot.’

Genevieve sounded fascinated. ‘How mysterious she became! Did she really just sneak out while you were on the phone that day?’

‘If you don’t mind taking the boxes, that would be great,’ Aaron interrupted. He was beginning to wish Genevieve hadn’t tagged along on this expedition. He could do without the village rehashing ‘poor Lee being jilted’, especially now Lee was living locally again.

Clancy rose, dusting off the knees of her jeans. ‘Let’s get everything to the Roundhouse and then I can let you two get on with your Sunday.’

Genevieve smiled and patted Aaron’s bum as she passed, as if to emphasise their closeness. ‘I’ll lay a couple of the dust sheets in the bed of the truck. If I know you it’ll be filled with grass and soil.’

Aaron suppressed a snippy remark about the function of the truck being to transport lawn mowers and plants and merely said, ‘Thanks.’

It didn’t take them too long to load up and Genevieve chattered happily to Clancy as they drove down to the Roundhouse, and all through the process of unloading.

Conversely, Aaron found himself working in silent frustration, especially when Genevieve giggled madly at having to squeeze and wiggle the springy mattress through the door at the top of the second flight of stairs, Clancy apparently having chosen the loft as her bedroom.

At that point Clancy called a halt. ‘Thank you both. I can manage from here. Would you like a cuppa before you head off?’

Genevieve blew her hair out of her face. ‘Love one! And Nelson adores a saucer of coffee if there’s enough going.’ She’d obviously taken to Clancy and when she’d settled beside her on the sofa Genevieve returned to her preoccupation with her housing issues. ‘Not being able to live in my place during the building works is going to be a nightmare. I’ve got a whopping excess of a thousand pounds to pay so I’ve nothing spare for rent.’

Clancy blew her coffee. ‘Your insurance company wouldn’t expect you to live under a hedge. They should meet a reasonable rent.’

Aaron paused. He didn’t remember this point being aired before.

But Genevieve was quick with an answer. ‘There’s nowhere available to rent in the village, but the main thing is that I’ll save loads on the utility bills if I can find someone to stay with, which will mean I can afford the thousand pounds.’

Aaron began drinking again. That was true. Genevieve didn’t have a well-paid job and, accordingly, only modest savings.

But Clancy hadn’t finished exploring the subject. ‘That could work in your favour because if there’s nowhere to rent in Nelson’s Bar, they should let you move into the village B&B instead. A B&B rate being inclusive, the utilities won’t come into it so you’ll save just the same.’ She glanced at Genevieve with a faint smile. ‘I interned with an insurance giant when I was doing my MBA.’

‘Oh,’ said Genevieve, smile fading. ‘I suppose I could see if the insurance company will wear it.’ Cheeks suddenly rosy, she kept her gaze away from Aaron’s.

‘I don’t think they have a choice, but I’m happy to talk to them for you if you encounter resistance. You’ve helped me today.’ Clancy began to smile. But then she looked from Genevieve to Aaron and back and whatever she read in their body language caused doubt to flicker in her eyes.

Genevieve drained her coffee. ‘Thank you. It seems my knotty problem isn’t a knotty problem after all. I should have known to ask the insurance company about alternatives.’

Aaron rose, as awkward for Genevieve’s obvious discomfort as it was possible to feel at the same time as being so relieved his whole spine flexed. He wanted to hug both women: Clancy in jubilation for resolving the Genevieve situation without apparently trying … but Genevieve in consolation because he felt guilty. It was really tough to disappoint someone you were fond of. But now she had no reason to pressure him he hoped Gen would return to her old independence and their relationship could revert to the easy-going thing it used to be.

He became aware of Gen’s eyes on him, as if she were reading his mind, seeing and being hurt by his relief, so he hunted for a neutral subject. ‘Clancy, are you starting work tomorrow? It might be a good idea for us to run through things in more detail.’

Clancy nodded. ‘That would be great.’

They arranged a time for first thing tomorrow, Monday, then Aaron and Genevieve said their goodbyes, Nelson stretching and shaking in preparation for leaving.

Outside, the sky had become inky and big drops of rain had begun to spatter the dust of the lane as Aaron opened the passenger door of the truck. ‘Gen, I’m giving Mum a ride to visit Aunt Norma. Fancy coming along?’

Genevieve was standing still, staring up Droody Road towards the centre of the village. ‘I think I’d better go home and examine my insurance policy,’ she said, all signs of her earlier vivaciousness gone.

As he had so often lately, Aaron experienced an uneasy feeling of guilt, which prompted resentment that he felt it. ‘Want me to ask Mum and Dad if you can store your furniture with them if Clancy’s B&B idea works out?’ He winced, conscious he’d called it Clancy’s idea as if to distance himself from it.

She shook her head, still not looking at him and ignoring the rain pattering on the leaves of nearby trees. ‘If the insurance will pay for the B&B then they’ll pay for my furniture storage.’

‘OK. Hop in. I’ll give you a lift home. It’s going to pour down.’ He clicked his fingers to tell Nelson to jump in the back seat. Big, hairy dogs took a lot of drying.

Genevieve did look at him this time. ‘It’s only half a mile. I’ll walk. Clancy’s pretty, isn’t she?’

He nodded, because he’d have been blind not to notice that. There was something in Genevieve’s expression that he didn’t particularly like. Jealousy? Suspicion? He was reasonably certain that he’d never told her about the episode in the darkness of his parents’ garden but had she picked up some lingering vibe between him and Clancy?

She began to turn away, and suddenly he found himself commenting, probably more bluntly than he should, ‘You don’t seem very happy that Clancy might have solved your accommodation issue.’ He hesitated, trying to find a way to put into non-contentious words something that had been bothering him. ‘You’ve always loved your cottage so much. I know it will be a wrench to leave it, even temporarily.’ So why angle to move in with me and make it sound permanent? was his subtext.

She sighed and answered. ‘Yes. But I suppose the problem has made me face things I hadn’t realised existed. It’s ended up being more about my future than about four walls … hasn’t it?’ Then she began striding away from him, her hair flying, head up as if she were confronting something other than the rain on her face. She didn’t offer him a kiss goodbye.

And Aaron didn’t mind that she hadn’t. He watched her go and knew they’d just acknowledged that the subsidence had been the cause of cracks in more than her cottage walls.

He drove to De Silva House, a solid, red-brick Victorian, the home still echoing in his imagination with childhood games shared with Lee in the tall rooms or the sprawling garden. Five granite steps swept up to the black front door, bay trees like sentries on either side, and each gracious bay window gleamed in the emerging sunshine. His father’s car was absent but Lee’s van was outside, indicating that Lee and their mum had returned from shopping.

Aaron found them in the kitchen. Four-year-old Daisy was helping put the shopping away by darting about to grab whatever caught her eye and getting under the feet of adults. It occurred to him that Daisy’s existence was something he hadn’t mentioned to Clancy. Probably just as well. She didn’t need additional emotional pressure right now.

‘Uncle Aaron!’ Daisy bellowed when she saw him, smile wide and arms out in the certainty of a good welcome.

‘Oof!’ He caught her in mid-air and swung her up. ‘Crazy Daisy!’

‘I want to say hello to Nelson,’ she said, trying to scramble down the instant she was up.

‘Sure thing.’ He set her carefully on her feet. ‘In fact, I think he wants you to take him in the garden and play tug o’ war with his rope toy.’

‘Yeah! I know where it is, don’t I, Granny? It’s in the utility room. C’mon, Nelson!’ She flew towards the next room, Nelson cantering gamely after.

‘Back garden only,’ Lee called after them. He turned to Aaron. ‘Want a beer?’

Aaron ignored his mother’s slight eye-roll and accepted. Though he’d been much more relaxed and carefree when he was younger, Lee had become a solemn man who took single fatherhood seriously, pragmatic about living with his parents until his place in Northamptonshire was sold. A beer or two with Aaron might be the social highlight of his week, particularly as Yvonne would be busy with Aunt Norma and less available for babysitting.

