He might be leaping to conclusions, but he was glad Rick was inside with Naomi and not out here to witness the scene.
Chapter Forty-Two
The day shone bright and glittery in the way that an October morning so often did, and while Ellis was in the shower, Naomi, wrapped in her warmest dressing gown, was outside on the balcony drinking the tea he had made for her. After a lifetime of marriage, Colin had never made her tea the way she liked; he’d always been too heavy-handed with the milk. Ellis didn’t make that mistake, he always got it just right.
The tide was out and down on the shore, the redshanks were busy poking about in the mudflats. In the distance, a soft breeze played across the surface of the water and shafts of early morning sunlight shone down through banks of clouds and glinted off the ripples. There wouldn’t be many more mornings when Naomi would be able to enjoy her first cup of tea of the day this way. Not in her nightclothes at any rate. The forecast was for rain to push in from the west this evening and to linger for the next few days. She was glad for Ellis’s sake that the weather had been as good as it had been yesterday. A funeral in the rain was just adding insult to injury.
Ellis had known that it was only a matter of time before his mother died, but it had still shaken him. Given the strong relationship he had with his mother, his reaction was only natural and had brought back memories for Naomi of losing her own parents,who had died when Martha and Willow were teenagers.
Her mother was first to die of a stroke and her father a few years later of sepsis, after stepping on a rusty nail and not bothering to go to the doctor. Not until it was too late. At the time, Naomi could accept that there had been nothing her mother could do to prevent the stroke that killed her, but her father’s death had seemed so avoidable. If only he had been more careful … if only he had gone to the doctor … if only he hadn’t been so reckless and pig-headed and made light of feeling ‘a touch under the weather’ on the telephone to her. ‘Just some silly bug I’ll soon shake off, I’m sure,’ he’d said.
In many ways Colin had been quite like her father – both thoroughly headstrong and convinced they could make the world bend to their will. Kindred spirits, her father and Colin had got on famously together, and perhaps Colin had seen in Naomi’s father not so much a replacement for his own, but someone he could respect and admire in a similar fashion.
Colin had lost his parents when he was at university; they’d died in a bomb explosion planted by the IRA at a restaurant in London. He never forgave those who were responsible for the murder of his parents, and years later he was still capable of exploding with a furious rage whenmurdering terrorists, as he saw them, appeared on the television masquerading as politicians.
Naomi had always believed that this was the source of his temper and internal anger, the death of his parents, to whom he had been devoted. Many times she had suggested he seek help, that talking through losing his mother and father in so violent a manner might help unlock what had the power to consume and overwhelm him at times. He refused, of course. Very likely he was scared to look too deeply inside himself,afraid at what he might find lurking there.
For a man like Colin, very much an alpha male, it was so much better to suppress the pain and anguish. Rightly or wrongly, it was why Naomi forgave him his outbursts. She didn’t expect others to understand that. Or to understand that their secret – their dirty secret that he hit her – became a bond between them. He trusted her not to tell anyone, she even promised him that she wouldn’t, but only because it was easy to keep a promise that was cloaked in shame and humiliation, that she, an intelligent woman, ‘allowed’ her husband to hit her.
She still felt that shame now and doubted she would ever really lose it. She knew that Ellis had been shocked by what she had shared with him, and that he would never understand how a man like Colin could behave so badly and get away with it.
But who were she and Ellis to judge when, the night of Geraldine’s wedding, they had lain on the floor of that summerhouse and made love? She had been a married woman with her desire fuelled by the need to pay her husband back for his affair, and Ellis had been fully aware of that. So no, she would not judge Colin. The only person she had a right to judge was herself, and over the years she had done far too much of that. But not anymore. With Ellis, she was determined to live with a fresh clean slate.
A few weeks ago, he had taken her by surprise when he’d told her that not only had he renewed the rental agreement on Waterside Cottage for another couple of months but he had been in talks with the owners to buy it.
‘But why?’ she had asked, alarmed. ‘Is it so you can have somewhere to escape if things go wrong between us?’
‘I knew you’d think that,’ he’d said, ‘and it’s absolutely not the reason I’m doing it. Apart from anything else, a beach-front property is a good investment.’
After that awful visit to the solicitor in Chichester, Naomi knew the value of Ellis’s financial portfolio, just as he knew her worth, so she couldn’t really see that he needed yet another investment.
‘I’m thinking ahead,’ he’d explained. ‘It might be nice for Lucas to have somewhere to stay when he visits in the future. And also, Martha and Willow. Overspill accommodation, if you like.’
‘But there’s room here,’ she’d countered.
‘I’m told by friends,’ he’d said with a smile, ‘who already have grandchildren that the more space one can have, the better. Besides, I thought it would be a fun project for us to do the cottage up together.’ He’d then produced some roughly sketched plans that showed how he wanted to open up the ground floor and install bi-fold doors so the beach and garden became a part of the cottage.
‘You’ve put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?’ she’d said.
‘I have,’ he’d admitted. ‘I decided that I’d had enough of retirement, I need something to do. You have your garden, which I’m more than happy to help you with, but I suspect I might be trespassing on sacred ground in that respect.’
‘Are you saying you’re bored?’
‘Not at all. But it’s either doing up Waterside Cottage or buying a bike and wearing skin-tight Lycra.’
She’d laughed. ‘Don’t ever think of wearing Lycra. I shall kick you out without a moment’s hesitation if you do that.’
‘And rightly so. So, am I forgiven for wanting to buy next door?’
‘Of course you are.’
With Rose’s death, the idea that Lucas could use the cottage when he next visited was implemented far sooner than Ellis had imagined. As soon as a date for the funeral was fixed, Lucas booked his flights and flew over. He was given the option to stay with the rest of them at Anchor House, but he’d said he would be quite happy sleeping next door.
Her tea now finished, and to the left of her eyeline, Naomi caught a flicker of movement down in the garden. Leaning forwards, she saw Willow walking the length of lawn towards the gate and the beach. To the side of the gate, on the path that ran between Anchor House and the beach, Lucas appeared. After exchanging a few words and a smile, they set off along the shoreline.
There was nothing particularly furtive about the encounter, but watching them disappear from view, and seeing the natural synchronicity between the pair of them – the way they had so easily fallen in step with each other, their arms swinging at their sides and almost touching – Naomi felt a chill of foreboding.
Surely she was wrong? Willow and Lucas were merely two young people thrown together by their parents’ relationship and were simply getting to know each other. It was all perfectly innocent.
