Chapter One
Sylvie felt Sam’s little hand grasp hers even tighter as they rounded the corner by the pub and turned down past the butcher’s. The sand was spilling out onto the pavement as they approached the beach, the golden grains signalling their arrival long before they set foot on the beach proper. She knew, if she glanced at him, his little teeth would be clenched with excitement.
They had been here every sunny day throughout summer and most of spring, and if truth be told they’d been here on the odd rainy one too. Sylvie had a feeling they could come every day for ever and neither she nor Sam would ever get bored. In fact, that was her plan.
The beach opened up wide in front of them, and as they reached the bit where pavement ended and beach began, they kicked off their flip-flops in a tradition they had built ever since Sam could walk. A quickly embedded ritual meant that the two of them bent over at the same time to pick their shoes up and glanced at each other and smiled. It was a shared signal that their beach day had started and that the next couple of hours would be nothing but heavenly.
The two of them had developed the perfect day over the last couple of months. Chores in the morning, when Sylvie would help her uncle out with the day-to-day running of the farm and Sam would be expected to get on with his work too. Work that largely involved his action figures and a city he would construct out of blocks, carefully colour coding each bit. And then as thesun began to fade from its midday high the two of them would grab their beach stuff, piled by the door next to the wellies and walking sticks, and make their way into the village.
Sylvie knew the sting of sunburn – as a child she merely had had to look out of the window and she’d fry. With Sam sharing her freckles, red (really red) hair and the pale skin that came with it she made sure that there was no way her child would experience blisters raised on his ears as her uncle used to out on the farm all day, or toss and turn at night – too burnt to sleep.
The spades, body-boards and buckets would be grabbed, the swim shoes and the rash vest dried out by the Aga from the day before, and the two of them would slather each other in factor fifty, with special attention paid to the neck and the ears. Fruit and water would be thrown into a bag along with a book each and then the two would race to the car, spades dropped to the floor as they put seat belts on and turned the music up loud, singing all of Sam’s favourite songs on the short journey from Lovage Farm into Penmenna. Sometimes as they belted it out together she thought she might love ‘Wheels on the Bus’ more now than she ever did at four. Other times she suspected she might hit saturation point Very Soon Indeed.
Back on the beach now, they felt the sand squidge between their toes as they headed to their favourite spot, getting damper and squidgier the closer they came to the water. She raised a hand to a group of mums from the village who were just leaving, and again to Alice, who was sitting at the foot of the cliff, engrossed in her book. Her heart melted as Sam saw their little spot – tucked away next to a natural stream running from the cliff straight down to the sea, perfect for keeping their water cool in the sun – and ran towards it. He was more confident here than anywhere else, the shadow recently cast over the farm still failing to shift completely.
Happy to let go of her hand to shake his towel out and claim his spot, he stopped short as she watched and turned back around to face her, perplexion written all across his little freckled face.
For the whole of summer that spot had been theirs. At no point, even at the peak of Regatta week, had they turned up to find the crime of all crimes committed – someone else’s towel. But today there was. Two to be precise. One great big luxurious one that looked like it should be rolled into a glamorous curl on some chichi hotel bed and one covered with little foxes’ faces, next to a small matching bag. Cute. But not theirs.
Sam looked at her for answers, and she was tempted to pick them up and place them just over there, a couple of feet away. Or perhaps she could chuck them behind the cluster of boulders piled up near the entrance to the cave. Or, if she could persuade Sam to close his eyes, she could peg it down to the shoreline super-fast, throw them out to sea and then come back and pretend she didn’t know what had happened. Although, of course, she would not do either. Instead she would use it as time to educate Sam about public spaces and the need to share them, no matter how personal they felt, how much you saw them as yours.
‘It’s OK, Mum. We can just go the other side of the stream.’
‘Plan, Sam. Like the way you’re thinking.’ OK, so the four-year-old didn’t need the lesson, that would just be her.
The two tiptoed through the little stream, their mouths opening as the cold of the water hit their toes and made them dance through, making high-pitched ow-ing noises, before laying their towels down in the not-quite-as-nice-but-really-not-remarkably-different spot.
