39
The first lie Isobel told her parents was that she was going away to forget it all.
She lifted her face to the sun beating down on the armchair in which she’d stationed herself in the corner of the café window, the worn leather warm and hospitable beneath her forearms. The tourist board’s website had promised hospitality. Other promises included a flourishing cosmopolitan atmosphere and some of the best surf and lobster in the British Isles! Fallenbay looked good in writing, but then Isobel knew better than to be suckered in by anything she read online. If she’d learnt nothing else, she’d learnt that much.
Fallenbay . . . Bay of the Fallen. Aptly named by the pirates who’d once besieged it. Now Isobel’s holiday destination. Her time out. A pretty distraction. She’d pitched it to her parents with those very words. They’d tripped right off her tongue and into her mother’s hopeful ears, easily as a damning rumour. Fallenbay was a just lucky hit. A random spot on the map Isobel had stuck her pin into. That was the second lie she told.
Isobel