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Abigail ran out of the room, tears rolling down her face. She heard Carys say the word ‘regret’ before she slammed the door behind her.
Abigail didn’t know how she drove down the lane and back to the cottage. She arrived, doing a handbrake turn on the driveway, spewing stones in her wake, and causing her neighbour in the lighthouse to look out of the window. Abigail rushed into the cottage, up the stairs, and ran into her bedroom. ‘To hell with this cottage – and to hell with them!’ She grabbed her suitcase off the chair in the corner and dumped it on her bed.
She started packing, taking her clothes off the hangers in the wardrobe and flinging her jeans, tops and jumpers into her suitcase, tossing the hangers aside on the bed. She felt like leaving the projector and movie reels behind. It was too much hassle to load them into the car, but after what Lili had said, she didn’t want anything to happen to them. It was all she had left of Toby. And she doubted she’d be back.
Abigail went back and forward to the car, loading the projector and the box of home movie reels on to the back seat. Locking the front door, she picked up her suitcase and turned around to find Joss’s uncle standing outside the lighthouse, looking her way.
‘Where are you going?’ he called out.
Abigail cast a black look in his direction. That was all she needed – a run-in with her neighbour just to see her on her way. ‘What do you care?’ she shouted back as she heaved her suitcase on to the back seat.
‘Abigail …’
She paused for a moment, surprised he’d called her by her name. He appeared to be on the verge of telling her something. She waited. But he said nothing more. Abigail shut the passenger door and walked around to the driver’s side.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to London.’ She paused before getting in the car and shouted out. ‘You’ve got what you wanted, the place all to yourself again,’ she blurted. ‘I knew this was a mistake, coming here,’ she mumbled as she backed the car out of the driveway.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror as she set off and saw Joss’s uncle standing in the driveway, not looking nearly as happy as she’d thought he would at the prospect of her leaving. For a split second, she wondered if he was sorry to see her go.
‘Well, that’s a stupid thought,’ she admonished herself. Abigail glanced in her rear-view mirror one last time, seeing her cottage fading into the distance, feeling a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes. She wiped them away and put her foot down. ‘Come on, Penelope, let’s go home,’ she said, trying to quell a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that she wasn’t on her way home. She was leaving her home behind.