‘Thanks.’ Aaron took the proffered beer along with a seat at the table. ‘I’ve come to mention the new caretaker at Roundhouse Row. To everybody,’ he added.

Yvonne, busy stacking tins of soup in a cupboard, glanced over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t think you’d advertised.’

‘It became unnecessary.’ His words seemed to ring in his own ears as he added, ‘Clancy Moss has taken the position herself.’

Lee, who’d been making for another chair, halted.

Yvonne dropped a tin of soup with a clang. ‘Why on earth do you want her to do it?’ she demanded.

Aaron’s eyes remained on Lee. ‘I would have avoided it if I could.’

Although he’d paled, Lee remained composed. ‘OK, thanks for telling me.’ He looked at the bottle in his hand and then around the kitchen as if suddenly struggling to remember where he was or what he was doing. ‘I’ll just go and check Daisy’s OK.’

When the back door had closed behind him, Yvonne rounded on Aaron, pink and damp-eyed. ‘This won’t be good for Lee. Can you stop her?’

Aaron sighed. ‘No. She has as much say in it as I do.’ He deliberated over how much to reveal. ‘She’s not here to make trouble, Mum. From what she told me, she’s had a hard time of it and hasn’t got many places to go. Lee seemed to take it OK. Let’s not make a big deal out of it, in case he gets anxious.’

Yvonne gazed at him, eyes dark with worry. ‘We certainly don’t want that.’

Chapter Four

On Monday morning Clancy awoke in an unfamiliar bed in the only-slightly familiar room and the memory of why she was there crashed in on her.

Will.

Renée.

Will with Renée. The images of them together flashed before her eyes.

Stop it! she told herself sternly. She was in a new bed in her new room. She had a new life in a tiny jewel of a village high up above the sea. A wedge of sunlight sliced through the dormer window onto the floor, as if tempting her to get up and warm her feet on the wooden boards. Once that was accomplished, getting on with the day became easier.

First job when she got downstairs: sit down and write a shopping list.

Bedclothes

Towels

Curtains (downstairs and loft)

A rap at the front door made her drop her pen and jump up to answer, expecting it to be Aaron, though it was fifteen minutes earlier than they’d arranged. But when she threw the door open it was to find a woman standing there, her curls dancing in the breeze. ‘Hello, Clancy. I thought it best if we cleared the air.’

Clancy stepped back, feeling her cheeks heating up. ‘Oh! Mrs De Silva. Yvonne. Come in.’ The De Silvas must truly still be harbouring ill-feeling towards Alice and her family if air-clearing had to be done.

Yvonne looked strained and pinched. She stepped inside, her gaze roaming around the big echoing space of the ground floor in which the few pieces of furniture now in Clancy’s care were almost lost. She wasted no time getting down to business. ‘Are you absolutely sure about living here?’ Her hair was untidy. Not the tousled look her son carried off so well, but more the bedhead style of someone who hadn’t been able to wait to come and air her concerns.

Clancy had been about to offer her a cup of tea, but Yvonne’s words made her suspect it wasn’t going to be a long visit. ‘Nearly sure,’ she answered, honestly.

‘I see.’ Yvonne gazed at Clancy, her dark eyes tired. ‘I won’t beat about the bush. I’m worried. When Alice left so cruelly Lee was so hurt … I was terrified at the way he crashed, emotionally. I thought he’d end up in either the psychiatric ward or the morgue. It destroys you to see your child that way and know someone else is responsible.’

‘Of course,’ Clancy said softly.

Yvonne sighed and seated herself at the kitchen table. ‘Fergus says I have to remember you aren’t Alice.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘But humans want someone to blame when things go wrong.’

Clancy tried to laugh, but, as much for Alice as herself, it tried to turn into a sob in her throat. ‘I’d heard villages were friendly places.’

Embarrassment crept across Yvonne’s face. ‘I’m sorry. You must think I’m a horror. But Lee … I thought he’d made such progress when he came back here to live a few months ago. Then Aaron told us about you turning up, and the look on Lee’s face—’ She had to stop to swallow.

Her own throat aching, Clancy nodded. She’d liked Yvonne before and understood she was only paying this visit because, in her eyes, one of her children was being threatened. For an instant she was tempted to cave in. Say, ‘OK, I’ll find somewhere else. I’ve certainly done it before. I could go out to Namibia where my parents are working on a new school. Or find out where Alice is and see if I can join her …’

But, then, into her mind flashed more of the memories she’d managed to shove away, earlier. That awful afternoon in the conference room. Asila, Monty, Tracey … and Will, looking absolutely wretched, as if, she remembered thinking, she’d been the one to cheat. Monty saying, ‘I appreciate you didn’t like the way we wanted to handle things but we were only thinking of IsVid.’

‘But it’s not fair to let people think it was me—!’

‘It’s not personal,’ Monty had snapped. ‘All our livelihoods are tied up in IsVid.’

But it had felt personal. Her friends … Asila, so petite that it always looked as if her glorious black hair would pull her over, eyes filled with tears. Jon ‘Monty’ Montagu regarding Clancy angrily through his glasses. Tracey, big, cushiony Tracey, troubled but resolute, though it had been in her arms Clancy had wept in pain and humiliation when Will’s infidelity had come to light in such an excruciatingly public way.

Clancy remembered gasping as if plunged into ice water. She, the victim, was being sacrificed for the business.

She’d had little choice but to go – though not before she’d told them a couple of financial truths about what her leaving meant, ending coldly, ‘You don’t think I’m going to just give you my share of the business, do you? A fifth of everything you’re guarding so blindly is mine.’ That had taken them aback, especially Will, judging from his stark expression. She hadn’t been able to withhold a parting shot. ‘Next time you cheat on someone, Will, you need to think where it leaves everyone financially.’ Then she’d stared Monty down. ‘No pat answer for that one?’ But she’d known lots of things were more important than money. Lots. She’d lost Will, her best friends and her work.

And she was not about to be the loser again.

‘I can only tell you what I told Aaron,’ she said to Yvonne, making her voice sympathetic. ‘I need somewhere to be and something to do. I’m sorry Lee was hurt – and I know how he feels – but I didn’t hurt him.’ Clancy manufactured a smile. ‘At least I’ll be doing a great job for your other son’s investment. I’m going to caretake the hell out of Roundhouse Row.’

Yvonne sighed, murmuring enigmatically, ‘You strike me as that kind. Thank you for being frank, at least.’ She rose, and so did Clancy – just as the door-knocker clattered again. Clancy opened up to reveal Aaron on the doorstep.

His brows clanged down when his gaze lit on Yvonne. ‘Mum? I didn’t expect to find you here.’

His mother lifted her chin. ‘I wanted to speak to Clancy.’

‘Really?’ His eyes flicked Clancy’s way and he said to her, ‘Be with you in a minute.’ He began to close the door with himself and his mother on the outside.

‘Just come in when you’re ready,’ Clancy muttered, returning to the kitchen table and her list. She’d added gardening gloves by the time Aaron stepped indoors.

He was still frowning. ‘I had no idea Mum planned to call on you. I hope she didn’t—’ he hesitated ‘—make you uncomfortable.’

She wrote down coffee pod machine and sat back. ‘I hope we came to an understanding.’

‘Right.’ He looked as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what that meant and took the chair beside hers. ‘Shall we get straight down to business? You’ve read Evelyn’s notes, you said?’

‘And the information sheet she puts out for guests. I now know that the village was named to celebrate Nelson’s victory at Waterloo, his being born just along the coast at Burnham Thorpe, this headland being a bar, or spit, of land.’

