Secrets at the Last House Before the Sea

by Liz Eeles

  Where would her mum keep a key to a copper box that she’d hidden away in the attic? Taking her find with her, Rosie went to the sitting room and started rummaging through the oak bureau. There was so much old tat in here – ancient bills, brass radiator keys, tags for Christmas presents, endless half-used rolls of sticky tape – but nothing that would fit the small lock in front of her.

  The box might even be empty, thought Rosie. It wasn’t particularly heavy and nothing rattled when it was shaken. But why would her mother have locked and buried an empty box in a muddle of old clothing in the attic?

  Rosie picked up the box again and studied its small lock before fetching the tool box from under the stairs. Many of the ancient tools inside were rusty, but a small screwdriver caught her eye. That might do the trick. Inserting it into the lock, she jiggled it up and down. This kind of thing looked easy on TV detective shows – how tricky could picking a lock be? Very tricky, she soon realised, abandoning the screwdriver for a larger one that she forced under the lid. It was a shame because the box was beautiful, but brute force was the only option.

  Sitting back on her heels, she started levering the screwdriver upwards as carefully as she could and the side of the box began to warp and bend. At last, with one final push, the lock gave way and the lid sprang open.

  Rosie exhaled loudly – she hadn’t realised she was holding her breath – and peeked inside. For one mad moment, she wondered if the hidden box might be full of stolen cash or counterfeit notes. But the box contained nothing more than a few folded sheets of paper and a letter inside a ripped open envelope.

  The letter was addressed to her mother at Cove Cottage, Smuggler’s Lane, Heaven’s Cove. That was the tiny, damp house where Sofia had lived when she first moved to Heaven’s Cove, eighteen months before Rosie was born. As a child, Rosie would stand outside the cottage and imagine her mum living there as a young woman, before she was married to her dad; before Rosie even existed. But the thought of not being in the world was too much to get her childish head around. Now, it was her mother who was no longer in the world, and some days that was too much for her adult self to take in.

  Rosie pulled the letter from its envelope and, feeling like a thief stealing secrets from the dead, began to read the black writing that sloped across the single sheet:

  My darling Saffy,

  You are in my heart for as long as the world turns. Before you, my life was empty and cold, and your love has brought me more happiness than I deserve. The thought of our wedding day, and spending the rest of my life with you, fills me with joy.

  Rosie stopped reading. She’d been so keen to discover what lay inside the box, but reading such an intimate letter felt wrong – especially as the handwriting was different from the scrawled messages inside the Christmas and birthday cards she’d received from her father. This was a love letter to her mother from another man; a man whom Rosie knew nothing about.

  She sat quietly for a while, with the letter in her lap, wondering what to do next. Her mother had hidden it away for a reason, but how could this secret hurt Sofia now she was gone? And Rosie had to know… Taking a deep breath, she scanned through the letter again and her eyes strayed to the final two lines:

  Know that you are always loved.

  J

  Rosie’s hands shook as she smoothed out the letter and grabbed her phone. She flicked through her photos to the card that was tied to the lilies on her mother’s grave. The writing was the same: the ‘a’ not closed, as though written in haste, and the loop-less lower stroke of the ‘g’. The mysterious J from the card was her mother’s secret suitor, declaring his undying love in this letter, and a part of Sofia’s life to the very end. How could Rosie not know who he was?

  Tipping out the remaining contents of the box, she found a yellowing copy of the house lease that had come as such a bombshell, her birth certificate, and a pair of white knitted bootees with pink edges. There was also a faded photo of her as a tiny baby, being held in bed by her mother with another older woman standing next to them.

  On the back of the photo, carefully printed in her mother’s handwriting, were the words: Me with Rose Emily (born 4.10 am, 8 June 1989) and Morag MacIntyre.

  Driftwood House creaked and groaned while Rosie turned the photo over and over in her hands. She’d never seen it before, but very few old photos were on display in the house. Her mother had always been one for looking ahead and keeping the past in the past.

  Overwhelmed by a feeling of nostalgia, for precious things lost, Rosie went to the large oak cupboard in the hall, got on her knees and started rooting through it. At the back, her fingers closed around her mum and dad’s wedding album. She hadn’t looked at it in years.

  She opened it and flicked through the small number of photos. Her mum said she and Dad hadn’t bothered with a proper photographer because they’d decided suddenly to get married. So the only photos were snaps taken by the strangers they’d pulled in off the street to witness the ceremony.

  Rosie had thought it wonderfully romantic when she was growing up – her parents loved each other so much, they couldn’t wait to be wed, so took themselves off to the register office in Exeter on a whim.

  She looked at the first photo of her parents standing hand in hand on the steps of the office. Her mum with long fair hair, staring at the camera, and Dad next to her. They were both smiling but looked uncomfortable, as though they were nervous. Her father was in smart trousers, an open-neck shirt and dark jacket, and her mother was wearing a flowing green maxi-dress that matched her eyes. Rosie was pretty sure that dress was still in the back of her mum’s wardrobe.

