Escape to the seaside this summer!

After actress Martha’s painful break-up hits the headlines, the warm golden sands and sparkling seas of Elberry Cove are the perfect escape from the paparazzi!

Nestled amongst a gorgeous line of brightly-coloured beach chalets, Number 23 The Strand is a home from home, a secret paradise where she can slowly begin to piece her heart back together.

When it’s finally time to leave, Martha decides to leave a special gift for the next guest. It’s a small act of kindness that starts a magical tradition all summer long…

A delightfully uplifting holiday read, perfect for fans of Lilly Bartlett, Tilly Tennant and Eve Devon.

LINDA MITCHELMORE began writing in the late 1990s – rather a late starter – when she lost her hearing due to viral damage. To begin with she buried herself in magazines and books and then decided to have a go at writing. She found it a way of communicating. And it paid! She has now had over 300 short stories published, worldwide. Linda has had four full-length novels and two novellas published with Choc Lit, but Summer at 23 The Strand is her first novel with HQ Digital.

Linda has lived in Devon, beside the sea, all her life and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. She walks by the sea most days, or up over the hill behind her house where she has fabulous views out over Dartmoor. In summer she can be found on the pillion of one of her husband, Roger’s, vintage motorbikes, or relaxing in the garden with a book and a glass of Prosecco. Life couldn’t be sweeter.

You can follow Linda on Twitter: @LindaMitchelmor

Summer at 23 The Strand

Linda Mitchelmore

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Linda Mitchelmore 2018

Linda Mitchelmore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 978-0-00-828451-0

Version: 2018-03-14

For Rog – for all the beach walks

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Author Bio

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Endpages

About the Publisher

Chapter One

EARLY MAY

Martha

‘I’ll just check your details.’ The clerk behind the desk in the tourist office on the seafront spoke without looking up. Martha, peering out from under the rim of her black straw hat, held her breath. Would the woman detect a lie? A false address? Not a fictitious name as such but not the one the world knew her by? ‘So, that’s Martha Langford? Eighteen Staplethorpe Avenue, Brighton? Right? From one seaside resort to another, eh?’

‘Yes to all that,’ Martha said.

‘Well, you’ll just love it here in Hollacombe, I’m sure. A proper little home from home is how our guests describe Number 23. Here’s the key. You’ll find your chalet is about five hundred yards to your left as you leave this office. One double bedroom, one sitting room with sofabed cum galley kitchen, one loo with basin and shower. All breakages to be paid for. No barbecues on the wooden deck, I’m afraid, because the chalets are wooden. Fire risk, and all that. To be vacated a fortnight from today by 10 a.m. to give the cleaner time to turn it all around before the next occupants. The key with the luggage-label tag on it to be posted through the letterbox here if we’re closed. Any problems—’

‘I’ll sort them,’ Martha interrupted. The last thing she needed was to have to come back here and, possibly, have someone else turn up at Number 23 The Strand to sort out whatever problem she might have. Just standing here, listening to the clerk reciting what she must have recited hundreds of times before, was giving her goose bumps. The sooner she got out of here the better.

‘Of course, this could be the last season this particular chalet is let because it’s up for sale,’ the clerk said as though Martha hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s owned by the local authority at present, as are a couple of others and they need to cut costs, so they’re up for sale too. The others are privately owned by locals who keep them for their own use at weekends and in the school holidays, although some do rent them out to holidaymakers. There’s not been a lot of interest in Number 23 so far but it’s early in the season. Any questions?’ The clerk cocked her head to one side questioningly.

‘Can’t think of any,’ Martha said, perhaps a bit too sharply, which is what happens when one’s nerves are on end. She didn’t want to be rude but she had to go.

Well, Martha thought, as she closed the door of the chalet behind her, what a lovely surprise. She’d glanced at the photos on the website when she’d booked, of course, but she hadn’t studied it in much detail. It was bigger than she’d been expecting – more ski chalet than beach hut, perhaps a bit boutique hotel – and just as the lady in the tourist office had said, a little home from home. And so very clean. A nest. Martha felt the welcome of it wrap around her, warm her. The boarded walls were painted a soft shade of yellow, like vanilla custard, with a frieze of stencilled scallop shells in deep turquoise where the walls met the ceiling. Pretty, cotton curtains with blue and yellow sailboats hung at the windows in the double bedroom and living room. The cream, linen-covered sofabed was piled with large and squashy cushions in various shades of yellow and blue, and two small but matching armchairs had biscuit-coloured fleece throws draped over the arms, for colder days perhaps. The duvet on the double bed, covered in a turquoise, jacquard-style pattern, was thick and sumptuous, and the pillows large, plump and inviting.

‘All very Eastern Seaboard,’ Martha said out loud. ‘I love it.’

Some of the tension she’d been carrying with her was beginning to seep away. Yes, she’d made the right decision coming here. It was as though this chalet had been waiting for her. She patted the duvet, her hand almost disappearing in its sumptuousness.

‘And I could lie down on you right now,’ she laughed, surprising herself with that laugh because she hadn’t laughed for weeks now. But she couldn’t flop down on it just yet. Martha drew her breath in and then let it all out again slowly, her shoulders dropping as she physically relaxed. Yes, it felt good here. It would give her space and time to rethink what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. But first, she just had to do something with her hair.

Martha had never done a home hair dye before. Ever since she’d been eleven years old and at stage school, her naturally blonde hair had always been professionally cut and coloured. And, of course, for filming she’d often worn wigs. It felt strange, but empowering, to be choosing a new hair colour without others calling the shots. So she’d chosen red; a sort of rosehip red with a bit of gloss to it to cover her natural blonde. The basin in the bijou bathroom – small but perfectly appointed the brochure had said, and so it was – looked as though a murder had been committed as Martha rinsed her hair one last time. Now to dry it. And then cut it. She pulled her hair high over her head and, with eyes closed, chopped straight across. When she opened her eyes again she had about eighteen inches of ponytail in her hand. Shaking her head to loosen her hair, she braved the mirror.

Not bad. Not bad at all. Next came the coloured contact lenses. Martha’s eyes were the palest blue, bordering on turquoise, but she reckoned a redhead might have green eyes. So in went the onyx contacts.

‘I hardly recognise myself,’ Martha said, in a Scottish accent, light years away from her true Home Counties way of speaking. But that was the advantage of being an actress. She could become anyone from anywhere. And she had. Many, many, times. From stage work to period TV dramas, through a six-month stint on a ‘soap’, to Hollywood. But there was a downside – over the years so many other people had pulled her strings, as it were. So many that she felt she had almost lost the essence of who she was inside. Almost.

Her agent, Ralph Newcombe, had been furious when she’d decided to turn her back on it all.

‘You cannot be serious!’ he’d raged at her in his office that smelled of whisky and cigarettes, making Martha gag. Or rather making Serena Ross, as she was known to the world, gag. ‘You are making me look an utter fool pulling out of this! I’ve worked my backside off getting you, not the lead role admittedly, but a not insignificant role in a Tom Marchant film. Bets were on that you’d get Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. And you pull this stunt! I’ll be surprised if you ever work again!’

That night, Martha had gone back to the flat the film company had provided and cried and cried and cried. No need for glycerine on her bottom lashes to bring on the tears. And then she’d called Tom and told him she wouldn’t be coming back to the set. She’d been flattered by his attention, even though she’d known he was married with two small children – as did the rest of the world. Sitting close to him on breaks, sharing a burger or a salad, a frisson of excitement had fizzed through her. His invite to dinner after the day’s filming had been tempting. So she’d gone. Just dinner, he’d said. And it had been. Although if she were honest with herself it wouldn’t have taken much for their feelings to run over – perhaps not this time they had dinner, but definitely the next. Tom had felt it too.

‘Taxi time,’ he’d said, leaning across the table to give her hand a squeeze. ‘The danger hour approacheth. Two people from out of town with hours to fill till morning.’

Tom had even called the taxi for her, walked with her to the door – just a little behind her with a hand in the small of her back. And that’s when she’d been startled by a barrage of camera flashes and saw in rapid fast-forward how it would be if she were to enter a full-blown affair with Tom. She – and he – would be hounded.

Martha, not liking herself very much at that moment for what she’d been on the cusp of, had turned to Tom then.

‘The danger hour is too dangerous for me,’ she’d said. ‘I’m not in the habit of breaking up marriages, despite the magic…’

‘…between us,’ Tom had finished for her.

Martha didn’t think Tom was a serial adulterer, although she was under no illusion that she’d been the first to tempt him. For the two weeks they’d been thrown together, working on Breaking Ice, he’d showered her with gifts, in time-honoured Hollywood style – bespoke perfume and a designer handbag, Italian silk scarves and an amethyst pendant on a fine gold chain. She’d worn that pendant on her first – and last – dinner date with Tom. But she’d known in an instant, the camera flashes almost blinding her, that she hadn’t been in love with him – merely in lust, feelings heightened and enhanced by the place and the setting and the fabulous clothes. There could be many Toms in the future if she stayed here among the beautiful people with money to spend and lavish lifestyles. Was that what she wanted?

And that was when she’d made her decision to end her contract on Breaking Ice and go home, back to the UK. And then… what?

Well, she had a fortnight to work out where her life was going, and a town she didn’t know to explore. In front of her, there was the curve of a bay the colour of faded denim, flat as the proverbial pancake at that moment, and the sun was shining. First she’d need to find a supermarket of sorts to buy food, and maybe a bottle of wine, although she knew it was dangerous – very dangerous – to drink alone. Martha placed her four-inch heels in the cupboard in the bedroom, slid her feet into flip-flops, took a deep breath, and went out.

‘Can I help you with that?’

A man’s voice. A Scottish accent. To answer or not? With one foot on the bottom step of the wooden steps that led up to the deck of 23 The Strand, and her arms full of carrier bags and a lamp she’d picked up in a charity shop, Martha considered her options. If she answered, she’d need to drop the Scottish accent she’d been using for a couple of days and which was becoming second nature now, because this man was likely to ask where in Scotland she came from, and she only knew Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, each of which had its own particular accent.

‘I can manage, thanks. Only a few more steps,’ she said. And then the newspaper that had been on top of one of the bags fell to the floor.

The man picked it up, shifting awkwardly as he rebalanced himself.

‘Damned leg,’ he said, rubbing a hip. He looked at the photo and the headline on the front page and then at Martha.

ACTRESS SERENA ROSS QUITS BREAKING ICE

The photo was one taken on the steps of the hotel as Tom had guided her to her taxi. There were, Martha knew, more photos of them both inside, cosied up in the restaurant, because she was wiser now and knew that the man in the corner hadn’t been taking selfies but had been taking photographs of her and Tom.

‘I’ll take that,’ she said. ‘Thanks. The press scraping about in the gutter as per usual, I expect,’ she added, with a nod to the front page of the newspaper.

‘More than likely,’ the man said. ‘Don’t shoot but… Hugh Fraser. Photographer. Currently on sick leave while my leg heals.’

Oh my God! What sort of a photographer, she wanted to know – paparazzi? – but she was afraid to ask. Her hat had slipped back over her head as she struggled with her bags. If he was paparazzi, would he recognise her? She might have changed her hair colour and be wearing coloured lenses, but her mouth was the same shape. Her nose. Her high cheekbones, for which she was known in the world of acting.

‘I’m sorry about your leg,’ she said, acting a calmness she didn’t feel inside, although it was true she was sorry. ‘What happened?’

‘You know how, on TV, when you see photographers following a story in the street and they’re running backwards and taking photos? Have you ever wondered if they fall over?’

Martha gulped. So he was paparazzi? What on earth was she doing keeping him here, engaging him in conversation?

‘Yes, yes, I have.’

‘Well, I did. Right over a low wall. Only it was an urban fox I was trying to film without scaring it off. Compound fracture. Hence my stay here for a couple of weeks to strengthen my muscles now the break’s been sorted. Running on sand is good for that.’

‘Oh!’ Martha said, unable to stop the smile that crept to her lips as a cartoon strip of Hugh running backwards and going over the wall played in her head. ‘Sorry. It’s not funny, I know.’

‘That’s okay. Every one of my colleagues fell about laughing. And you are?’

‘Martha Langford.’

‘I’d shake your hand, Martha Langford, if you had one free for me to shake. How about I come over all macho and carry this newspaper up the steps for you?’

And then he did just that, but carefully and with a bit of a limp, Martha noticed.

Hugh took Martha’s bags and parcels from her as she scrabbled in her pocket for the chalet key.