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘“Nelson’s Spit” wouldn’t have sounded as picturesque, would it? There’s also a story that he was conceived here, but how anybody thinks they know that I have no idea.’ He glanced at his watch and moved the subject on to Clancy’s duties and the joys of ‘changeover days’ when one set of guests would leave by 10 a.m. and the next move in after 3 p.m.

After they’d discussed Evelyn’s notes, Aaron sat back. ‘You’ve met Dilys, I hear. Shall we see whether Ernie’s in? He’s feeling left out.’ He hesitated. ‘I ought to warn you that he’s becoming rather … blunt.’

‘Thanks for the heads up.’ Clancy followed Aaron out of the front door to the next-door-but-one house and between clipped hedges to the front door. When he rang the bell it was answered by a rather fierce-looking man with sticking-up grey hair and a pendulous bottom lip.

‘I’m Ernie Romain,’ he said, sticking out a hand to shake Clancy’s. ‘You’re our new Evelyn.’

‘Clancy Moss,’ she said. ‘I’m doing the job Evelyn used to do, yes.’ Then, thinking that she ought to demonstrate her willingness to be approached, added, ‘Just let me know if you have any issues with the cottage.’

‘Come in,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the house.

Aaron sighed but when Clancy stepped through the green front door into a tiny hall with stripy wallpaper, he followed. In the kitchen they found Ernie, who obviously had an impressive turn of speed despite his age, already switching on a kettle, an open jar of Maxwell House standing beside three mugs. The kitchen was the same size and shape as Dilys’s but clean and bare.

‘Only a quick one for me.’ Aaron took a seat at the table. ‘I’m supposed to be terracing a garden in Titchwell.’

‘She’s better-looking than Evelyn,’ Ernie answered, evidently in a different conversation in his head.

Clancy caught an apologetic glance from Aaron and found herself grinning. ‘Have you lived here long, Ernie?’ she asked, in an effort to turn to safer topics before he enlarged on his opinion of hers or Evelyn’s looks.

The kettle boiled and Ernie poured the water into the mugs, stirring vigorously. ‘Since I lost my wife. Soon be ten years she’s been gone and still a pain in the arse.’ He stuck a sugar jar and a carton of milk on the table too.

Clancy might have been thrown by this if Dilys hadn’t already explained their novel living arrangements.

‘She said you’re Alice’s cousin,’ he added suddenly, peering at Clancy. ‘Where’s Alice got to? She was a gal, she was.’ Ernie snorted a laugh. ‘Always up to something. Always got some plan afoot. Pretty little dot. She and me got on like a house on fire.’

‘Good! I’ve always got on with her, too.’ Clancy was glad someone had something positive to say about Alice.

‘You look a bit like her. But she was a cow, pissing off like that,’ Ernie added, his fond tone belying the caustic nature of his words. He fell to drinking his coffee meditatively.

Oh dear, the positivity hadn’t lasted long. ‘Er, well, I’m looking forward to exploring the village soon. For one reason or another I’ve been stuck in the Roundhouse pretty much since I got here. Evelyn left maps she gave the guests—’

‘Maps?’ Ernie bellowed a laugh, his eyebrows beetling incredulously. ‘If you need a map to find your way round Nelson’s Bar you must be brainless.’

Aaron cleared his throat and, finding the elderly man’s bluntness uncomfortable judging by his pained expression, managed to keep him talking about Roundhouse Row until they’d finished their coffee and could leave.

‘Sorry about Ernie,’ Aaron apologised as soon as they were out of earshot in the lane. ‘He just turns his thoughts to words, no matter how inappropriate or blunt.’

Clancy shrugged. ‘I’m sure we’ll get used to each other.’ Then, as Aaron took out the keys to his truck, she recalled something that had bothered her last night. ‘By the way, I’m sorry if I somehow said the wrong thing to you and Genevieve yesterday. The atmosphere got a bit …’ She let the sentence tail away rather than say ‘weird’.

He scuffed a booted toe in the dust of the lane. ‘It was kind of you to share your knowledge. Gen’s been knocked off balance by what’s happening to her home.’

When he said no more, Clancy ventured, ‘She seems nice.’

‘She is,’ he acknowledged, but he sounded rueful. His brown eyes looked very dark in the sunshine; almost black.

Clancy backed away a step. ‘OK. Good. Well, thanks for clueing me in about my new job.’

He took a couple of steps in the other direction, towards his truck. ‘If you have any questions, just call me on my landline or mobile – I can normally get a signal if I’m out of the village. Or you can leave a message.’

‘Sure.’ With a final smile goodbye, Clancy slipped indoors through the porch, wondering whether she was just being ultra-sensitive … or whether she’d read something in Aaron’s awkward manner that did not bode well for Genevieve.

Chapter Five

Despite Ernie’s guffaws, Clancy did pick up a map of Nelson’s Bar out of the folder Evelyn had left. She would have liked Evelyn, she was sure, judging by the neat way she’d left everything.

The hand-drawn map showed that most of the village nestled between Long Lane and Marshview Road, curling together as they neared the tip of the headland and met Droody Road running through the middle. The shape they made looked a little like a heart with an arrow through it, she thought fancifully. Where the three roads met a building was marked ‘The Duke of Bronte B&B’ after which Evelyn had written, ‘(The Duke of Bronte being Lord Nelson’s secondary title)’. Side roads such as Frenchmen’s Way, Trader’s Place and The Green led off the main thoroughfares, and the hill leading to the village was prosaically named Long Climb.

As she’d already walked up Long Lane as far as Aaron’s place, Clancy decided to begin with Marshview Road, as it would lead her towards what was marked on the map as Zig-zag Path leading to Zig-zag Beach, which she remembered as the short stretch of sand where Alice had once taken her.

She stepped outside, the map tucked in her pocket. Once she’d left the shelter of the lane the wind pounced on her, whipping her hair about and making her zip up her fleece. Many of the cottages, sunbathing behind hedges as she passed along Marshview Road, were built of the red and white chalk she was fast getting used to. Between them she was able to catch glimpses of the sea, blue and enticing, each wave sporting a jaunty white frill.

After a few minutes, she reached a small but well-worn footpath to the right, between a hedge and a fence, with a sign saying To Zig-zag Path. Following it, Clancy soon arrived on the scrubby, undulating grassland of the clifftop. The footpath became a vague line where the soil showed through the grass, leading to where a white handrail was poised at the cliff edge and gulls wheeled and called mournfully above.

Exhilarated, hair thrashing more wildly than ever, Clancy strode to the handrail that marked the beginning of Zig-zag Path, pausing to drink in the full glory of the view. Sea, sea, sea, right to the curved horizon. Catching the sun’s rays and tossing them into a million dancing lights, the waves ran constantly, restlessly inshore. To catch sight of the swaying reed beds and winding creeks of the salt marsh between Nelson’s Bar and Brancaster she had to swivel to her right and look almost behind her. The Nelson’s Bar headland seemed to have erupted through the gentle, flat scenery all around it, right out into the sea.

At Clancy’s feet the handrail zigged and zagged steeply down, out of sight after the first few sharp bends. She gave in to its lure, her feet slapping the ground as she followed it down, the sea closer with every step, the hiss and crash of the waves louder.

At last she reached Zig-zag Beach, a triangle of pale sand gritty with countless broken seashells. For several minutes she watched as the waves chased each other up the beach almost to the high tide mark of tossed seaweed, then fell back with a disappointed tshhhhhh into the giant blue and white canvas of the sea. The gulls called to her like lost souls, riding the wind on their perfect wings, then they moved off as if realising she had no food to share.

It didn’t take her long to explore the beach, turning pungent heaps of kelp with her toe, shells crunching beneath the soles of her trainers, but as she breathed in the briny air she was filled with a oneness with the place, almost a feeling of belonging. Or just longing?

Finally, she began back up the path.

She’d toiled to the halfway point, the muscles of her calves pulling, when she was surprised by sounds from behind her and two panting teenaged lads in dripping board shorts jogged up to overtake her.

