A Time for Living
By
Ruth Saberton
Polwenna Bay 2
Copyright
All characters, organisations and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The opinions expressed in this book are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and / or legal right to publish all materials in this book.
Copyright © 2015 Ruth Saberton
Cover illustration copyright © Carrie May
Editor: Jane Griffiths
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Also by Ruth Saberton
Runaway Summer: Polwenna Bay 1
Escape for the Summer
Escape for Christmas
Dead Romantic
Hobb’s Cottage
Weight Till Christmas
Katy Carter Wants a Hero
Ellie Andrews Has Second Thoughts
Amber Scott is Starting Over
The Wedding Countdown
Writing as Jessica Fox
The One That Got Away
Eastern Promise
Hard to Get
Unlucky in Love
Always the Bride
Writing as Holly Cavendish
Looking for Fireworks
Writing as Georgie Carter
The Perfect Christmas
A note from Ruth
Welcome to Polwenna Bay! Watch fishing boats dance in the harbour, hear waves breaking on the beach and explore the pretty village where new friends wait and there’s love to be found, warmer than the summer sunshine!
I’ve loved meeting and writing about all the characters in the Cornish fishing village of Polwenna Bay and escaping into their stories, romances and adventures. I really hope that you’ll enjoy them too and share in their laughter, loves and tears. I have lived in Cornwall for twenty years and it’s a place very dear to me, and one I miss whenever I am far away. Writing about Polwenna Bay has been a joy and when I type I can almost hear the seagulls calling and smell the pasties…
Polwenna Bay is a magical place full of big-hearted families, colourful characters, handsome heroes, feisty heroines, myths, legends and beautiful locations. I’m really looking forward to sharing all the excitement and stories with you all as the series unfolds.
Enjoy the book!
X Ruth x
Chapter 1
“Come on, Mo, don’t be so miserable. This is supposed to be fun. You do remember fun, don’t you?”
Morwenna Tremaine, dragged against her better judgement from the peace and quiet of her stable yard, grimaced as her sister tugged her through the crowd.
“Tell me again what fun has got to do with this?” Mo grumbled.
“The Polwenna Bay raft race? Flour fights? Live music? Pasties?” Issie offered, her blue eyes shining and her braids bobbing as she glanced around excitedly. She was clearly enjoying every single second. Mo didn’t have the heart to tell her sister that she simply wasn’t in the mood for village celebrations.
“The race has started!” Issie cried. “Quick, let’s find somewhere to watch!” She continued threading her way through a group of holidaymakers, who were red-skinned from the unusually hot Cornish sunshine and intent on eating their pasties right in the way of anyone actually wanting to watch the activity out on the water. Finally, Issie heaved Mo up onto a stone bench at the bottom end of the quay. At this height the girls had a clear view over the crowds of onlookers and out across the water, where fifteen colourful rafts were being paddled against the tide for all their fancy-dressed crews were worth. Each raft had to round the furthest buoy at the entrance to the bay before making it back in one piece to the fish market – where Eddie Penhalligan, the biggest and toughest fisherman in the village, was holding a stopwatch and willing his sons to complete the course in record time. Eddie had been adjudicating the raft race for as long as Mo could remember and he took this role exceedingly seriously. Village honour was at stake.
“Come on, Bobby! Come on, Joe!” Issie was screaming at her friends. Her waving was so enthusiastic that she almost tumbled off the bench. Just in the nick of time, Mo grabbed her sister by the scruff of her tee shirt and yanked her backwards to safety.
“Aw, spoilsport! I was going to do some crowd-surfing,” grumbled Issie, not grateful in the least to have been saved from bashing her freckled nose on the concrete below. “Wouldn’t that have been cool?”
Mo opened her mouth to say, no, not really because this was a village carnival not an Aerosmith concert, when a small red raft crewed by four muscly young men dressed as Baywatch lifeguards zipped into the lead. Any protests Mo might have had were drowned out by Issie’s screams of excitement. While the boys rowed, two slim girls in blonde wigs pelted the opposition with flour bombs. Before long, the bay was hazy with a mist of McDougalls’ finest self-raising.
“Go on, Nick!” Issie hollered at her twin brother, who was rowing flat out. “Come on!”
As the rafts rounded the marker buoy and turned for home, the crowds erupted with cheering and clapping, everyone caught up with the thrill of the spectacle.
There must be something really wrong with her, Mo realised, if even the raft race with its fancy dress and the flour fight didn’t make her smile. She’d always loved the Water Carnival in the past; it was one of the highlights of the Polwenna Bay calendar. Today was perfect for it too, with blue skies, a mirror-flat sea and golden sunshine – but as far as Mo was concerned everything felt grey and leaden. She was so sick of feeling like this. Just what was her problem?
“Go on, Nick!” Issie shrilled, right into Mo’s ear. She was pogoing up and down as her brother’s raft drew neck and neck with a smart and suspiciously professional-looking affair bearing the legend Polwenna Bay Hotel. “Row! Don’t let those tossers beat you! Kick Teddy St Milton’s arse! Flour bomb ’em! Sink ’em!”
