“Don’t pretend things are fine when we both know it’s a lie; just tell me the truth.”
The consultant inclined his bald head. The registrar coughed awkwardly. His fingertips were yellow, Ashley noticed.
It was time for some gallows humour…
“You really shouldn’t smoke,” Ashley remarked. “It kills you, apparently. I’ve never even had a puff. How’s that for irony?”
The registrar couldn’t meet his eye. It seemed that there was suddenly something very interesting on the floor.
Ashley’s consultant cleared his throat. His expression said that the time for joking was over, and for once Ashley couldn’t have agreed more.
This was a deadly serious business, after all.
“I’m very sorry, Mr Carstairs,” the consultant began, flipping open his notes and fixing Ashley with serious grey eyes. “We need to face some tough facts because I’m afraid it’s not great news…”
To be continued in the next Polwenna Bay novel
A Time for Living
A Time for Living
A Polwenna Bay Novel
Ruth Saberton
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 judgment 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, glancing around excitedly. Braids bobbing with enthusiasm and blue eyes shining, she was clearly enjoying every single second and Mo didn’t have the heart to point out that she simply wasn’t in the mood for village celebrations. “The race has started! Quick, let’s find somewhere to watch!”
Threading her way through a group of holidaymakers, 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, 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 hoping his sons completed 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 a stake.
“Come on, Bobby! Come on Joe!” Issie was screaming at her friends, the enthusiastic nature of her waving almost causing her to tumble 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 pretty 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 piloted by four muscly young men dressed as Bay Watch life guards zipped into the lead and any protests that she might have had were drowned out by Issie’s screams of excitement. While the boys rowed, two slim girls in blond wigs pelted the opposition with flour bombs and before long the bay was hazy with a mist of McDougal’s finest self-raising.
“Go on, Nick!” Issie hollered at her twin brother, who was rowing for all he was worth. “Come on!”
As the rafts rounded the marker buoy and turned for home the crowds erupted, everyone cheering and clapping and totally caught up with the excitement 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 Comfort blue skies, 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 them! 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 no love lost between the Tremaine family and the St Miltons from the hotel, that was for certain. Ella St Milton and Mo had loathed each other for years, a feud that had culminated with Ella taking Mo’s star horse away last month while the hotel’s heir, Teddy St Milton, had been rubbing her brothers up the wrong way since primary school.
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. A rag tag mixture of craft, sponsored by the businesses in the village and crewed by everyone from 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 were working long and hard, and often top secretly too, on the designs for their rafts. Fights had been known to break out in the pub when industrial espionage was committed and 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 was spared if it could possibly be utilized; it was an unwise villager who left rope or twine lying around. Any scraps of fabric that could be transformed into flags or costumes were gathered up for Alice Tremaine to work her magic on. Most of the shabby chic bunting that festooned the harbour today had come from her sewing machine and Mo even recognized scraps 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 these 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 pelted 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 in a traditional free for all where everyone jumped into the sea or launched water balloons from the harbour. Jake, Mo’s eldest brother, had been running the safety boat and was laughing as he received a good natured pelting from some children on the quayside and 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; his injuries sustained in action in Afghanistan, followed by a wife who didn’t seem sure whether she wanted to stay with him or not, had meant that for a while he’d been a man on the edge. His peculiar friendship with Jules the vicar seemed to have cheered him up though, as had having Morgan with him for the summer. Of Mo’s on off sister in law there was no sign. She’d obviously decided to give the water carnival a
nd her husband’s family a miss.
Typical, thought Mo darkly. She could cheerfully have dunked Tara Tremaine in the harbour and held her under until the bubbles stopped for the way she’d 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 she knew Danny was 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? And she was the one who’d walked out on Dan.
“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 he 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. Unable to see his injuries from here and with the sunshine turning his blonde 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. “I’m glad she didn’t listen.”
“She did until Morgan told her that his mum had a new boyfriend. Fact!” Issie grinned, quoting their nephew. “She gave Dan a huge lecture about marriage and God though. Apparently he was pretty scared. She’s dead serious about religion.”
