THE END
Epilogue
After a warm summer and wheat-rich September, autumn had fallen in earnest across Cornwall. Leaves whirled from the trees like ballerinas and mist filled the valley in the mornings, slumbering at the feet of steep hillsides and shrouding the riverbanks. Days drowsed in gold and red and russet before the evenings drew in, as dark as merlot grapes and laced with winter’s icy breath. The horses up at Polwenna Equestrian grew woolly like moorland ponies and any villagers setting out after sundown reached once again for their jackets and scarves.
Although it was only half past six, the countryside was already drowning in lakes of darkness. The sky was wadded with thick clouds that obscured the stars, and deep purple shadows swaddled the fields and cliff tops. As the taxi that had travelled from Bodmin station plunged down the incline leading to Polwenna Bay, the only illuminations were the bright beam of headlights sweeping the lane and the crimson glow of brakes as the driver slowed down for each sharp bend.
“Bleddy dangerous road,” he grumbled to the woman seated beside him. “Council needs to light this, don’t they?”
But his passenger didn’t reply; she was staring into the inky void, lost several months away in thought. She didn’t need the daylight to anticipate every twist and turn of the road and neither did she need to be told that any minute now the lights of the village would appear. She’d driven down this hill more times than she could count.
After her last upward journey along this road, she’d been certain she’d never return. The new life beckoning to her in Plymouth had seemed so sure and so solid that she’d never once dreamed it would prove to be as insubstantial as the frost that now iced the early mornings. Unexpectedly, she was back exactly where she’d started from, with little more to her name than two suitcases, the small boy sitting behind her and a marriage that was more tattered than the inside of the cab.
Funny how life had a habit of really kicking you when you were down.
“There’s the village. Pretty, isn’t it? It’s one of the most painted harbours in Cornwall,” declared the driver when they rounded the final hairpin bend. He sounded as proud of the place as if he’d personally been responsible for the higgledy-piggledy cottages, narrow twisting streets and sturdy quayside – although of course its character had been formed by years of people, storms and broken dreams.
How many other women had fled from this small village hoping for a new start, only to return with their tail well and truly between their legs? She was sure she wasn’t the only one. For some folks Polwenna Bay, with its breathtaking views and close community, was paradise. For others, though, it was stifling beyond all imagination, the narrow valley a prison that hemmed you in and blocked out the sky. Here you could never escape your past: you were always the person you’d been before. Mistakes might be forgotten but they were certainly never forgiven.
Especially mistakes like the one she’d made…
The lights of Polwenna Bay shone out of the thick night. Cottages clustered around the pretty harbour and clung to the steep valley just like the barnacles on the rocky parts of the beach. Windows poured buttery light into the streets, pooling warmth and welcome into the darkness. Across the fish quay was a whitewashed pub, the sign and windows strung with coloured bulbs whose reflections trembled in the shifting harbour waters; a treasure chest of emeralds, sapphires and rubies. She was taken aback that Mariners, the house high on the headland, hurled light from its huge windows. As long as she’d lived in Polwenna Bay the place had been empty. So things could change here after all. Maybe she should take this as a good omen?
She knew all the houses and cottages by heart, of course; could name them in her sleep if she had to, even though she’d tried her hardest to forget. How was it possible that she’d managed to end up exactly where she’d left off? Had all the heartache, all the struggles and all the dreams been for nothing? Was this all she had to show for every tear and agonised decision? And all because a stupid error of judgement had cost her everything?
Was it true that no matter how far you ran you could never really escape yourself?
The cab had slowed for the mini-roundabout and was crawling through the main street, avoiding groups of children dressed up as ghouls and vampires and one stray Spiderman. Their breath plumed white as they tore up and down the road, oblivious to traffic in the way only children raised in a village designed for the horse age ever can be. Adults accompanied them, reaching out to grab their mittened hands and pull them back to safety – or at least, hold on to them as best they could while heavily laden with goody bags crammed with sweets.
Halloween. Of course. The night when the undead walked the streets. She laughed bitterly. The date couldn’t have been more apt. After all, she was a ghost too, wasn’t she? A spectre returning to claim a life she’d thought she’d laid to rest and a marriage that had been in its death throes long before she’d chosen to give it the last rites. Everywhere she looked she saw the places that shadowed her dreams and haunted her memories.
Now she would be the one to do the haunting. His face would be ghastly when he saw her; that she did know.
“This is as far as I go.” The taxi driver swung the cab into the small loading area opposite the pasty shop. Images of a hot afternoon, smiling bluebell eyes and a mouth kissing flakes of pastry from her lips darted unbidden before her vision, until something far bleaker and uglier pushed them aside. She didn’t deserve that memory. It was lost forever, just like the look of love in those eyes had been.
“You’ll have to get out here,” the driver continued apologetically. “It’s too bleddy narrow for me. I’m not risking scratching the old girl or meeting one of those emmets with a satnav. Those townies can’t reverse.”
It was late October, a notoriously barren time of the year for a village that relied heavily on tourism, and there was more chance of meeting Elvis than a holidaymaker in a four-by-four. She glanced at her son, who was sitting in the back looking out of the window. He’d never manage to carry both the big camera bag he was hugging so tightly and his suitcase all the way through the village and up the path to the clifftop house where she was planning to stay.
“Couldn’t you go just a little further? Maybe to the village green?” she asked hopefully. She could probably manage both of their cases from there, even though it would be a struggle. God. She’d forgotten how much she’d hated the inconvenience of this place. A sucker punch of longing for the neat new-build home in Plymouth almost floored her.
But the driver wasn’t prepared to chance his luck on a road not much wider than his cab, and was even less inclined to risk reversing. With a sinking heart she paid the fare, deliberately leaving out a tip, and before long his tail lights were just two red devil’s eyes vanishing into the Halloween darkness.
The air smelt achingly familiar, of salt and earth and wood smoke, and it was bitterly cold. Curtains were drawn against the night now, so that only the occasional stripe of cosy light spilled into the street. She shivered. Was the sense of being shut out just in her mind or did it run deeper than that? She’d been a part of this place once; now she was a stranger, and a despised one at that.
Well, she was back. Unwelcome and unwanted for certain – but blood was thicker than water, surely, even if that blood was only by marriage. They wouldn’t turn her away, especially not when her son was here with her.
“Come on, Morgan,” said Tara Tremaine wearily, “let’s go and find your dad.”
To be continued in the next Polwenna Bay novel
Winter Wishes
Ruth Saberton is the bestselling author of Runaway Summer, Katy Carter Wants a Hero, and Escape for the Summer. She also writes commercial fiction under the pen names Jessica Fox, Georgie Carter and Holly Cavendish.
Ruth loves to chat with her readers, please do add her as a Facebook friend and follow her on Twitter and Pinterest.
www.ruthsaberton.co.uk
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> Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
A Time for Living: Polwenna Bay 2 Page 26
