“I’d love a dog. Dad said we could get one when we moved here but we haven’t got one yet.”
“Dogs are hard work. They need a lot of walking,” Lucy warned.
Josh shrugged one shoulder. “I can do that. Then I’d have a friend with me all the time. I don’t have any friends here. Nobody likes me.”
Lucy didn’t want to patronise him by offering platitudes. “That must be pretty lonely,” she remarked instead.
“Yeah, it is. Dad said we were coming here for a new start but he’s working all the time on the church now.”
Ah, so his father was working for Max Reynard. That figured. Who else would expect his employees to work on a Sunday and be prepared to pay them the weekend rates? No wonder Josh was at a loose end; from what Lucy knew of Max he’d be making sure he got value for money.
“What did you like to do when you were in London? There must have been things you enjoyed there?” Lucy asked as they climbed the steps up from the beach and made their way along the quay towards the town.
“It was different then because my mum was still… hadn’t…”
His voice tailed off, the unsaid words telling Lucy all she needed to know. Poor little boy. He was really having a tough time of it. Meeting him was certainly putting her own woes into perspective.
“I liked to play the violin,” Josh told her, looking thoughtful. “I play the piano too but we don’t have room for one here so I haven’t done that for ages. Mum played duets with me sometimes. She was really good but she said I was even better.”
“You’re musical. That’s great,” said Lucy.
Josh looked unconvinced. “The kids here think liking music makes me weird. When I have my violin lessons at school they all laugh at me.”
“Don’t listen to them. Being musical is brilliant,” Lucy replied staunchly. “I bet they like Kanye West and all the girls are mad about One Direction, aren’t they? Those guys are musicians and I can’t imagine anyone thinks they’re weird.”
At least she thought Kanye and One Direction were musicians; Lucy wasn’t quite sure, being more of a Take That fan herself. Still, her words seemed to do the trick and Josh looked slightly more cheerful.
They were nearing the ice cream kiosk and Lucy decided to buy them both a cornet to help overcome the earlier trauma. As they queued, she told Josh about her Uncle Armand and how he’d been a famous composer.
“He’s not as popular as he used to be but he’s still pretty well known. Google him when you get home and you’ll soon see. He wrote most of his music over there.” She pointed across to the island.
Josh’s eyes widened. “In Max’s castle?”
Max’s castle? So that was the rumour going around among the workers, was it? Interesting, thought Lucy.
“It certainly isn’t Max’s castle,” she said firmly. “It belongs to my family and it’s our home. There’s a wonderful music room there with a lovely grand piano. My uncle loved to play that when he was younger. You must ask your father if you can come and visit one day and play it.”
Josh’s eyes lit up like the lights on the seafront. “Cool! Yes, please! Can I come now?”
Lucy laughed. “I think you ought to ask your father first.”
“He won’t mind; he’s really busy. Anyway, I can text him – and his friend lives over there in a caravan. He can give me a lift home or bring Dad.”
“You mean Merryn?” Lucy asked, handing him an ice cream.
Another nod.
“Merryn’s got a really cool boat and all the girls at school fancy him,” Josh said through a mouthful of mint choc chip.
Not just the girls at school, thought Lucy. Oh dear. She really needed to get over her crush – and soon, before it got embarrassing. She’d be fancying Justin Bieber next.
“You could text him now then, and tell him you’ll be with Lucy Penwellyn and Merryn Hellier,” she suggested. “Everyone knows me here so he won’t need to worry.”
“And I can see Biscuit.” Josh was busy texting with one hand and feeding the spaniel some of his wafer with the other, a feat of great dexterity. No wonder he was good at playing the piano, Lucy thought.
Before she’d even managed to finish her ice cream, Josh’s mobile pinged and he punched the air.
“Yes! Dad says he knows who you are and that’s fine as long as I come back with Merryn by six,” he announced, all earlier woes forgotten. “Let’s go now!”
“I didn’t realise I was so famous,” said Lucy. She held out the rest of her ice cream for Biscuit to gobble up and then brushed the crumbs from her hands.
