The Beach at Doonshean

by Penny Feeny

  THE BEACH AT DOONSHEAN

  Also by Penny Feeny

  That Summer in Ischia

  The Apartment in Rome

  Secrets in Sicily

  THE BEACH AT DOONSHEAN

  PENNY FEENY

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Penny Feeny, 2019

  The moral right of Penny Feeny to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781788547321

  Cover design © Charlotte Abrams-Simpson

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  For Jack and George

  Contents

  Also by Penny Feeny

  Welcome Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Two

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Three

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Four

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part Five

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part Six

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part Seven

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  PROLOGUE

  9th July 1981

  They called it the secret beach – their secret, because it felt so private and undiscovered. Yesterday they had it entirely to themselves, on a squally unpredictable afternoon when clouds chased the sun and a wild wind whipped eddies of fine sand along the shoreline. They spun in its powerful gusts and fell over laughing, breathless and exhilarated. In a lull they built a magnificent castle, only for it to be beaten down by the tide. This thundered in so quickly they had to scramble to reach the cliff top.

  He stands on the ledge now, looking down, shading the light from his eyes, trying to make out the handful of silhouettes paddling in the shallows, foraging in the rock pools. No one is swimming. Today is different. Although the sun is bright enough to dazzle there’s a chill in the air – similar to the chill that’s settled around his heart. The fear he knows he’d be unwise to dismiss.

  He’s been looking for them everywhere. At first he pounded Dingle’s pavements, past the brightly coloured pubs with their Guinness-dark interiors, then along the harbour and the pier, as if they might be hiding under a tarpaulin or behind a stack of lobster pots. Although his hunt was fruitless, the rhythm of walking calmed him. He wouldn’t let the situation get the better of him: forbearance is his default setting. He climbed into the car and slowly cruised the back roads, eyes swivelling from side to side. When he swung towards the beach it was his last resort.

  Perfectly secluded, Doonshean is a gift for those in the know. It’s much closer to Dingle than Ventry or Inch Strand – that long finger pointing across the bay where campers squat among the dunes. In the distance, he can make out the curious rock formation named The Foal, like an enchanted seahorse rising from the waves, another instance of the magic that haunts this spot. He takes in the drama of the scene: the folds of land like arms embracing the series of coves and the deceptive surface of the water, a deep twinkling blue. The sand has a silver sheen; the sky is a bolt of silk unfurled. The beauty of it draws him down the steep cobbled incline.

  The cries of a child skim across the beach towards him. He can’t tell if they are cries of excitement or alarm. The breeze lifts the sounds into the air where they swirl in competition with the gulls. He’s not sure if the voice is familiar, but suddenly he is alert to danger and a sense of panic returns. He begins to move faster towards the slippery outcrop with its trove of shrimps and limpets and sea anemones, where the small figure is perched. He’s not close enough to make out facial features, but he can recognise a little boy in trouble. He curses the distance as he sees the boy lose his footing, windmill his arms and then, in appalling slow motion, topple from the rocks. There’s a splash, followed by a moment’s fraught silence.

  He tugs off his shoes and runs. The sand is so firm his feet make no sound. He’s pulling his arms out of his jacket and abandoning that also. He’s aware of a frenzied yelling, voices wailing for help, figures jumping up and down in distress. Nobody else has gone after the child and there’s no head breaking through the foaming water, no sign of movement below the swell of the waves slapping the boulders. He increases his pace, fixated on rescue. This is his job: to save lives. This is a life he will save.

  He plunges into the freezing ocean.

  PART ONE

  APRIL 2010

  Wednesday Thursday Friday

  1

  The House

  Rachael was stacking meringue nests into ivory towers. The radio was burbling in the background. Meringues were fragile and liable to crumble into dust at rough treatment, but they required little effort and would keep forever. She produced them regularly at her catering functions and liked to organise advance supplies. Checking her nests were wedged firm, she slotted lids onto containers and arranged them on the slate shelves of the old pantry. Wiping away the sticky residue of spilled egg whites, dumping the used equipment in the deep butler’s sink, she felt a satisfying sense of accomplishment. Then she glanced into the garden and saw the boy.

  He was crouched in the middle of the lawn by the pear tree that had, until this instant, delighted her with its frilly white blossom. He was about nine or ten, a scrawny body muffled in a tracksuit. She couldn’t see his face or what he was doing but it looked suspicious. She thumped on the windowpane. The boy raised his head and then resumed his mysterious activity.

