veg shop.
‘Go on, you’ll be late if you don’t get a shuffle on,’ shooed Cleo.‘And get your mother to top up your data, Milo!’ she called.
‘She won’t!’ he called back.
‘Yeah,’ the other boy snorted, ‘his mum thinks too much internet will warp his little mind.’
‘Get going, boys,’ Cleo instructed, marching purposefully towards the back of Coast.
‘So, wanderlust, Isobel? Sounds exciting.’
She felt her thoughts stall like those fainting goats Ella liked to watch on YouTube. She should’ve put more effort into her back story before making pretend friends with chatty locals.
‘Not really. More of a flexible holiday.’ It sounded like a lie.
‘So why Fallenbay, of all the places?’
Because I’m a teacher too. With a lesson to teach. ‘Um . . . the surf. I want to learn.’
‘Yeah, the schools here are great, you should book in with the Blue Fin guys. They started my boys off.’
‘Go on! Move it along! You can’t just rummage through my things, even if they are the unwanted bits. Go on or I’ll call the police.’ Cleo emerged from behind the café, arms spread wide, herding a man looking at her in complete bewilderment. He had a thick matted beard and duct tape around his trainers.
‘Poor guy,’ said Sarah quietly. Cleo was trying to drive him towards the street, but their generously laden breakfast table had caught his attention. Isobel felt her breathing quicken. The fallen-from-grace banker. Who liked to hurt girls. ‘We should give him something to eat,’ Sarah decided. ‘We’ll have to be discreet though. Cleo bans customers for encouraging the gulls, she’ll go berserk if we encourage that gentleman. Uh-oh, I think he’s read my mind.’
Isobel’s heart was pattering steadily.
‘No, no, come away from there please, this way! Walk this way and I’ll find you something to take with you.’ But his eyes were already locked on the pastries and fruit. ‘No! Don’t bother my guests! I’m so sorry, girls . . .’
He kept on coming. The smell of stale clothes over something less pleasant reached Isobel first. His features were dark and furrowed. Pitiful. Wretched. A man who hurt girls deserved an existence like this, didn’t he? He came close enough that he was staring down at her. She thought about standing, making herself taller, more formidable. The way you were supposed to when confronted by a bear . . . or was it a wolf you should stand your ground with?
‘Isobel?’ Sarah gently touched her hand. Isobel looked down, her knuckles were white, her fist clamped around a fork she couldn’t recall grabbing.
A figure jogged across the terrace. ‘He’s harmless, Mrs R. Come on, Bob, I’ve got a box of sarnies here. I hate tuna but the old dear thinks it’ll make me smarter. Step this way, Bob.’
‘Milo, I don’t think you should—’ Sarah stopped herself.
‘It’s cool. Cheers for letting us bum off your wifi, Mrs R, you’re a life-saver, serious. Bob likes the beach, don’t you, Bob? And tuna sarnies. We’re going that way anyway.’
Cleo stopped eying Isobel and the fork. ‘Milo, hurry up and get yourselves to school.’
‘It’s cool, Mrs. R, just don’t tell the mother you saw us.’
Sarah leant back on her chair and peered along the hallway. Max’s orange raincoat lay abandoned at the bottom of the stairs. At the end of the corridor a familiar rump peeped into view around the kitchen doorway. ‘Mum, stop rummaging through my pantry!’ Her mother’s greying Bardot style popped around the door instead.
‘It’ll take you months to eat this lot, darling. You’ll be paying removal costs for . . .’ her mother inspected another tin, ‘ . . . kidney beans.’
Sarah grimaced. She wasn’t a fan of kidney beans. Patrick had called her boring for picking hers out of a chilli con carne once. Patrick had thought her boring for all sorts of reasons.
She lobbed her pen on to the Healthy! Happy! Hooray! paperwork Mr Pethers had dumped on her and abandoned the study. ‘I think you’re forgetting how much Will eats now, Mum,’ she called ahead. She made the kitchen doorway, the boys’ heights measured and remeasured up the frame. Soon a stranger would paint all over their milestones.
Disbelief glowered in Sarah’s mother’s eyes. ‘Mulligatawny soup?’
‘Think that came in last year’s Harvest Festival basket.’
‘Eat, pack or food bank?’
‘Mum, we only received the offer two days ago. What even is Mulligatawny?’ Sarah rinsed her cup under the tap and looked out on to the back garden. More than a decade of forgotten junk still needed clearing from Patrick’s long-abandoned summerhouse. The rotting shed had been off limits for a long time now; even Jon avoided it, despite it being the only space big enough to house his treadmill. It had been a small mercy the children had been in there and not inside the main house when Elodie had been hurt. A place they could close the door on.
‘Hello? Earth to Sarah?’
‘Sorry. You were saying?’
Milo was growing up. His voice this morning had been deep and confident, just like Karl’s. He’d still avoided eye contact though, the way Juliette had trained him.
‘I said, I believe it’s similar to a curried soup.’
‘What is?’
‘Mulligatawny!’
‘Oh. Mulligatawny,’ Sarah repeated absently. ‘Sounds like an Irish cove . . . or rare owl maybe . . .’
Sarah’s mother glared over her reading glasses. ‘Are you on drugs, darling? I’ve been reading about M-Cat in the Mail. Your father thinks M-Cat and internet porn are going to be the downfall of at least the next two generations.’
Sarah was on drugs, as it happened. Just the one secret pill, every day, religiously.
‘Goodness, that was a rather hefty sigh, darling. And there I was thinking that moving to a palatial new home overlooking the ocean was something to be upbeat about.’
‘Tea, Mum?’
‘Yes please. It is, though, isn’t it, darling?’
‘Is what?’
‘Something to be upbeat about?’
‘Of course. Where’s your cup?’
‘By the teapot. Your father’s always saying you’d both be better off putting your cash into property. Savings just aren’t worth the bother since interest rates died.’
‘Must be right, then. If Dad says so. Chamomile or regular?’
‘Regular is fine.’
She reached for the pot of teabags. Her mum’s hand appeared over hers. ‘Everyone deserves a happy ending, darling. Sometimes I wonder if you don’t believe you’re about due yours.’
‘You worry too much, Mum.’
‘Then what’s the matter, darling? And don’t say nothing
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