‘Hello. ’Scuse,’ said the lead boy, sprinkling chilly seawater as he passed. His dark curls were a bit like Aaron’s. The second boy’s hair was slicked back against his head. He grinned, and puffed past her too.

‘Hello,’ she said to their departing backs. Where the hell had they appeared from? Intrigued, she followed as their bare feet picked a way through grit and stones until, at the top of the path, they swung right. Clancy was just able to keep them in sight as they ran a hundred yards to where there was a dip in the clifftop, pausing to confer as they backed away from the edge.

Then, with Tarzan yells, they sprinted right off the top of the cliff, arms windmilling for balance as they plummeted from view.

Shocked into action, Clancy broke into a run, hardly feeling her feet touch ground until she reached the spot where the boys had vanished. Cautiously, she peered over the cliff edge, almost dizzy with relief – or at the way the sea swirled below – to see two heads bobbing in the waves.

‘Are you OK?’ she yelled, only half-believing anyone could jump that far and not be crippled by the force of hitting the water. Faces turned up towards her and an arm waved. Reassured that they’d survived their mad leap, she waved back as they turned to swim through the frothing sea and out of sight around a fold in the cliff.

She hovered restlessly, assuming they’d be swimming to Zig-zag Beach but, unable to be certain, poised to get help if they never appeared.

It must have been a good ten minutes before she could smile and relax as they puffed into sight, doing their tiptoe jog over the inhospitable ground. ‘You scared the life out of me,’ she called, pulling what she hoped was a comical face. They were about eighteen, she judged, old enough to resent reproof.

The dark, curly-haired one wore a big grin. ‘We’re all right. We’re cliff jumping.’

Clancy glanced at their launching point. ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

‘We’re all right,’ he repeated. ‘This is The Leap. The tide doesn’t go out far enough here to be a problem. Wanna try it?’ His grin widened.

‘Erm, I didn’t bring my swim things.’ Clancy pulled a petrified face, making both lads laugh. ‘I’m Clancy, by the way. I’ve moved into the Roundhouse.’

‘Oh, yeah? I’m Harry,’ said the dark one.

‘Rory,’ added the other, speaking for the first time.

Harry beckoned Clancy closer to the cliff edge. ‘The Leap’s quite easy. You need to avoid those rocks there. That’s why we take a run at it, so we jump over them.’

She stared at the sea breaking over the dark jagged rocks then sucking restlessly away. It seemed a long way down. ‘Doesn’t it hurt?’

Rory was beginning to shiver. ‘Depends. You don’t want to belly-flop.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Clancy admitted frankly. Then she stood back to spectate while they retreated twenty or thirty yards from the cliff edge before beginning a new charge to the accompaniment of blood-curdling yells. They hurtled confidently into thin air, their trajectory arcing well out past the rocks. They hit the water in explosions of spray, bobbing back to the surface a few seconds later. Then they struck out towards the fold in the cliffs, once again vanishing from view.

This time, Clancy whiled away their absence by studying her surroundings. She was at the furthest point of the headland now so the sea surrounded her on three sides and the salt marshes were out of view. Out to sea, a couple of white-sailed yachts leaned over in the wind and she watched them skipping atop the waves. Inland, the edge of the village was only a hundred yards away. A few tables stood outside a comparatively large building of brown stone, though the parasols stuck through the tables were furled against the wind. The B&B, she realised. It must have a fantastic sea view. She glanced back to check the progress of the two white yachts. It was a shame the Roundhouse was on the landward side of the village. She could look at a view like this all day.

Then some kind of inner alarm went off and she swung around sharply, her gaze flying to the top of Zig-zag Path. Where were Harry and Rory? They’d had more than enough time to climb back up. She cast around for any sign of them. What she presumed were their clothes were heaped beneath a nearby tree so they hadn’t got past her while she’d been daydreaming.

She hurried to the cliff edge. Nothing. Almost running now, she went back as far as Zig-zag Path and craned over the handrail, hoping to catch a glimpse of wet teenagers jogging back up.

Nothing.

Breath heaving in her chest, she ran back to The Leap, harbouring dubious thoughts about jumping in after them. She was a strong swimmer but throwing herself fully clothed into an unknown sea in the hope of rescuing two lads bigger than she was seemed foolhardy. Panic bubbled in her chest. Should she ring the coastguard? Instinct made her pat her pockets before she remembered abandoning her phone at home as it was so useless in the village. She could sprint to the B&B. They’d have a landline and it must be staffed by locals, people who’d know what to do.

Then, finally, faintly, she heard youthful laughter and turned to see them running up the clifftop towards her, grinning and nudging one another in, she imagined, glee. Relief coursed through her. The little ratbags had been trying to wind her up, probably hanging on to a rock somewhere, hoping she’d still be waiting around for their reappearance and laughing up their sleeves – if they’d been wearing any.

She determined not to give them the pleasure of detecting her erstwhile panic. They were teenagers. Winding up adults was what they did. So, ‘Going in again?’ was all she said, gaining a little satisfaction at their evident disappointment that she wasn’t going to shout at them.

They looked at each other and shrugged and nodded. They ran at the clifftop again, Clancy taking up her vantage point to watch their screaming, euphoric flight down to the dancing waves so far below. Once she’d seen them safely bob to the surface she waved goodbye and made her way across the scrubby grass towards the Duke of Bronte B&B. Evelyn’s notes had said the B&B and Roundhouse Row occasionally sent each other business.

As she approached the lawn in front of the building someone came out and sat down at one of the two tables, a hot drink in one hand and a plate in the other. Clancy paused as she recognised Genevieve’s flowing blonde hair.

A middle-aged woman followed, depositing condiments on the table then pausing to chat as Clancy started forward again. Both women looked up at her approach and she found herself slipping into her business persona, giving Genevieve a warm hello and then extending her hand to the other woman. ‘Hi, I’m Clancy. I’ve moved into the Roundhouse and I’ll be looking after the cottages.’

The woman beamed. She had a round face with a chin to spare and her small dark eyes almost disappeared when she smiled. ‘I’m Kaz. Me and my husband Oli run the B&B. Welcome to Nelson’s Bar.’ Her smile broadened. ‘We have a tiny bar indoors and that’s called Nelson’s Bar too. An old girlfriend of Horatio Nelson lived here, legend has it.’

It seemed there was no end to Nelson’s connections with the village. They chatted for several minutes and then Clancy became conscious of a rumbling tummy and indicated the salad before Genevieve. ‘That looks good. I didn’t realise you did lunches.’

Kaz beamed anew. ‘We do whatever people want if it means business for us. Gen’s got a ham salad there but I can also offer you cheese or tuna, or any of those things in a sandwich. If people give me a bit of notice I can usually offer jacket potatoes or omelettes too.’

After ordering a ham salad and a cup of tea, which sent Kaz bustling indoors, Clancy hovered beside Genevieve. ‘May I join you?’

Immediately, Genevieve nodded. ‘Sit down. It’ll be nice to chat.’

Relieved, Clancy took the seat opposite. ‘Sorry if I was a know-all about your insurance situation. I’m one of those annoying people who see a puzzle and try and solve it.’

Genevieve shrugged, pulling her hair back into a ponytail as she prepared to eat. Her blondeness looked natural, fitting well with her milky skin and blue eyes. ‘I rang the insurance company and you were exactly right. I was just making arrangements with Kaz to move in here for a couple of months. You’ve provided her with a guaranteed guest, which is good for business, and me with a summer of being looked after.’

Clancy didn’t think she sounded super-thrilled, but smiled and began a polite getting-to-know-you conversation. Genevieve, she discovered, was a nursery nurse in a kids’ club in Hunstanton where holidaymakers could leave children for a couple of hours’ play. ‘Monday and Tuesday are my days off this week so I’m using them to get organised for the builders to move into my poor little cottage.’ Tears shone in her eyes for a moment. Then, as Kaz appeared with Clancy’s lunch, ‘In fact, I think I deserve a glass of wine. Fancy joining me?’