  She studied the picture more closely. The letter from J must have been sent to Cove Cottage not that long before this wedding photo was taken. But no one in the village had ever mentioned Sofia having a fiancé before Rosie’s dad, and Belinda would be all over any hint of long-lost romance like a rash. It would be gossip gold in Heaven’s Cove, even after all these years.

  Rosie sat back on her heels, feeling confused. Rather than uncovering her mother’s secrets at Driftwood House, she was only adding to them day by day.

  She ran her fingers across the faces of her parents in their wedding clothes. Did her dad know about J when he stood in the register office and said ‘I do’? Did he know that Sofia had presumably loved another man enough to promise to marry him?

  ‘I hope not,’ she said into the empty hallway, feeling close to tears. Though maybe her dad had been well aware of J and had stolen Sofia away from him. Rosie sighed. Dealing with bereavement was hard enough without the secrets her mother had left behind, like landmines littering her way forward. Secrets that were making her doubt the close relationship she’d thought she had with her mum.

  ‘What the…?’

  Someone was hammering on the front door, the noise echoing through the empty house. Rosie jumped up and her parents’ photo album slid facedown onto the tiles.

  CHAPTER 13

  The front door was in a terrible state. Anyone could break in if they were even slightly determined, and Rosie was up here on her own at night. No one in Heaven’s Cove would stoop to burglary, but who knew about the tourists that were starting to flood into the village now the weather was improving?

  Liam blew air through his pursed lips and ran his hand across the warped wood. The splits in the grain were like wounds under his fingers. Stormy weather had battered this house and, though it was still standing, the fabric of it was damaged. He knew how it felt.

  Good grief, he was identifying with a dilapidated old house now. He really needed to pull himself together and get back out there. Get yourself back on the horse was how Alex put it, as though Dee was a race that he’d lost, rather than the woman who’d ripped out his heart.

  It wasn’t like no one was interested. Katrina had texted him only this morning to check if he was going to the dance in the village hall in a few weeks’ time. She’d definitely be up for some no-strings fun if her boyfriend’s back was tu
rned.

  ‘Shall I go to the dance, boy?’ He bent and patted faithful Billy, who was nuzzling at his feet. ‘Maybe Alex is right and it’s time to get back to who I was. I mean, it’s over a year since—’

  The words died on his lips when the door, with a nails-down-blackboard shudder, was dragged across the tiles, and Rosie poked her head around it.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  She seemed surprised to see him. Actually, she seemed distressed. The dark circles under her eyes were purple shadows against her flushed cheeks.

  ‘Did you forget that I said I’d help for a while this morning?’

  ‘I remembered first thing but then I got distracted and forgot. Sorry. Come in.’

  With more scraping of wood on tile, she pulled the door fully open and he could see her properly. Her blue T-shirt had grubby streaks, her jeans were faded and ripped, and was that a cobweb in her hair? When he reached out and brushed his hand across her head, she stepped back in alarm.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Getting this.’ He held up his fingers, now covered in sticky filaments. ‘It looks like a spider’s web.’

  ‘I’ve been up in the attic.’ Rubbing her hands across her head, she turned slowly on the spot. ‘Please tell me the web didn’t come with its own spider.’

  He laughed. ‘I can’t see one. But surely living in a hot country means you’re used to spiders. Don’t they have huge ones over there?’

  ‘Yeah, all sorts of scarily massive wildlife, but they don’t tend to live in my hair.’

  When she giggled, Liam caught a glimpse of what Rosie must be like in Spain, far from the sorrows of Heaven’s Cove: happier, less vulnerable, more carefree.

  ‘Would you still like me to give you a hand this morning?’ he asked, hoping she wouldn’t send him away. He’d grumbled to himself on the walk here because there was so much work to do on the farm, but now, seeing her, he wanted to stay.

  Rosie hesitated, before stepping aside and beckoning him into the hall. ‘If you don’t mind. I think I can do with all the help I can get.’

  She padded across the tiles in her bare feet, bending on the way to pick up an open photo album and place it on the hall table.

  ‘Old photos of Mum and Dad,’ she explained, before leading him into the sitting room.

  This must have been a grand room once, thought Liam, with its picture rails, large fireplace and sash windows overlooking the sea, but not now. His eye was drawn to cracks in the coving, tired paintwork and window frames in desperate need of repair. In fact, seeing the room again only confirmed what he’d feared yesterday: that Rosie had her work cut out if she was going to impress the stuck-up Eppings. Since his last visit, furniture had been pushed together into the middle of the room, and paperwork was scattered across the floorboards.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Rosie, though why she was apologising, he wasn’t sure. When she gathered up the paperwork and shoved it into the bureau, he noticed a tremor in her hands. She was still upset.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Have you ever been in here – apart from when you delivered the stuff from Shelley’s?’ she asked, waving her arm around the room and ignoring his question.

  ‘No, I’ve been in the kitchen a couple of times while I was delivering post but that’s all. Your mum was friendly in the village but kept herself to herself up here.’

  ‘So what do you honestly think of this room?’

  ‘I think… it has potential.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Rosie shook her head. ‘You used to lie much more efficiently. Oh…’ She closed her eyes. ‘Sorry, if that sounds rude.’