“OK, let’s go. I’m already looking forward to hearing what you can do,” she told Josh.
Needing no encouragement at all, Josh and Biscuit bounded ahead of her. It was hard to tell who was more excited. Lucy felt her own spirits lift. She hadn’t touched the piano or her violin since Armand had died; the music room now echoed with memories rather than the rich notes of the Steinway. Why not make the most of the beautiful grand piano before Jamie sold his inheritance?
Yes, decided Lucy as she followed Josh across the beach, an hour or two of music was exactly what she needed to clear her tangled thoughts.
Everything else would just have to wait.
Chapter 11
You couldn’t really moan about working on a Sunday afternoon when you were being paid handsomely, the sun was pouring golden warmth down from a blue sky and one of the best views in Cornwall was spread out before you, Adam Miller decided. The mallet in his right hand might be heavy and he was having to take extreme care to prevent the chisel from slipping on the ancient stone, but working on this beautiful old church against the backdrop of St Pirran’s Bay made up for any difficulties. The texture of the granite beneath his fingers and the way the masonry was coming back to life after years of neglect were hugely satisfying too. So the project was complex and the hours were long, but that was what he’d signed up for and Adam wasn’t complaining. This certainly beat life on-site in London. The move here had been a good one.
Beneath his tools, the same basic ones his medieval forebears would have been familiar with, a gurning gargoyle was slowly coming back to life. Centuries of gales and prevailing westerly winds had weathered the stone and blurred the mischievous features, but with Adam’s skilled touch the years were peeling away.
Stepping back from his bench Adam laid his tools down for a moment and, flexing his aching fingers, pushed his dusty blond fringe out of his eyes. Note to self: he must get his hair cut – and properly this time too, rather than hacking it off with the kitchen scissors. Elly had always cut it for him before and, as with most of the jobs his wife had done so well, Adam’s attempts were a very poor second. There was also something intimate about hair cutting, and to have another woman brushing the hair from his neck and snipping around his ears felt like a betrayal, almost an infidelity.
“I know, I’m being bloody ridiculous,” Adam said to the gargoyle – and then laughed out loud. He was talking to a piece of stone now? That said it all. Never mind being ridiculous; he was going mad. It had always been a matter of time. If the grief hadn’t crazed him then the stress of trying to complete Max’s latest project on time was certainly driving him insane. They were already running three weeks behind schedule and Max, being Max, was starting to put on the pressure.
Adam picked up his tools and resumed his task, chipping away with a precision that belied the crude instruments. The speed of this operation was painfully slow, but that was the way it had to be. One slip of the chisel, one false move and that would be it: game over, with the artefact ruined beyond repair. Much as it irked his friend, Adam knew from long experience as a master mason that you couldn’t rush these things. Like grief, working stone had its own timescale. Sometimes you felt as though you were getting nowhere. Other days it felt as though life was starting to become a little easier. And then there were those days when no matter what you tried, even making a start felt pointless.
Adam blew more dust away and contin
ued his work. He knew that his perseverance would eventually reveal something fantastic. Granted, it might never be quite the same as it had once been, but it would certainly be close – and it would be just as beautiful in its own way. Likewise, if he kept chipping away at this new life he was carving out for himself and Josh here in St Pirran, then surely something good would come from it?
He had to hope so and to hold onto this thought in any case. It had been over two years now and although Adam knew he would never, ever get over losing Elly, there was a sense of getting used to the loss. That raw, unbearable grief had eventually ebbed like the tide from the causeway and the ache had become a dullness rather than a searing pain. Nevertheless, Adam knew that he and Josh would never be the same again. They were changed forever, like the stone beneath his chisel.