As Kaz had paused hopefully Clancy immediately fell in with the suggestion. ‘Wonderful idea.’ They ordered large glasses, red for Clancy and rosé for Genevieve.

The salad proved to be a rainbow confection of leaves, tomatoes and peppers with cheese and thick-cut ham.

‘So, what’s brought you to Nelson’s Bar?’ Genevieve asked, as Clancy began her meal. ‘Did you decide you needed to be more on the spot to look after your cousin’s interests when Evelyn left?’

‘Not at all,’ said Clancy hastily, not wanting that version of events to get back to Aaron. ‘I really, really needed a change. In fact,’ she added honestly, ‘I needed somewhere to live and a job.’

Kaz popped out with two glasses of wine, both glowing with colour in the afternoon sun. Clancy gave her time to bustle off before she carried on. ‘Up until about ten weeks ago I thought I was getting married. To Will. He’s the sort of man everyone describes as “lovely” so it was a big shock when I found out that he’d met someone else. We worked together too.’

Genevieve paused, her wine poised just short of her lips. ‘Was working together still tenable? After?’

Clancy sighed. ‘We tried. Will managed OK, but I … didn’t. It became obvious one of us had to leave and it seemed as if everyone wanted it to be me.’

‘But that’s not fair!’ Genevieve exclaimed.

The warmth of sisterly solidarity stole over Clancy. ‘Agreed. And I could question the legality, if I wanted to.’ It had crossed her mind often, sitting alone in the Roundhouse and feeling betrayed. ‘But, anyway. Roundhouse Row needed a new caretaker, and filling the position got me out of two unpleasant situations in one go. Now I’m in Nelson’s Bar, while Will moves his new girlfriend into our apartment.’ She chose not to admit that Will was mainly moving Renée in because of the financial knot Clancy had tied him up in, which had pretty much bound him to the apartment, at least for now.

Genevieve’s eyes had been getting bigger and bigger. ‘I can see you’re Alice’s cousin.’

‘Really?’ Clancy turned to look at the other woman. ‘So you knew her well?’

‘We were friendly enough to go out for a drink together, until she … Well, neither of you are frightened of making big changes to your lives, are you? Your relationship ends and you just move on.’

Clancy polished off a couple of gulps of wine thinking there had been no ‘just’ about her moving on. ‘A woman doesn’t have to be defined by the love of a man, or the loss of a man. I do regret that I closed my eyes to warning signs, never challenged Will on why he was spending so much time elsewhere. I was complacent, which put my fate in his hands and set me up for a nasty fall. But I deserve better and I’m getting used to being single.’ She held aloft her wine to invite Genevieve to clink glasses.

Genevieve obliged. ‘Until you meet someone new?’ she queried with a grin.

Clancy batted the idea away. ‘I’m in no hurry for that, believe me.’

Chapter Six

It had been good to get a full day’s work in, Aaron thought, as he drove into the village late on Tuesday afternoon. He’d just about finished planting out the terraces in Titchwell. A heatwave was predicted and he was already anticipating customers not watering their gardens and then blaming him for dead plants and lawns with gaping cracks.

He was due to pick his mum up to collect Aunt Norma from King’s Lynn hospital and wanted to be at the ward at seven when it opened. Then he was meeting Genevieve later.

A quick stop at home to shower and grab a sandwich, then he set out again for De Silva House. Yvonne was uncharacteristically quiet when she climbed into his truck.

On the journey, through Hunstanton and on to King’s Lynn, Aaron tried to get the conversation going but his mother replied only absently, even to his enquiries about Daisy. He settled for concentrating on the traffic and listening to Capital FM.

Aunt Norma was ready when they arrived, a plaster cast on her ankle and a livid bruise on her temple. The nurse who organised her discharge said she was being sent home with a walking frame. ‘Bloody thing,’ Aunt Norma called it. Aaron brought the truck up close and settled her into the front seat and she wasn’t much more talkative than Yvonne while Aaron negotiated the overcrowded traffic system out of King’s Lynn.

It was only as they were on the more open road that she shifted her plastered foot irritably and demanded, ‘Aaron, what are you doing allowing Awful Alice’s cousin to park herself in the village?’

Aaron glanced across at her. ‘Clancy? I couldn’t do much to stop it. She acts for Alice. And I don’t suppose she even gets paid for that,’ he added, realising he’d never before thought of it. He received an income stream from the rental but all Clancy saw was the profits vanish, half in his direction and half in her cousin’s. ‘I told her about Evelyn leaving and suddenly she was moving in.’

Aunt Norma sniffed. ‘But what about Lee? How does he feel?’

His great-aunt was old and just out of hospital so Aaron kept his own tone level. ‘You’ll have to ask Lee. I hope that now he’s moved on with his life he’ll be OK with Clancy. She didn’t ask Alice to—’

‘You seem to be on her side,’ Aunt Norma commented sadly. She was known for being pretty forthright in her views.

He glanced at the old lady again as he continued to trail the car in front, wishing the traffic would speed up. ‘I’m not taking sides,’ he said quietly. ‘Alice treated Lee shamefully and I was as worried about him as anyone. I tried to persuade Clancy the job wasn’t for her but I failed.’ Then, when neither his mother nor aunt replied, he added, ‘If Lee has an issue with the way I’ve handled things then he’s welcome to raise the subject but I’m not going on a witch hunt. Life’s been pretty crap to Clancy, from what she’s told me.’

Aunt Norma sniffed again. ‘There’s no need to say crap.’

Aaron swallowed his laughter. Was he thirty-six or thirteen?

It was turned nine when he’d eventually helped Aunt Norma into her annexe at his parents’ place, driving up the slope, walking beside her as she puffed her way up the ramp that delivered her to the first floor. ‘Thank you, Aaron,’ she said stiffly. ‘You get off now.’

Aaron kissed her soft cheek and said she could call him if she needed anything. His mother gave him a hug, then Aaron took Aunt Norma at her word and left.

Once home, he released Nelson from the confines of the kitchen, rubbing the hairy head as Nelson reared up on his hind legs and pawed the air with whimpers of joy. ‘Come on, you silly hound. Let’s give you a run.’ He walked a circuit of the clifftop, watching the scrubby trees waving, throwing the ball so Nelson covered plenty of ground, then whistled him so they could turn off to Genevieve’s home in Trader’s Place.

When he arrived at The Mimosas, a pretty name that seemed to him to be trying to compensate for the less-than-pretty brick-built cottage, it was to find Genevieve three-quarters of the way down a bottle of wine, sitting out in her garden in the twilight looking balefully at the corner of her home, propped up for safety until the builders began the necessary dismantling, underpinning and rebuilding.

‘Hey,’ he said, pulling up a mismatched garden chair to join her, leaning down to brush her lips with his. ‘Feeling down in the dumps about the cottage?’

‘Yup,’ she answered flatly, putting down her wine glass to accept Nelson’s panting, pawing expressions of adoration. ‘Amongst other things. Like, whether we’ve got a future.’

Aaron had been about to go and get himself a wine glass but instead he dropped into the chair in surprise at this opening gambit. ‘Where did that come from?’

She sighed, still tousling Nelson’s grey hairy ears. He’d taken up station with his head on her lap and looked well happy with the situation. ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since Clancy came up with the idea of me moving into the B&B. You were so relieved! You obviously don’t want me to move in with you.’ Her eyes glittered in the fading light.

He put his hand over hers, feeling bad that she’d read him so accurately and it had hurt her. ‘But you love your cottage.’

She shrugged. ‘Does that mean I’m forced to live alone in it for the rest of my life?’