‘I’m at Number 20.’ He waved the newspaper in the direction of his chalet. ‘Belongs to my parents, actually. Holiday home of sorts. I’d stop with them in their house back in Exeter but Mum would smother me to death with kindness. Much better I fend for myself a bit, get those muscles working again. Keep an eye open for the next big scoop, as it were.’

Martha shivered. She had no intention of being Hugh’s next big scoop.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You know. For your help. Just put my bags on the deck. I can manage now. Things to do. Bye.’

With almost indecent haste she scooped her bags into her arms and grabbed the newspaper from him, pushed the door open with her knee, sidled in behind it and then closed it with a foot.

Hugh seemed like a nice bloke – the sort of bloke she’d be happy to spend time with in normal circumstances, because photographers could be useful to an actress. But her circumstances weren’t normal, were they, if the papers were still carrying stories about her quitting Breaking Ice? And she wasn’t entirely sure she still wanted to be an actress any more anyway. And what was more, she badly needed to get to know herself better before she even thought about making a new relationship with anyone. And could she trust Hugh not to be on his laptop right now letting the world know he knew where Serena Ross was holed up?

Martha kept a low profile for a few days, always on the lookout for Hugh in case he wanted to talk, or asked too many probing questions she didn’t want to answer. She’d seen him running a couple of times a day, not fast and rather ungainly, as though he was still carrying pain from his broken leg. She’d also seen him look up at her chalet as he made his way back to his own. But the red sand of the beach and the soft shush as the sea met the shore with a petticoat frill of white foam was calling her. The only thing Martha was missing from her old life at the moment was the gym. There were probably more than a few gyms in the area but she didn’t want to join one. Power walking and running could be just as good. She couldn’t hide from the world for ever. Or from Hugh. She had to get out there.

Hugh always looked glowing and happy when he got back from a run. Martha badly needed some of that – glowing and happy. But running on the beach was tide-dependent so she bought a tide-table from the kiosk at the end of The Strand that also sold teas, coffees, ice creams and a few beach toys, so she could work out when Hugh might be running and when he might not. She simply couldn’t risk, at the moment at least, that he might recognise her, although she had a gut feeling he already had. Only that morning she’d seen him swing his long legs – rather stiffly – over the sandstone wall and drop onto the beach, landing awkwardly, struggling to get his balance the way a duck might on a frozen pond. She ought not to have laughed. Hugh had looked up directly towards her chalet as though he had sensed her watching him. She’d ducked quickly behind the curtain, but the speed of her movement made the fabric flutter. Had he seen?

To run, Martha would need trainers and some leggings and a T-shirt, so she went out to buy everything along with a few groceries. And a newspaper. Back at her chalet she decided to take a mug of coffee and the newspaper down to the beach. She laid a towel on the sand and sat down.

Martha shivered, a double-page feature on the demise of Tom’s marriage – TOM MARCHANT’S WIFE FILES FOR DIVORCE – falling open on her lap. Another actress, Amy Stevens, had been cited. Not her. So she’d been right – she hadn’t been the first to turn Tom’s head. And neither would Amy be the last. Martha felt relief wash over her that she hadn’t entered a full-blown affair with Tom and that there had been little between them except animal attraction, a few small gifts and one dinner after filming.

‘Was it something I said?’

Hugh. Standing above her on the steps that led to and from the beach. Could he read the headline from there?

Martha closed the newspaper with one deft movement. She did not look up.

‘No.’

‘But you’ve been avoiding me?’

‘If that’s what you think,’ Martha said with a shrug.

‘I like to think I’m thicker-skinned than that.’

Hugh jumped – rather awkwardly it had to be said – down onto the sand and sat beside her without being asked.

‘You’re not still letting that get to you, are you?’ Hugh asked, tapping a finger on the newspaper in Martha’s – now shaking – hands.

Oh my God. He knew, didn’t he? He knew that, despite the red hair dye, the coloured contacts, the wide-brimmed hat, and her almost exclusion from normal life, she was really Serena Ross.

‘You haven’t written this, have you?’ she asked, waving the newspaper at him. Sometimes it was better to graciously admit defeat than fight a corner she was never going to win. He would know by her answer that she’d guessed he knew.

‘No. Of course not. I’m a photographer – wildlife and landscape mostly – not a fully paid-up member of the paparazzi. But I did recognise you. And I’ve read that particular newspaper this morning and I see Mr Marchant has moved on.’

‘That’s not a very flattering remark,’ Martha said. He was making it sound as though she were totally dispensable, which, while it might be true in Tom Marchant’s case, was doing nothing for her self-esteem.

‘I’m not rushing to judge you. You’re here for your own reasons and it’s not for me to pry.’

‘I’m not suggesting you are for one moment but… well… I’m a bit sensitive right now.’

‘Yes, I can see how that might be. But if it helps, today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappings, as the saying has it.’

‘If only,’ Martha said with a mock-groan.

‘True. But if you ask me – which I know you’re not – you are far, far prettier than his, um, latest squeeze.’

‘Well, thank you, kind sir,’ Martha said, unable to stop a smile creeping to the corners of her mouth. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘Please do.’

Martha felt her smile widen.

‘That’s better. Cliché alert – you’re even prettier when you smile.’

‘Thank you again, kind sir.’ Martha laughed. ‘I know I’ve not done enough of it lately. But I’ll need to go now. My coffee’s gone cold and…’

‘I could make you another,’ Hugh said. He gave Martha a big grin, the strength of it rippling the skin beside his eyes. ‘I’m in dire need of a coffee myself after my run. Stay right there,’ he went on, wagging a finger playfully at her. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Before Martha could find breath to reply, Hugh had loped and limped his way back up the steps.

Martha considered simply getting up and going back to her own chalet, because although she didn’t think Hugh was a controlling sort of man in any way, she didn’t know him well enough to really judge. And it had felt as though it was an order he’d issued just now.

But she stayed. She was safe enough here on a public beach and, as far as she could tell, Hugh didn’t have a camera of any sort with him. She folded up the newspaper and put it underneath her beach towel and waited.

Hugh was soon back. He’d put two mugs of black coffee, a small jug of milk, some tubes of sugar and a packet of Hobnobs on a tray.

‘Could you hang on to that while I sit back down?’ he asked. ‘Only I get a bit of a balance issue now and then from the leg and I wouldn’t want to shower you with it.’

‘Of course,’ Martha said, reaching up to take the tray.

Hugh sat back down and took the tray from her.

‘How do you take your poison?’

‘Black, no sugar, thanks,’ Martha said.

‘Ah,’ Hugh said, ‘we have the same impeccable taste in coffee.’

‘Indeed we do,’ Martha said, accepting her coffee and holding it to her in both hands. How civilised this was, just yards from their chalets, nothing between them and the horizon except shell-strewn sand and some strings of seaweed left by the tide.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Hugh said, ‘but I’ve brought my phone. I don’t take it with me when I’m out running in case it falls out of my pocket.’ He placed the tray on the sand beside him and took out a top-of-the-range phone from the pocket of his shorts. ‘So many interesting things in the sand to take photographs of.’

Martha heard her own sharp intake of breath, like a gunshot in her ears. Of course, people took pictures with phones as well as cameras, and phones could be so slim and so easy to hide. A shiver of unease wriggled between her shoulder blades.

‘But no photos of you. Promise,’ Hugh said. ‘I think I could work out where your thought processes were going there!’

‘More than likely.’ Martha laughed nervously. She sipped at her coffee – very good coffee she was pleased and surprised to note. But she wanted the focus off her for the moment, so she asked: ‘What sort of photographs do you take? And sell, presumably?’

‘How long have you got?’

‘Until I’ve finished this coffee?’ Martha quipped – gosh, how good that felt, to make a joke.

‘Right. Well. Best drink slowly! I do wildlife photography and sell it to book publishers and magazines. Newspapers. I take landscape photographs for the same outlets. Both here and abroad for all of that. Most of that is commissioned but I also sell to photo-banks and agencies, and I have no jurisdiction over where those photos go. When cash flow has been stagnant I’ve done engagement parties, weddings – both in the UK and exotic beach locations, local theatre productions, that sort of thing. Enough to be going on with?’

‘Yes. Thank you,’ Martha said. She had a feeling she knew what sort of photographs Hugh might take that went to photo-banks and agencies over which he didn’t have, as he’d said, jurisdiction: photos of celebrities being where they ought not to have been, and with people they ought not to have been with. But it was only a feeling – she had no proof.

‘And do you know something, Martha?’ Hugh went on. ‘I’ve had all-expenses-paid trips to Bali and Bondi Beach, various Greek Island beaches and countless places in Spain, and it’s always puzzled me as to why people bother to go all that way when we have perfectly lovely beaches in this country. I mean, look at this one.’

Martha looked. Indeed it did look magnificent with the sun shining, the sea, as she looked out towards Torquay at one side of the bay and Brixham at the other, appeared as though someone had scattered a million diamonds over it. Seagulls dipped and dived on the thermals and a cormorant dived for fish, then reappeared a few seconds later some way from where it had gone down.

‘On a day like today, yes,’ Martha said. ‘I suppose people go abroad for the guaranteed sunshine.’

‘Ah!’ Hugh said. ‘Not always guaranteed, I’m afraid. A friend’s wedding I covered in Bali was rained off completely – monsoon didn’t come into it! I could set up some wonderful shots here. The bride, barefoot, with her skirt hoisted to her knees, dipping a toe in to test the water for a paddle, with the groom holding her firmly by the waist, his trousers rolled up over his calves, so she doesn’t stumble.’

Goodness, what a romantic, Martha thought. Was there a significant woman in his life, she wondered, but wasn’t going to ask. They were only ships passing in the night here, weren’t they? Hugh was healing and she was, too, in a way.

‘I say,’ Hugh said, scooping up a handful of sand and shells and letting the sand sift through his fingers. ‘Could I borrow a corner of your towel to photograph these? The stripes are sharp and the navy against the white of the shells will be a perfect backdrop.’

‘Be my guest,’ Martha said, and edged a little further away as Hugh moved towards her, making space for his photoshoot.

‘What I’ll do,’ Hugh said, ‘is lay the shells in a line down the navy stripes. See, some of them have little swirls of long-discarded egg cases encrusted on them. And this one has got a frond of seaweed so firmly attached to it it’s going to take more than my strength to pull it off.’

‘It’s like a hat,’ Martha said. ‘Or a fascinator.’

‘Exactly that. And this one is so perfect it’s like one half of a pigeon’s egg. And just as delicate.’ Hugh handed the shell to Martha, placing it gently on her palm when she held out her hand to take it.

‘Exquisite,’ Martha said. And it was. She knew beaches were always covered in shells from which the living beings had long gone, but she’d never stopped to examine any of them in detail as Hugh was now.

She watched, in silence, as Hugh took photograph after photograph, so absorbed in what he was doing now that he didn’t speak either. For Martha it was a comfortable silence.

‘I’ll photoshop them later,’ Hugh said, holding his phone towards Martha. ‘But you get the gist.’

Martha was surprised to find Hugh had taken at least twenty photos of the shells against the backdrop of her beach towel. They were all of the same thing and yet they all looked different.

‘I’d buy a card – a postcard or birthday card – with any one of these on it,’ she said.

‘Now, there’s a thought! Never thought of doing cards or postcards. Thanks for the tip.’

Martha had finished her coffee, eaten one of Hugh’s Hobnobs, and knew she ought to go. Besides, Hugh seemed to have run out of things to say now they had exhausted the subject of the shells.

And then Hugh surprised her.

‘There’s a fête on the green tomorrow. Two o’clock. Would you like to come?’

‘A fête?’ Martha’s father had always termed the village fête ‘a fête worse than death’ but they’d always gone anyway, she and her parents, and bought things they didn’t really need or want because they felt sorry for the stall-holders. She hadn’t been to a fête in years.

‘I know. Very old-fashioned things, but it’s for a good cause. They hold two or three during the summer on the green the other side of the promenade and I usually go if I’m in the area. Please say you’ll come.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ Martha said. She knew she didn’t have a good excuse if Hugh pressed the issue. It was beginning to feel like a date, this invite, and she wasn’t ready to date yet.

‘It’s for a good cause.’

‘From my childhood memories of fêtes, they usually are. The church roof or the Scouts’ trip to summer camp or somesuch.’

‘Neither of those,’ Hugh said. ‘This one’s for the local hospice. It’s where my brother spent his last few days.’

Martha hadn’t expected that, but the actress in her made her hang on to her composure – a composure she didn’t feel inside. Inside she felt crass, and gauche, and uncomfortable, as though Hugh had fed her his final line on purpose to test her reaction.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ she said. ‘But I still can’t come. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’

She got to her feet and pulled at a corner of her beach towel.