Mo laughed. “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 didn’t feel 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 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 woods/making a helipad delete as appropriate. Rich, materialistic and from London Ashley represented just about everything that Mo hated. He insisted that everything he wanted was done a double the usual speed, which was really saying something in Cornwall where do it dreckly was the usual attitude, and had an aloof arrogance that really got Mo’s hackles up. Dark, saturnine and arrogant, Mo couldn’t stand Ashley Carstairs; in fact she’d even go as far as to say that she hated him.
Which made the fact that she’d kissed him at a recent masked ball infuriating and that her head and heart hadn’t stopped spinning since 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 St Wenns.”
“Granny Alice did say something about the last Parish Council meeting talking about the church’s future but seriously? You think Cashley’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 six 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 wanted to concrete over Fernside Woods and build a private drive to his house so badly that he’d outmanoeuvred Mo and the PAG at every turn and finally purchased the land at a price several times the amount they had managed to raise. Ashley had taunted Mo every step of the way – she was sure he’d only kissed her as some part of his evil master plan – and seemed to enjoy each verbal battle they shared.
When he’d handed her an envelope that, as it had turned out, contained the deeds to Fernside Woods made out in her name Mo had been uncharacteristically lost for words. It 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 was in darkness and there had been no sign of him since. His boat was untouched in the marina and although he’d trebled the work force 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 leaving the deeds with her like that?
And this was the state that Ashley got her in. Never normally confused about anything – you didn’t get to ride event horses around Badminton 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 bad 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 said it but Ashley Carstairs had better come back soon because this was doing her head in.
“Well? Do you?” prompted Issie when, deep in thought, Mo didn’t reply.
“I wouldn’t put anything past him,” she said firmly. “It’s a pretty church and some outsider would probably love to live in it once Ashley’s developed it, although knowing him it’ll probably be turned into a night club.”
“A night club? Cool!” said Issie, then catching her sister’s glare added quickly. “Joke!”
“Never joke about Ashley Carstairs,” Mo warned in true beware the ides of March style. She certainly wasn’t laughing. Several dreams that she didn’t dare start to 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 Trelawne 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 Poldark thing going on.”
Mo snorted. “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 had a great backside, not that she’d looked at it that much.
Or at all, actually.
“Beware the Greeks is all I’m saying,” she warned.
“Never mind the Greeks. It’s tall, dark handsome Londoners you should watch out for,” teased Issie as they turned left past Symon Tremaine’s Plump Seagull restaurant and joined the tide of bodies flowing towards the mini fete on the
village green. “Nick and I reckon he fancies you.”
“Well, that shows how little you two know then!” retorted Mo while silently thanking God nobody knew about that midnight kiss except for her and Ashley. She would simply die of shame. In Polwenna Bay it would be like owning up to fancying the fisheries minister or something. With her face start to glow, Mo pretended to be fascinated by the nearest stall, which only made Issie even more suspicious.
“Since when have you been so interested in crocheted doilies?”
Mo ignored her. The small village green, inappropriately named as it was actually made of concrete and without a blade of grass in sight, was crammed with an eclectic mix of stalls selling everything from pickled onions to splodgy paintings from the village’s resident artist, to tarot readings courtesy of Silver Starr, patron of Polwenna Bay’s New Age Shop, Magic Moon. A local folk duo was providing the music, pasties were being sold from a cart and everyone seemed in high spirits. Even the seagulls were having a wonderful time feasting on debris from over flowing bins and dive-bombing tourists for ice creams.
“Let’s get our cards read,” suggested Issie, making a bee line for the rickety stand where Silver Starr, dressed up in full Romany costume, was busy shuffling her deck and charging five pounds for the privilege of making up utter nonsense. With her flowing hair, flouncy clothes and jangling jewellery Silver might look the part but her real name was Shirley Potts and she came from Uxbridge. Everybody in the village knew she was about as psychic as one of the pasties on Patsy Trelawnes’s cart.
“Are you out of your tiny mind?” Mo said. “She’s a total fraud.”
“So you say but Jenny Jago swears by her. She says Silver’s told her things that nobody else could know.”
Mo rolled her eyes. “Jenny Jago has the IQ of a lettuce and a particularly stupid lettuce at that. Besides, she’s got such a mouth on her that every body knows her business, it wouldn’t be hard to predict who she’d fallen out with or what poor soul she fancies.”
[Polwenna Bay 01.0] Runaway Summer Page 42
