The Girl on the Beach

by Morton S. Gray

  ‘Hey, hey, come on, spill the beans. You fancy the new headmaster, don’t you?’

  Ellie was horrified, particularly as heat bathed her face. ‘No, Mandy. You’ve got completely the wrong idea. I do not fancy Harry Dixon.’

  Did she? Was that the problem? Did she fancy Harry Dixon, despite her suspicions that he used to have a different name, be a different person?

  She’d never really had a proper relationship with Ben Rivers. It had been more like a fantasy, then a tantalising glimpse of possibility, followed by dashed hopes. She’d been much younger and more naïve then. Time had given Ben immortality and a god-like status in her memories. Harry, on the other hand, was real and alive.

  They walked to the wine bar on the seafront. It was the busiest evening for a long while, now that the hotels, guest houses and self-catering properties were filling up with those who wanted and could take a break before the school holidays. Settled in the comfortable leather seats by the window, Ellie began to feel more relaxed as she sipped a glass of white wine. The wine bar was newly refurbished with tall chrome lamps and glass tables. The wooden floor still smelled new and mingled with the scent of the curry listed on the specials board.

  ‘Sorry if I upset you earlier about the new headmaster thing. It seemed a pretty extreme denial though.’ Mandy smiled, a question in her eyes.

  ‘Ghosts from the past, Mandy. Ghosts from the past.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about them?’

  Ellie pushed her hands through her curls and pulled her locks behind her head. ‘To be honest, I’d love to tell you all about it and ask your opinion on a few things, but tonight, I’d just prefer a girly chat, relaxation and a few glasses of wine.’

  ‘Okay by me,’ Mandy said, with a laugh. ‘Just say the word when you are ready to talk and I’ll be all ears.’

  Ellie nodded, sipped more wine and then choked on her mouthful.

  A man was looking at them from outside the window.

  It seemed just as if their conversation and her thoughts had called him to be right here, right now. It was Harry Dixon.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Oh, who’s the dish? He’s having a good look at us. Wonder which one of us he likes the best? Please let it be me,’ said Mandy, running her hands over her already smooth hair.

  Ellie wiped spilled wine off her lap and the front of her shirt, thankful that it was white wine, not red and peered through the window again, wondering if she’d been mistaken.

  Had the wine genie conjured up an image of Harry Dixon? She’d hardly drunk anything, so couldn’t be hallucinating yet.

  But, it wasn’t a mirage.

  It was the man himself.

  He appeared as surprised as she did to be face to face through the glass.

  Raising his hand in a half wave, he walked away.

  Ellie leaped to her feet. ‘I won’t be long, promise. I need to talk to that man.’

  She moved before reason told her not to, before Mandy could speak.

  The pavement outside the wine bar was busy with people, mainly tourists, out for the evening. She dodged an elderly couple and set off up the high street in search of Harry.

  She soon caught up with him.

  ‘Mr Dixon, Harry, could I have a word with you please?’

  ‘Good evening, Ms Golden. I tried to find you earlier, but your gallery was closed.’

  Ellie swept her mane of curls behind her shoulders. Chasing him down the road didn’t seem such a good idea any more. She felt hot and out of breath. ‘Oh, yes, you wanted to buy a picture?’

  ‘I’d like to have a better look at your artwork, whether I can afford anything is a different matter, but, also, you seemed to think that you knew me earlier. I wanted to talk to you to see if we could work out when and where we could have met before.’

  The initial enthusiasm for following Harry and challenging him began to flood away, leaving behind just embarrassment about her behaviour.

  ‘That’s why I came after you, so that I could get the questions out of my mind.’

  This evening he looked somehow different and her earlier certainty that he was Ben began to wane.

  ‘And…’

  ‘Why don’t you come and have a drink with my friend, Mandy, and I. Then we can discuss it?’