‘Of course,’ Hugh said, standing up, although it took a second or two for him to get his balance because of his bad leg. ‘Thanks for the loan of the beach towel.’

‘And for the coffee and biscuits,’ Martha responded, pulling the towel towards her.

It was only as she got halfway up the steps that she realised she’d left her newspaper on the sand where it had been underneath the beach towel. Well, she wasn’t going back for it now.

But when she got to the door of her chalet and glanced round, she saw Hugh had made it to the top of the steps and was dropping her newspaper in a litter bin. The kindness of his action in getting rid of something about which she had been upset earlier brought a lump to Martha’s throat. He really was such a good and kind man, wasn’t he? But at the back of her mind was the thought that she couldn’t be entirely sure if the invite to the fête had been because she was Martha Langford or… Serena Ross.

Martha tossed and turned all night. She’d been unforgivably rude walking off like that. Hugh had said his brother had died in the hospice and although she didn’t know how old Hugh was, his brother couldn’t have been very old either. Panic had made her behave the way she had and she was going to have to get over that.

Martha took a mug of tea and a round of toast and marmalade out onto the deck at half past eight the next morning. She took one of the throws and draped it over her knees while she sat at the metal bistro table and waited for Hugh to emerge from his chalet for his morning run.

But there was no Hugh that morning. Martha waited until almost ten o’clock then went in search of him.

‘Well, good morning. This is a nice surprise,’ Hugh said, opening the door to her knock, as though the fact she’d rebuffed him the day before hadn’t happened. He was in checked pyjama bottoms but naked from the waist up. And his feet were bare. His hair was damp and curling every which way as though he was fresh from the shower and she’d knocked and interrupted him just as he was about to put a comb through it.

‘I’ve come to apologise for my appalling behaviour yesterday,’ Martha said. ‘I meant it when I said I was truly sorry to hear about your brother’s death, but I was rude to rush off the way I did without asking you about it. I’m sorry.’

‘Apology accepted,’ Hugh said. ‘After Harris – that was my brother’s name, by the way – died there were people who crossed the street to avoid saying anything to me at all.’

‘Oh God, that’s awful. Sometimes people simply don’t know what to say, I suppose, and say nothing rather than say the wrong thing. I’ve done it myself.’

‘It’s exactly that,’ Hugh said. ‘I’d ask you in but this is serious bachelor-pad land at the moment. I’m going to have to give it a thorough going over before I hand it back to my parents.’

Martha tried to peek around him to test the truth of his statement but his not inconsiderable body was blocking her view.

‘I can be messy on occasion,’ she said. ‘As more than a few flatmates have mentioned! But, well, I just came to say I’m truly sorry for how I reacted and if you want to talk to me about Harris, I’ll be happy to listen. But I’ll go now.’

‘Okay. As you see, I’m hours behind. But how do you feel about joining me for a spot of lunch later? The Shoreline does a mean burger, and lots of interesting fish, and salads for the diet-conscious. Do you know it?’

‘Give me a rough direction.’

‘Halfway between here and the harbour. Keep going in a straight line. You can’t miss it. It’s got fantastic views.’

‘I think I know where you mean.’

‘Good. Harris and I used to eat there in the holidays. I could tell you about him.’

‘I’d like that, Hugh,’ Martha said.

‘So would I. So, can I ask you to meet me there?’ Hugh asked. ‘About one o’clock?’

‘Of course,’ Martha said. She hadn’t planned her day beyond apologising to Hugh, but now she had a lunch date – was it really a date so early in the acquaintance? – she thought she might get into her newly purchased running kit and go for a run. It might help to clear her head. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

‘Me too, Martha Langford,’ Hugh said with a grin.

He was letting her know it was as Martha he was wanting to get to know her, not just because she was also known as Serena Ross, wasn’t he? Martha’s heart lifted a little.

Martha was early, only about fifteen minutes, but she decided to go on in and find a table.

Oh! Another surprise because there were full-length windows on three sides, the ceiling was very high with Raffles-style fans, and the whole place was filled with light. Outside there was a small balcony along two sides. Tables and chairs were set up outside but Martha decided it wasn’t quite warm enough to sit out, although a few people were.

She chose a table for two, by the window facing the sea. The restaurant was built over the road, closed for the summer to traffic, and with the tide high it was as though she was sitting in the prow of a ship. She hadn’t expected that – it was almost like being on a cruise in the Mediterranean if she allowed her imagination to run away with her. She picked up the menu. Lots to choose from. Was Hugh going to offer to pay or should she suggest they go Dutch. If they went Dutch it would be easier to say, ‘Well, that was nice, but I don’t think we have a future together.’

Red snapper or crab? Quinoa salad or pesto pasta?

‘Penny for them,’ Hugh said.

‘They might cost a little bit more than that.’ Martha laughed, looking up into his smiling face.

Hugh laid a hand of greeting, briefly, on Martha’s shoulder and sat down opposite. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘I’m glad to be here and, seeing as I had my first ever run this morning after I left you, I’m rather hungry.’

‘Really? The first? Ever?’

‘Yep. Although I’ve been guilty of being a bit of a gym bunny in my time, and daily dance lessons when I was at stage school.’

Talking about this now, it was starting to feel as though it was all in the past for her. Was it? Could it be?

‘Did you like it? The run, I mean.’

‘I’ll let you know tomorrow what opinion my calves have on that,’ she said, laughing.

‘It gets easier,’ Hugh said. ‘As most things do.’

And the smile on his face seemed to freeze, and although he was looking at Martha it was as though he was also looking inside himself.

‘Do you want to talk about Harris before we eat? You said earlier you used to come here with him so it can’t be easy being here with someone who isn’t your brother. We could just order a drink and talk? I’m not going to die of hunger if we postpone lunch for a while.’

‘I didn’t have you down as a mind-reader,’ Hugh said. ‘But yes, I was thinking about Harris. I imagined for a moment that he was going to come marching in, tell me it was my turn to buy the drinks – he always said that, even though I bought far more rounds than he ever did.’

‘And you wish you could be buying that round now?’

A waiter arrived at their table. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked.

‘Just a drink for the moment for me,’ Martha said. ‘We’ll eat later. Okay with that, Hugh?’

‘Fine, fine,’ Hugh said. ‘I’ll have a pint of local ale. And you, Martha?’

‘Prosecco if you have it,’ Martha said.

‘We sure do. Won’t be a moment.’

‘That was inordinately kind,’ Hugh said. ‘To realise I was struggling a bit there. I seemed to have lost all power of thought and speech for a second.’

‘We all need a bit of help and understanding sometimes,’ Martha said. ‘Tell me about Harris.’

‘It’ll be easier if I show you.’ He took out his phone from his jeans pocket. ‘I’ve got hundreds on here. I’ll spare you the baby brother photos.’ He looked up from scrolling through and smiled at Martha.

‘I can probably live without seeing those,’ she said, doing her utmost to lighten what was, to Hugh, a difficult moment. ‘What did he do?’

‘Sports teacher. With a bit of English on the side. Rugby was his game, although he was pretty good at just about everything he tried – tennis, cricket, water sports of every description. Here. That’s a good one.’

Hugh handed the phone to Martha, and a good-looking chap, with hair fairer than Hugh’s and a big, rugby player’s frame, smiled out at her. Despite the physical differences, she could see the likeness between the brothers.

‘How did he die?’ Martha asked, handing back the phone.

‘Leukaemia,’ Hugh said. ‘He responded to treatment at first and we all held our breath with hope, but then it just stopped working for him and he shrunk before our eyes. It was swift in the end.’

The waiter came back with their drinks then.

‘Can you come back in about half an hour, mate?’ Hugh said.

‘Sure can. Enjoy your drinks.’

‘Nice bloke,’ Hugh said. ‘But I think it’s plainer than day that we’re not enjoying much at the moment.’

‘It can’t be easy for you,’ Martha said. ‘But I’m not sad I’m here. How long ago did Harris die?’

‘Just over two years. It’s still a bit raw. It’s why I try to go to as many of those fêtes as I can and help them raise a bit of money so others can get the care Harris did. Although what I’m going to do with yet another teddy bear won on the tombola I don’t know!’

‘Offload it to a charity shop?’ She was feeling guilty now that she hadn’t gone along with Hugh, but there was no point saying so. Hugh just needed to talk. About himself. About Harris.

‘I could. But a stupid part of me thinks Harris wants me to have the stupid things. They’re tactile. Look… sorry, Martha, I know I’m being less than a thrilling lunch companion. I can be a right miserable sod at times. It’s why I’ve been known to drink myself stupid more often than was good for my liver, although I’m over that bit now. It’s why I turned into a bit of a recluse, turned down commissions. And it’s why my long-term relationship broke down. Violins time, eh?’

Martha had a feeling that, with this remark, he was subtly letting her know he was unattached at the moment.

‘What was she called? Your long-term girlfriend? If you don’t mind telling me?’

‘No. I don’t mind. Abby. Abigail. Losing her was like losing Harris all over again but time has healed me more quickly there. And I realise now she could have been more understanding. Harris had only been gone three months when she walked out. And so, here I am, trying to put all the pieces of my life back together, along with my broken leg. Doing my best to live again. But I’m being a right bloke, aren’t I, talking about me all the time?’

‘I did ask you to,’ Martha said. ‘And besides, you must know a fair bit about me if you’ve ever watched TV or been to the cinema. Or read the newspapers.’

‘Yeah, that must suck at times, too, having every bit of your private life splashed across the media.’

‘It does. But I don’t have to take it any more.’ The restaurant was beginning to fill up now and people had come to sit at tables either side of Martha and Hugh. She couldn’t risk anyone overhearing what she was saying. ‘Shall we order now?’

‘Good idea,’ Hugh said.

‘And then we can think, perhaps, of something we can do that will put our respective lives back on track.’

Running, it seemed, was the activity that suited them both. Hugh ran on the beach at least three times a day, while Martha preferred to run along the promenade, but only twice a day. If they saw one another in the distance they waved, but Hugh hadn’t issued another invite to lunch, or dinner. And Martha wasn’t entirely sure she wanted another invite because she still wasn’t entirely convinced Hugh wouldn’t suddenly send photos of her to some agency. She’d told her parents she was staying with a friend until the hullabaloo had died down, and that she was fine, and would call them soon. Friends texted her and left voicemails but she didn’t reply to them either, having told anyone who needed to know the same story she’d told her parents. Sometimes she saw Hugh on the beach, bending to photograph something lying in the sand, or focusing on something out at sea. A couple of times she’d got that feeling a person gets when someone is looking at them and she’d turned to look up at the headland above the chalets, and Hugh had been there. There was a wonderfully panoramic view of the bay from up there and he’d probably been taking landscape, or seascape, shots. He’d obviously seen her, because he’d waved to her as she turned.

But here was Hugh now, walking towards Martha’s chalet where she was sitting on the deck, hat on to shield the low light from her eyes, reading in the late-afternoon sunshine.

He had a bottle of wine in one hand, and two glasses hanging from the fingers of the other.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Hugh said, walking up the steps of Number 23. ‘But my motto these days is never to drink alone, and I fancied a drink, so I hope I can persuade you to join me.’

‘Is the sun below the yardarm?’ Martha said, smiling.

‘It is somewhere in the world.’ Hugh laughed back. He set the bottle and glasses down on the patio table and took a corkscrew from his jeans pocket. ‘So, can I pour?’

‘You can,’ Martha said. ‘I might have some nibbles to go with that – some crisps and savoury crackers, and two or three varieties of cheese.’

‘Sounds divine,’ Hugh said.

Hugh had poured her a very full glass of wine when she got back with the nibbles.

‘To you,’ Hugh said, handing the wine to her.

‘Cheers,’ they said as one, chinking glasses.

‘I’ve come to thank you,’ Hugh said.

‘For what?’

‘For having lunch with me the other day. I’d never have been able to go in there had you not been waiting for me. I was hiding behind a pillar waiting for you and watched you go in. But now I’ve faced my demons and I’ve been in there alone. Just coffee and cake, but I did it. I sat where we sat having lunch and, really, it was fine.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Martha said, cradling her glass in her hands. ‘Unless it’s that I was happy to join you, and I’m glad you’ve faced that particular demon.’

‘We’ll drink to that then,’ Hugh said, holding his glass out towards Martha to clink again.

‘Onwards for us both!’ Martha said, holding her glass high as Hugh reached over to touch it with his. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed but when I’ve been running I haven’t worn my hat. And my hair’s been tied back at the nape of my neck.’

‘And no one came up and accused you of anything? Not that anything you may or may not have done is anyone else’s business.’

