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‘Yeah, but only because—’
‘I know why – because I was rarely seen. It was quite clever really.’ She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. ‘My mum was ill.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry. That must have been really difficult for both of you.’
‘It was a tough time.’ Nessa stared at the grass for a moment, lost in thought, before shaking her head. ‘Anyway, that was years ago and there’s no point in raking up the past. And I’d better get to work or Scaggy will be on the warpath.’
‘Mr Scaglin doesn’t still run Shelley’s, does he? He was getting on a fair bit when we were at school. He must be ninety by now.’
‘Ninety-five at the very least. He’s all right, really. Bit of a stickler for time though so I’d best get a move on. He goes mad if I turn up after nine fifteen.’ Nessa got to her feet and wiped blades of grass from her backside. ‘I can’t believe what’s planned for Driftwood House and I hope, whatever you do, that things work out for you, Rosie.’
‘Don’t you mean Raging Rosie?’ she replied, raising an eyebrow.
‘Hmm, maybe I should have kept that to myself.’
‘It’s fine. There are worse things I could have been called.’
Worse things she probably was being called in the village right now. Runaway Rosie sprang to mind. She glanced up at Nessa from under her eyelashes. ‘Do you see much of Liam Satterley?’
‘Liam?’ Nessa gave her a sideways look. ‘I see him round and about. Why?’
‘No reason. I’ve bumped into him a couple of times and he seems much the same as he ever was.’
‘Do you think?’
‘Yeah. Still a bit full of himself. He was in the churchyard this morning and in a funny mood.’
‘That’s hardly surprising on today of all days.’
‘Why? What’s so different about today?’
Nessa glanced around and lowered her voice, even though only the seagulls circling overhead could overhear. ‘As I say, I don’t usually gossip but it’s exactly a year ago to the day since Liam was supposed to get married. Some people were talking about it in the shop yesterday, while I was doing my best not to listen.’
‘Liam Satterley was getting married?’ Rosie could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘I didn’t think he was the type to settle down. Far too much of a ladies’ man.’
Nessa’s eyebrows knitted together in a frown. ‘People can change, Rosie. I get the feeling you’re judging us all on how we used to be before you ran off to Spain.’
‘I didn’t run off. I escaped.’
‘Youescaped? From the picturesque, peaceful seaside village of Heaven’s Cove?’ spluttered Nessa.
‘So what happened, with the wedding?’ asked Rosie, ignoring the heavy sarcasm that she kind of deserved. Her interest was piqued by Liam’s abandoned nuptials, in spite of herself.
‘Deanna got cold feet. I always thought she was too high maintenance to be content as a farmer’s wife. Anyway, she left him standing at the altar in front of everyone.’
‘That’s awful!’
‘Yeah, and totally unnecessary. What a cow!’ Nessa glanced at her watch. ‘Look, I really do need to go or Scaggy will go mad. Good luck with everything and hopefully I’ll see you around before you head back to Spain. Don’t forget us all.’
With a smile, Nessa rushed off and started picking her way confidently down the cliff path, towards the village.
Rosie turned her face towards the sea. A fishing boat was chugging its way into harbour, followed by a bevy of gulls skimming its deck. Below her, there was a dull boom as waves hit the rock face and sprayed arcs of water into the morning air.
It really was beautiful here, and peaceful. Far more peaceful than her neighbourhood in Spain, where music drifted from open windows late into the night and there was a constant hum of conversation from people drinking at the street café beneath her first-floor flat.
She meant to picture Matt, sitting at her window with his handsome face in profile as he watched the people below, but Liam’s face popped into her mind instead. The breaker of many hearts had suffered a broken heart himself. No wonder he’d been distracted and irritable this morning on such a sad anniversary.
Rosie wished she’d questioned Nessa more about what happened between him and his fiancée. She wished she’d listened when her mum told her about the goings-on in Heaven’s Cove. But she’d been so obviously uninterested, so sure that life here was boring, that her mum had stopped talking much about the village at all.
Rosie sighed and got to her feet. She’d spend the rest of the day scouring Driftwood House for paperwork – anything that might cast more light on her mother’s agreement with the Eppings, and the identity of the mysterious J whose flowers lay in the graveyard.
Three hours later, Rosie had found no paperwork of note at all – no will, nothing about her mum’s move to Driftwood House, and no mention of J. In fact, all she had, after working her way through a huge pile of old bills and invoices, was a pounding head, and an aching heart from seeing her mum’s instructions to herself scrawled across the paperwork:Settle by end of the month. Query this amount. What the hell is this payment for?
She’d laughed at that last one. Mum could never remember what she bought from one week to the next. And she was hopeless with money, unlike Rosie, who managed to stretch out her meagre wages to cover rent, nights out with friends, and food for her and Matt. Although his own much bigger apartment was nearby, and he earned more than she did, he often ate at hers, and drank her dry of white wine and sangria.
Rosie yawned and moved her shoulders up and down to ease her aching muscles. She was kneeling on the sitting room floor, in sunshine that had crept around the heavy damask curtains and pooled on the rug in front of the fireplace. The light was turning the multi-coloured rug into a bright mosaic and dust motes were dancing in sunbeams.
Although she was totally alone, Rosie felt comforted by the solidity of the house and its permanence in such a changing world. This special place had served her mother well and provided shelter and refuge over the years – when her grandparents died, when her father moved out, when she left. It had been a part of Heaven’s Cove for generations, only for it now to face destruction on the whim of a greedy landowner.
Upstairs, a door banged in the breeze that was eddying through the house as Rosie came to a decision. She grabbed the letter from Charles Epping and her mother’s car keys from the kitchen dresser and stepped out into the lunchtime sunshine.