Sam immediately started stripping down to his trunks and gently lowered himself onto his own towel, pulled on his beach shoes carefully and then jumped to attention.
‘OK, I’ll go find some stones.’ He looked longingly at the slate patches on the beach, nestling next to the boulders. The other side of the strange towels. ‘Do you think they’d mind?’
‘I’m sure they wouldn’t? Go on, I’ll keep my eyes peeled. And anyway, you know the rule – grab the moment!’
Sam liked to build a couple of slate towers once he had got himself changed. He was a funny little thing, fond of routine and order, set in his ways. He would start with the tower, then they’d go down for a paddle, starting in the stream and heading to the shoreline, where they’d jump waves and slowly-slowly get a little deeper each time. He was happy past his knees now but Sylvie was hoping to get him in a little further. He had swimming lessons at the leisure centre in Roscarrock but the difference between the safety of a pool and the wildness of the waves, even on a millpond-smooth day, was great. The swimming pool wasn’t salty brine, riddled with seaweed and probable sea monsters.
As she watched him collect his first slate, she saw a man approach. Tall, imposing even from a distance, his dark head bowed as he chatted away to a girl who looked about Sam’s age, and was leaping gazelle-like at his side. They were coming around the cave mouth and heading towards the towels.
She quickly diverted her gaze as he looked up, but she felt his eyes sweep across and dismiss her. Good. The last thing she wanted was interaction. This was her and Sam’s special bit of the day. The time when she didn’t worry about money, or next steps, or moving out from the farm and letting Tom move his girlfriend in, which she was fairly sure was his plan.
Sam, seeing the arrival of the towel-owners, had thrown his usual caution to the winds and instead of carefully bringing back one or two slates, was clasping three bits to his chest, with one more tucked under his chin. His eyes were wide open as he made his getaway, beach shoes saving him from freezing toesin the stream as he headed purposefully back to his mother. Looking at the panic on his face, she was fairly sure he didn’t have a career in burglary in his future.
‘Phew.’ He clattered the slates at her feet as he let out an over-expressive sigh of relief. ‘That should do for a minute.’ He flicked a quick look over his shoulder as the two approached.
‘Good job. We can get more in a minute, if you want?’
‘Hmm, let’s see how we go.’
As the man reached his towel she experienced a jolt of familiarity that made no sense, but was there all the same – quiet and determined and very present. She couldn’t place where she could possibly know him from; he certainly wasn’t from the village, she would have definitely noticed him before. Everyone would have noticed him before!
He exuded an animal magnetism, sleek and dangerous like a jungle cat, and yet she didn’t feel in the slightest bit fearful, just intrigued and certain that she was meant to meet him, here and today. She felt her tummy flip a little with lust. Wow! She had forgotten what instantaneous attraction felt like – the last time her tummy had flipped was after an ex-boyfriend had drunkenly cooked some shellfish in a kind of (failed) rapprochement.
The man pushed his floppy jet hair out of his eyes as the small girl tried to stop him from sitting by divebombing onto the swish towel, her cornrows waving as she did so. Next she starfished out and smiled up at him with a real ner-ner-ner-watcha-gonna-do look on her face, before flipping her own foxy towel out of the way so he had no options left but sand and slate.
Sylvie couldn’t help but smile at her mischief, whereas when she flicked a look over to her son he looked entranced – half horrified by the girl’s behaviour and half enchanted. It would appear that both strangers were capable of weaving a spell.
The man cast a quick glance at Sylvie, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth, a see-what-I-have-to-contend-with look,conspiratorial. Bugger, that made her tingle all the way to her toes, and she had been fairly sure that side of her had died shortly before childbirth, and very definitely after!
For goodness’ sake, she didn’t even feel fizz when Idris Elba was on TV any more. And now she was virtually squirming around in the sand because a stranger to the village had stood within twenty feet of her. Please God, don’t let him speak – Lord knows what she’d do then. Present responses indicated there was a strong chance it would involve forgetting her son was present and hurling her bikini top to the four winds.