In spite of her grouchy mood, Mo couldn’t help laughing at her sister. Being outspoken was a Tremaine family trait and one she too possessed in spades. Perhaps Issie’s wasn’t the most sporting sentiment but there was certainly no love lost between the Tremaine family and the St Miltons from the hotel. Ella St Milton and Mo had loathed each other for years, and their feud had recently culminated in Ella taking Mo’s star horse away from her equestrian centre. Besides that, the hotel’s heir, Teddy St Milton, had been rubbing her brothers up the wrong way since primary school.
No, if the St Milton raft sank Mo wouldn’t be sad.
The majority of the rafts were a good twenty metres behind the leaders now. Every year the race featured a ragtag mixture of craft, sponsored by the businesses in the village and crewed by everyone from the village GP to the vicar. All the money raised went to local charities, so people always dug deep. For weeks leading up to the big day villagers worked long and hard, and often in top secret, on the designs for their rafts. Fights had been known to break out in the pub when espionage had been committed. As usual, Nick Tremaine had guarded his design with the kind of secrecy more usually seen at GCHQ. No oil drum, fish box or plank of wood had been spared if it could possibly be utilised; it was an unwise villager who left rope or twine lying around. Any scraps of fabric that could be transformed into flags or costumes had been gathered up for Alice Tremaine to work her magic on. Most of the shabby chic bunting that fest
ooned the harbour today had come from her sewing machine. Mo even recognised bits of material that had once belonged to family clothes; she guessed this meant that the Tremaines really were part of the fabric of the village.
As she clung onto her sister and watched the rafts battling for pole position, Mo reflected that, no matter what their differences, everyone who lived in Polwenna Bay was out and about supporting the village. Or maybe that should be almost everyone. There was one person whose absence was very noticeable, and Mo was starting to fret that this may be the cause of her constant bad mood.
If so, then she may just as well drown herself in the harbour right now…
“Yes! He did it! Go Nick!”
Issie’s shrieks of triumph and the roaring crowd ripped Mo away from her uncomfortable thoughts. Peering into the harbour she realised that her brother’s raft had pipped the opposition at the post. Clouds of flour filled the air as the teams bombarded one another in a way that was supposed to be good-natured but which actually revealed years of village rivalries. Fishermen, bakers and builders were leaping from their rafts into the cloudy water as the mother of all battles began. This was the traditional free-for-all where everyone jumped into the sea or launched water balloons and flour bombs from the harbour. Jake, Mo’s eldest brother, had been running the safety boat and was laughing as he received a friendly pelting from some children on the quayside. Even the vicar was joining in, splashing around with great enthusiasm with Danny – another of Mo’s brothers – and his son.
Seeing Danny having fun lifted Mo’s spirits. He’d had such a hard time recently, contending not only with the injuries he’d sustained in action in Afghanistan, but also with a wife who didn’t seem sure whether she wanted to stay with him or not. For a while he’d been a man on the edge. His peculiar friendship with Jules the vicar seemed to be cheering him up, though – as was having his son Morgan staying with him for the summer. Of Mo’s estranged sister-in-law there was no sign. She’d obviously decided to give the Water Carnival and her husband’s family a miss and stay in Plymouth with her latest man.
Good, thought Mo darkly. She could cheerfully have dunked Tara Tremaine in the harbour and held her under until the bubbles stopped, as retribution for the way Tara had treated Dan. He might seem fine now, splashing around with Jules and the others, but Mo had heard him sobbing in the small hours and seen his face twist in pain, and knew that Danny was still far from fine. Tara might complain that nobody knew how hard it was for her, but she wasn’t the one who’d sustained life-changing injuries, was she? She was the one who had walked away.
“Didn’t I tell you that would be fun?” Issie said, nudging Mo triumphantly. “I can see you’re smiling. No point hiding it.”
“I was just thinking how good it is to see Dan having fun,” Mo replied.
“Yep, with you there. I think Jules is good for him. He’s really perked up since she arrived and he’s hardly ever in the pub these days.”
Mo agreed. “It’s a good friendship if she keeps Danny away from the booze.”
“Tara doesn’t like them being friends though,” Issie said. “Apparently she told Jules to stay away.”
“That sounds about right. Tara’s always been a dog in the manger.” Mo watched her brother and Jules larking about for a moment longer. She was unable to see his injuries from here, and with the sunshine turning his blond hair to gold Danny looked about seventeen again. Mo didn’t know much about the new vicar, apart from the fact that Granny Alice raved about her and Danny seemed to enjoy her company, but she was predisposed to like anyone who made her brother happy. Her sister-in-law certainly hadn’t done so for a while. “I’m glad Jules didn’t listen to Tara’s nonsense.”
“She did at first – but then Granny Alice persuaded Jules that Dan’s been so much happier since having her friendship, and that his marital problems were a separate issue anyway,” Issie explained. “Jules agreed in the end, although not before she gave Dan a huge lecture about marriage and God. Apparently he was pretty scared. She’s dead serious about religion.”
“She’s a vicar, Issie! Of course she is.”
“Like, duh! I sometimes forget that,” Issie admitted. “She’s great fun, Mo. You’d like her if you gave her a chance. Forget about the church stuff. Jules is cool. You should hang out with us all sometime.”
