husband had actually been Miles.
‘Frankie?’ Peta assumed her sister had phoned for a chat, yet she was doing all the talking.
‘Still here,’ Frankie said. Peta’s impassioned tirades against politics in the PTA, unfairness in the rugby club, Philip’s long hours, the boys’ adolescent mood swings and stinky bedrooms had wafted over Frankie quite soothingly, like a billowing sheet.
‘So – what’s been happening in the Back of Beyond?’
‘I don’t live in the back of beyond.’
Peta laughed. ‘Burnham Market it ain’t.’
It was just under twelve miles to Burnham Market but Frankie had to admit quietly to herself that her sister had a point. Renting a holiday cottage in the popular market town had inspired her move from London to Norfolk. But like most holiday romances, reality rendered the fantasy obsolete. Property prices in any of the Burnhams were beyond her means. The type of home she envisaged for her family, that which she could afford, took her further afield. Or, as Peta would have it, in the middle of a bloody field.
‘And the kids?’
‘They’re brilliant,’ said Frankie. ‘Loving school. Loving the outdoors, the sea. Dressed crab from a shack. Scampering.’
‘And you? New friends?’ Peta worried that Frankie’s choice to have a limited social group in a city was one thing, but to move miles away from anywhere was quite another.
‘There’s Ruth,’ said Frankie.
‘The reiki woman?’
‘Alexander Technique,’ Frankie said. ‘It’s about balance and posture, rest and realignment and it’s helped with my headaches already. She’s definitely becoming a good friend.’
‘She’s not a lentil-munching happyclappy hippy is she?’
‘Peta you’re terrible. She’s chic, sassy and my age. She’s much more Jäger-bombs and a secret ciggy than mung beans and wheatgrass shots.’
‘Thank God for that. But you can have more than one friend you know.’
‘You’re not going to tell me to join the PTA are you?’
‘No but too strong a belief in self-sufficiency can be isolating. Lecture over – how’s work?’
Frankie paused. ‘It’s back. The block. I can’t hear Alice. It’s really worrying me now.’ She misread Peta’s ensuing silence and leapt to the defensive. ‘Just because I write for kids doesn’t mean it’s child’s play.’
‘Whoa – whoa. But it’s happened before – when you’ve struggled with the story. Have you told your editor?’
‘No. He keeps leaving messages. And I daren’t tell the bank either.’
‘Are you strapped?’ Peta asked. ‘For cash?’
Frankie thought about it. She had only to ask her sister. She’d done so in the past and Peta had been generous, keen even; as if the money she’d married into had value only when she could give it to others.
‘It’s OK, Peta. Guess what turned up today? Not so much a bad penny – but four grand. From Miles.’
‘Oh dear God that man. Where is he?’
‘Ecuador.’
‘Doing what?’
‘God knows. Being Indiana Jones.’
‘Bank it – before it bounces. And go and drink wine with Ruth. Or join the school mums for a coffee morning.’
‘I don’t have time – I have to write my book.’
Frankie decided she’d try and fool Alice into appearing. She left her pencils and paper all spread out on the kitchen table like a fisherman’s nets but instead, she drove to Wells-next-the-Sea directly from dropping Annabel at school. It was all part of her plan. She went to the bank and was told it would be five working days before Miles’s cheque appeared in her account. She went to the newsagent, bought a plain notepad and a clutch of pencils that she wrapped inside a copy of the Guardian. Then she walked slowly, casually glancing in shop windows as if this was precisely the way she’d planned to spend her morning. She came to two cafés almost next door to each other, but she eschewed the crowded one that indulged mums and toddlers with cappuccinos and crayons for the one that didn’t. She wandered in as if the fancy had only just taken her. It was filled with the creak of pensioners but there was an empty table by the side window towards the back and it was perfect. Dumping all her stuff on the empty chair, she ordered poached eggs on toast – white please – and a pot of tea. And there she sat, watching the microcosm of Wells going about its business, as if the street in this small seaside town typified the world at large. Mothers with strollers, people with dogs, builders taking a break, pensioners taking their time, a couple of kids playing hooky, a traffic warden trying to be inconspicuous, a horse and rider, a lorry headed for the Londis – and just an off-duty author having a fulfilling breakfast of eggs and toast and tea.
Alice?
Alice?
You should see this place – why don’t you come and sit with me awhile?
I don’t like towns, Frankie.
It’s hardly a big town.
I like fields.
But this is fun, it’s different. No one knows you here, Alice. See – a lovely blank piece of paper. Hop onto it – it’s what you know. I’ll look after you.
He won’t come you know – not here. He’s too shy. You know that.
You went trick-or-treating together though? That was in a town – remember?
That was in Cloddington. You created Cloddington for me to live in. This place is not there.
But it’s similar.
It’s completely different Frankie. I don’t want an adventure here. But if you eat your eggs and finish your cuppa, I’ll race you home.
So Frankie ate her eggs and finished her tea and walked briskly to her car and raced Alice home. But Alice won. By the time Frankie made it back to her kitchen table, Alice had found one heck of a hiding place and wasn’t going to give Frankie even the tiniest clue as to where she was.
* * *
‘Frankie Darling.’
The voice of Michael, her editor, came through on the answering machine and Frankie closed the door to the kitchen as if he might spy the pages devoid of any creativity strewn over the kitchen table.
‘My surname’s Shaw,’ Frankie muttered at the answering machine, ‘not Darling.’
Actually, she quite liked the way her publishers always referred to her as Frankie Darling. Her agent simply called her Author. She liked that too.
‘Frankie