  If that sounds rude? How else could it sound? But he knew what she meant. Not so long ago, he’d been a master of the white lie. I’ll ring you tomorrow. You look amazing in that dress.

  But that was before the only woman he’d ever truly loved deceived him with the biggest lie of all: Of course I love you.

  Rosie was staring at him, biting her lip.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he told her. ‘So what are you planning to do in here first?’

  ‘I thought I’d paint the walls – I’ve already washed them down. A coat of paint should freshen things up straight away, don’t you think?’

  She sounded desperate, surrounded by piles of furniture and pots of paint. She sounded like someone who’d bitten off more than she could chew, which meant the Eppings would win. Like they always did when money was involved. Affluent Charles and Cecilia Epping got richer by pushing up rents on local homes and business premises until people couldn’t cope. They didn’t care about the ordinary villagers of Heaven’s Cove at all.

  ‘What do you want me to do first?’ asked Liam, trying not to think about the rent rise on the fields that he leased from the Eppings. If his worries spiralled, he would only end up imagining his mum and dad having to sell up and move from Meadowsweet Farm.

  Rosie wrinkled her nose. ‘Can you wave a magic wand and make this place into a perfect little guesthouse?’

  ‘I’m afraid magic is outside my remit, but if you’ve got any fields that need planting or courtyards that need hosing down, I’m your man. And I’m sure I can slap on some paint.’

  Rosie’s face relaxed into a smile. ‘Are you sure you can spare the time?’

  ‘I can spare an hour or so. Tom’s helping out this morning and he’s brought his younger brother with him. Dad might give them a hand too if Mum can spare him.’

  ‘How are your parents these days?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Really?’

  Liam breathed out slowly. ‘Kind of fine. Dad’s getting more and more forgetful which can be… difficult at times.’

  ‘How’s your mum coping?’

  ‘She’s worried, like me, but OK. They get on pretty well, considering, and she likes that he’s home more these days, rather than being in the pub. Dad was a bit of a lad when he was younger.’

  Rosie narrowed her eyes. She looked like she was about to say something but, instead, she thrust a paintbrush into his hand.

  One hour helping out at Driftwood House soon became two. Not that Liam minded. The rhythmic strokes of the paintbrush were soothing and it was peaceful here, high above Heaven’s Cove, with only Rosie for company, although she hardly spoke.

  She’d been painting the opposite wall for a while, but seemed distracted and kept abandoning her paint and switching to other tasks. A couple of times she opened the bureau and looked at the paperwork that she’d gathered up from the floor and shoved inside. When she did it for a third time, Liam paused from slapping on paint and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. She was never going to get Driftwood House up to scratch if she couldn’t concentrate.

  ‘Something interesting?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Not really.’ She turned over a photo she was holding. ‘Have you heard of someone called Morag MacIntyre?’

  ‘Sounds like a good Devon name.’

  Rosie’s smile was half-hearted. ‘I just thought you might know her.’

  ‘Afraid not. Why?’

  ‘Nothing important. She’s in this photo that I found in the attic.’

  He squinted at the picture she was waving at him. ‘Is that a baby?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me. Look!’

  The baby was wrapped in a white knitted shawl and clasped to a woman’s chest. ‘Is that you and your mum?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘You were tiny.’

  ‘I was premature, around six weeks, I think.’

  ‘Did you find that other paperwork in the attic too?’

  He was prying but she was acting very oddly – staring into space while paint dripped from her brush onto the floorboards, or abandoning her painting all together to pace up and down. She stared at him with her big, troubled eyes: an intense gaze that sliced right through him.

  ‘I found the photo in a box in the attic, along with a copy of the legal agreement abo
ut this house,’ she said, at last. ‘The one that the Eppings sent me.’

  ‘Was there any explanation with that? Anything to explain why your mum kept it from you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Did you find anything else with the lease and photo?’

  ‘A few bits and pieces – my birth certificate and an old letter to my mum. A love letter.’

  ‘From your dad?’

  Their conversation was interrupted by the shrill ring of a phone. Rosie snatched up her mobile and winced when she looked at the screen.

  ‘Hey, Matt,’ she said, her voice over-bright and high-pitched.

  ‘Hey, there.’ Matt’s voice was tinny but Liam could just make out the words.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘I’m missing you.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Yeah but I’m missing you big time, babe.’

  Liam might have been mistaken but Rosie recoiled slightly at the word ‘babe’. It made Matt, whoever he was, sound slightly sleazy, thought Liam, fully aware of his own hypocrisy. He was pretty sure he’d called girlfriends ‘babe’ in the past.

  ‘I’ll be back soon, Matt.’ Rosie was hunched over the mobile, trying to keep her conversation private.

  ‘When, though? The sun’s out and interest in our properties is soaring. We could do with you in the office,’ said Matt’s tinny voice.

  Liam raised an eyebrow. One minute Matt was missing Rosie and the next he was moaning that she wasn’t at work. What a charmer!

  Rosie lowered the phone. ‘I’ll take this outside. Back in a minute.’ As she grabbed a cardigan and slipped through the front door, he heard her say: ‘Oh, no one. Just a local who’s giving me a hand.’