“Hmm,” said Mo. She hadn’t been feeling particularly sociable lately.
“Summer likes her.”
Summer, Mo’s oldest friend and probably the most forgiving person on the surface of the planet, made Gandhi look mean-spirited.
“Summer likes everyone,” Mo pointed out. “She even still likes me after what I did.”
“Of course she does. Anyway, that was years ago,” said Issie airily.
This was easy for her sister to say. Twelve years ago Mo had made a heat-of-the-moment decision that had changed the course of her best friend’s life and very nearly resulted in tragedy. Summer, generous and tender hearted, had forgiven Mo long ago but Mo was still struggling to forgive herself.
Issie gave her sister a sideways look. “Never mind all that ancient history. We were talking about Jules. Even Ashley Carstairs likes the vicar. He’s always at the church.”
Just hearing that name made Mo’s stomach lurch as though she’d just leapt off the cliffs. Her heartbeat skittered. God, this was ridiculous. What on earth had got into her? Ashley Carstairs was a property developer and Mo’s bitterest rival. Not a meeting of the Polwenna Action Group had taken place where they hadn’t clashed over his plans for rebuilding his house/bulldozing the woods/making a helipad (delete as appropriate). Rich, materialistic and a Londoner to boot, Ashley represented just about everything Mo despised. He always insisted that everything he wanted had to be done at double the usual speed – which was really saying something in Cornwall, where do it dreckly was the usual approach. Dark, saturnine and arrogant, Ashley Carstairs had an aloofness about him that really got Mo’s hackles up. She’d even go as far as to say that she hated him. The fact that she’d kissed him at a recent masked ball was infuriating, and the truth that her head and heart hadn’t stopped spinning since was even more so…
To cover her confusion, Mo said quickly, “Don’t be taken in. He’s probably trying to work out how to get his greasy mitts on St Wenn’s.”
“Granny Alice did say something about the church’s future coming up at the last parish council meeting. But seriously? You think Ashley’s after the church?”
Mo shrugged. To be honest she didn’t have a clue but she wouldn’t put anything past “Cashley”, as the villagers had nicknamed him. Playing games with people’s heads seemed to be his forte. The last time she’d seen him, almost nine weeks ago (not that she was counting), he’d given her the deeds to the woods they’d been fighting over. It was obviously another of his mind games. Ashley had so badly wanted to concrete over Fernside woods and build a private drive to his house that he’d outmanoeuvred Mo and the Polwenna Action Group at every turn. In the end he’d purchased the land at an auction. He’d taunted Mo at every opportunity – she was sure he’d only kissed her as some part of his evil master plan – and had seemed to relish each verbal battle they’d shared.
So when she’d opened the envelope Ashley had handed her, containing the revelation that the woodland was now registered in her name rather than his, Mo had been uncharacteristically lost for words. It had made no sense. She’d run up to Ashley’s holiday home to find out what the hell he was playing at, but the place had been in darkness and there had been no sign of him since. His boat had remained untouched in the marina and although he’d trebled the workforce on his renovations he’d yet to reappear. This mysterious absence was driving Mo crazy. How could he vanish without an explanation after kissing her like that?
Err, she meant after signing the woodland over to her like that?
And this was the ridiculous state that Ashley Carstairs got her in. Never normally confused about anything – you couldn’t ride e
vent horses if you suffered from indecision – Mo hadn’t been able to think straight for weeks. The horses could sense it the minute she was in the saddle and her family was certainly bearing the brunt of her foul mood. Mo hated riddles, and not being able to solve this one was more than she could bear. She’d never thought the day would come when she’d say it, but Ashley Carstairs had better return soon because this was doing her head in.
“Well? Do you think he’s after the church?” prompted Issie when her sister failed to reply.
“I wouldn’t put anything past him,” Mo said darkly. “It’s a pretty church and some outsider would probably love to live there once Ashley’s developed it, although knowing him it’ll probably be turned into a nightclub.”
“A nightclub? Cool!” said Issie, before catching her sister’s unamused expression and adding quickly, “Joke!”
“Never joke about Ashley Carstairs,” Mo warned. She certainly wasn’t laughing. Several unsettling dreams that she didn’t dare contemplate, and thoughts that kept trying to run off with her like badly schooled horses, had robbed Mo of her sense of humour.
“But he was so brave when he rescued the Penhalligan boys when their boat sank. And he gave you the woods when he could have just flattened the lot. Fact,” Issie pointed out with faultless and very annoying logic. Mo had been grappling with these points herself so often that she could probably join a wrestling league, but instead of answering she just tossed her tangled red curls dismissively.
“He’s hot too, isn’t he?” added Issie slyly. “He’s got that whole smouldering Ross Poldark thing going on.”
Mo snorted. “In his dreams! Have you been on the cider?”
“No, but I do have eyes in my head. Just because you don’t like Ashley doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate his finer points. Like his nice arse.”
“Total arse more like,” muttered Mo, although in fairness her sister had a point: Ashley did have a great backside, not that she’d looked at it that much.
A Time for Living: Polwenna Bay 2 Page 1