  Mandy had a twinkle in her eyes, as Ellie, followed by Harry, returned to the wine bar. Ellie shot her a ‘don’t you dare’ look, as she introduced Harry and they sat down. Harry perched on the bench seat at the other side of the table, his back against the window. Ellie noted his faded denims and dark blue shirt. She told him about Mandy’s craft centre and couldn’t believe that her friend blatantly fluttered her eyelashes at him as she spoke. Why did that make her feel so uncomfortable? What was wrong with Mandy flirting with Harry? He didn’t belong to Ellie after all.

  ‘Can I get you ladies another drink?’

  They sent him off to get glasses of white wine and Mandy huddled closer. ‘What’s going on?’

  Ellie schooled her features and her breathing. Harry glanced across at them a couple of times as he stood at the bar waiting to be served.

  ‘When I met Harry, I had the impression that I already knew him. It’s been eating at me all day, which is why I asked him to have a drink with us. Hopefully, I can find out if we have met each other before … to put my mind at rest.’

  Mandy twisted on her seat to look blatantly over at Harry at the bar. ‘Whoa. Have you told him that you think you know him from somewhere?’

  Know didn’t quite cover it, but Ellie didn’t say that. ‘He doesn’t seem to remember me.’

  Mandy looked at her quizzically. ‘Not usual for you to make a mistake though. You’ll have to tell me more, but not now – he’s coming back.’

  Harry was aware that the next few minutes could make or break his future in Borteen. He stood well and truly in the lion’s den, with Ellie throwing daggers of suspicion at him and Mandy firing arrows of apparent lust.

  As he moved away from the bar, carrying a tray with two wine glasses and an orange juice, he took a huge breath to steady himself. It was all he could do to keep the drinks upright on the tray, with the women studying him as he crossed the wooden floor. He placed the glasses in front of the two very different females. Ellie nodded. Mandy thanked him with a wink.

  He didn’t react, merely sipped his orange juice. Ellie was by far the most attractive woman, with her wild hair and petite figure. Mandy seemed friendly, but was too loud and brash for Harry’s taste. He found it disconcerting that she appeared so openly to be trying to attract a man, or rather … him.

  ‘The art competition was a success, Ellie. Do you organise it every year?’

  ‘I’ve been considering it for a while, but it was actually the first one.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’ll do it again next year.’

  She looked at him with a strange expression on her face. She was studying his features, of that he had no doubt.

  ‘I’d love to. Thank you, by the way, for giving that special award to Tom. It’s really boosted his confidence.’

  ‘I stand by my opinion. Tom’s was by far the best picture in the exhibition.’

  ‘Which picture did Tom enter, Ellie? Was it the fireworks one?’ asked Mandy.

  Ellie nodded.

  ‘Oooh, that’s a super picture, my favourite too.’

  Harry grew fed up of skirting the real issue and when Mandy left them to visit the toilet, he decided to dive straight in. ‘Now, tell me, where do you think you’ve met me before? It’s been intriguing me ever since I met you this morning.’

  Her cheeks grew pink. He couldn’t tell if this was with embarrassment or the effects of the alcohol; he suspected the former.

  ‘I knew a guy in Cornwall, years ago. I thought you were the same person, although he wasn’t called Harry Dixon and he had long blond hair, a surf board and a tattoo.’ Her face held a challenge. She locked eyes with him and when she couldn’t hold his gaze any longer, she looked at his le
ft arm, which was covered by his shirt sleeve. It took all of Harry’s concentration not to flex the muscles of his forearm.

  He forced himself to scratch his head, using the techniques he had mastered over the years not to show a flicker of reaction on his face to her words. ‘Cornwall? No, sorry, not guilty. I’ve only been to Cornwall once, as far as I am aware, on a family holiday. I must have been about ten.’

  She looked up and he fixed his eyes on hers again. She broke eye contact first.

  Certain aspects of his past training were useful. He could tell by her expression that she hadn’t been convinced by his answer, so he decided to go for reinforcement. ‘Are you sure it was Cornwall? Could we have met at college?’

  He felt pleased to see confusion pass through her eyes. ‘I went to college in Cornwall. Have you got a brother?’

  ‘I had a step-brother, but he looked nothing like me.’

