SIX
ON SATURDAY MORNING Olivia wobbled up the muddy track to the Barley Nook stables, sandals slipping off the backs of her feet so that her ankle kept catching on the greasy chain. Her denim shorts were baking hot, and beyond the paddocks the green line of the sea was desperately tantalising. She stopped at the crooked gate and wheeled on to the verge, jamming the bike over a crusted fold of earth before resting it against the hedge. To the south lay the avocado expanse of the Montgomerys’ vineyard, where a pair of figures milled in floppy hats, their pastel edges blurred in the Cornish heat, fluid as a Monet watercolour. Up ahead a riding lesson was unfolding. Horses were circling the ring, the strident aroma of hide and manure vinegary and sweet.
Beth Merrill was in the stalls, grooming her beloved stallion Archie. Beth had been inseparable from her horse ever since she’d picked him up as a wild foal: crossing the grassland at the tip of Lustell Cove she had discovered him on the brink of death, tangled in barbed wire and severely dehydrated. Over time she had nursed him back to health, housing him at the stables and riding him every day.
Olivia waved excitedly, making her way over. The girls hugged.
‘I want all the details,’ Beth instructed, her green eyes sparkling. ‘I mean everything. Right now. From the beginning.’
Olivia laughed. ‘All right, give me a chance!’
‘You’re seriously working there?’
‘As of Monday—but swear to God, I didn’t know about the Cato thing.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘I didn’t!’
‘Everyone in town’s going totally crazy. At first it was just a rumour, then Harriet Blease’s sister’s friend’s boyfriend said he saw them in this massive car going through the Usherwood gates and the window was down and apparently Susanna Denver’s had so many facelifts her chin’s up by her ears.’
‘She doesn’t look that bad.’
‘Well, go on then—spill!’
Olivia obliged, running through her first encounter with the Lomax family—she was still weirded out by the whole thing. Each time she recalled it she had to pinch herself, as if she had dreamed it, or it had happened to another person: the collision must have put her in a kind of stupor. She’d been led through the house by a movie star and his actress girlfriend, and it was only when she had returned to her own bed later that night that her brain had finally clicked into gear. Her mother’s caravan had never felt so small.
Beth listened intently, as she always had to Olivia’s adventures; a ten-year-old sitting cross-legged in the garden while she was showered with stories of monster quests and jungle riots, of pirate loot and buried treasure, and of how Addy had held Olivia’s hand one day when they were out in the forest and they thought Gun Tower HQ was being attacked but it had turned out only to be a badger. Since the girls were little, they had been like sisters. Beth was the more cautious, sensible one, a tempering agency on Olivia’s hot-headedness, where Olivia was reckless and fun, dragging her friend over walls and under fences, whispering secrets as they shared their first cigarette, pilfered from the locked tin box Flo kept under the sink. Seeing Beth at home was like no time at all had passed; they could have been those kids again, making potions with her mother’s hemp shampoo or dragging their sledge through the snow. They had shared so much at Lustell Cove.
‘Can I help, d’you think?’ Beth asked, awestruck when she reached the end. Her hair had gone coppery in the sun and her skin was tanned. ‘Since you’ve got the added bonus of visitors at the house? I could wash Cato’s pants?’
‘I’m not sure Cato wears any pants.’
‘Have you seen?’
‘No,’ Olivia lifted an eyebrow, ‘just an instinct. And anyway, I don’t know if Cato being there is a bonus. He and Charlie seem to really hate each other.’
‘Ooh; Beth teased, ‘it’s “Charlie”, is it?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Is he still all tortured and moody?’
Olivia regarded her quizzically. ‘Huh?’
‘You remember—at Towerfield?’
Something faint glimmered at the edges of her memory. Before the Lomax boys were bundled off to Harrow they had attended the local prep. Cato had been way older, she couldn’t recall him, but another boy in Addy’s year, yes, possibly: shirt untucked, messy hair, the big polished car that used to drop him off at the gates …
‘Silly question.’ Beth’s expression was wry. ‘You wouldn’t remember because you were so obsessed with Addy that you never even noticed anyone else.’
‘I was not.’
‘You were, too.’
‘He didn’t hang out with Addy. I’d have noticed if he had.’
‘That’s ‘cause he didn’t like Addy.’
‘How would you know?’
‘It might be an impossible concept for you to grasp,’ Beth sighed, ‘but not everyone does. It’s just you who’s got this massive blind spot.’
‘All right, all right!’ Olivia bristled. ‘Anyway you should have seen him with Cato. They were at each other’s throats, standing there yelling at each other. No,’ she frowned, ‘not yelling, it was more restrained than that—and kind of more intense for it. At one point I thought they were going to strangle each other!’
‘Sexy!’
‘Hmm.’
‘Is it any wonder, though?’ Beth resumed grooming her horse, taking the brush in long slow strokes across the animal’s flank. ‘Of course they can’t stand to be in the same room, what with Cato shooting off the second their parents disappeared. Poor Charlie,’ she grinned, ‘got left behind to look after everything.’
‘I suppose.’
‘What age was he back then, thirteen?’
Olivia shrugged, trying to work it out in her head. Charlie would have left Towerfield at twelve, when the boys had gone into senior school. He would have been at Harrow a year before his parents vanished, and she guessed that the housekeeper had taken care of him after that. He definitely hadn’t been at Towerfield when it happened because if he had then Addy would have talked about it; and she would remember Addy talking about it, if nothing else.
‘It would have been bad for Cato, too,’ Olivia argued. ‘I expect running away was easier, maybe he just couldn’t face things here.’ Cato had been far nicer to her in their brief acquaintance, and she felt the need to defend him.
‘Maybe.’
Olivia narrowed her eyes.
‘Between you and me,’ she confided, ‘I can’t help feeling the animosity’s about more than the parents dying. Something else, something deeper …’
Beth