He paused again and squinted at the ugly face leering up at him. It was the product of almost a week’s work, and he felt a tingle of pride as he contemplated this piece of restoration. Let Max moan. Fast wouldn’t be good and if Max didn’t want the best then he wouldn’t have hired Adam Miller. If Reynard Developments had wanted nothing more than a quick fix job then they could have had their pick of anyone, but master stonemasons were few and far between. Adam Miller had years of experience. He’d worked his apprenticeship the old-fashioned way, starting as a sixteen-year-old in Malcom Reynard’s building yard before moving on to work with the National Trust and English Heritage, growing his reputation as an expert in his field and as one of a handful of master masons who could be trusted with the most delicate projects. He’d had his pick of the best jobs, and a very comfortable life in London too, and his old friend had had to make it worth his while to move all the way to Cornwall.
Adam brushed off some more dust with his forefinger, then picked up his tools again. Working like this was almost meditative, and sometimes hours could pass in what felt like moments. He was lucky to have been given the chance to make this move. So many people were caught up in the rat race, scurrying around to make a living and becoming slaves to huge mortgages that they could just about pay. Most of his friends back in London were trying to spin so many plates that just watching them had made him feel giddy. Adam had worked hard, but his expertise had commanded the best fees and he’d been able to take the jobs that really appealed to him. He’d travelled all over Europe and worked on some incredible buildings, from cathedrals to palaces. Adam adored his job, and when Elly had still been alive the travelling hadn’t been an issue at all – but once she’d died everything had shifted. Suddenly Josh had needed him in every way. Quite apart from the grief, Adam’s life had become a complex game of juggling childminders, jobs and pitying neighbours.
None of this had been much help for Josh, of course. As brilliant as Adam’s friends and neighbours had been, making stews and doing the shopping and collecting Josh from school, they weren’t Elly. His son had grown more withdrawn by the day and it had broken Adam’s heart all over again to see the formerly outgoing and sociable little boy sink deeper into himself. Josh’s music had stopped too, although in truth the closed piano lid and the dust falling on top of it had hardly featured in Adam’s consciousness at the time. Just the sight of an old lipstick in the glovebox or a cardigan hanging on the back of the door had been enough to break him; he’d barely been aware of anything except his wife’s absence. The house, the street and the daily routines had all reminded him of Elly. Although he might have looked as though he was functioning, inside Adam had been falling to pieces.
It hadn’t been unexpected, not when Elly had found the third lump. They’d both known then that all the treatments were only to buy time. Towards the end she’d been so exhausted that putting her through them had felt like the worst kind of cruelty. When the doctors had told them that there was nothing more they could do except keep her comfortable, Adam had thought he was prepared. He’d seen counsellors, knew what Elly wanted done and had made sure that Josh understood too. This was death by numbers: something expected, planned for and that he was almost at peace with – or so he’d thought. The reality was that when she’d finally slipped away from him, the shock and the anger had been overwhelming.
Some days they still were…
Losing Elly had turned Adam’s world inside out. Nothing looked the same anymore. Nothing seemed to work. A bit like a tune played slightly off-key, parts of his life had seemed hauntingly familiar and yet not quite as they ought to be. He’d felt constantly on edge. But he had to carry on for Josh – and for Elly too, because she’d fought so hard and been so courageous. He couldn’t respond to that by being weak. Life without her was lonely at times and difficult and empty, but at least he still had a life. Adam knew he owed it to his wife to keep going.
“Time heals everything,” was what people kept had telling him, and they’d been right – to some extent. The trouble was that everywhere he’d gone, Adam had kept seeing Elly. She’d be in the kitchen making one of her pasta concoctions that always involved using every pan and utensil they possessed, or she’d be in their tiny courtyard garden coaxing blooms from the smallest patch of earth. And somehow she was always sitting at the piano with her slender fingers flying over the keys, filling the small house with fluttering notes. She was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Although the sharp sting of his grief had lessened somewhat, Adam had known that if he was ever to come into a real time of healing, something big had to happen – for him and for Josh.
The problem was that he simply hadn’t had the energy to figure out what that “something” ought to be. Trying to carry Josh through and remain strong for him whilst coping with the demands of his job had been wearing him out; most evenings it had been as much as Adam could do to make it from the sofa to bed, never mind decide what the hell to do next.