  Harry felt hot. Ellie had stared at the exact place where his tattoo used to be. This was more than a coincidence. He needed to keep calm. He found Ellie very attractive, but there was no flicker of recognition. If he’d known her before, it had to be around the time of his memory-destroying head injury. The thought was disconcerting, their connection could have been close or distant and he wouldn’t know.

  She put her head on one side, as she thought. ‘You don’t cook, do you?’

  He laughed. ‘Beans and cheese on toast is my speciality. Why do you ask that?’

  ‘I love cookery competitions on television. If you’d been a competitor in one of those, I might have recognised you from that. Oh well, I must be mistaken, or else you have a double.’

  That was a much better response. If Ellie remained uncertain, she wouldn’t make trouble for him and perhaps he could continue with his original plans.

  When Mandy returned to the table, he diverted from the subject of his identity by asking her a few questions about the local area and places to visit nearby. He showed an interest in the goods she stocked in the craft centre and asked for the address so that he could go and have a look for himself. He worried that he was encouraging her attentions, but he’d have to deal with that danger another time.

  Satisfied he’d averted disaster with Ellie and got Mandy on his side, he finished his drink and made his excuses. He was pleased with the encounter. Hopefully, he’d cleared the air and secured his future in the town.

  But, could it really be that easy?

  ‘What was that all about?’ Mandy’s eyes sparkled in the wine bar’s lighting.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ellie had developed a fascination for the hem of her trousers.

  ‘Come on, Ellie. In all the time I’ve been friends with you, I’ve never seen you run down the street after a man. In fact, I’ve never seen you talk to a person of the male gender, unless it was to do with business or your son.’

  ‘That’s a slight exaggeration. I just needed to clear up if I’d met Harry before. It’s been bugging me.’

  ‘You mean, before … before?’

  ‘Yes, before!’

  Mandy was acquainted with certain parts of Ellie’s history. She had told her friend about the night Rushton Jacob, her ex-husband, had let his temper get the better of him and beaten her badly enough for her to need surgery, because it explained why Tom, who had witnessed the attack, was sometimes withdrawn.

  Mandy always managed to get through to her son with her bright breezy approach to life. She often did jigsaws, or played board games with him, to encourage him to talk and interact. Things had got better the older he’d become, but he still had his moments. Ellie was grateful to Mandy for the part she’d played in helping Tom to adjust to life in Borteen.

  Her face, which she ran her hands over in response to Mandy’s reference to her past, little resembled the girl who’d been infatuated with Ben Rivers all those years ago. Her reconstructed nose was smaller than the original. Her new cheekbones were higher. There were occasions when she didn’t even recognise her own reflection in the mirror.

  ‘So, you now know it was a case of mistaken identity and Harry isn’t who you thought he was?’

  ‘Maybe…’

  Mandy’s eyes widened. ‘Are you suggesting that he lied?’

  ‘Who knows? I just have a gut feeling that he wasn’t telling the complete truth.’

  ‘I don’t get why he’d deny living in Cornwall.’

  ‘I’m probably deluded. Please forget I ever said anything.’

  Ellie definitely wasn’t ready to tell Mandy the full extent of her suspicions about Harry Dixon.

  Chapter Six

  The next day, Ellie was pleased not to have a headache. She’d drunk more wine than she would normally have done on a night out, but, thankfully, there were no ill effects.

  Tom went off to school in a happy mood. He’d given her a rare kiss, before hoisting his school bag onto his shoulder.

  She dusted the arms of the battered rocking chair, which had been one of the first items of furniture she’d bought after arriving in Borteen. She’d always wanted a rocking chair and this one had seemed to be waiting for her in the window of the charity shop. Rocking soothed her nerves in a way nothing else did and she couldn’t imagine being without the chair.

  Ellie and Tom had moved a lot in the early years after Rushton had been sent to prison. It had been hard to settle and to trust that they were safe, given the type of friends Rushton mixed with and the threats he’d made.

