second-hand parent. Unlike her mother, Morwenna hadn’t planned Loveday or longed for her, and it was hardly surprising that she felt no maternal instincts towards her whatsoever – the emotions which came with motherhood could not be handed down through the family like old jewellery or precious bits of furniture. It had been easier when there were two of them – at least in the early days, before Harry became someone she did not recognise – and she missed her brother’s reassurance, his strength. She had no idea how she would cope financially without him, and she would rather die than go to the Union again, but she had Loveday to consider as well as herself. Things might have been different if she’d only been braver when she had had the chance to make changes: people often told her that there were opportunities outside the estate for someone as bright as she was, but she had clung to the life she knew, terrified of trying anything unfamiliar on her own. Looking back, though, she knew that nothing could have been as unfamiliar as this grief – this vast landscape of sorrow, emptiness and guilt, in which there were no signposts, and no rules on how to behave. If she weren’t so numb, she might be amused by the irony of it all: the first thing she had ever had to do without Harry was mourn him.
Overcome now by weariness, she abandoned the cleaning to the morning and sat down at the kitchen table, thinking back over the events of the day. She was surprised at how pleased she had been to see Archie, although she half regretted talking to him so openly. Still, at least it had stopped her from going too far with Nathaniel: the violence that she had felt well up inside as she watched him in the pulpit had frightened her, and it was only now that she began to analyse why his eulogy had made her feel the way she did. She was concerned about the curate’s influence on Loveday – that much was true, but there was more to it than that. Put simply, she was jealous of his faith: Harry’s death had made her crave the certainty of which she had been so scornful, the certainty which Nathaniel carried with him every day, and she did not want to be teased by the hope of immortality and reunion if she could not believe it in her heart.
And anyway, was that really what she wanted? To see Harry in another life when she could never forgive him for what he had done to her in this one? How could he treat her like that, then leave her to pick up the pieces? That wasn’t reassurance and strength; it was cowardice – despicable cowardice – and the injustice of it was that she was the one left to atone for it as best she could in the blank, meaningless days that lay ahead, when Harry’s death would continue to hang over her like a silent, angry accusation.
She could bear it no longer. Hardly caring that it was Loveday’s favourite picture of her brother, Morwenna tore the photograph of Harry from the wall and ripped it from its frame. She walked over to where the fire burned low in the grate and placed one corner deep into the coals, watching as the flames made easy work of his smiling face – and wishing that everything else could be wiped out as easily.
Chapter Six
The indigo tide stole ever further across the sand like a stain of spreading dye, and campion tinted the cliff- top in every direction. Josephine was glad of the holiday mood which had driven her early from her bed and out along the coastal path for her first glimpse of the sea. She was not an early riser by nature, but one evening at Loe House had shown her that she would be wise to snatch some peace and quiet at the beginning of each day if she was to get any work done at all. The Motleys’ hospitality was infectious, and she was intrigued by the estate traditions which were to be played out over the coming week – above all, she wanted to spend some time with Archie away from the professional demands that dominated their time together in London. If sleep had to be sacrificed, then so be it.
It was a glorious morning, and it seemed to belong entirely to her and to the flock of young herring gulls who swung overhead, testing their broad, muddy-brown wings and repeating a strident, laughing note as if they sensed that their first long winter had finally come to an end. It was the essence of the coast as surely as the pipes were the essence of the Highlands, and it would, she guessed, arouse the same feelings in the heart of someone born to the sea as a few notes of ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ could stir in her. The gulls’ dissonant song followed her along the cliff path, past the church and away from the estate. When she came to a spot which offered a particularly good view of the long beach stretching back towards the Lizard, Josephine left the path and made her way down a gentle slope of springy turf to the cliff edge, where a group of flat, grey boulders created exactly the working space she was looking for. Apart from a solitary figure heading towards her from the direction of the village, there wasn’t a soul in sight. If she couldn’t find peace and inspiration here, it was time to look for another job altogether.
The figure on the path – a small, dark man with heavy black boots and a paper tucked under his arm – waved jovially as he passed her, and went on his way, whistling tunelessly. Josephine sat down on the smallest of the three rocks and took a notebook and pen from her bag, enjoying the ritual and the sense of possibility that these early stages offered before the inevitable frustrations had a chance to take hold. She looked at her watch and made a start, intrigued to see where the first few words would take her. ‘It was a little after seven on a summer morning,’ she wrote, ‘and…’ She cast round for a name. Archie? No, too obvious, and he’d only be embarrassed. William, then – that would do. ‘… and William Potticary was taking his accustomed way over the short down grass of the cliff-top.’ The words seemed to run into each other on the page, and she reached impatiently into her bag again to look for the reading glasses which she had recently accepted as a necessary evil. They felt strange and uncomfortable, and she hated the way she looked in them, but she had to admit that the wretched things made life easier. ‘Beyond his elbow, two hundred feet below,’ she continued, and glanced up from the paper to consider the image. As she looked at the sea, her attention was caught by a shape on the sand down to her left, where the beach cut between two rocks. Glad of any excuse to remove her glasses, she peered more closely at the object and saw that it was a young girl in a green dress, lying on her back with her arms stretched out behind her. The tide was on its way in, and an occasional wave came far enough up the beach to wet her feet. Josephine watched for a moment, hoping that the girl would sit up and move out of reach of the water, but she lay there motionless, allowing the sea to wash over her bare legs and threaten the rest of her body, and Josephine knew instantly that she was dead.
Battling with urgency and hopelessness, Josephine flung her notebook down and ran back to the coastal path. The cliff-top church, which offered the closest safe access to the beach, was about a hundred yards away and she reached it in good time, but then had to double back via the sand, which was much harder going. There was no doubt in her mind that the girl was Loveday, and her concerns of the night before came back now to haunt her. Why hadn’t she telephoned Archie before she went to sleep? No young girl should be allowed to wander about near the sea in the middle of the night, let alone one who had so recently suffered a devastating bereavement and who, in Ronnie’s words, ‘wasn’t quite right in the head’. What were they all thinking of? What a terrible way to go – alone in the cold, black water, just like her brother.
She rounded the rock, no longer able to keep up more than a jog, and saw with relief that she was at least in time to stop the body being washed back out to sea. As she approached the girl, she noticed that her hair and upper body were completely dry but, in her panic, the significance of this did not register – until, as she stretched out her hand, Loveday sat up quickly and looked at her.
Josephine screamed and stepped backwards. ‘Jesus Christ – I thought you were…’ She stopped in mid- sentence, trying to maintain some sort of tact in spite of her shock.
‘No, I’m not dead – I’m just pretending,’ said Loveday, with a matter-of-factness that defied any pretensions to sensitivity. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’
Still breathing hard, Josephine said: ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m glad you’re all right – but why would you want to pretend something like that?’
‘I wanted to know how my brother feels,’ she said earnestly. ‘Everyone keeps saying he’s at peace and nothing can hurt you when you’re dead, and I just wanted to make sure they were telling the truth.’ There was such a powerful combination of logic and impossibility in the reasoning that Josephine did not even begin to argue. ‘It’s a nice idea,’ Loveday continued, standing up and brushing the sand off her skirt. ‘Just being quiet, with no one shouting or crying. I think I’d like that a lot.’
The remark was made without any sense of self-pity, but it told Josephine more about Loveday’s short life than half an hour of conversation could have done. ‘Do people often shout at you?’ she asked.
‘Not
‘Yes – how did you know?’