‘Well, no,’ he acknowledged. ‘But we’d never talked about living together and suddenly you were hinting that we should, and as if it would become a permanent thing. Taking such a major step out of expediency, because your cottage needs work—’

‘—is not happening,’ she finished for him, her voice tight with tears, forehead furrowing with misery. She gulped a mouthful of wine.

‘I didn’t put it like that—’

But she wasn’t listening to him, just gazing at the sagging corner of her house as if it held all the answers. ‘We’ve been together a year. To be absolutely clear – do you ever foresee us taking our relationship to the next level?’

‘Hey,’ he said gently, patting the hand that lay unresponsive under his. ‘What’s going on? I feel as if I’ve missed half a conversation.’

‘Do you ever foresee us making our relationship more committed?’ she insisted.

‘I don’t discount it,’ he answered carefully, as she was clearly intent on making him lay all his cards on the table. ‘We’ve had a great relationship and, if you’re asking me to be honest, then I’m happy as we are.’

She turned to face him. ‘Clancy says women shouldn’t be defined by the love of a man, but I’m going to ask you. Do you love me? And yes or no are the only acceptable answers.’

Aaron tried to get a grip on the conversation, which felt as out of control as a kite in a hurricane. He hated upsetting Gen but that familiar prickle of resentment at being made to feel the bad guy was there too. He made his voice gentle. ‘Backing me into a corner isn’t going to help this situation.’

Slowly, her blonde hair lifting on the evening breeze, Genevieve upended the wine bottle over her glass, watching it fill almost to the brim. ‘So that’s a no then.’

‘I didn’t say that!’ He’d never asked himself whether he loved Genevieve, or any past girlfriends. He’d never wanted to settle down before he was thirty and then, when he was exactly that age, what happened to Lee had made him wary. Lee had given his whole heart to Alice and she’d ripped it up and tossed it over her shoulder as she shook the dust of Nelson’s Bar from her feet.

Genevieve went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I feel as if you’ve been playing me along.’

Once more, he was taken aback. ‘I didn’t realise we had different expectations, that’s all.’

‘I’m thirty-four. It didn’t occur to you that I’d want children?’ Her eyes were huge with unshed tears.

He decided there was no right answer to that because it had, in fact, been in the back of his mind, but not in a positive way. ‘I’m sorry you’re upset,’ he said.

‘So am I,’ she responded slowly. ‘I deserve more than a man who neither loves me nor sees a future with me.’ Tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes. ‘I obviously feel more than you and I don’t want to spoil the memories of what we’ve had for the last year. Let’s not bicker or blame. Let’s part as friends, both of us free of unrealistic expectations.’ Then, as Aaron sat, stunned into silence, she gave a half-laugh, half-sob. ‘I think you should go now, before I make a bigger idiot of myself than I already have.’

‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ he asked, rising uncertainly to his feet. Genevieve just looked away and shooed him with a wave of her hand. Aaron had little choice but to click his fingers to Nelson and leave for home, his thoughts circling madly.

How had he just gone from being cautious about his relationship moving too fast to it exploding in his face?

And … how much did he mind?

Chapter Seven

To: Clancy Moss

From: William Martin

21 May

Dear Clancy,

Just writing to confirm that the company will continue paying you dividends – in the short term – and I’ve today paid what we agreed as rent for your half of the apartment. I’d like to think these financial arrangements are interim. When the dust’s settled we’ll be able to put lasting proposals to you. You’ll probably know more about what you want the future to look like by then too.

Is it possible for you to tell one of us you’re OK? If you feel the need for a complete communication break then we’ll try to understand but we’re concerned. I hope you can take that in the spirit it’s meant.

Will hadn’t signed the email. Clancy supposed he hadn’t known how. Kisses were no longer appropriate and Kind regards plain odd when a few short months ago they’d been deciding the menu for their wedding breakfast. In those days, the apartment had been the settled home she’d waited all her life for. Will was her forever man.

She sat back and sighed, the noise and bustle of a busy Hunstanton café surrounding her. Dilys and Ernie, who’d leapt at the opportunity of grabbing a lift into ‘Hunny’, were running errands while Clancy emailed her parents to update them on the past weeks, though the remote village in Namibia where Brenda and Gerry Moss were working was almost as technology-deprived as Nelson’s Bar. There, all communications were via satellite and easily affected by weather.

Luckily, Clancy’s superpower had always been not needing parental support.

As she’d tried to make good her intention to throw herself into her new life, the week had sped by without her moving out of the village and into a signal or Wi-Fi area. She hadn’t liked to press Aaron about using his satellite broadband, especially when it wasn’t for Roundhouse Row matters. Instead, she’d readied the rentals for occupation, including mowing lawns and tidying borders, and found her feet with the paperwork side of her caretaking duties. She’d also cooked more than she’d had time for in London, and a couple of times invited Dilys and Ernie to share the results.

But now she felt guilty, especially when she thought of those texts from Asila and Tracey, which she’d ignored. She replied to Will quickly, noting his comments on financial arrangements. Then she began another message.

To: Asila Memon, Jon Montagu, Tracey Murland, William Martin

From: Clancy Moss

25 May

Just to let you know I’m OK. I didn’t deliberately blank your texts/emails but I’m staying somewhere that doesn’t have mobile signal or broadband.

She thought of the years they’d worked together from the first idea, which had been Monty’s, making enthusiastic plans over takeaways at kitchen tables, beginning with rented equipment in a tiny enterprise zone, building their client list and their reputation and eventually moving to the offices in Islington. Until Will got caught with his pants down she’d considered it her life. After reflecting on their years as friends as well as colleagues she added, Hope you’re all OK.

Then she began a new email.

To: Alice Nettles

From: Clancy Moss

25 May

Subject: Nelson’s Bar

Alice, just to update you:

Clancy spent twenty minutes explaining how she’d come to move into the Roundhouse.

Then she rounded off:

As I’ve been looking after things for you I didn’t think you’d object, but I thought I’d tell you I’m here. Are you still in the US? Are you having fun? Send me a lovely long catch-up. I haven’t even seen you on Insta lately.

It’s funny being in Nelson’s Bar without you, living in the Roundhouse where you used to live with Lee, but it’s a sweet village.

After adding love and kisses, she shut down and went off to stow her laptop in the car and shop for readymade curtains, thinking of Alice and wondering if her travelling days would ever end. Funny how they’d become the antithesis of each other. Alice had spent her early years in England but had developed itchy feet. Clancy, with travel-bug parents, had been relieved to come to the UK and put down roots, roots that had eventually come to mean Will and IsVid. She wondered what she’d find to replace them.

It was late afternoon by the time she drove Dilys and Ernie back to Nelson’s Bar, thinking how odd it was they lived apart when they seemed to get on. Then Ernie told Dilys she was very wrinkly and she snapped at him to shut up, and she thought maybe they knew what they were doing after all. As they came into the village, they passed a tall figure walking a big dog and Ernie and Dilys broke off their argument to exclaim, ‘There’s Aaron!’

Clancy drove carefully around the pair while Ernie and Dilys waved out of the car windows.

As she parked outside the Roundhouse, Dilys said, ‘It’s the village meeting at De Silva House later. Are you coming, Clancy?’

Clancy pressed the button that opened the boot so they could access their shopping. ‘I don’t think so.’ She didn’t know anything about the meeting but it didn’t sound appealing.

Dilys pulled herself out of the car. ‘Official village matters are dealt with by the Village Committee through Parish Meetings, but this is a village meeting, which is sort of unofficial.’

Clancy shook her head as she opened her door and hopped out with more agility than Dilys. She’d done pro bono work with a rural charity and had heard enough about the intricacies of Parish Councils, Village Councils and Parish Meetings to feel them best avoided – and that was without considering her prospective welcome at De Silva House. ‘I don’t think I’d have anything to contribute.’

‘You would!’ Dilys cried, sounding disappointed. ‘It’s about improving the village. I want to get internet and you know about it.’

