‘And don’t you worry about your granny,’ she reassured Annabel with a squeeze of her shoulder. ‘We’ll take good care of her for you, I promise!’
Annabel stood up to leave, but bent down to kiss her grandmother’s forehead before doing so. She smiled at her, telling her not to worry about anything and she would see her tomorrow.
Concern showed in Dotty’s normally brilliant blue eyes. ‘We’ll talk then, my darling. There are . . . things I need to tell you. Things you should know.’
Confusion coursed through Annabel as she wondered what bombshell her grandmother might be about to drop, but she forced a bright smile and reassured her that everything would be alright. The old lady’s eyes were closing as Annabel gave her a final kiss.
The drive to Penrose Farm was a sombre one. Annabel tried to distract herself by listening to the cheerful presenters on the local radio station, but her mind was racing with everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. It was early evening when she reached Wincastle and, suddenly hungry, she stopped at the chip shop on the high street. Her mouth watered as she took the salt and vinegar scented bundle back to the car, but she stopped herself from tearing it open and took it home.
Annabel couldn’t recall a time at the farmhouse without Dotty being there. It was ominously quiet, with only the sound of the grandfather clock for company, and it didn’t feel right. Everything was just as her granny had left it that morning; the makings of breakfast still stood on the kitchen table and a cereal bowl and coffee cup were in the sink, waiting to be washed.
She took one of her granny’s bottles of cider from the fridge and carried it, together with the steaming paper bundle and a bottle of ketchup, out onto the patio. She didn’t bother with a plate or cutlery, but ate straight from the wrapper, just as sheand William had always done with Dotty and Grandpa. ‘It’s the only way to do it!’ Grandpa had always said.
It had always been something of a family tradition to start the school holidays with fish and chips. Dotty and Grandpa would meet them off the train in Bodmin and stop at the chip shop on their way home to the farm. Depending on their father Noel’s work, their parents would join them in the holidays when they could, or whisk them off abroad or to wherever they were living at the time. But Annabel had always been perfectly happy with her grandparents in Cornwall. She loved driving home from Bodmin Parkway station through the narrow, leafy lanes in the back of Grandpa’s old Land Rover, one of their dogs usually curled up between her and William on the back seat.
Their grandparents were always so happy to see them. They were always interested in all their news and the holidays were always full of adventures. Penrose Farm really was a perfect holiday idyll, with animals to take care of, farm machinery to play on and acres of countryside to explore. Then there was the beach, the golden stretch of sand with rock pools to investigate and caves to explore. It wasn’t a private beach, but the only access to it was down the cliff steps at the end of the Penrose Farm land. There was a public right of way along the clifftop path, but with no available parking for miles in either direction, it was a quiet spot and the beach was usually deserted.
The sun was low in the sky as Annabel finished the last few chips, casting a golden glow across the sea in the distance. She briefly considered walking down to the beach, but was feeling so full after wolfing down her supper that she decided against it. Instead, it was time to make some phone calls.
She started by calling her mum with an update on Dotty. She was going to ring her dad, but wasn’t sure she could tell himthe doctor’s news without straying into the difficult territory of what the scan had highlighted. Next, she called Luke. His phone rang and rang, but there was no answer. She had texted him earlier in the afternoon, telling him about Dotty’s accident and saying that she’d had to go straight down to the hospital. She could see that he’d been online recently, but the delivery ticks were still grey, meaning ‘unread’. Something didn’t feel right.
The air grew cooler as the sun made its descent. Annabel cleared the empty chip wrapper and went inside to make herself a mug of tea and fetch a jacket. She went back out and sat nursing her mug as she watched the sun set, an explosion of oranges and yellows out over the sea. How often she and William had sat at this same table with their grandparents, she thought, enjoying breakfasts of orange juice and bacon rolls or summer picnic lunches. She thought of the last time she’d sat here with her grandfather, with him in his wheelchair, a rug over his knees to keep warm on that crisp autumn morning. Annabel had been nineteen years old at the time and they had played cards and chatted out here for hours. He had been such a kind and gentle man. She missed him.