The change had come when he’d least expected it. One Tuesday morning he’d been sitting at the kitchen table after dropping Josh at school. He’d been staring sightlessly into a cooling cup of tea, when there’d been a sharp rap of knuckles on the front door. Who now? Adam had wondered. The neighbours weren’t quite as frantic about his welfare as they had been (although they were still visiting regularly enough to ensure that he had a freezer full of casseroles), and it was a bit early in the day for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Deciding to ignore it, Adam had almost jumped out of his skin when there had been another sharp knock and a voice had called, “Don’t ignore me, Windy! I know you’re in there. Open the bloody door, for God’s sake! I’m scared I’ll get mugged if I stay out here much longer. Bad enough my car will end up on bricks without some little scrote stealing my wallet too!”
It was Adam’s friend, Max Reynard, shouting through the letterbox. What on earth was Max doing here on a weekday when he should be busy taking over the universe while mere mortals watched The Jeremy Kyle Show?
Adam and Max had grown up together – Adam’s bricklayer father working for Max’s – and the two had been best friends at primary school, where they’d got into all kinds of scrapes. Even now, Adam had the silvery scar on his palm from their decision to become blood brothers. They’d pinched a Stanley knife from his dad’s toolkit and there had actually been far too much blood; both boys had been taken to A & E for stitches. He still had the bump in his nose too, which he’d acquired during a bout of overenthusiastic play-fighting with Max. Although their paths had diverged years ago when Max had won a place at public school and Adam had chosen to embark on a training scheme, they’d stayed in touch and had the kind of friendship that meant it didn’t matter if they only saw each other once in a blue moon. Max was Josh’s godfather and for all his ridiculous wealth had always seemed just as content hanging out with Adam and Elly, eating pasta and drinking cheap white wine on their Ikea sofa, as he was swanning about in The Ivy. He might seem like the stereotypical rich businessman, but Adam knew he was equally, if not more, devoted to his charity work than to making a profit. The homeless shelter Max had set up in his father’s memory took up huge amounts of his time, and it might surprise the read
ers of the business pages to know that Max Reynard was just as likely to be found dishing up dinners or unblocking a toilet as he was chairing a board meeting.
He was the velvet fist in the iron glove all right – or, as Elly had often said, a soft heart locked inside a safe. Somebody surely would find the combination one day and set it free? Elly had thought Max was wasted on his own, because he had so much to give. Adam would tease her and call her a hopeless romantic but actually they were in perfect agreement: Max was one of the most generous people they knew. He just played his cards close to his chest, that was all.
When had Elly died, in that bleak time that now felt like a black and white blur, it had been Max who’d moved in for a week, taken charge of the funeral arrangements and made sure that Josh was looked after. He’d let Adam cry too; rather than giving him platitudes Max had simply handed him a loo roll and poured them both a drink.
Yes, there was no doubt about it: Max Reynard was the kind of friend you wanted around when the chips were down.
But at nine-thirty in the morning when Jeremy Kyle was about to start? Well, that was a different matter.
“This is Hoxton, not the Bronx,” Adam had pointed out as he’d let Max in. “We’re up and coming here these days, you know.”
Max did know; of course he did. Reynards had completed a big warehouse development down the road only six months previously. All the same, Max liked to wind Adam up about the area as much as Adam had always enjoyed teasing Max about his posh accent and bubble-brained girlfriends. Although Max always claimed not to be with any of them for their intellect, saying the last thing he wanted was a brainy woman giving him grief, Adam knew that in reality this was exactly the kind of girl his friend needed. Elly had also said so – and his musician wife, the epitome of a clever woman, had never been wrong.
“Christ, what’s gone on in here?” Max had stared around the kitchen in surprise.
“Cleaner came yesterday,” Adam had replied. He’d hardly noticed how neat and tidy the place was. In the past, Elly – queen of clutter – had filled it with everything from glass painting to clarinets to piles of sheet music. Now that she was gone the place might be tidy but, just like him, the heart had gone out of it.
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