fine.’ She’d shrugged off the caring hand her mother had placed in the small of her back.
‘If you’re sure?’ Her mother let her hand rest by her hip. ‘Is it your period?’
She had hunched her shoulders and scowled at that. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘Ella and Henry had a lovely day with you on the beach,’ said her mother, bending her head to look up into her daughter’s downcast eyes. ‘You’re doing so well.’
Sennen shrugged and turned to head for the stairs. Her father came out of the kitchen. ‘Those little ’uns of yours asleep, are they?’
‘She’s tired, Bill,’ replied her mother.
‘An early night.’ Her father smiled. ‘Good for you.’ She could feel her father’s loving gaze on her back, as she ascended the stairs. She wouldn’t turn around.
‘Goodnight, Sennen,’ chirped her mother. ‘Sleep tight.’
Her parents had finally gone to bed almost an hour ago and now she picked up the heavy rucksack she’d got for her fifteenth birthday. It had been used once, on a disastrous first weekend of camping for the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award. Even now the bone-numbing cold of one night in a tent and the penetrating rain of the twenty-mile hike the following day made her stomach clench. Back home she refused to complete any more challenges and dropped out. She used Henry as an excuse. He had just started to walk and her mother expected her to come home from school every weekend and do the things a mother should do for her child. On top of that she was expected to work hard for her exams. Why the hell would she want to learn how to read a map and cook a chicken over a campfire as well?
And then Ella came along.
Sennen had sat in the summer heat of the exam hall, six weeks from her due date, hating the kicks of her unborn child, hating being pitied by her teachers.
She rubbed a hand across her eyes and tightened the straps on the rucksack. What a model daughter she had been. Two babies by a father unknown and now she was leaving. Leaving them, her A levels, her over-indulgent liberal leftie parents who had supported her through it all – and leaving Cornwall.
She hovered on the landing outside Henry and Ella’s room. She didn’t go in. She knew she would never leave if she saw them, smelt them … She kissed her hand and placed it on their nameplates on the door. Downstairs, she tiptoed through the hall. Bertie the cat ran from under the hall table with a mew. She put her hand to her mouth to stop her startled cry then bent down to tickle him. ‘Bye, Bert. Have a nice life.’
Slowly she turned the handle of the downstairs loo and edged in carefully, making sure that the rucksack didn’t knock over the earthenware plant pot with its flourishing spider plant. Bert came with her and she had to nudge him out with her boot before closing the door behind him. The front door was too noisy to leave by.
The loo window always stuck a little and the trick was to give it a little thump with your palm. She held her breath, listened for any noise from upstairs. Nothing. She wound the small linen hand towel around her fist. It took three good pushes, each stronger than the last before the window swung open, noiselessly.
She threw the rucksack out first and then carefully climbed out after it.
She pushed the window shut and stood in the moonlit, tiled courtyard. In a corner was Henry’s little trike and in another, Ella’s beach pushchair. She had meant to take both in in case of rain, but had forgotten. She looked up to the night sky. Cloudless. It would be a dry night.
She picked her way over the sandpit, held in a wooden box that her father had made for her when she was little and now given fresh life to with a coat of scarlet paint, and made her way to the gate. The hinge creaked a little, but before it had shut itself she was already gone. Around the corner, down the lane and out to the bus stop by the harbour.
Pendruggan, 2018
Kit Beauchamp stirred the tomato soup in front of him. ‘When will your brother get here?’
Ella put her bowl down on the kitchen table and sat opposite him. ‘Why? Nervous?’
Kit looked up into Ella’s golden eyes. ‘Should I be?’
‘He’ll adore you,’ she reassured him. ‘And if he doesn’t, you’ll know about it pretty quickly.’
‘Oh blimey.’ Kit really was nervous.
Ella loved that her boyfriend was taking this meeting seriously. Her brother was the only family she had left. His opinion counted for everything. She picked up her spoon and replied, ‘Tomorrow lunchtime. He’s getting the early train down from Paddington. Should be at Bodmin by about one.’ Ella pushed curls the same colour as her soup behind her ears and dipped her spoon into the steaming bowl. She sipped and burnt her top lip. ‘Ow.’
‘Careful,’ Kit said, blowing on his own spoon.
Freckles bounced across her face as she opened her mouth to fan cool air onto her burning tongue.
Kit tore at the centre of his crusty French roll and handed her some. ‘It’ll cool you down.’ She took it gratefully.
For a couple of minutes neither spoke, quietly enjoying their simple lunch.
‘I suppose,’ frowned Kit, ‘I don’t want to make a bad impression.’
Ella giggled. ‘I think Henry is the one who needs to be more worried. He can be a total arse.’ She pulled Kit’s hand over the table and rubbed it against her cheek. ‘You’ll be the brother he never had.’
Kit let his hand trail her cheek and chin. ‘He’s very important to you, isn’t he?’
She blew on another spoonful of soup and nodded. ‘We are the last of the Tallons.’
Kit wiped the final crust of bread around his bowl. ‘Why do you think the solicitor wants to see you both?’
‘The usual, I expect. Mum has either hidden herself so well that she doesn’t want to be found, or she’s dead.’ Ella put her spoon down. Kit saw the lost child in the woman in front of him.
‘He’ll find her,’ he said with a certainty he didn’t feel.
‘I don’t know.’ Ella sighed. ‘Pass me your bowl.’
‘I’ll wash up,’ he said glancing out of the window and looking at the sky. ‘Fancy a walk? The dogs could do with one. Or are you too tired after all that vacuuming for your brother?’
Ella looked over at Terry and Celia who were lounging in their separate beds looking as disdainful as only Afghan hounds can.
‘Well,