  The times she awoke in the middle of the night with his voice yelling at her, “I’m going to kill you, if it’s the last thing I do,” had lessened, but the memory was never far from the surface of her mind, as if he sat on her shoulder repeating his maxim if she dared to get too comfortable. The dreaded man might be in prison, but she was still haunted by him.

  Thankfully, she’d had money to finance the moves. Before they’d discovered Borteen, she’d even been considering Australia. Her concerns about Harry Dixon had reawakened her urge to move on. These thoughts were demons, nagging at the edges of her mind. How on earth would Tom react if she told him they were moving again, particularly just as her gallery was beginning to take off? He’d probably refuse and ask Mandy if he could move in with her.

  At nine-fifteen, she began to walk down the road to the seafront and her gallery. She found it hard to believe that she’d been brave enough to rent her own shop, rather than exhibiting in other people’s galleries and craft shops as she had done for many years. It made the urges to move on again more difficult to act upon.

  Borteen was the first place she’d tried to put down permanent roots and leave the past behind. Harry Dixon turning up here had unsettled her. Even if he wasn’t who she believed him to be, and she was pretty certain he was, the rush of memories from the past had invaded her peace and caused her to re-examine her past and her future.

  She walked at a steady pace down the hill, past the white-washed cottages, reminiscent of those in her native Cornwall. The air was warm already and it promised to be a blisteringly hot day. The blue sky merged with the sea in exactly the same shade at the horizon, making it difficult to distinguish one from the other. Seagulls circled, calling and squawking. She breathed in the unmistakable scent of the sea, the smell that felt vital to her very existence.

  Whenever she intended to spend time painting in her studio at the gallery, she loved to find inspiration on her short journey to work. Today, the overwhelming colour was blue, the dominant sensation heat and her emotions were in turmoil. She’d see what she could make of it all on canvas. Art and her own imagination never ceased to amaze her.

  She stopped by the sea wall to enjoy the sight of the early morning beach, cleansed and levelled by the tide. A man jogged across the sand. Ellie watched, fascinated by the sand wisps thrown up by his trainers and the trail of footprints, tracing across the seashore, showing the route he had run. Her fascination changed to discomfort as she realised the identity of the runner – Harry Dixon. Her first instinct was to walk off in the opposite dir
ection, but she forced herself to stay still.

  Blue running shorts displayed muscled, tanned legs and his orange vest top revealed well-toned arms. To her horror, he noticed her watching him and raised his water bottle in a wave, as he sprinted past at the water’s edge. Thankfully, he ran past fast enough that Ellie didn’t need to respond, but, nevertheless, she walked away from the seafront with a blush on her cheeks.

  She knew from experience that creative activity would calm her mind. First, however, she needed to make sure that the gallery was ready for any visitors. She cleaned the large window and door of the shop before she did anything else, standing on a beer crate to reach the high bits. She exchanged pleasantries about the weather with Maeve, who owned the gift shop in the corner of the alleyway. Maeve arranged brightly coloured windmills in a basket as she spoke.

  The front room of the gallery housed Ellie’s exhibits. Paintings hung on the wall, or were propped on easels. The walls were painted white and she had sprayed the easels with gold paint to fit in with the Golden Designs theme. The wide window sill and a central table contained carefully arranged ceramic pots. Ellie tried to keep the ceramics she displayed to a theme of colour or subject. At the moment, the pots were all glazed in blue and white with wave patterns on them.

  The lighting was strategically placed to illuminate the canvases and reflective surfaces, mirrors and a large glass vase full of marbles were positioned to reflect the light around the shop.

  She’d noticed that displaying less led to more sales. People preferred to be able to see exactly what they were buying and to be sure that they were purchasing unique pieces.

  Ellie whizzed a duster over the pots and frames. It wasn’t wise to let dust build up and give the impression that products weren’t selling. She wondered for a moment whether the perfume diffuser’s scent of vanilla was too strong.

  The gallery had been open nearly a year and she was breaking even, just about holding her own. She had great hopes for the summer holidays and had been building a stock of artwork to replace any that, fingers crossed, sold. Ellie kept her stock of pictures and pots in a big cupboard off the kitchenette.