‘No. No one. I think there might have been two or three people who recognised me because, when people do, a sort of disbelief that it could be me running towards them, or in the queue for an ice cream, comes over their face like a veil. And then, when I’ve gone, they whisper to their companion, only often it’s louder than a whisper and I catch my name on the breeze… Serena Ross.’

‘Be careful who you pretend to be or you might forget who you are.’

‘Gosh, that’s a very profound statement,’ Martha said.

‘Not mine, I’m afraid. I’m quoting, only I’ve forgotten who for the moment. Is that how it’s been for you for a while? With the acting name, I mean.’

Martha nodded. ‘I see that now. These past few days have been good. Since you showed me the shells on the beach and pointed things out to me, I’m seeing more, if that makes sense.’

‘Perfect sense. And “seeing more” is my cue to come in with a suggestion. My mission here is twofold. There was the chance to share a bottle of wine, of course, but it was also to tell you there’s a small boat that does wildlife trips, coast-hugging. It leaves from the harbour early. Would you like to join me? Can you do early?’

‘Ah, so you’ve noticed I don’t emerge for my run until after coffee time?’

‘I have. Would eight o’clock at the harbour be too early? The carrot here is that there’ll more than likely be dolphins off Berry Head.’

‘Really?’

‘The boat leaving at eight bit, or the dolphins bit?’

‘I can do early if I’m going to see dolphins.’

‘You’re on,’ Hugh said. ‘My treat.’

Martha was up at six o’clock the next morning. Hugh had said it might be an idea to wear a jacket with a hood if she had one with her, and a scarf, because it was still only May and, while the forecast was good, it could be a lot colder on the water than it was sitting on the decks of their chalets in the shelter of the cliff behind them.

He’d said it in a very non-bossy way as though he really was concerned she might get chilled.

Hugh had said he’d call for her at seven and they could walk over to the harbour. But when she looked out to see if he was on his way she saw he was on the beach, his phone/camera to his eye, back to the sea, photographing the chalets on The Strand.

Why was he doing that? Was he waiting for her to open the door so he could get a shot of her coming out? Was she being paranoid? Whichever, a ripple of unease snaked its way up her spine and out over her shoulders, and she shivered.

But just as Hugh had faced his demons by going into The Shoreline on his own without his brother, so she would have to face the fact that not every lens aimed her way was going to be for evil ends.

Martha reached for her coat, scarf and shoulder bag and went out. Hugh slid his phone back into his pocket and walked to greet her.

‘Gorgeous morning for it, Martha,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ll regret this.’

‘I hope not,’ Martha said. ‘I’ve usually got pretty good sea legs.’ And then she decided to let Hugh know she’d seen him photographing her chalet. ‘What were you taking photographs of just now?’

‘The chalets. And yours in particular.’

‘Why?’ Martha said. She didn’t know whether she wanted to go and see dolphins any more.

‘Because there was a peregrine falcon hovering above it. I think it must have seen a piece of cockle or something a seagull had dropped. I’ll show you if you like.’

‘Please.’

‘We’ll need to get going if we’re going to catch that boat, though.’ Hugh placed an arm under Martha’s elbow and steered her round in the direction of the harbour. ‘I’ll find the best shots and show you as we go along.’

And he did, but still Martha was uneasy.

‘Have you ever seen the film Roman Holiday?’ Martha asked.

‘Yep. Dozens of times. It’s my mother’s favourite. After Harris died she curled up on the couch watching it on a loop for months. I watched with her more times than I can count. So, I think, reading between the lines here, that you’re saying I’m not the Gregory Peck character who gets to kiss the iconic Audrey Hepburn character, but that I’m… the photographer?’

‘But you haven’t taken any photos of me that you’re going to present to me, as happened in the film, when my fortnight of escapism here is over?’

‘Nope. But then, photographers don’t, for the most part, have to sit in a darkroom developing stuff these days. There are no negatives to blackmail people with. Anything unwanted is deleted with a swipe of a finger. ‘But back to Roman Holiday… Audrey Hepburn’s character, Princess Ann, and the journalist, Joe Bradley, as played by Gregory Peck, were never going to get together, were they? Even though they did share just the one kiss,’ Hugh went on. ‘See how well I know this film!’

‘And the Princess Ann character was never going to get it together with the photographer?’ Martha smiled.

‘Irving Radovich, as played by Eddie Albert. Who never got to kiss Audrey Hepburn, although, as I said, Gregory Peck did. And what a kiss! What fantastic on-screen chemistry those two had, eh? And off-screen for all we know.’

They’d reached the end of the beach now, and would have to get back on to the promenade to make their way to the harbour. Hugh, with his long legs, stepped on to the prom and held a hand out to help Martha up.

Hugh was looking at Martha, a gentle smile playing about his lips. He ran his tongue around them as though they had suddenly gone dry with nerves. She had the feeling he would very much like to kiss her. And much to her surprise, Martha found she wanted very much to kiss him too. In all her twenty-seven years she’d never kissed anyone who hadn’t been involved in the world of acting. But would that be wise? Could their worlds knit together happily? Would they?

‘Well,’ Hugh said, breaking the spell that seemed to have been cast over them both. ‘The boat and the dolphins wait for no man. Come on.’

‘You weren’t joking when you said it was a small boat.’ Martha laughed. ‘I’ve been in bigger baths in the States!’

‘I’ll have to take your word for that!’ Hugh grinned.

They were sitting in the stern, just seven other passengers seated onboard. And two crew. Tea and coffee available on request was written on a scrap of paper pinned to the cockpit and Martha wondered where it could possibly be made in such a small space – and how, given the boat rocked as the captain spun it round to point out to sea. But then the sea seemed to flatten out as though it had been ironed and they were sailing over a sheet of satin.

‘Cormorants,’ Hugh said. ‘Fairy Cove.’

Just yards out of the harbour and Martha had seen her first cormorant up close, standing on a rock a few yards from the shoreline of a fairy-sized cove. How large they seemed so close up, how glossy and rather elegant-looking with their small heads and slender bodies.

‘And the gulls are just waking up in their cliff roosting places,’ Hugh said, pointing up at the red sandstone cliff. ‘And terns.’

‘It’s a bit of a day of firsts for me already,’ Martha said. ‘I mean, do we ever really look at cormorants and seagulls and terns in the normal course of events?’ She never had – they were just there, seagulls being a nuisance much of the time, but from the boat they looked as though they’d just come through a washing machine on a white wash, they were so bright in the early-morning light.

‘Well, I do,’ Hugh laughed. ‘They can be my bread and butter, seagulls. Thank God for photo memory cards these days because I can take literally thousands of images and then discard what I don’t want. Forgive me if I ignore you for a moment, but there’s loads I want to take pictures of.’

‘Snap away,’ Martha told him.

The captain was giving a running commentary about the area and the wildlife and Martha was happy to let his words wash over her as her eyes drank in the view. Hugh kept standing up to take pictures, then sitting down again, touching her on the arm now and then, gently but briefly, to ask if she was okay, and was she warm enough.

And then, there they were. As the boat rounded Berry Head, there were the dolphins. The captain shut down the throttle so that there was only the shush of the sea and the rumble of the motor as they all stood, as though choreographed, watching the dolphins jump and dive. No one spoke. A woman on the port side put her hands to her mouth and her eyes went wide with wonder as though she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Martha tried to count them… seven, eight, nine… but couldn’t be sure she wasn’t counting the same ones twice. As the boat rocked gently on the current, and everyone seemed to instantly find their sea legs, the dolphins came nearer. Martha had the urge to reach out and touch one, they were so close.

Martha lost track of time. She’d heard how seeing dolphins could be an almost religious experience and now she knew it to be true. Never would she have thought she could see them here, off the Devon coast, and in May, and in the company of a man she’d only just met. They were so free, so joyous, the way they leapt and then disappeared beneath the water again only to surface a few yards further away to make the same manoeuvre all over again. And it was then that Martha knew she had never had that freedom. Her life in acting had been scripted by her mother for the most part. Yes, she’d had a gift for acting – and dancing and singing – but had she only been living the life her mother had wanted for herself? She had spent two-thirds of her life living in what she now realised was a rather cloistered world.

Although it had been Martha who had run out on her acting life, it had taken meeting Hugh to show her the beauty in the real world.

‘Thank you for bringing me, Hugh,’ she said, sitting back down, quite giddy with emotion now.

‘It’s been my pleasure.’

The dolphins were moving further away now. Still rising from the water but not as high as they had been.

‘I’ll hold this experience to me for ever, I think,’ Martha said.

‘Me too. And we could,’ Hugh said, ‘make a few more before your fortnight’s up. If that’s okay with you, Miss Martha Langford.’

There it was again – Hugh’s use of her real name, not her stage name. He liked her because of who she was, not what she was.

‘We could,’ Martha said. ‘And I think we should.’

So they did. They still ran each day, but separately, because Martha was never going to be able to keep up, running on sand, with Hugh. But they always met for coffee, at one of the many cafés along the seafront, or back at Martha’s chalet, taking their drinks down onto the beach to drink if the tide was out, burying their bare feet in the sand, and letting the sand trickle through their fingers as they talked and shared aspects of their past lives. In the evenings they wandered up into the town to find a restaurant or pub for supper. They even had a hilarious hour in the Penny Arcade playing the gaming machines – winning sometimes, losing sometimes. A bit like life, Martha thought, although she thought she might be on a winning streak now she’d met Hugh.

Hugh had taken Martha’s arm in a gallant way and linked it through his to cross roads, but they didn’t hold hands. Or kiss.

On Martha’s last night, sitting on the deck of 23 The Strand, Hugh uncorked a bottle of champagne he said he’d had cooling in his fridge, along with a plate of deli nibbles Martha had a feeling he’d bought for just such an occasion.

‘Glasses out,’ Hugh said, indicating the frothing champagne and the need to get it into glasses before it frothed all over the deck.

‘Yes, sir!’ Martha laughed, holding out the champagne glasses towards him.

When they were filled to the brim, she handed one to Hugh.

‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To you. For helping me with my grief over Harris. So, to you.’

Martha gulped back tears, then took a sip of champagne.

‘And to you,’ she said, clinking glasses. ‘And to legs and hearts that will mend, given time.’

‘That too,’ Hugh said, tapping Martha’s glass again.

‘What will you do now?’

‘Photography, of course. I’ve a fancy for photographing the oceans of the world, running on the world’s beaches. I’ve got an idea for a TV series running around in my head – 90 Mile Beach, Bondi Beach. Woolacombe in North Devon, even. It doesn’t have to be a big beach or a famous one. The concept is I’d run with a well-known personality and we’d look at the geography and wildlife around us, and put the world to rights as we ran. What do you think?’

I think it’s a rotten idea. I want you to stay in my life, not go running off with some random person you might fall in love with on a tropical beach. Was he telling her this was the end of their friendship? Or was he putting the ball in her court, giving her an ‘out’ if she wanted it?

‘Sounds good,’ Martha said.

‘Once more with feeling,’ Hugh laughed.

‘Sounds really, really good.’

‘That’s better. A seven out of ten that time. And you?’ Hugh asked.

‘I’ve not made any firm plans yet. I quite fancy stage work again. It’s all too easy to iron out mistakes while filming for TV or the cinema. The money would be less but I’ve got enough to live on for a while. Then again, there’s an idea buzzing about in my head like a mosquito that I could train to teach drama. Not at a stage school but in an ordinary comprehensive perhaps.’

‘Go for it,’ Hugh said. ‘You’ve got a beautiful speaking voice. Well, a beautiful everything actually.’

‘That’s a lovely thing to hear,’ Martha said. ‘And?’

‘And what?’ Hugh swirled the stem of his glass in his fingers. He looked down at the table, up at the sky, out to sea. His eyes settled on Martha for a second and she saw his Adam’s apple going up and down.

He was struggling for the right thing to say, wasn’t he?

‘To our respective futures?’ Hugh said eventually.

‘I think we both know that isn’t what I meant. And I do believe, Hugh, you’re blushing.’

Martha prised Hugh’s glass gently from him and placed it on the tiny table between them.

‘I was taught in drama school that, in the right situation, more emotion, more feeling, more truth can be conveyed by what people don’t say than by what they do. Action – and conversely inaction – really can speak louder than words sometimes.’ Then she cupped Hugh’s face in her hands and kissed him. Just a gentle kiss but she let it linger.

‘Wow! Is that how they teach you to kiss in stage school?’

‘Nope. That one came from the heart.’

And then Hugh kissed her back.

It was that old cliché of fireworks and music playing for Martha.

‘And so did that. But back to our futures… I like live theatre,’ Hugh said. ‘Can I come and watch?’

