Callie gazed out and gasped. The cottage looked down over the steep slope to the harbour below. To her left she could see Lullbury Bay’s long sandy beach, the cliffs which led east and apanorama of sea and sky gleaming an unending blue, stretching out to the horizon. She couldn’t give up this view. And it seemed unfair to ask Johnny to.
‘Your bathroom’s through there and there are locks on the bedroom doors. You’ll be quite safe.’
Callie didn’t think she needed locks to reassure her, although she supposed it would be sensible to lock herself in. Johnny Starling was, after all, a complete stranger. The name flickered across her memory. Something about it was familiar. Shaking the thought off, she realised he was waiting for her response. ‘Sold,’ she said and turned to him, her eyes shining. ‘It’s all I thought it would be. I’d be mad to try to find something else.’
He met her grin with a warm one of his own. ‘Deal. You know, somehow, I think we’ll be fine together.’
As she stared up at him and into his vivid grey eyes, sparkling with humour, she heard Frida’s voice again.Mum, he’s such a silver fox!
Two
SATURDAY NIGHT 10TH AUGUST
Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841–1919
A painter of beauty and the sensuality of women. Examine the use of paint to show flesh tones.
(Taken from Calliope Thorne’s teaching notes.)
Johnny was as good as his word. Callie unpacked her stuff, made an omelette and took her glass of wine out into the garden to soak up the cool of the evening. Whatever plans Johnny Starling had, it involved being out of Sea Haven House and she had it all to herself. Sending a quick text to Frida to say she’d arrived and all was fine, Callie sank back into the old-fashioned blue and white striped deck chair breathing in the sea air. The night was scented with the perfume from tubs of nicotiana, and brine.
Marvelling that the garden was flat – a miracle as the steep hill she’d coaxed her car down before parking at the bottom of the track had been anything but – she surveyed it. A rectangular lawn was surrounded by rough, white-painted walls. Tree ferns, beds of tumbling Japanese anemones, pots of flowers – whitegeraniums mixed with lime green nicotiana and collections of glossy grey pebbles. Someone spent a great deal of time lavishing care and attention.
No views from here but perfect privacy. It was exactly the sort of garden she’d have if given a choice. Her tiny stretch of lawn and a few pots didn’t compare. Easing off her trainers she scrunched her hot toes into the dampening grass. Bliss.
She must have dozed off because a text pinging through to her phone woke her up.
Glad u got there ok. All good here. Hot. Luv F
Brief and to the point and too little information. Callie stifled the unease in her gut. Frida had been vague about who she was holidaying with, stating it was friends of her old school friend, Leah. The girl had never been a great influence, but Callie tried to keep out of it. Her daughter knew she disapproved but Callie figured, at twenty-three, Frida could make her own decisions.
Clambering, with difficulty, out of the deck chair, Callie returned to the house and poured another glass of white. It slid down her throat with welcome ease, so she poured another, deciding to take it to bed. Locking the French doors to the garden it occurred to her she and Johnny hadn’t discussed keys. She didn’t want to lock him out, and wanted even less to have to roll out of bed to let him in. What a nuisance! Then, as she reached to switch off the kitchen lights, she spotted a corkboard by the door with a note attached. In scrawled handwriting it proclaimed:
Taken the spare key from under the flowerpot. Don’t wait up.
At her smile, all irritability fled. He really was a thoughtful man. Yawning, she climbed the stairs.
Settling into bed with the latest bestseller and her wine, she sank down. The room was decorated in soothing whites and creams with the walls adorned with Renoir prints. Miss Grosvenor was obviously an art fan. Callie thoroughly approved. Wriggling a little against the cool cotton with sensual pleasure, she opened her book and began to read.
The window was ajar and the scents and the sounds of the night drifted in. Gulls cackled against the purple sky. After her drive on the motorway, when her shoulders had been up near her ears, she felt her body relaxing. But her mind wouldn’t comply and refused to shut off.
Worries over Frida chased around her brain. Picking up her phone, she went to text her daughter.
How’s the holiday going? Tell me more. Mum x
It had been the two of them from the very beginning. Callie had become pregnant when a student. Her parents, once they’d realised she was going to keep the baby, had distanced themselves. All communication stopped and they’d lavished attention, instead, onto her brother, his wife and their perfect two-point-two lifestyle.
Callie had concentrated on making a life, thrown herself into her career and bought the little terraced house she and Frida still lived in. It had been unspeakably tough at the beginning, but she’d survived. Frida had grown up to be a kind affectionate girl and had even forgiven her mother for naming her after an iconic painter.
The fierce love Callie felt when first cradling her waxy mewling newborn daughter hadn’t lessened but she frettedFrida, as a young adult, hadn’t found her path in life. After dropping out of a degree, she’d drifted from bar job to telesales back to waitressing, and was now stuck in a dead-end office job. She seemed happy to still live at home, content to drift.
And now there was an additional layer to the worry which niggled at Callie. Frida had become increasingly distant over the last few months, but Callie, busy with end of term head of department stuff, hadn’t had time to sit her daughter down to discover what was going on. The guilt gnawed. But then, sighed Callie, as she closed her book having read the same paragraph three times, the guilt as a parent always did. And, as a single parent, it was a double load. When Frida was small, she’d had no choice but to put her into childcare. It had been an excellent nursery but Callie had longed to spend more time at home with her tiny daughter.
If only Sunil had stuck around things might have been different. But he’d disappeared off the radar as soon as Callie told him about the baby. She and Frida had heard nothing from him and expected less. She had no idea where her daughter’s father was or even if he was still alive.
Checking her phone only to be disappointed to see no new text from Frida, Callie went for a wee, cleaned her teeth and settled into bed again, determined to sleep. She was halfway to dozing off when she heard a key in the lock of the front door.Ah good, Frida is home.
Callie was suddenly wide awake. She bolted upright. She wasn’t in the Victorian terrace in a narrow street in Worcester but in a holiday cottage in Dorset. And that wasn’t her daughter coming in from a night out; it was the strange man she’d agreed to share with. A seemingly well-mannered man but a stranger no less.
