AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Well, at least now the book police aren’t around.Gideon never read, outside whatever legal briefs he had to read for work. He gave the air of considering himself too important for something as fanciful as reading a novel or a play or a poem. Privately, Mara had always thought that anyone who didn’t like books was either boring or an idiot.Turns out, I was right.
The thing was, that although Gideon was pretty unpleasant to her, he was a great dad. He made up plays with Franny – which always turned out to have some kind of legal theme, though Franny didn’t seem to mind – and patiently painted the backdrops for her productions ofThe Princess and the PeaorRumpelstiltskin. He played endless hours of football in the garden with John and talked to him when he had a nightmare, often up into the small hours himself, preparing for a case. Sometimes she’d wake up in the middle of the night and find one of the twins – usually John – asleep on Gideon’s office sofa, with Gideon working at his desk. She’d pick John up and return him to his bed. Gideon, when he was working late, would usually sleep in his office and take John’s place.
That’s why Mara had stayed for as long as she did: Gideon was a devoted father. It was just that – as far as their own relationship went – things weren’t great. She supposed that she had also believed that she could never do any better. Her confidence had never been high as far as men were concerned.
She opened the flap of the box. Inside, there was a clear plastic bag. She took it out, noting a few notebooks that lay underneath. Inside the bag was a bundle of letters.
She listened to Franny’s voice upstairs for a moment which had taken on a familiar, monotonous tone; it sounded as though she was telling John one of her stories, which could take a while. Mara thought it was likely that the new doll was expected to listen, too.
She hadn’t worked since the children were born, because Gideon had said, I earn enough to support us; you should concentrate on the kids.And that had been fine; she’d wanted to, she’d been happy to support the family, being a stay-at-home mum. Yet, despite the fact that he had wanted her to, Gideon never seemed to respect her for it. He would make remarks about her lack of experience at work, that she wasn’t savvy about things, that she was naïve.
Well, I’m not naïve now, she thought.Not about cheating husbands, anyway.That cherry has been well and truly popped.
Mara undid the rubber band that held the letters together and looked at them curiously. They all had the same name and address: Paul Sullivan, at an address in Helston, perhaps a forty-five-minute drive away from St Ives, as long as the traffic was okay. Every one of the letters was unopened, and each one had been stamped RETURN TO SENDER. She turned the bundle over in her hands thoughtfully.
Now, she had to find a job. She had studied literature at university, but a literature degree, some long-ago office experience and eleven years of being a stay-at-home wife and then a mother qualified her for precisely nothing, as far as she could see. She’d applied for a couple of jobs, but she didn’t feel confident. All the more reason to sell this place – at least it might buy her some time to find a job if she had some cash to carry them through.
‘Mummy! Come upstairs!’ Franny’s voice called down the stairs.
‘I’ll be right there, sweetie,’ Mara called back. Should she open the letters? It felt wrong – they weren’t addressed to her. Yet Abby had wanted to make sure she had them after she died. There must be some kind of important information she was supposed to have.
Mara had slid her fingernail under the flap of the first letter in the bundle when there was another knock at the door: Clare had forgotten to tell her something, she supposed. She frowned and went to open it, absent-mindedly carrying the letter with her.
CHAPTER THREE
The man looked surprised when Mara opened the door.
‘Oh, hi. I saw someone moving around and wanted to make sure everything was okay,’ he said, taking a step back from the door.Kind eyes, Mara thought.
‘Everything’s okay.’ Mara realised she was standing with her hands on her hips; she wanted to read the letters, whatever they were. ‘Can I help you?’
The man had an easy smile; wry amusement flashed in his deep blue eyes.
‘Well, now, I’d kind of decided that I was going to be the helpful one.’ His dark blond hair was slicked back with water and he wore a black wetsuit with the top rolled down and a faded blue rugby shirt on top. He looked like he had just thrown the top on and seemed to be in the process of pulling it down, but not before Mara saw a flash of a toned, muscular stomach underneath. She blinked and looked away.
‘Everything’s fine, thanks,’ she replied curtly. ‘This is my house.’
It was strange to say it, but, oddly, the beach house did feel like hers already. Even the fact that it was decrepit felt familiar and homely, not that her house for the past twelve years could ever be described as either decrepit or homely.
Nothing in her house was ever more than three years old: the freezer, the sofa, the light fittings. Gideon liked everything to be new; in retrospect, Mara realised his obsession for novelty should have made her suspicious a long time ago. Yet all it had done was keep her busy. She seemed to spend her life researching the best shade of paint, the best floor lamps and the best drawer organisers.
The beach house was the opposite of her house with Gideon and the twins, but there was something about it… Perhaps it was simply the fact that it was hers. Something that only she owned. Still, it wouldn’t be hers for long.
‘Your house?’ The man cocked his head on one side, quizzically. ‘It’s been empty a good while. There was an older woman that used to come down sometimes and stay for a while, walk on the beach. I thought it was hers?’
‘That must have been my mother. She… passed recently.’ Mara wondered why she was having to explain herself to this passer-by.
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ He looked genuinely sympathetic, and Mara felt herself thaw a little. Behind the man, a girl, perhaps in her twenties, emerged from the sea, also wearing a wetsuit and carrying a surfboard. She approached the man and nudged him on the arm.
‘Hi, Brian. Want to go back in?’ she asked, smiling politely at Mara.
‘Sure, sweetie. I’ll be right there.’ He gave the girl a warm smile which had more than a hint of what Mara would describe as ‘come to bed eyes’.
‘One of my students,’ he explained. ‘That’s my base over there.’ He pointed to the wooden shack at the other side of the beach.
Mara thought the girl looked like she wanted to say something more – like,hey, stop chatting some woman up in my lesson time.Mara thought she would probably be thinking that herself if she was halfway through a surf lesson with this guy–but she just pulled her long blonde hair into a wet topknot with an elastic band and gave Brian a thumbs up, then turned away, walking back to the shoreline.
‘You were friends with Abby?’ Mara asked him, curious.