‘Of course. And I’ve decided a bit of running on the world’s beaches is something I’d quite like too.’

‘So, we’ve rewritten the end of Roman Holiday.’ Hugh kissed her again.

‘Get a room already!’ someone shouted from the prom.

‘Your cabin or mine?’ Martha asked as Hugh released her from the kiss.

Martha wrapped the amethyst necklace Tom Marchant had given her in tissue paper and slid it into an envelope. She had no need of it any more but it might be just the thing someone else might love and cherish. On the outside of the envelope she wrote her message:

Dear next occupant,

I’ve had the most interesting and wonderful fortnight at 23 The Strand. Life-changing even. I hope you have a wonderful time too. I leave you this gift, which I hope you’ll enjoy wearing or will give to someone you think would like it. It might be fun if you could leave some little thing as a welcome gift for the next occupant but that’s by no means obligatory.

Best wishes

Martha

P.S. Formerly known as Serena Ross

Chapter Two

MID TO LATE MAY

Cally

‘Do you think, Jack,’ Cally asked her husband, ‘it’s the Serena Ross who’s left this?’

‘Who?’

Jack was busy unpacking their sons’ bags, sliding the T-shirts and shorts, and the pants, socks and jumpers, Cally had laundered ready for their two-week stay by the sea, onto the shelves in the wardrobe of their double room. The boys would have to sleep on the small pull-out sofa in the sitting room. He didn’t look up.

‘Serena Ross. She’s an actress. She was all over the papers recently. Pulled out of a film or something. Tom Marchant’s in it. Breaking Ice, the film’s called. He’s still in it but she’s not, so it said in one of the Sunday papers. There seems to have been some sort of affair between them. He’s married.’

‘So far so normal for the film world I’d say. Cynic that I am.’ Jack laughed. ‘Anyway, left what?’

‘This necklace.’ Standing in the open doorway of the bedroom, watching Jack, Cally uncurled her fingers to reveal a lozenge-shaped amethyst about three centimetres long and half as wide, on a gold chain so fine Cally thought she might be able to get it through the eye of a needle. Cally didn’t wear jewellery much, except her engagement ring if she and Jack were going out, which wasn’t often these days. Her hands were for ever in water, or cleaning up something after the boys, or gardening, and rings got filthy or slid off and she lost them. And when she was hairdressing she only wore her wedding band because anything with a raised stone might scratch a client. But she liked this necklace. ‘Amethyst. It’s my birthstone. There’s a note to say it’s a gift. I can keep it if I want to and leave a welcome gift for the next occupant, also if I want to. Not obligatory.’

‘Just as well,’ Jack said. ‘We can’t run to leaving expensive jewellery for people we don’t know.’

‘No, I know we can’t. But we might leave something when the holiday’s over.’

‘Over?’ Jack said, looking up sharply at Cally. ‘We’ve only just got here! I’m sorry it’s not the Maldives or somewhere five-star, but I thought, well, you know, a holiday might be just what we need.’

Cally thought Jack sounded petulant – he certainly looked it, slapping down the boys’ socks and pants on a shelf – as though he was irritated she wasn’t showing enough gratitude for the holiday he’d booked as a surprise. Cally struggled to think of something to say. Why didn’t you at least show me the details of 23 The Strand before booking? was uppermost in her mind, but to say that would put a chill between them, although with the boys around they wouldn’t argue about it. There had been far too much ‘chill’ between them lately. A combination of things – pressure of work for Jack, bouts of flu the boys had been laid really low with, too much time off work at the salon for Cally, which had put her job in jeopardy. And also… no, Cally wasn’t even going to think about that.

‘It’s a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be,’ Cally said, trying to diffuse the atmosphere. ‘Thankfully!’ she added, laughing. ‘I mean, when we came along the promenade I thought you’d booked us into one of those beach huts.’

Near the information office where Cally and Jack had picked up the key, the boys squealing with delight and sliding about on the tiled floor while they waited, impatiently, to be seen, was a double row of beach huts, each no bigger than their garden shed at home, all with brightly coloured doors. One row faced the sea, and the other the green. A few were open with people sitting outside on deckchairs, sipping mugs of tea or reading.

‘As if!’ Jack said. ‘Those get taken down in the winter and you’re not allowed to sleep overnight in them. I did check before we came, Cally. Besides, you couldn’t swing the proverbial cat in one of those!’

‘Of course you did,’ Cally said, aware she kept saying the wrong thing or, if not the wrong thing, something that irritated Jack, demeaning – in his eyes at least – his kind gesture in booking the holiday. She reached down to ruffle four-year-old Noah’s hair. He was being quiet and pensive for once, as though he was puzzled about where he was, and why.

‘Can we have a cat?’ Noah asked. ‘A tiger? Or a lion?’

Cally laughed. Noah was for ever asking for a pet – a dog, a cat, a hamster, a parrot. So far Cally and Jack had resisted all entreaties, even though it was good for children to learn about love and loss when the pets died. Died? Why were words like that cropping up all the time now? Was it the same as when a friend got a new make of car, and suddenly you started seeing those cars everywhere – same model, same colour?

‘Can we?’ Noah persisted. ‘You said swing a cat, Daddy! I can swing a cat.’

Cally wagged a finger playfully at Jack and shook her head. The trouble was, Noah was all ears. She’d have to be careful what she said in front of him from now on. They both would, once she found the courage to tell Jack about the lump. She so didn’t want it to be real, the tiny, granite-chipping lump she’d found in her left breast, just below the nipple. She so didn’t want the information she’d seen on the internet when she’d Googled lumps/breasts to be one hundred per cent correct. There had to be a margin for hope. She hoped telling him here would be easier. She’d been on the verge of telling him at home but the moment was snatched from her. The boys had been in bed fast asleep, and Jack had done the supper dishes while Cally had a shower and changed into her night things. Then Jack had come in with a mug of cocoa for her and that was when Noah had woken up screaming. They’d both rushed upstairs. That he’d woken with a nightmare had been Cally’s first thought, but when they got there they could see he was running a temperature. He didn’t go limp in Jack’s arms when he picked him up, but remained rigid, holding his hands to his head. And then he’d been monumentally sick. Cally had checked for a rash but in the low light of the bedroom she couldn’t be sure if it was a rash she was seeing or the pressure of the fabric of Noah’s pyjamas on his skin. So she’d called her mother on her mobile to come and sit with Riley, while Jack used the landline to ring for an ambulance. In the early hours of the morning, with Noah’s temperature back down and in his own bed again, Cally realised that, for the time she’d been dealing with what could have been a serious emergency, she’d completely forgotten about her own health worries. And now, she wanted to deal with it in her own time, in her own way. It was her lump after all.

‘Please, Daddy?’ Noah persisted, dragging Cally’s mind back to the present. ‘You said. I’ll help look after it.’

Cally thought, after the rush to hospital, that she would willingly give him anything he asked for. Jack too. But that was a subject Cally and Jack didn’t agree on one hundred per cent; that a pet would be good for the boys. Cally thought it was a natural way to teach them responsibility, and gentleness, instead of the rough and tumble that was their normal life, but Jack didn’t agree. He saw pets as tying, and she had to agree that a pet would have given them an extra problem to deal with before they could come away to the seaside.

‘And me!’ Three-year-old Riley always wanted whatever it was his older brother had. Once, he’d had a meltdown because Noah needed medicine for a stomach upset while Riley had nothing wrong with him. It had taken ages to quieten him down.

‘No. Sorry,’ Jack said. ‘Not a cat. I’m allergic to them, I’m afraid.’

Desperate not to risk a meltdown from Riley over having a pet cat – or not in this case – Cally came up with an idea.

‘Shall we go down to the beach? Now? We can come back and make toast in the chalet afterwards.’

‘Yes!’ the boys said in unison.

‘We’ll go along to the little tea station and buy buckets and spades. And maybe some flags for the tops of sandcastles if they have them…’

Cally’s voice trailed away. She remembered, as a child, that when her Aunt Frances took her on holiday with her cousins, they always bought a new bucket and spade each season and had sandcastle-building competitions, and always there would be flags on the top as well as shells and bird feathers. If worst came to worst with the lump Cally had found, she’d be making memories for her boys on this holiday, wouldn’t she? Once they started school proper she wouldn’t be able to take them out of school for holidays. A lump caught in her throat at the thought she might die before they even started school proper at five years old.

‘You okay?’ Jack asked. He put an arm around her shoulder but didn’t pull her close as he usually did. Cally felt herself still under his touch and hated herself for it. But how could she tell Jack about the lump she’d found? Now? Right at this minute? She couldn’t. She’d just promised the boys a trip to the beach, hadn’t she?

To make amends for the chill she knew she was conveying to Jack, she reached up and touched his hand.

‘I’m fine. Why?’

‘Well, I’ve noticed you’ve begun to say something and then you stop. You did it more than a few times at home for a few weeks before we came away. I was going to ask you about it, but then Noah gave us that little panic.’

‘He did, didn’t he? All well again now.’

And I want to be able to say those words about myself soon – all well again. In the middle of the night when Cally woke, her mind racing with thoughts for the future, for all their futures, those were the words she wanted to believe most. Wee-small-hours thinking was so bad for the soul, she knew that, but she couldn’t stop herself.

‘But are you?’ Jack asked. ‘Well, I mean.’

He drew Cally to him then and she so wanted to say that no, she wasn’t well, she’d found a lump and she was too, too scared of what it might mean; she might have cancer, she might have to go through horrid treatments, and she might still die at the end of it. But there were two little boys waiting for her to fulfil a promise she’d just made.

‘I’ve said. I’m fine, Jack.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘Honest’.

‘I hope so,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll talk about it later, eh? Only I’m worried. It’s like you forget what it is you’re going to say sometimes.’

‘Do I? I…’

‘There you go,’ Jack said. ‘You’re doing it again.’

‘Just tired,’ Cally said. ‘It’s been manic at the salon. So many went sick with that norovirus. We were lucky to miss it. I did double shifts, remember?’

Cally loved her work as a hairdresser. She loved cutting best of all. ‘Anyone can gild a lily,’ was what Hannah, her tutor, had told her, ‘but a lily is beautiful without the gilding. You have to have a solid foundation to work on and a good cut is paramount.’ So many clients asked for her now that she rarely did colours or perms these days.

‘Hmm,’ Jack said, as though he didn’t quite believe it was just tiredness and overwork. ‘You would tell me if…?’ It was Jack’s turn for his voice to trail away, as though he couldn’t remember what it was he was going to say, or didn’t want to say what should be coming next. ‘If anything was wrong? Whatever sort of wrong it might be?’

Cally pressed her lips together and nodded. She couldn’t tell Jack what was bothering her, not yet. Not on the first day. They had to have some good and happy days first. She had to make memories on this holiday for Jack as well as the boys. And she and Jack needed to get back to their close and loving relationship, and it was her fault cracks had begun to appear – not because she’d found the lump but the way she was dealing with it. She’d lost count of the times Jack had come up behind her when she’d been online searching for information, and she’d closed down the site with a stab of the exit icon.

‘Cally?’ Jack had said the first time he’d walked into the spare bedroom they’d set up as an office and eventual homework space for the boys. ‘What’s that you don’t want me to see, eh? Shopping channel? Hmm?’

And Cally had lied and said, ‘Something like that,’ because wasn’t she shopping around for information?

But Jack was less jokey about it after the fourth time – the time she’d had an email from someone she’d contacted on a cancer support chat site; someone who was in the same position she was right now. A man. Tony. Up until then it hadn’t really crossed Cally’s mind that men could get breast cancer too. Cally and Tony had exchanged a few emails and she’d been reading the latest from him where he’d said he wished he hadn’t told as many people his fears in the beginning because they’d immediately begun to treat him as though he were made of eggshells and would shatter at any moment. He’d urged Cally to think about when, and who, she told.

‘You’re getting a lot of emails these days,’ Jack had said, coming up behind her. He sounded more concerned than accusatory – as though he suspected something was up but didn’t know what.

But Cally had been more alert by then. She’d heard him coming and exited Tony’s email, and it was one from an old school friend, Ruthie, that filled the screen as he came to stand behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders.

‘Won’t be a moment. Ruthie’s having another crisis. Someone called Mark wants to take her to meet his mother. Well, you know Ruthie, she’s never going to commit!’

‘Spare me!’ Jack had laughed. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? Tea or coffee?’

‘Hot chocolate,’ Cally said. She needed the comfort of that at the moment. She’d reply to Ruthie’s email tomorrow. And Tony’s. And then, maybe, she’d share her fears with Jack. Maybe.

