Star smiled wistfully to herself. When she had been Skye’s age, she hadn’t had the luxury of burning the candle at bothends. The only time she was up all hours was when she was woken in the night to tend to her toddler’s needs. Looking at Skye now, she still couldn’t quite believe how she had managed to produce such a kind and lovely human being. Or maybe she could. For by sacrificing her own needs, she had created an environment of such love and stability that Skye had grown up to be secure in herself, with inner strength and showing no fear of being exactly who or what she wanted to be.
Star often wondered whether the fact that her daughter had grown up without a father figure would impact on her in later years. Time alone would tell.
Not wanting to disturb the girl, or alert her to a potential burglar in their midst, Star went to change into comfy clothes, then laid herself down on the purple velvet sofa and sighed contentedly, looking around her. The flat was light and airy with a large oblong living room and a corridor to the rear where two similar-size double bedrooms were situated. She had scarcely been able to contain her delight when, on being shown around by the estate agent, she discovered that the recently modernised and spacious bathroom not only contained a roll-top bath but a huge walk-in shower too. The park home in which she had been brought up had its own redeeming qualities, but space wasn’t one of them.
Compared with the rest of the flat, the kitchen off the lounge was small but functional. What made it special to Star was that the plain white tiles were interspersed with blue painted stars and moons in varying degrees of fullness. She had painted every wall white. A couple of abstract colour prints adorned the facing walls of the main room, and the dreamcatcher she had made herself hung in front of the big bay window that overlooked the market. A clock with apainting on its face of a white silk-robed angel ticked quietly, and candles of all shapes and sizes were placed around the room. Two of Skye’s favourites were burning, their familiar musky aromas filling the space and creating a comforting ambience along with the glow from the fire.
Star didn’t own the flat or the shop, but her uncle’s inheritance had given her a buffer to pay her rent and take over the lease. With her business now flourishing, money worries were a thing of the past, and that felt so good. Yes, she had to work ridiculously hard to keep it all afloat, but now that her online business had really started to pick up, with customers from all over the world loving her birthstone jewellery range, she felt that she had turned a corner. She was already working on new designs to expand her collections and was enjoying every moment.
Star remained eternally grateful to Jim and Flo for drumming it into her to split her money three ways whenever she earned any. ‘A third for the tax man, a third for saving and a third for living’ was their mantra. At the time she had found the idea so dull – and as soon as her jewellery started flying off the market stall, she had wanted to spend everything on herself. Later she came to realise that what they had said made so much sense. Living was expensive, especially bringing up a child in a twenty-first-century world full of gadgets. Savings gave her a comfort blanket. The money boost aside, it was her strong work ethic that had got her to where she was today, fuelled and inspired by her aunt and uncle’s regimental running of the newsagent and their passion in doing so. She used to nag them for not going away on holiday, but now that she worked for herself, reality had hit, and she herself had not been away for years. Star had convinced herself it was because she lived by the sea anyway. And on a summer’sday, walking along Penrigan Beach, you could actually be anywhere in the world, it was so stunningly beautiful.
Her next goal was to be able to afford her own place, ideally to get a mortgage on the shop and flat if it ever came up for sale. And also to venture abroad soon, if she could find someone to mind the shop and market stall for her for a week, that was.
Just then, Skye began to stir.
‘Darling, why don’t you get up and into bed,’ her mother said.
‘What’s the time?’ Skye replied sleepily, smacking her dry lips.
‘It’s only nine-thirty but it’s market day tomorrow and you need to be up early.’
‘OK.’ The teenager got up slowly, clumsily kissed her mother’s cheek, and with an ‘I love you, Mum’, headed off to bed.
Star checked her phone. Nothing from Kara or Billy about the suspected intruder. She went to the back door and peered out across to Kara’s flat: still in darkness with not a policeman in sight. She then pulled up the wooden slatted blind and opened one of her front windows. The fireworks had stopped, but on craning her neck to see as far as she could down to the estuary, the sight of a police car moving slowly through the end-of-season party masses made her feel decidedly uneasy.
Monique Dubois was just opening the big grey dustbin to the side of Frank’s when she clocked the familiar face of his nephew. You could tell instantly it was a Brady. Handsome.Broad-shouldered, with dark brown curly hair and brown eyes that told you nothing, unless he liked you. He was now walking slowly and deliberately as he mixed in with the crowd. Through her colourful life working in many countries and with a whole range of characters, she had encountered many faces that looked hunted – just like Conor Brady’s did right now.
Ushering the young man down the outside brick stairs into the back kitchen,the half-French woman closed the door against the wind, kissed Conor cheek-to-cheek three times before saying,‘Viens –get in here near the heater. What eez it? You’ve only just arrived,non?’
‘The woman who owns the flat left a key out so I let myself in. Her nosy bloody neighbour only thought I was breaking in – said she was calling the Old Bill. I can’t be dealing with them, not at the moment. So much for going incognito.’ Conor looked stressed.
Blue lights could now be seen flashing down the hill as a police car navigated its way through the crowd down Ferry Lane and parked up alongside the cafe. Grabbing a tea towel, Big Frank precariously carried the big cauldron of unlicensed alcoholic punch from the cafe counter into the back kitchen and plonked it on the side next to an unsmiling Monique and his white-faced nephew.
‘Jesus, lad. What’s happened? The police are right outside.’
‘Fais pas d’histoires,’Monique told her long-term lover in a brisk voice. ‘It’s just a misunderstanding. Some neighbour thought Conor was breaking into Kara’s flat. I will deal with it.’ She untied her apron to reveal a stylish all-in-one black jumpsuit. Formidable and in her late fifties, she was one of those women with such effortless style that she could have pulled off wearing a bin liner. Taking a deep red lipstick from her pocket she reapplied it expertly to her full lipswithout a mirror. Then, after patting the back of her platinum-blonde shoulder-length hair, she readjusted her bra to reveal a small amount of cleavage. Before she set off through to the cafe counter, in her sexy French accent she informed the nervous-looking Brady uncle and nephew: ‘Gentlemen, leave this tomoi!’