  Rachael was nonplussed. She should challenge him, of course. The trouble was, she didn’t feel properly established in this house; she had only a toehold. It was the home where her husband, Matt, had spent his teenage years and he’d been reluctant to move back. He said it carried too much baggage and he’d rather have a fresh start. But Rachael, who had long coveted it, had pointed out the obvious advantages: the leafy location, the space, the garden, which would all be wonderful for Danny. It was far too big for just one person and if his mother chose to be generous, Matt shouldn’t be selfish.<
br />
  No money had changed hands. Julia, newly retired, had moved into the city centre apartment they’d vacated and gone to visit old friends in the Dordogne while it was being refurbished. Rachael had been so elated she didn’t like to admit she was now having second thoughts: that perhaps she wasn’t quite ready for suburbia, or that living with shades of her mother-in-law – with the strong dark colours and functional furnishings – was discomfiting. She longed to redecorate in a scheme that would be as light and airy and floral as her favourite perfume, but until they could afford to do this, she felt almost as much a trespasser as the boy outside.

  The Victorian villa had been one of the first built in the street. Its exterior had a worn, comfortable air like a well-thumbed book, but its neighbours were a hash of different styles and periods. The bungalow next door had been empty since its elderly occupant moved into a nursing home and Rachael noticed there was a gap in the privet hedge dividing the two gardens, just large enough for a child to squeeze through. She clattered down the short flight of steps from the kitchen and crossed the flagged patio.

  The boy must have heard her but he didn’t react. He was crouching over a piece of slate. Earthworms and slugs were squirming across the surface and he was chopping them into bits with the sharp edge of a stone.

  ‘Whatever are you up to?’ exclaimed Rachael.

  He didn’t stop. ‘Feed the birds,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not the way to do it!’ It was macabre and repulsive and she couldn’t bear to watch. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  Danny was at school. It had been agonising at first to leave him drooping at the door of the reception class. But since Easter he’d rallied. He’d even let her say goodbye at the gate and watch him trot into the building with the staunch sense of duty he’d inherited from Matt.

  The boy looked in her direction for the first time. His hair was shorn brutally close, his eyes rolled, wide apart. He had a scratch along his jaw and an outcrop of freckles that gave his face a rough innocence.

  ‘Got the day off ’cos we’re moving.’

  Surely he wasn’t coming to live next door? There was no sign of a removal van. ‘Well, you shouldn’t be in this garden, all the same.’

  ‘She said I could.’

  ‘Who did?’

  The boy’s lower lip jutted beyond the upper in an exaggerated pout. He scrambled up and with the toe of his trainer started pawing the ground. ‘She what lives here.’

  ‘I live here,’ said Rachael – a phrase she repeated often in her head for reassurance. Then she realised he was referring to Bel.

  Bel was currently installed in the attic recovering from a bout of malaria. She was an added complication because her life never ran smoothly. Other people didn’t come back from a charitable stint in Africa to find their flatmate had re-let their room; other people managed to visit the tropics without getting bitten or infected with disease; other people didn’t invite random scallies to invade their garden and sacrifice living creatures.

  Rachael was fond of Bel, but she wouldn’t have chosen her as a cohabitee. Their tastes and lifestyles were very different. And she had no concept of privacy. ‘But you can borrow anything of mine!’ she’d protested when Rachael tracked down her missing pashmina. ‘Only I find it so cold here.’ And Rachael couldn’t argue, although she’d never been in the least tempted to borrow any of her sister-in-law’s clothes.

  ‘She probably thought you wanted to get your ball back or something,’ she told him, giving Bel the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘I weren’t playing ball.’

  ‘Okay, but you have to go anyway. And stop that… massacre.’

  The worms weren’t writhing any more, they were slowly desiccating in the warm spring sun. ‘Worms eat dead people,’ he said. He kicked at the slate so that sections of invertebrates leapt and scattered. ‘Feed the birds.’

  Rachael shuddered.

  She watched his feet disappear through the hedge and once she was certain he’d gone, she went back indoors. The radio was informing her that although the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, was still active – how the newsreaders loved to twist their tongues around its name – the ban on flights had been lifted and stranded travellers would be able to resume their journeys. The sky had been empty of planes for almost a week: a blue distilled silence. It seemed incredible that billions of invisible rock fragments were tainting the atmosphere, disrupting whole continents, when superficially everything looked so normal.