‘Come on, boys,’ Cally said, struggling to make her voice sound bright and enthusiastic. She’d missed an opportunity to tell Jack before coming away and now she was beginning to regret that. She could have been starting treatment, if treatment was what was needed, couldn’t she? But Jack had sprung the surprise of the holiday and it would have been like throwing his kind gesture back in his face to have told him then. He needed a holiday as much as she did. ‘Last one on the beach gets chucked in the water!’

Cally found she couldn’t tell Jack about the lump on the second or third day either. Every morning when she showered, Cally felt tentatively for the lump, praying it had gone or at the very least reduced in size. It hadn’t. The first few days after she’d discovered it, she’d felt it at least twenty times a day – every time she went to the loo so she’d know, with the door locked, she couldn’t be interrupted, and each night in bed when she was sure Jack had fallen asleep beside her. But now, on holiday, she only felt for it once a day. It was reducing the horror a little not to be constantly touching it.

Each day Cally and her family spent most of their time on the beach, coming back up to the chalet to eat their lunch and tea, squashed together on the tiny deck if it was warm enough, or inside when it wasn’t. Noah and Riley loved being barefoot, sand between their toes, in their hair – loved the freedom of being able to run on the sand without their parents urging them to be careful of the kerb, or other hazards, as they did in everyday life.

‘I want to swim!’ Noah announced on the fourth day.

‘Me too,’ Cally said, ‘but it’s too cold. Even to paddle. Your feet will go blue if you paddle.’

‘Blue feet are silly,’ Noah said.

‘They are,’ Cally agreed.

‘I swim!’ Riley yelled, racing away from them. Jack leapt up and went after him, tucking the small boy under his arm, legs and arms flying like windmill sails in the storybook Cally often read to the boys at bedtime.

‘Is it really too cold?’ Jack said, sotto voce, when he came back with Noah.

‘It’s May, Jack,’ Cally said.

‘I know. But the tide’s coming in over sand that’s had the sun on it for a while. I used to go in the sea with the Cubs when I was six or seven.’

‘Riley’s only three. I don’t want him to get a chill.’

‘No, but they’ve got to learn to take risks. Live a little dangerously now and then. It’s not as though I’m going to stand here and watch him drown, now is it?’

Cally didn’t answer that because, really, it needed no answer. Jack was as committed to their boys as she was. And so they left it at that – the issue unresolved, but only showing up their differences; Jack prepared to have a go and sort out any problems as they arose, and Cally seeing dangers and problems everywhere. She shivered then, despite the sun’s still being warm on her cardiganed-shoulders, to think that, should she have to face the worst-case scenario of all and no longer be around, Jack would more than likely let the boys paddle in May.

‘Time to get back?’ Jack asked. ‘You shivered then.’

‘Did I?’ Cally said, touched he’d noticed and yet alarmed too, as though he were constantly monitoring her mood. ‘I was thinking of something.’

‘Well, I hope it involves what we might eat later. All this fresh air is making me ravenous.’

And I seem to have lost my appetite.

‘It does. Pancetta, olive and tomato pasta,’ she said. A little white lie because she hadn’t been thinking about supper at all, and at home Jack often cooked, starting to prepare meals from whatever he found in the fridge and cupboards while she was fetching the boys from their grandparents’ house.

At least he’ll be able to feed them.

‘Sounds good to me. You go on. I’ll pack up and bring the boys back with me via the supermarket. I’ll get something for us for later.’

‘I’m getting quite used to this little kitchen,’ Cally said as she put away the crockery and red-handled cutlery Jack had washed and dried. ‘Galley kitchen, I suppose. But everything we need is here and within an arm’s length.’

‘Bijou it said in the brochure,’ Jack said. ‘I didn’t have a clue what that meant, apart from it being the name of the jeweller where I bought our wedding rings, so I thought maybe it meant jewel or something.’

‘It was Bijoux, with an “x”, where you bought our rings,’ Cally said. ‘It does mean jewels, translated from the French, but it also means small and compact, I suppose.’

‘Like you,’ Jack said.

‘Oh, Jack, you say the nicest things. I’m taking it as a compliment anyway.’

‘As it was meant. Now come and sit down. Wine time now the boys are asleep, although we won’t be able to get up to any noisy athletics or we’ll wake them!’ Jack, seated in the small leather bucket chair, a throw draped over one arm of it, patted the other one, inviting Cally to come and sit beside him.

She went. She sat. It would have been churlish not to. Jack had nipped up to the small supermarket in the middle of town to fetch wine while she’d been cooking the pasta sauce. She didn’t know how she was going to turn down his offer of ‘noisy athletics’, as he put it, should their kisses and cuddles move from the sitting room to the bedroom and on to other things, as they usually did at home.

‘It’s quite lovely in here with the lamps on low,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Do you think sometimes, Jack, that we’ve got too much stuff? Our first flat was small and we filled that up, and now we have a much bigger home, we’ve filled that up too.’

‘Everybody does,’ Jack laughed. ‘I daresay even the Queen looks around her sometimes and wonders if she’s got too much stuff in her palaces.’

‘Yeah,’ Cally laughed. ‘But I like the pared-back look of this place. I mean, we only need a knife, fork and spoon each for everyday use, and a plate and mug each, and yet when I open drawers and cupboards at home they’re stuffed with the things.’

‘Eh?’ Jack said. ‘You’re coming over all deep here! Time to relax a bit. Jack filled a glass to the brim with chilled Sancerre and handed it to her.

‘It gives me space to think,’ Cally said, accepting the glass and taking a large gulp of it, ‘with less stuff about, I suppose.’

She yawned. Jack gave her rather a sharp look.

‘Sorry. You’re not boring me. Honest,’ she laughed. ‘It must be all the sea air.’

‘Phew! I thought it might have been something I said.’

No, it’s something I haven’t said.

But now? Could she? Should she? Wouldn’t she want to know if there was something bothering Jack? If he’d found a lump somewhere and hadn’t told her, she’d be furious with him for shouldering the worry on his own, she knew she would. And yet…

‘Nothing you said,’ Cally told him. ‘Only it’s been a long day and I think I’ll go to bed when I’ve finished this.’

‘It’s only nine o’clock, Cally! The boys have only been asleep an hour.’

‘I know. But we might wake them if we chat.’

‘Then we won’t chat,’ Jack said.

‘And do what instead?’

‘Kiss. Cuddle. Progress to other things. The rug here looks nice and thick. Comfy. Not for nothing do they call that fabric “shag pile”.’

‘Jack!’ Cally said, although just a few short weeks ago she’d have gone for that suggestion hook, line and sinker. Jack was a tender and considerate lover. It was rare for her not to climax.

‘Or, like I said, we could go in for some noisy athletics. In the bedroom with the door shut. It’s what couples do on holiday,’ Jack said. ‘And we haven’t yet, have we? Since we’ve been here, I mean.’

‘No, Cally,’ said, ‘we haven’t. It’s not that I don’t want to but—’

Again Cally couldn’t finish her sentence and she was beginning to hate herself for her weakness.

‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ Jack asked, sitting up straighter. He reached for Cally’s free hand, and held it between both of his.

‘It isn’t about anything, Jack,’ Cally lied, looking into his mud-brown eyes. She saw all the worry frowns on his forehead and knew she was putting them there. ‘I really am tired. I was overdoing things at the salon. And I know the boys are safe with both of us there but the ocean is just so big and vast and everyone knows there are things like riptides…’

‘Not here there aren’t,’ Jack interrupted her. ‘I checked it out. It’s why I chose this place – for the boys’ safety.’

‘But I can’t help worrying.’

‘Well, do you think you could try not to? It wouldn’t be good if your anxiety got transferred to the boys somehow and stopped their adventurous spirit. Now would it?’

‘No. You’re right. I’ll try harder.’

Cally pulled herself off the edge of the chair, careful to do it so as not to disturb the boys, and stood up. She had to end this conversation. She had to go to bed. She had to try and get some sleep. She had to pray that in the morning the lump would be gone and she and Jack would be as before, making delicious love on the rug.

They woke to rain and high winds and a crashing sea the next morning.

‘We can still go out,’ Noah said. ‘We can splash in puddles and splash in the sea.’ He clapped his hands together excitedly, hopping up and down on one foot. How scrumptious he looked in the early morning, fresh from sleep, his hair tousled, his cheeks still pink from warm slumbers. Cally would have to cut off his blond curls soon – already they were reaching his shoulders and more than one person had thought he was a girl, much to Noah’s indignation.

‘We can’t,’ Cally told him, ‘because I haven’t brought wellies.’

Noah stopped hopping, thumped his feet down hard on the wooden floor of the chalet and folded his arms across his chest and went into a sulk. Riley followed suit. And Cally made a mental note to add ‘be prepared for every weather situation when you take the boys out’ to her list for Jack, should the worst happen to her.

‘We could bake instead,’ Cally said, trying to save the situation. She’d packed the bare essentials of flour and sugar and butter. And raisins, because the boys loved to snack on raisins. ‘Welsh cakes. You love those.’

Cally’s Aunt Frances had made Welsh cakes regularly, even on holiday. Cally breathed in deeply and it was as though the scent of cinnamon was in the air – that and the acrid aroma of slightly charred mixture where the cakes had been left a bit too long on the griddle. Cally had loved those burnt bits. Everyone knew burnt anything – toast, barbecue food, Welsh cakes – could be cancer-producing, didn’t they?

‘Yeah!’ Noah said, punching the air. Riley followed suit.

‘Then, that’s what we’ll do. Until the rain stops and then we’ll think again. You can watch CBeebies until we’re ready to bake.’ She reached for the remote and switched on the tiny TV that sat on a small shelf just above the mock fireplace. ‘There you go,’ she said, finding the right channel. Both boys sat, thumbs in mouths, ready to watch.

Cally could make Welsh cakes without having to read a recipe because she could judge the quantities fairly accurately as her aunt had done before her. Cally felt a pang that her aunt had died – at fifty-two, which was far too young to die. Cancer. Did it run in families? Cally had a feeling it did. She shivered just thinking about it.

‘She would have adored them,’ Cally said as she wiped off the countertop ready for baking.

‘Who would? What?’ Jack asked.

‘Aunt Frances. Our boys. Sorry, I didn’t realise I’d spoken out loud. She used to make Welsh cakes. My brain was making the connection.’ There were tears in her eyes and she turned away from Jack in the hope he wouldn’t see them.

But Jack had obviously seen because he said, ‘You okay?’

Cally bit the insides of her cheeks to stop the tears from falling. She’d read somewhere in a magazine that that was what celebrities did, what royalty did, so they didn’t cry in public. It worked for Cally now anyway. She turned round to face Jack, a smile on her face.

‘Fine. There’s only a little ceramic frying pan to make the Welsh cakes in but it should do. We’ll only be able to make a few at a time though.’

She bustled about collecting the ingredients, finding the pan.

Jack came and stood behind her, put his arms around her waist and pulled her gently back towards him.

‘Did you sleep better last night? You were dead to the world when I looked in on you at half past nine.’

Dead to the world? Why did you choose that expression, Jack? Why?

‘Heaps better, thanks,’ Cally said, forcing her shoulders to go down from somewhere up around her ears. She leaned in to him, jiggling her shoulders to get a better fit.

‘You talk in your sleep, you know?’ Jack said, kissing the side of her neck.

Cally, startled, felt herself stiffen in his embrace. Do I? What might I have said?

‘Do I?’ she asked, feigning a nonchalance she didn’t feel. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘That was a very concerned “Do I?” Jack remarked. He kissed the side of Cally’s neck again, letting his lips linger, making a little sucking movement.

‘Jack, I’m sorry but I just don’t have time for this,’ Cally said. ‘The Welsh cakes. You know. The boys will get bored of the TV in a minute and…’

She reached for Jack’s hands and pulled them apart where they rested on her waist.

‘There you go, not finishing your sentence again. I don’t believe for a second you’re fine,’ Jack whispered in her ear. ‘There’s something. I know there is. And I’m scared. Scared it’s something to do with you and me.’

‘No, not that,’ Cally said, turning to face him.

‘But there is something,’ Jack said. ‘You’ve all but gone and admitted it with that response.’ He cupped her face in his hands, looking deeply into her eyes. ‘Your reluctance to make love, your…’

‘What are you two arguing about?’ Noah asked. ‘I don’t like it.’

Cally disentangled herself from Jack and rushed to Noah, folding him in her arms.

‘We’re not arguing, darling. We’re just talking about something. Come on. Welsh cake-making time.’

And the moment passed. The boys loved watching the bubbles rise in the cakes as they cooked. Cally even let Noah flip one over and helped Riley do the same. When they’d cooled a bit she dusted them with sugar and they ate them warm and fragrant and full of memories for Cally of when she’d done the same with her Aunt Frances and her cousins.