At last, the sky darkened and, on feeling the first few drops of rain, Annabel took herself back inside the old stone farmhouse and settled in for the night. She closed the curtains, turned the lights on and switched on the TV for company. The eerie quiet of the room was replaced by the raucous laughter of a Saturday night entertainment show. It reminded her of cosy nights on the sofa with William when they were children, cuddled up in their dressing gowns, watching TV with their grandparents. It had always felt so cosy and safe.
Feeling an overwhelming nostalgia for the old days at the farm, she went over to the bookcase in the corner of the room,behind Dotty’s fireside wingback chair. On the top stood a collection of photo frames, proudly displaying a selection of family photos through the years.
There were her parents on their wedding day in the late 1970s, Jeanette with big hair and an even bigger meringue of a dress. Next to it was an old black-and-white photo of a young Noel at the beach with Dotty. He must have been around five or six years old and the image never failed to make her smile; the look of pure delight on their faces as they paddled in the shallow water, holding hands and grinning at Grandpa behind the camera. There was another wedding photo, William and Sarah this time, then baby photos of Aiden and Lucy, and a picture of herself on her PhD graduation day at Oxford University. Dotty had been so proud, she recalled with a smile.
Annabel knelt down to look at the lowest shelf of the bookcase, where the family photo albums stood to attention like soldiers, Dotty’s spidery handwriting on the spines. She slid out the earliest album: 1946–50.
She put the album on the coffee table and made herself comfortable on the sofa. She smiled as she flicked through the black-and-white images of her grandparents in their younger years. They had made a handsome couple, with Dotty’s sparkling blue eyes and wide smile, and Grandpa’s tall, lean figure and mop of shaggy hair. The young Noel Penrose featured in many of the photos and she smiled as she recognised her father’s cheerful grin.
Annabel worked her way right through the album, enjoying the photos of the happy family – on the farm, with the animals, visiting friends, celebrating birthdays and relaxing on the beach.
It was only when she got to the end that something occurred to her: she hadn’t yet seen any baby photos of her father. Shelooked through the other albums to make sure, but they were all in date order and Noel Penrose just grew older through each one.
She did the maths and figured that he would have been five years old in 1946, and that matched the pictures in the first album she had opened. But there was no album dated before 1946. Had the albums been lost during the war, maybe? That would explain it, Annabel mused. Poor Dotty had lost so much in the war. But she couldn’t recall her grandmother ever mentioning losing their belongings. Maybe they had gone missing during the move from London to Cornwall?
A little niggling doubt crept in and made Annabel check the albums again. But no, she hadn’t missed anything. The conversation with Dr Underwood replayed in her mind and her heart began to race. Where were her father’s baby photos?
CHAPTER 5
Cornwall
Sunday 24th March, 2019
The sun streaming around the edge of the curtains woke Annabel from a long, deep sleep. For a moment, she wondered where she was. It was so quiet and all she could hear was the tweeting of birds and the bleating of lambs in the field.
She blinked open her eyes and the pretty English rose wallpaper reminded her that she was at Dotty’s. This had been her bedroom for as long as she could remember and she loved it; it always made her feel like she was home. She had shared it with William for a while when they were younger, before he had moved to a box room further along the corridor.
Annabel reached for her mobile phone which was charging on the bedside table. The clock showed 8.09 a.m. She was surprised she’d slept so late, but was feeling so much better for it. The phone notifications showed messages from the three men in her life: two this morning from her dad and brother, and a very late-night – or early-morning – one from Luke.
She clicked on Luke’s message first. 2.37 a.m.
Sorry to hear about Dotty, hope she’s OK. Let me know if you need anything x
Like bees, questions started buzzing around her head. Where had he been last night? Why had he been out so late? Who had he been with? She hated herself for feeling so suspicious, but why had he ignored her message for so long and taken almost twelve hours to reply? He’d never been one for long-winded text conversations, but was that really the best he could manage? She sighed.
