by Judy Astley
‘What time’s it start?’ Sam asked for the fourth time.
‘It said eight thirty,’ Theo told him, stretching his long self out on the floor in front of the new scarlet velvet chesterfield. Sam and Chas looked years older than in the previous summer. They’d grown inches and taken to a short-cut hairstyle, with the same Tintin flicked-up front bits that Aidan had had. Theo had lost his London flabby pallor, partly, Alice was sure, because he’d spent all winter careering about with his new schoolfriends on Tremorwell’s hills risking his life on a skateboard, and as soon as the weather warmed up practically lived in the sea on a surfboard.
‘A few bits of wood and polystyrene,’ Noel had remarked one day. ‘If only I’d known that’s all it would take to keep him amused.’
‘I’ve put the pasties in the Aga to warm up, Alice,’ Mo said, bustling into the room with a tray of glasses. ‘Where do you want the champagne?’
‘Inside me, please,’ Jocelyn demanded from her peacock chair. Alice had tried and tried, but Jocelyn had insisted that the ugly, unravelling cane chair stay in the hexagon where it had always lived. ‘It fits there, sweetie. You keep it,’ Joss had said, patting Alice fondly as if she was bestowing a priceless gift. Joss, of course, had treated herself to a stunning Matthew Hilton leather chair to take pride of place in the revamped Cygnet and spent her afternoons in that instead, peering down her new telescope at the beach and the opposite headland, and reporting back gleefully whenever she saw an adulterously active couple up to no good in the copse by Grace’s favourite bench. Mo, well occupied with the new business in St Ives and recently converted to the delights of a nearby beauty parlour and hairdresser, commented that Joss should have better things to do than to go spying on villagers. ‘Why doesn’t she take up voluntary work?’ she suggested. ‘Or get on with another book?’
Alice poured champagne for everyone and turned up the volume as an advert for cat food faded away. Patrice, she hoped, had done right by Jocelyn in the editing of this life appreciation. It wouldn’t, she thought, look good for him if he hadn’t: Joss was, for the moment, something of a national treasure again, an admired survivor of mad times and excessive living. How long for, nobody knew. But then, Alice recalled, thinking of Grace and Sam trapped in the cave a year ago, who knew how long anyone had?
The programme started with the titles rolling across a view of Tremorwell Bay. Surfers bobbed on the water and there was the muffled sound of holidaymakers calling to each other and whooping through beach-cricket games.
‘Oh look! Me and Big Shepherd!’ Joss commented, pointing delightedly at the screen. Patrice loomed into shot, smiling at the view across the orchard, towards Arthur Gillings’s grave. ‘And here, for over forty years, an icon of her own, and succeeding generations . . . a muse, a symbol, a rebel, an inspiration . . .’
Alice caught Harry’s eyes raised to the ceiling and smiled at him. ‘She’ll go all big-time after this,’ he whispered to her.
‘Yes, but what’s new?’ Alice said.
Grace watched the scenes of her new home as if it was another place and from another time. She lived here now – she was going to be the one who took over when Joss moved on. Exactly what she’d take over, she wasn’t yet sure. All she knew was that she was now happy, at home and at her new school. And she was learning things here, things that the school witch girls wouldn’t have the smallest clue about. Joss was a brilliant tutor, reading and instructing every weekend, sitting with Grace on the fabulous new rope swing chairs on the Cygnet terrace. Grace now knew the proper significance of each of the year’s important festivals and about the part played by the gods and goddesses of the earth and planets and elements. Most importantly, she had her own special crystal that Joss had given her on her birthday. This Litha, Midsummer Day a few weeks from now, she would hang it up for the first time in the hexagon window and draw down the power from the sun for the protection and safekeeping of all at Penmorrow.
THE END
About the Author
Judy Astley was frequently told off for day-dreaming at her drearily traditional school but has found it to be the ideal training for becoming a writer. There were several false-starts to her career: secretary at an all-male Oxford college (sacked for undisclosable reasons), at an airline (decided, after a crash and a hijacking, that she was safer elsewhere) and as a dress designer (quit before anyone noticed she was adapting Vogue patterns). She spent some years as a parent and as a painter before sensing that the day was approaching when she’d have to go out and get a Proper Job. With a nagging certainty that she was temperamentally unemployable, and desperate to avoid office coffee, having to wear tights every day and missing out on sunny days on Cornish beaches with her daughters, she wrote her first novel, Just for the Summer. She has now had ten novels published by Black Swan.
Also by Judy Astley
JUST FOR THE SUMMER
PLEASANT VICES
SEVEN FOR A SECRET
MUDDY WATERS
EVERY GOOD GIRL
THE RIGHT THING
EXCESS BAGGAGE
NO PLACE FOR A MAN
UNCHAINED MELANIE
and published by Black Swan
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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AWAY FROM IT ALL
A BLACK SWAN BOOK: 9780552999519
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446437827
First publication in Great Britain
PRINTING HISTORY
Black Swan edition published 2003
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Copyright © Judy Astley 2003
The right of Judy Astley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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