‘Oh, I have to get a photo of that,’ Cally said, pointing at the boys, both with sugar all over their lips. Riley even had some in his hair – it looked like snow crystals. She reached for her phone. Either Cally or Jack had taken photos of the boys at every stage of the Welsh cake making. More memories for Noah and Riley. Even though Jack didn’t know – yet – that was why Cally was taking so many.

‘Can we go out when we’ve eaten these?’ Noah asked. ‘I can eat lots and lots!’

He reached for a second Welsh cake and began to cram it into his mouth.

‘Not too many,’ Cally said, wagging a finger at him, mock stern. ‘And we’ll go out if the rain eases off a bit.’

But the rain did not ease off. Cally began to feel suffocated in the small space of the chalet.

‘Jack,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got to get out.’

‘Okay. It’s not cold. The boys can go barefoot on the sand. They’ll probably go in the sea and get wet anyway.’

‘No. On my own, I mean.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t sound like that about it,’ Cally said. She fingered the amethyst she’d worn around her neck since the minute she’d found it there waiting for her. Her gift. It made her feel calm touching the cold stone, as though it held some sort of healing quality.

‘Like what?’

‘Defensive.’

‘Well, how am I supposed to sound? I’m getting the brush-off at every turn…’

‘You’re not! I’ve told you, I’m just very tired, and I’ve been stressed at work. I couldn’t work if my mum didn’t have the boys, but I have to drive them there and fetch them afterwards and… and we’re in danger of arguing and you know the boys don’t like it when we do.’

‘Which isn’t often, is it?’

‘No. It isn’t,’ Cally had to agree. ‘But I really must get out. Clear my head a bit. Get a bit of exercise.’

‘Okay,’ Jack said, sounding resigned. ‘Seems we’re not wanted on this voyage, boys.’ He ruffled the boys’ small curly heads with his large, tanned hands.

How safe they look in his hands. They’ll be fine. Still a family. If…

‘It’s not that, and you know it, Jack,’ Cally said with a bit of a wobble. ‘I’ll just go and find something to wear.’

Cally didn’t have wellies so trainers would have to do. And a cagoule that was probably more sieve than waterproof. As she hurried along the promenade in front of the chalets, the rain began to ease off. The relentless hammering on the roofs of the chalets and into the puddles forming on the promenade had changed to what her Aunt Frances would have called a ‘mizzle’. A sort of misty drizzle that soaked you just as much as heavy rain did but at least it didn’t beat against your skin.

How often she was thinking of her Aunt Frances here. More so than at home, that was for sure. She knew, had her aunt still been alive, that she would have shared her fears over the lump with her, before telling her own mother. She still dreaded telling her mother, which she knew she would have to soon, because the lump wasn’t going away. It wasn’t getting any bigger either but Cally had read enough on the internet to know there was no significance in that. Her mother, she knew, would smother her with love and want to take over everything – looking after the boys, the housework, the cooking; she’d probably turn up every day with a cottage pie or some macaroni cheese – ‘To save you having to do it, darling. While, you know, you fight this thing.’ But she didn’t need smothering with love, did she? She needed a good talking-to so she’d stop being so reluctant to tell Jack, who had a right to know – Cally knew that now.

Cally had no idea where she was going as she strode out towards the pier. A sign screwed to the low beach wall indicated there was a two-mile walk from where she was standing to a point the other side of the harbour and back.

‘That should do it,’ Cally said out loud. Although what the ‘it’ was she wasn’t certain. Certainly it wouldn’t make the lump go. But it might help her focus on what her next step was. To get through this fortnight, see a doctor and then a specialist on her own, or tell Jack first? To tell him here or when they got home? She felt sick with the possibilities.

Cally found a handful of coins in the pocket of the cagoule. Enough to buy a coffee somewhere if she wanted to. She hurried on.

Jack and the boys didn’t deserve to have their holiday blighted by her low – no, not low, worried – mood, did they? She wondered what Jack might be doing with the boys. Perhaps he’d found another TV channel to watch with them – cartoons maybe – and was sitting with them both cuddled up on his lap, his arms around them, holding them safe. Or he could be reading to them. Jack loved to read to the boys and it was always he who did the bedtime story every night. And Cally loved to watch him, peering through a crack in the bedroom door, listening to the lower timbre of his voice, watching until the boys drifted off to sleep, and sometimes Jack with them.

‘And you, Cally Jones, have got yourself too wrapped up in your boys and not enough in your husband, who is second to none,’ she said, wagging a finger at a bemused gull standing on the sea wall. ‘He won’t take much more of my self-absorption will he, Mr Seagull?’

The gull flew off. And that’s why men have affairs, Cally told herself – because their wives forget they married a man, making them semi-redundant once they’d fathered the children they wanted. Sometimes, Cally knew, she put Jack below her boys, her parents and her job.

‘Guilty as charged,’ she called after the gull, who was now landing at the water’s edge.

She walked on, picking up pace until she was almost running. She had to jump over a large puddle that had formed in a crack in the pavement, and just for the moment she jumped over it, and looked down, it became a mirror and Cally saw that she was smiling. She’d read somewhere that the human mind doesn’t know the difference between a real smile and a false one, and if you just keep smiling your mood will lift, and you’ll become happier. She’d just have to keep smiling then, wouldn’t she? And keep walking.

Cally went past the marker for the two-mile walk and under a small arch that led to the harbour.

Trips around the bay it said on a blackboard propped up against a kiosk that had seen better days, with peeling paint and a plank broken at the bottom of the door. On another it offered ferry rides, Every hour on the half-hour. Both kiosks were closed. Cally and Jack had never taken the boys on a boat – they’d like that, or Cally hoped they would. She’d suggest to Jack they book tickets for another day – one when the sun was guaranteed to shine.

But first, coffee. Cally drew out a handful of coins from the pocket of her cagoule. They were rather wet, as she was. But no matter, she had enough to buy a cappuccino – how comforting one of those was when you needed it. And besides, while she drank it, it would give Jack more time with his boys. Cally’s smile widened, just thinking about that.

Jack stood in the open doorway waiting for her. The rain had stopped completely and there was a hazy sun trying to break through. It was warmer too.

‘Phew! You’re back,’ Jack said as Cally walked up the steps to 23 The Strand in her now-sodden trainers because she’d walked back along the beach, walking through the bits covered with a thin film of water where the tide had gone out.

‘Have I been long?’ she asked. In truth, she had no idea how long she’d been out but could see now that the sun – hazy as it was – was almost overhead. Nearly lunchtime.

‘Two hours, thirty-three minutes, and about fifteen seconds,’ Jack said.

‘Are you sure about that?’ Cally said. She couldn’t help smiling. Jack had been worried about her. He’d missed her. He loved her and she’d hazard a guess he didn’t want to be without her. It was a good feeling and yet a terrible one because what if he ended up missing her, like, for ever…

‘Give or take a second,’ Jack quipped. ‘The kettle’s on. Or shall we celebrate your return with a pre-lunch glass of wine? Seeing as we’re on holiday?’

‘Wine. Please,’ Cally said. On impulse she kissed Jack on the lips, just a swift kiss, the way she kissed the boys, but it conveyed how much she loved him, or she hoped it did. ‘I’ll just get out of these sodden things.’

The shower was warm rather than hot, and hardly a power shower, but it helped revive Cally. She roughly rinsed her hair too. Towelled herself dry as best she could in the cramped space.

‘Jack! Could you pass me my dressing gown?’ she yelled, opening the door of the bathroom a tad. ‘I’ll dress in our bedroom.’

Jack was back in seconds, just as the towel Cally had wrapped around her still slightly damp body slid to the floor.

‘Pity the boys are here,’ Jack said. ‘I could ravage you.’

He reached out a hand and the ends of his fingers caught Cally’s left breast. She flinched. Wrapped both arms around herself protectively.

‘Cally?’ Jack said, fear in his eyes. ‘What’s wrong? Is there someone else?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I’m not sure I believe that.’

‘You must.’

‘Must I? You’ve never recoiled from me before…’

‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s me. I’ve got something I need to tell you and I don’t know how to do it. Or when. But right now I’m freezing.’ She held out her hands for the fleecy dressing gown with roses on it that she’d got in a charity shop – it was rather less than fashionable but it was warm and strangely comforting. And she needed comforting now. ‘And I will tell you but I don’t want it to be in front of the boys. Soon, I’ll tell you soon. Jack, I love you. Perhaps more now than when I married you. There is no other man for me and there never will be. Can you hang on to that?’

‘Strange compliment,’ Jack said, but he gave Cally the lopsided grin she so loved, the one that gave her butterflies in her tummy – the one that told her Jack loved her just as much as she did him. ‘But I’ll take it.’

Cally and Jack took the boys on a boat trip that afternoon.

‘I can hardly believe it’s the same month, never mind the same day,’ Cally said. ‘It’s so warm now compared to this morning.’ Just a few short hours ago she’d been trying to settle her demons, getting herself soaking wet in the progress, and now here they were, almost back to how they’d been – her and Jack – before she’d found the lump.

‘We’re opportunists, that’s what we are,’ Jack said. He leaned towards Cally and kissed her cheek. ‘Got the boat almost to ourselves as well.’

‘Well, it is early in the season. Still May. There’ll be more people around next month, I expect.’

‘Are there whales?’ Noah asked. ‘The man said.’

‘He did, didn’t he?’ Cally said.

The man who’d sold them the tickets at the kiosk had said they were a bit late coming out to see the dolphins because they liked to feed in the mornings off Berry Head. Then he’d said a whale had been spotted in the bay the previous summer. A few lucky holidaymakers had seen it from his very own boat and had photos to prove it. Gosh, how exciting that would be, to see a whale. They’d come back.

Gosh, the first positive thought about the future since I’ve been here.

‘Can I see? Can I have a whale for a pet? I’ll help look after it. It could live in the bath.’ Noah was pink-cheeked with excitement at the thought.

‘I want to see a whale,’ Riley said. He slid from the seat and was at the rail in a nanosecond before Jack reacted and leapt up to grab him. ‘A big whale.’

‘Maybe a goldfish,’ Jack said, scooping his youngest son into his arms and carrying him back to the wooden bench where Cally and Noah sat.

‘Two goldfish,’ Noah said. ‘One for Riley and one for me.’

‘Two it is then,’ Jack said.

And there it was – Jack’s first sign of acceptance that, perhaps, his boys needed pets in their lives.

‘We’ll go to the pet shop as soon as we get home and buy a big tank and some weed for them to hide in,’ Cally said.

Goodness, the second positive thought in such a short space of time.

‘We’re going to look for whales!’ Noah announced. ‘Come on, Riley!’

He grabbed his little brother’s hand and they went over to scramble up onto a large, varnished, wooden box in the middle of the boat. They were safe there, sitting with their legs dangling, feet from the deck, but clinging on to one another.

‘Do you miss the computer?’ Jack asked suddenly.

‘Why?’ Cally asked, sharply, her little bubble of happiness deflating a little. How quickly moods, and thoughts, could change.

‘Well, you’re on it a lot at home and you haven’t got access here.’

‘I’m not on it a lot,’ Cally said, knowing just how defensive she was sounding. ‘Just half an hour or so while you read to the boys and settle them for the night. Facebook mostly, seeing what old school friends are up to.’

‘Not everyone is as they seem on chat sites or Facebook,’ Jack said, immediately planting a seed of doubt in Cally’s mind that maybe Tony, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, might fit into that category, although Cally was fairly certain he didn’t. ‘And any information you might Google is only as accurate as however knowledgeable the person who put it there is.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Cally said.

‘Well, you do now. I’ve looked up things about engineering when I’ve been at work and on more than a few occasions the info has been utter tosh.’

‘Oh,’ Cally said. How naïve of her to have accepted everything she might have looked at as being one hundred per cent the truth – if what Jack was saying was true.

‘And emails,’ Jack carried on. ‘I’ve noticed you get more of those than you used to.’

Cally and Jack used the same computer at home but it was a golden rule that neither tried to access the other’s emails. Cally knew Jack’s password in case there was ever an emergency and she needed to be able to contact his bosses, and he knew hers, but that’s all it was, a safety net. Wasn’t it?

‘Have you been spying on me?’ Part of her hoped he had and that he had seen her browsing history and would ask why she was looking at cancer sites, and then it would open the conversation she knew they must have.

‘I’ve not used your password to look, no. I’d never stoop that low. I like to think we’ve got a better, more trusting, relationship than that.’