  To Rachael, the day no longer felt normal. The incident with the boy had unnerved her. She hoped the birds would snaffle the evidence of his visit; she didn’t want Danny to see what he’d been up to. Dan was only five, far too young for inappropriate influences, though there was no telling whether he’d be as disgusted as she was or just that little bit excited. Child-rearing was a minefield. The fact that her mother-in-law was a paediatrician should have been useful, but actually made her feel an extra obligation to get it right.

  She switched off the radio, worried she’d be late fetching Danny from school. She knew he’d emerge with his shirt askew, his bag trailing and his mood vulnerable. She usually brought a snack to revive him but because she’d been delayed they’d have to call in at the sweet shop. He regarded this as a treat to be savoured and would spend a long time making up his mind while louder, bigger children jostled in front of him at the counter.

  It was another half hour before she returned home. Danny had chosen chocolate buttons and was letting them melt one by one on his tongue. When she turned into their street she was shocked to see a patrol car waiting outside the house. She braked sharply and the last few buttons scattered.

  It will be about the boy, she reasoned. He’ll have got into trouble with some other, less tolerant neighbour who’s summoned the police to deal with him. Nothing to do with us. She parked in the drive and opened the passenger door. She was rescuing the schoolbag and the torn chocolate wrapper when she heard a footfall. Danny was gazing upwards with a thrilled expression on his face.

  ‘Mrs Wentworth?’ said the policewoman.

  Rachael wasn’t often addressed by her married name so she hesitated before straightening up and turning around. ‘Yes?’ she said. Instinctively she clasped Danny’s hand. The appearance of two police officers with their peaked caps and their walkie-talkies did not bode well.

  ‘Can we come inside a moment?’

  ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is Matt all right?’

  She couldn’t help it: it was always the first question that sprang to mind. Matt’s father had died while on holiday in Ireland, saving a child from drowning. Matt had been four at the time, too young to comprehend the tragedy, but for Rachael this stranger cast a long shadow, the sort of shadow that could taint a future. Every now and again she’d have to crush the notion that, despite his apparent good health, Matt might suffer from some kind of jinx. And this irrational part of her prayed that the jinx was watered down from one generation to the next, otherwise Danny would be affected too, which would simply be more than she could bear.

  ‘We’re just making inquiries at this stage,’ said the policewoman, going on to introduce herself and her colleague and indicate their identity badges. ‘Can we come in?’

  Rachael didn’t want to let them into the house, their heavy shoes clumping through the hall. She wouldn’t be able to despatch Danny to his room because he’d be eager to know what was happening and who had done something they shouldn’t. Then she saw the boy – the garden invader – sloping past, staring with interest at the police car, the bright flash along its sides. The officers watched him too, perhaps waiting to see if he was going to gouge the paintwork or stab the tyres, but he moved on.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, fumbling through her keys for the one to the front door and then leading them into the sitting room. She switched on the television for Dan, who ignored it.

  ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you, Mrs Wentworth,’ the policewoman said, ‘but we’re following up
an investigation in France.’

  ‘France?’

  ‘Yes. It seems a car you hired when you were over there, a red Citroën, was found abandoned in Bordeaux. It should have been returned to the airport in Limoges on Wednesday. There were concerns initially that it had been stolen and something had befallen you… so we just need to clear up a few issues…’

  ‘But I haven’t been in France,’ said Rachael.

  ‘This house is number 21? You are Mrs Wentworth?’

  ‘Well yes, but—’

  ‘Mrs Julia Wentworth?’

  Rachael had been standing, half aware of their reflections – three puzzled faces – in the mirror on the wall. She sat down suddenly. At least the soft, opulent sofa was her own. The one Julia had taken with her wasn’t nearly so comfortable.

  ‘Actually it’s Dr Wentworth and she’s my mother-in-law. I’m Rachael.’

  ‘This is her address?’

  ‘It used to be, till she moved out a couple of months ago. But she has gone to France. Staying with some friends who run a gîte or something.’

  The policewoman looked at her notebook. ‘Yes. She gave their address when she collected the car, but they don’t know her whereabouts. Apparently she didn’t tell them where she was going.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ said Rachael.

  The policewoman sighed. ‘There’s been a lot of confusion lately – well, it’s still going on – because so many flights are grounded. To tell the truth, we thought this was an over-reaction. Cars are being dumped all over the place because there’s no room for them on the ferries.’

  ‘Because of the volcanic eruption you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I saw the news reports,’ said Rachael. ‘But we weren’t bothered because we knew Julia had planned to be away for two weeks… We didn’t expect to hear from her.’

  ‘As far as you’re concerned, she’s not a missing person?’