‘No more than many people who’ve used the internet on a regular basis,’ Clancy replied firmly. ‘We’d better get our shopping in. Come for coffee tomorrow and you can tell me about the meeting then.’

‘What good’s that?’ Dilys, instead of taking her bags from Clancy, planted her fists on her hips. Then her face brightened as she looked over Clancy’s shoulder. ‘Aaron! Come and tell Clancy about the village meeting.’

Clancy turned to see Aaron bearing down on them, Nelson with his ears back and tail wagging. Aaron glanced at Clancy.

‘Do you want to come to the meeting?’ he asked in much the way he might have said: ‘Do you want to eat worms?’ Stubble darkened his jaw as if he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days.

‘No,’ answered Clancy obligingly, though nettled at his tone, which she assumed sprang from the fact that the meeting would take place in his parents’ home. It was as if someone had arranged for her to be permanently in the wrong. Will began an affair with Renée; Clancy was asked to leave IsVid. Alice did a runner on her wedding day? Clancy should be kept at arm’s length.

Dilys seemed unaware of the undercurrents. ‘We need the internet. We need to be able to order groceries to come to our houses, and do our banking without having to go into Hunny.’ She clapped Clancy on the shoulder. ‘This girl, she knows all about it. She should tell everyone.’

Aaron looked anywhere but at Clancy. ‘Um … you could always give the information to me to be shared with the meeting.’

It was so obvious he hoped Clancy would go for that option that she nodded. ‘OK. As it happens, I have a little understanding of the problem of connectivity in rural areas because I once worked with a rural charity client.’ She drew a breath and delivered a rapid stream of facts about the need for affordable, fast broadband for working from home, networking, advertising, education and socialising. ‘Unfortunately, the commercial reality is that big providers are not necessarily interested in small communities,’ she ended. ‘Good luck.’

Then she deposited Dilys and Ernie’s shopping on their respective doorsteps; returned for her own bags, offered the three still standing in the lane a goodbye smile and sailed indoors.

It was after a couple of hours of hanging curtains that Clancy realised she was short of curtain hooks. Knowing she’d bought plenty, she trotted out to check her car boot. Sure enough, two packs had found their way into a corner and she had to move to the offside of the vehicle and stretch in to reclaim them.

She’d just straightened up when a white van rounded the bend and came flying up the lane, forcing her to leap out of its way. She dropped the packs in the dust in her fright. As she retrieved them, muttering under her breath, she heard the sound of the van halting and a door opening and closing.

‘Sorry,’ came a male voice. ‘I took the bend too quickly.’

Clancy met the man’s awkward gaze with a sense of shock.

‘Clancy,’ he murmured, when she remained speechless, ‘I thought it was you.’

His hair was lighter and straighter than Aaron’s and his face less animated but Clancy knew him too. She looked into his eyes – also lighter than Aaron’s – and was shocked. He looked so weary, and more like five years older than his brother than two years younger. ‘Hello, Lee. I’m glad to see you.’ She would have been gladder to see him with the boyish grin he used to wear.

His smile looked to be an effort. ‘But perhaps not at such speed? I’m late for a thing at my parents’ house but I didn’t mean to mow you down.’

‘Don’t worry, you missed.’

An awkward pause, Clancy absorbing the fact that she’d said she was glad to see Lee but he hadn’t returned the compliment. In fact, he was regarding her in the way a child might regard a spoonful of medicine – unpleasant but unavoidable.

She decided to try a gentle tackle on the elephant in the lane. ‘I hope me being around doesn’t bring back bad memories. I just … needed somewhere to go.’

He looked struck as he digested this. ‘I suppose I did the same.’ Then he patted her shoulder awkwardly, returned to his vehicle and drove away.

She returned to the Roundhouse thinking sombrely that life just beat some people up. She’d continue to fight against becoming one of them.

The summer sky had taken on a navy blue hue between box hedges and chalk cottages when Aaron arrived, unannounced, at Clancy’s door, Nelson sporting a doggy grin, at his side.

‘Got a minute to chat?’ Aaron asked, by way of greeting.

Conscious that he owned half the building she was living in and so, presumably, didn’t really need to ask, she decided to be civilised and invite him in for coffee. ‘Good meeting?’ she asked politely, as she took down mugs. They’d been Alice’s and were plain white with Royal Doulton on the bottom. Alice was nothing if not aspirational.

Aaron had helped himself to a seat at the kitchen table, dark eyes on her as she tried to remember how to work her new coffee machine. ‘I suppose so,’ he answered. ‘The usual stuff: the school in Thornham closed in the eighties – that always gets an airing – so we need young couples to stay in the village and increase the population. We should have a village hall but no one knows how to come up with the money. Kaz at the B&B wants more tourism and is worried about the future of the business. Obviously, wanting Roundhouse Row to be as full as possible, I agreed with her, not least because the B&B is in our literature as somewhere our guests might get a meal, but some villagers huffed and puffed about not wanting Nelson’s Bar “overrun with tourists”.’

‘Three holiday rentals and one B&B won’t attract enough tourists to “overrun” will they?’ In view of her current occupation, Clancy felt an affinity with Kaz and Oli. Kaz had seemed very nice if – understandably, it seemed – a little preoccupied with business.

‘Unlikely,’ Aaron agreed drily. ‘And those same people want the B&B there when they fancy lunch on the lawn or somewhere local for friends and relatives to stay. Ernie says the B&B needs a bigger bar so more than five people can get in at a time – nobody disagreed with that one. And, as you knew she would, Dilys took the position that Nelson’s Bar needs the internet and Ernie boomed out that the internet’s full of viruses and crooks.’

The coffee machine hissed and began to emit the unmistakeable coffee-is-nigh fragrance. Clancy gave him the first cup – with a splash in a saucer for Nelson – and popped in a coffee pod for the second. ‘The B&B seems a big part of the village.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘It would certainly be a worry if it came under threat. I had a chat with Kaz and Oli afterwards, trying to remember all the points about rural communities that you’d fired at me. Anyway,’ he went on, before she could ask more, ‘I’ve come to apologise. And explain.’ He’d propped his chin on his fist.

‘Go on then,’ she said, intrigued. The second coffee ready, she scooped it up and joined him at the table.

He ran a fingertip moodily around the rim of his mug. ‘I’m not impressed with myself. I deliberately made you feel unwelcome to go to the meeting.’

‘I got that.’

He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Which makes it worse. I’m sure it felt personal but, really, it wasn’t.’

‘It was because of Lee,’ she supplied.

The dark eyes flicked open, looking wary. ‘Yes. You probably think I’m way exceeding my protectiveness but—’

‘I’ve seen him,’ she put in, remembering the fragility in Lee’s eyes. ‘He stopped to say hello.’ She told Aaron about the meeting, adding, ‘I couldn’t get over the change in him. He looks a genuinely troubled soul. I have to admit that at first I was stung that you so obviously wanted to keep me away from De Silva House and impatient if Lee was still rotting inside about what Alice did, but he looks so … beaten.’

Aaron’s shoulders relaxed a notch. ‘Thank you for saying that but it proves how misguided I was to try and protect him, when he chose to meet the issue head-on.’ He inhaled the steam of his coffee before taking an appreciative swig. ‘I’m guilty of excessive big-brotherliness – but I don’t think you have siblings, do you?’

‘I’m an only child,’ Clancy agreed slowly, ‘but did you know that because our mothers are identical twins, the DNA profiles of Alice and me are more like half-sisters than cousins?’

He lowered his coffee cup, looking struck. ‘Maybe Lee told me that once. Does it make a difference?’

‘I think so. I feel closer to her than my few cousins on Dad’s side, which allows me a glimmer of insight into why your family closes ranks around Lee.’ Clancy still had to push aside a pinprick of hurt though. ‘It’s more about Lee than it is about me.’