‘And we have,’ Cally said. There’d never been a second in all the time she’d known Jack, and been married to him, when she’d questioned the truth – or not – of what he’d told her. But all the same, she couldn’t just blurt out here what was troubling her. She knew she’d probably burst into tears and there were other passengers, and the crew, to think about. They wouldn’t want her raw emotions spread in front of them. And Jack would be torn between comforting her and checking the boys were okay. ‘So, can we just get on and enjoy the trip?’

The boat’s engine slowed then. One of the passengers was pointing to some rocks near a cove that were exposed now the tide had gone out.

‘Oh, it’s a seal!’ Cally said.

She leapt up and went to the boys, lifting them down to take them to the side of the boat where they’d see the seal.

The captain came over the tannoy to tell them that this seal loved to swim up to boats and catch any fish thrown to it.

‘And I just happen to have some mackerel here!’ he laughed. ‘And I can see two little boys who would be very good at feeding seals, I should think.’

‘Me! Me!’ Noah and Riley yelled in unison.

Jack came up behind Cally and put his arms around all of them, and her awkward moment had passed.

Another memory was being made for her boys and she must relish the moment.

‘And to answer your question,’ Cally said, leaning in to him. ‘I’m not missing the internet. Not one bit.’ And she wasn’t, because she knew now that it had only been fuelling her fears – a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as the old adage had it. She wriggled in closer to Jack, the slight frostiness that had been between them melting a little.

‘Good,’ Jack whispered in her ear. ‘That’s music to my ears.’

But still Cally couldn’t find it in her to tell Jack what was worrying her. She found that the best way not to have to tell him was to have the boys around all the time. When Noah wanted to paddle but Riley didn’t, Cally went with him. Even though she could have reached out and grabbed him from where she’d been sitting had he fallen.

‘The sea is sucking my feet,’ Noah giggled. ‘Look, they’re disappearing!’

Cally looked. As the tide pulled back out again, leaving the sand full of water, Noah’s small and perfect feet sank down, the tops covered with a sheen of water.

‘Do you like it?’ Cally asked.

‘I love it, Mummy,’ Noah said. ‘It tickles. I like tickles.’

‘In that case…’

Cally bent down and tickled Noah, making him squirm, making him laugh. And she found she was laughing too. A genuine laugh. Making memories for Noah.

‘Can we live here?’ Noah asked. ‘I like it here.’

‘We can come back,’ Cally said. ‘Maybe,’ she whispered under her breath. Then in a louder voice she said, ‘Yes. Yes, we will.’

‘The zoo today, boys,’ Jack said, lifting Riley onto his shoulders ready to board the bus. An open-top bus ran a round robin service. Cally and her family scrambled up to the top deck and sat in the two front seats – Cally with Noah, Jack with Riley.

‘Grandstand view,’ Jack said as the bus made its way past the pier.

‘Will there be whales?’ Noah asked.

‘Where?’ Jack said.

‘At the zoo.’

‘No, I shouldn’t think so. Although the man who took us out on the boat the other day when we saw the seal said they do get a whale come into the bay sometimes.’

‘See whales now!’ Riley shouted, and Cally and Jack shushed him in unison.

‘But there will be crocodiles,’ Cally said. ‘At the zoo.’

‘Crocodiles!’ Noah shouted, looking terrified and yet thrilled beyond belief in equal measure.

‘Crocodiles!’ Riley emulated his big brother.

‘Definitely,’ Cally said.

‘Sing the song!’ Riley yelled. ‘Sing the song!’

One of the songs Riley loved from the playgroup he went to two mornings a week was about a crocodile.

‘You must never smile at a crocodile, ’cos a crocodile has got an evil smile,’ Cally began to sing softly, almost a whisper.

But the boys had other ideas and began to sing the song, with wild facial gestures and much snapping of arms to indicate a crocodile’s jaws, very loudly.

Jack looked slightly embarrassed at the noise his sons were making.

‘Sorry,’ Cally mouthed at him.

‘Nah,’ Jack said. ‘It’s all right. We’ll let this one go. I expect there’ve been worse things on the top deck of a bus!’

And so the boys made more than a few repetitions of the crocodile song, and when they got to the zoo, Jack bought bags of special food for them to feed the animals and birds. Cally burst out laughing when Noah showed more interest in the locks and bolts on the gates of the pens than he did in the animals inside them.

‘He’s going to be an engineer,’ she said.

‘I should hope so,’ Jack said. ‘Or I’m a rotten role model.’

And could you take on the role of mother, if…?

Cally knew the answer to that – yes, he could.

Like all small children when they saw a big, empty space, Noah and Riley wanted to run into it. The paths in the zoo were wide and, at this time of year, not as crowded as they would be in the summer holidays with more children about.

‘When do we lose the ability to be so uninhibited?’ Jack asked. ‘Look at them!’

Noah and Riley were tearing around on their sturdy little legs, their blond curls blown every which way by the light breeze and their frantic activity. They were both squealing with delight, making car noises. Cally wished she could rush off in the sort of gay abandon Noah and Riley were achieving. Perhaps the lump would go if it knew she didn’t care about it, that she wasn’t going to let it get her.

‘Bang, bang,’ Riley said. He had found a stick from somewhere and was pointing it at Noah. ‘I deaded you.’

Dead.

Cally’s blood ran cold at Riley’s innocent choice of word in a game all children played, however much she might not like them playing it.

‘How happy they are,’ Jack said.

And they were. Cally took her phone from her bag and began taking photos. Lots of photos to go with those she’d already taken on this holiday. More memories. If…

‘It’s going to cost an arm and a leg getting that lot developed,’ Jack laughed.

Cally still loved to hold a photograph in her hand, rather than look at it on a screen, which was the norm these days. Already she had about six large albums full of photographs of the boys.

‘Some things are priceless,’ she said softly.

Jack linked his arm through Cally’s.

‘Like you. You’re priceless to me, sweetheart.’

Cally leaned in to him, full of sadness for what might yet turn out to be, yet full of love as well. It was all too much to bear, and the tears began to fall.

So, there in the zoo, with the boys running around, shouting their heads off, cheeks pink with exertion, Cally told Jack, their arms leaning on the wooden rail of the pen where strikingly beautiful zebra were nibbling grass.

‘I’ve found a lump.’

‘Where?’ Jack asked, putting an arm around Cally’s shoulder.

‘In my left breast.’

‘When? When did you find it?’

‘Two weeks ago? Three?’

‘Why didn’t you say?’ Jack sounded concerned rather than cross that she hadn’t mentioned such a serious worry.

‘I don’t know now. I should have. But I thought I might have been imagining it. That, maybe, I’d twisted a muscle or something and that it would unkink itself if I ignored it. At first I kept finding it with my fingers all the time. I couldn’t stop myself searching for info on the internet either.’

‘So, that’s what you were looking at?’

‘Yes, mostly. I found a chat site for cancer sufferers where they share their stories. Someone on there – a man called Tony – got in touch. I didn’t know men could get breast cancer.’

‘So, the email you were so keen for me not to see was from him?’

‘I wouldn’t have minded you seeing it, but I hadn’t told you and I didn’t want you jumping to conclusions.’

‘Oh, Cally. You’ve been shouldering this on your own. And I must confess I did begin to wonder if, you know, another man had come into your life. I hated myself for even thinking it, and I didn’t know how to handle it. So I thought it might be best if we got right away from our usual environment, and the computer, and just went back to being us.’

‘We’re always going to be “us”,’ Cally said. ‘And I’m really sorry now I told a chat site before telling you. Tony was one of many men on there – those who have, or have had, cancer, and those widowed by it. Tony said he wished he hadn’t told people when he did. He said he wished now he’d had all the correct information and a prognosis under his belt before he did, because people can have a lot of crackpot theories.’

‘This Tony is right there. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, sweetheart,’ Jack said. He pulled Cally closer. ‘We’re both guilty of not telling one another what fears we had in our minds, I think. I ought not to have booked this holiday without giving you the chance to say whether you wanted to come or not.’

‘I’m glad you did now,’ Cally said. ‘Or I’d still be searching cancer sites, and reading other people’s often very sad and scary stories night after night, and instead it’s been lovely sitting on the deck while the boys sleep, watching the moon cast its avenue of light on the water, and hearing the soft shush of the waves. It didn’t make the lump go away but it didn’t make it worse either, and for that short while I was able to forget.’

‘Sometimes the simplest things are the best.’

‘But I’m frightened, Jack,’ Cally said.

‘And I’m frightened with you. I can’t pretend anything else at this moment. But we must hang on to the fact that no one’s told you the lump is cancer yet. But if it is you need more than one soldier to fight a battle. And I’ll be right beside you. So, my next question – do you want to go back home right now and get the ball rolling, as it were, or…?’

‘No! Really, no. There will be fewer chances as the boys get older to holiday in school time like this. We’ll stay.’

‘And holiday like we’ve never holidayed before.’ Jack drew Cally towards him and kissed her cheek.

‘We will. And the weather seems to be on our side at the moment. And when I get back I want to cut back on work. Maybe just two days a week. I know Mum loves having them but the time with them is so short, isn’t it? Can we afford for me to only work two days?’

‘Yes, and yes,’ Jack said. And there were tears in his eyes as he said it.

‘Show me, Cally,’ Jack said.

They were lying in bed, both fresh from the shower, both naked. Cally was on her back, and Jack was lying on his side looking at her.

Cally took Jack’s hand and guided his fingers to the lump.

‘It’s not very big,’ she said.

‘Does it hurt?’ Jack asked, his fingers gently probing.

‘No.’

With Jack’s fingers caressing her, Cally felt a shiver of something. Desire? Yes, that’s what it was, desire.

‘Oh, I think I’ve found it. About the size of half a pea?’

‘Yes.’

Jack slid his other arm underneath Cally’s neck, and then pulled her towards him. He rocked her gently, back and forth, back and forth, kissing her hair, kissing her forehead.

‘I can’t find words,’ he said.

‘How about “Let’s make love”, Cally said. ‘Get some good old endorphins running through me. They’re supposed to be healing.’

‘You sure? I mean…’

‘Sure,’ Cally said, silencing him with a kiss.

‘Windsurfing?’ Jack laughed. ‘In May? This is the UK, you know!’

‘I know. The windsurf school hires out wetsuits. Life jackets. I really, really want to have a go.’

Cally pointed to a windsurfer whipping along parallel to the beach. A small wave was breaking behind him, and a smaller one in front. The sail was a fabulous shade of magenta. No, amethyst. The same shade as the stone on the necklace Cally had found waiting for her at 23 The Strand. It seemed almost like an omen. A good omen.

So Cally walked to where the windsurfing school was set up at the far end of the beach.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m a total novice at this but I’d really love to have a go.’

‘Hi. Great. We can do that. I’m Elisabeth – with an s not a z,’ the girl laughed.

‘I’m Cally, with a y not an ie and not short for anything.’

Elisabeth helped Cally into a wetsuit and secured a life-support.

‘Be careful,’ Cally said as Elisabeth tugged on the straps. ‘I hurt a little bit.’

Which wasn’t true. Cally had no pain around the area she had found the lump.

‘Oh, you’ll forget all that when you’re out there,’ Elisabeth laughed. ‘You’ll have the sun on your face – along with a lot of water, I expect! – and you’ll be concentrating so hard on standing upright that anything that’s bothering you in life will just fade away into insignificance.’

I hope so, Cally thought but didn’t say.

But so it proved. Cally found standing on a moving board with the force of a constantly shifting sea beneath her easier than she ever imagined it would be. Whole minutes went by when she didn’t think about the lump. Elisabeth encouraged her to go further and further each time. Cally was zipping along now and she could see Jack and the children on the beach. Jack was kneeling down scooping buckets of sand to make a pit of some sort for the boys to play in.

‘Hey!’ she shouted, but the breeze and her own speed whipped the word away.

But Jack must have sensed her because he looked up. He waved. And then he blew her a kiss. And in that moment there were no other people in the world, and nothing else mattered except their love. She’d been stupid to keep such a massive worry to herself, and silly beyond belief to think she had to cope on her own. Life was for living, and that was just what she was going to do.

Dear new occupant,

I was left a gift by the previous occupant and this is my gift to you – Welsh cakes made by my sons and me. My husband was chief taster and he says they are ‘Ace!’ I hope you will enjoy them with a cup of tea, sitting on the deck perhaps. I arrived here a worried woman, but this place has smoothed out my worries and I’m going home with a more positive outlook. Whatever your reasons for coming here I wish you a happy time. If you feel like leaving something for the next occupant of 23 The Strand, please do – but it’s by no means obligatory.

Cally – and Jack, Noah and Riley too.

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