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Rory sat in the first row, and she gave him a shy wave. He mouthed, ‘You got this,’ and grinned. Her heart fluttered just like it did every time she saw him. It had been six months since they’d started seeing each other and it had been the happiest six months of Carrie’s life.
Not just because of Rory, however. Carrie had started her nursing degree three months before, and Dr Dan had managed to arrange it so that she could do her first placement training at St Bernadette’s. She had tons to study, and she was exhausted from being on her feet all day when she was at work, but she was absolutely loving it too.
For the first time, Carrie felt as though she had a purpose. She was needed, and she could help people. She had helped so many patients already, from helping them put on their slippers to taking them to the toilet when they needed an arm; to monitoring their heart rate and watching the other nurses, who taught her how to put in cannulas, check blood pressure and a million other tasks.
She had stopped working at the restaurant with Rory, and he had found another kitchen assistant – Tom, a twenty-year-old young man who was going to catering college and was determined that he was going to have his own restaurant by the time he was twenty-five. Rory said Tom was a handful, but he was enjoying the challenge of having someone to train who was passionate about food.
Graham sat next to Rory. They’d actually become friends, the three of them, in the last couple of months. Graham had come up to Loch Cameron a few times and had dinner with them both, and Graham and Rory had got on very well. They’d also all gone up to the little chapel where Claire’s memorial stone was laid and taken flowers a few times since her service, with Carrie and Graham exchanging stories about Claire, making Rory laugh with her witticisms.
June played the opening chords of ‘Alone’. As the first bars of the song started, and Carrie lifted her voice with that of the others in the first verse, she felt her heart lift, and her whole body fill with happiness as if it was filled with bubbles. Finally, her cup was full, just like June had said it would be, and she had stepped out of the grief and darkness that she had been mired in when she’d arrived in Loch Cameron.
She had also started seeing a therapist at the hospital. It was early days, but she had stopped hearing Claire’s voice in her head as often. In a way, she missed it. She knew it had been her brain’s way of trying to keep a link to her sister, the person she had loved so much. The person she would always love. And that was okay. It was okay to want to hang on to loved ones when we lost them.
What would Claire say, if she was here? Carrie wondered. What would she think of Carrie becoming a nurse, or of Rory? She knew the answer. Claire would be proud of her. Carrie imagined her sitting in the back row of the chairs, smiling. She could almost see her now.
As she broke into the dramatic chorus of ‘Alone’, Carrie remembered the song that had been on the radio when the crash happened. She hadn’t been able to listen to it since that day; it was too triggering. But, just this morning, when she’d been getting ready for work, the song had come on the radio. It was like a sign, or a message of some kind.
And when you need me in the dead of night,I’m just a minute away… ooh, ooh
Carrie had stood there, listening, all the way through. She had cried, but it wasn’t bad. She would probably always cry, listening to that song. But, at least now, shecouldlisten to it.
Maybe it was a message from Claire.When you need me, I’ll be there. Carrie liked the idea. She knew she would never not feel connected to Claire, even though Claire wasn’t around anymore. Because shewasaround. She was part of Carrie’s DNA. And she lived on in Carrie’s memory, forever.
She was still emotional, when she thought about Claire, which was often. There wasn’t a day that passed when she didn’t think about her sister, and she hoped there never would be. She wanted to remember Claire.
But as she pushed her voice to reach the long, high notes of ‘Alone’, she poured all of her emotion into the song, and, again, she felt some of the loss leave her, as if she was setting it free. This was what singing could do for her. She would never forget Claire, but she could start to free some of the aching pain of loss that clung to her heart like mud.
For now, Carrie could concentrate on her new job, helping others, and her role with the choir. There were new songs to sing, and a new life to live. And that was okay. That was more than okay, in fact, because if Carrie had learnt anything from her time in Loch Cameron, it was that life continued, and life could change for the better.
She smiled as she sang, and the song filled the room.
* * *
If Carrie and Rory’s story totally captured your heart, you’ll loveThe House at Magpie Cove. Mara Hughes has inherited her mother’s tumbledown beach house on the wild Cornish coast and when a box of old, unopened letters arrives on the doorstep she discovers a secret about her family she can scarcely believe to be true…
Get it here or keep reading for an exclusive extract!
THE HOUSE AT MAGPIE COVE
MAGPIE COVE BOOK 1
A gripping and emotional page-turner full of secrets and second chances
PROLOGUE
The beach house swayed and shook in the wind. There was a storm coming in. The grey clouds off the Cornish horizon sat heavy like judges in a court, pendulous and dark over the silver sea. Suddenly, a clap of thunder echoed across the beach and startled a flock of magpies nesting in the ruined roof of the house. They flew out, chattering like a scolding mother in the silence.
Abby watched the rain come, wondering why the house looked so different to how she remembered it. She knew it so well: the slightly off-kilter balance of the wooden floor in the lounge; the wide front door, its paint badly flaked so it was hardly blue anymore, revealing a cracked cream undercoat peeling off in the salt air.
Upstairs, Abby knew where the landing would creak, and where to walk around the edges to avoid waking up her parents; she knew how far it was from the back door to the hidden slip of rock that appeared at low tide. If you clambered over the rocks, exposed sand led you to a private hollow, unlooked-over by anyone walking by. She knew the smell of the salt air and the sea purslane that grew around the beach. She knew this place well: Magpie Cove, where she had lived all her life until she was seventeen.
Abby knew that she was dreaming. And as the storm rolled in, she knew what it brought with it. In the dream, she turned to run from the shadow that always came; the shadow that chased her along the beach, away from the house. She ran and ran, her breath ragged in her throat, but it was no good; now, like she always did in this dream, she fell, catching her ankle on a rock hidden in the sand. And she begged the dream to let her wake up, because she knew what was coming for her. Abby knew what was in the storm, and she woke up screaming.
CHAPTER ONE
‘No one’s lived here for a time, by the looks of things. Fair amount of work to be done.’ The solicitor handed Mara the house keys and gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Not quite the luxury beach retreat, I’m afraid,’ she added.
‘This is it?’ Mara looked around the deserted beach; it was the only house on this cove, though there was a small wooden shack at the other side, and she could see the roof of another house beyond a promontory that reached into the Cornish sea. She knelt and zipped up her son John’s coat against the wind, and beckoned her daughter Franny back to pull a purple knitted hat down over her black curls.