‘Yeah.’ But he was frowning again. ‘But you’re just as entitled to a safe haven.’

‘Oh.’ The pinprick of hurt blossomed suddenly into warmth. ‘Thank you.’ Feeling in charity with him, she broke out a packet of chocolate Hobnobs, which led to more coffee making as neither of them really had enough of the first cup left to allow dunking. Nelson jumped up hopefully when he heard the packet rustle but lay down again with a sigh when none of the bounty came his way.

Clancy resumed her seat and tried a less contentious subject. ‘I saw Genevieve at the B&B. It sounds as if her insurance company are playing ball OK. She’s moving into the B&B soon, isn’t she?’

He shrugged. ‘Think so.’ He dunked a Hobnob and popped it into his mouth whole. After he’d chewed and swallowed he added, ‘She ended things between us.’

‘Oh!’ Clancy paused. So much for less contentious subjects. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks,’ he said moodily. ‘I think we were moving through the relationship at different speeds, but there’s something about being dumped, isn’t there?’

‘Yes.’ Her stomach gave the familiar lurch when she thought of Will. Will and Renée. ‘And when it’s a nice person who does the dumping, you wonder what that says about you.’

His gaze flew to her face and he cursed under his breath. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to—’

‘It’s OK.’ She buried her face in her coffee mug. Moving away from everything she knew had provided lots of distractions. Will had moved on in a brutally permanent way and so must she.

Aaron selected another Hobnob. ‘Actually, Genevieve quoted you. Something about women not being defined by men.’

‘I did say that, but I was talking about myself, not her.’ She began to add something about his love life being none of her business, but then stuttered to a halt when the memory of their kiss in the garden flashed into her mind. That had been a tiny bit of his love life, and it had certainly been her business. Did he ever think of that when he was at De Silva House? Ever look at the nook just beyond the garden arbour …? ‘I hope nothing I said influenced her decision,’ she ended.

Something flickered in his eyes, as if he were reading her mind. After a pause, he said, ‘I don’t think so. I was feeling that Genevieve was trying to manoeuvre me into asking her to move in. I didn’t want that – or not yet, anyway. When you came up with the B&B information, it got me out of that situation and apparently I let my relief show.’

Clancy’s face heated up. ‘If I interfered, it was totally unwittingly—’

He waved her words aside. ‘I’m not blaming you. Gen began demanding answers and I handled it badly. I was honest, I suppose, but not particularly gentle. She asked me if I loved her and I sort of became paralysed. So she ended things. I hate that me not wanting to commit definitely – or indefinitely – caused her pain but I can’t force feelings I don’t have.’ He dunked another biscuit.

Clancy froze. His words had jolted her heart into an uncomfortable rhythm. ‘You feel bad because you can’t care for her as much as she wants you to?’ she clarified.

‘Basically.’ He popped the biscuit into his mouth.

She felt clammy. ‘Why should you share your home with someone if you don’t want to?’

He nodded as he swallowed. ‘That’s it. I live alone because I like it that way.’

A sigh slipped out from somewhere deep within her heart. ‘That must be how Will felt too. Have you got someone else?’ She was probably getting all up in his business even voicing the question but he was being pretty open with her.

His hand froze over the biscuit packet, his black eyebrows up in his hairline. ‘No! I haven’t cheated.’

‘That’s a significant difference.’ Now Aaron had provided the key to the puzzle she felt compelled to share what it unlocked. ‘Will does love someone else. Her name’s Renée. He’s loved her for years but she married a friend of his so he presumed it was hopeless. Then she came back into his life as an employee of an IsVid client. She was single again and his old feelings flooded back.’ She stopped to ease the tightness in her throat with a gulp of coffee. ‘He didn’t know how to tell me … so he kept quiet. I thought it was from malice but what if he couldn’t tell me out of affection? I found out about Renée in a particularly horrible way, but he couldn’t help how he felt about her and he couldn’t help how he felt about me.’ She suddenly realised that Aaron had abandoned the biscuits in favour of holding her hand.

‘That’s crappy for you,’ he said feelingly.

‘For him too,’ she acknowledged for the first time. She’d punished Will for something he couldn’t help; was punishing him still.

Aaron seemed at a loss for an answer. When they’d sat in silence for several minutes, she got a hold of herself and introduced a new subject, one unlikely to lead to as much heart-searching as the last. ‘Do you know a couple of teenagers called Harry and Rory?’ Her voice came out reedy and she battled to make it sound normal as she explained how she’d met them. ‘They had me really worried when they didn’t come straight back up to the clifftop.’

Aaron grinned ruefully, accepting her change of topic. ‘Harry Drew’s my second cousin’s son. He’s a live wire all right. I expect they hid out on Secret Beach to give you a scare.’

She screwed up her forehead. ‘The beach at the foot of Zig-zag Path? I ran back to look and I couldn’t see them.’ She remembered the minutes of worry that she’d have to take action when it felt as if a wrong choice could mean the difference between life and death.

‘That’s Zig-zag Beach,’ Aaron said. ‘If you go off The Leap, which most of us have tried at some time, between where you land and Zig-zag Beach there’s a tiny cove that disappears at high tide. We call it Secret Beach. You can swim to Secret Beach from Zig-zag Beach if you don’t want to go off The Leap – which is about as high as those boards the Olympic divers go off, so not recommended for poor swimmers or anyone of a nervous disposition.’

Glad to focus on a nice safe emotion like indignation, Clancy withdrew her hand from his large, warm one. ‘The little gits! I was running backwards and forwards like an idiot.’

‘Yes, they’re pranksters. They have too much time on their hands.’

They chatted about the village for a little longer, then Aaron rose, clicking his fingers and interrupting Nelson’s snooze on the sofa, which he’d crept onto when no one was looking.

She accompanied them to the door. ‘It’s a shame everyone focuses on the negatives of this village. No village hall, no pub, nothing for youngsters. But it’s beautiful! You have the sea on your doorstep, the salt marshes either side, flint and chalk cottages, pretty gardens and a real community. My stress levels dropped the moment I drove into Nelson’s Bar. Although that wasn’t hard at the time,’ she added fairly.

He smiled down as he opened the front door and the sea breeze romped in to blow his hair forward over his face. ‘You should be the village’s PR officer.’

‘PR came into everything at IsVid. Except writing terms and conditions or privacy policies.’ She sighed, wondering how everyone was getting on without her. Without her. Her heart flinched.

Hoping it didn’t show, she stooped to ruffle Nelson’s fur. ‘I was thinking today that I’ve never had a dog.’

Aaron moved out into the porch. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to practise on Nelson tomorrow? Mum has him if I’m working somewhere I can’t take him, which is much of the time. With Aunt Norma being on that walking frame it might be awkward though. He tends to get up on his hind legs to greet people and might bowl her over.’

‘I could,’ Clancy said impulsively, liking the idea of a bit of a dog-share. ‘The garden here’s secure, isn’t it?’

‘It is. Are you sure? I was half-joking, really.’ He looked from Nelson to Clancy and back again.

She was gathering enthusiasm for the idea though, envisaging walking around the leafy lanes with the big dog beside her and having something – someone? – to talk to in the Roundhouse. ‘Of course! At least, let’s try it. Bring him tomorrow and see if he settles. What kind of dog is he, anyway?’

Aaron regarded his pooch gravely and Nelson flattened his ears and grinned. ‘He looks like a wolf, stands on hind legs like a meerkat and plays on his back like a bear cub. He’s just a Nelson.’ After they’d made arrangements for the next day, Aaron stepped out into the dusky evening and left. Clancy stayed at the door, watching.

She felt a sudden prickle run over her skin. She wasn’t watching the way Aaron’s body moved so easily under his clothes, was she?

No, she told herself, stepping back indoors. She was admiring the grace of her new borrow-dog loping at his side.

Obviously.

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