she asked. ‘I have to go to work. Someone’s off sick at the café and they want me for the lunch service.’
‘The café? I thought you were working on a yacht.’
‘It’s a vintage sailing trawler actually, but it’s the end of the season so I’m only helping in the office two days a week. I’ve started doing some shifts in the Harbour Café again.’
He huffed. ‘Oh, well, I suppose you need a bit of money for extras and stuff. Lucky you don’t have to pay a mortgage or rent.’
‘Mum and Dad seem OK with the arrangement at the moment, and they’ve got enough on their plate without worrying about whether or not to sell this place. It’s not good to leave old houses like this empty, especially over the winter. I’m keeping the place safe and secure until they decide what to do with it, and I’m doing the garden and small maintenance jobs.’ Which took up a lot of her time, she could have added, not that Marcus would realise, because he didn’t know one end of a screwdriver from another.
‘They can’t even decide whether they want to stay married, so I shouldn’t hold your breath. Although if they do get a divorce, they’ll have to sell the manor and you’ll have to move out.’
‘Sorry. What was that?’ Ellie held the phone at arm’s length, fuming quietly that her attempts to soothe him had obviously failed. ‘I can’t hear you, the signal’s really bad down here.’ She heard his tinny voice say something about ‘being prepared for the worst’ then banged the handset on the hall table. ‘Oh no! Damn! I’ve lost you. Speak soon!’
She hung up.
Swearing under her breath, Ellie scooped up her car keys from the hall table. With a bit of luck, Marcus would be too wrapped up in his waste-management meeting to remember he’d called her landline.
As she drove, she thought back on her conversation with Marcus – it had renewed her worries about everyone involved, especially Scarlett. While Marcus had gone into a similar path of denial to their mother, choosing to blame Ellie and Scarlett for opening up a can of worms, Scarlett had taken the opposite and perhaps more understandable route: retreating from their mum and blaming her. Ellie understood this, even if she thought it wouldn’t help the rifts to heal any faster, or encourage their mum to open up. Not only did Scarlett have to cope with the turmoil of their parents’ estrangement, she also had to come to terms with finding out that her dad wasn’t her biological father. Scarlett couldn’t even begin to do that while their mother refused to be honest with them.
At least Ellie’s work at the bustling Harbour Café, with its cheerful boss and quirky clientele, kept her mind off her problems for a while. She loved Porthmellow in all its moods, even on a foggy autumn evening such as this, with mist wreathing around the old clock tower and the waves slip-slopping against the harbour walls. With its cosy beamed interior, the café was at the heart of village life; bustling with locals and visitors from breakfast till teatime.
Twilight was falling by the time she walked out of the old building onto the quayside. It was almost completely dark when she reached the dead-end lane that followed a stream down one side of the steep valley to Seaholly Manor and then the tiny cove itself.
The bare branches of the trees lining the cove lane were spidery in the gloom. Some people might have found the manor spooky on their own, but Ellie had spent nights in some ‘interesting’ places around the world and ghosts didn’t bother her. In fact, she wouldn’t have minded a chat with Auntie Joan again, bless her. Ellie hadn’t seen her that often, but it was enough to miss her witty, sharp conversations and anecdotes about famous authors. Joan had never been shy about relating her romantic adventures either. Their mother would probably have been horrified to hear what she’d shared once the girls were over eighteen. Even before then, they’d delighted in reading her novels, especially the ones in black and red covers that were written under another name that Joan kept in a chest in her room and didn’t think they knew about.
Seaholly Manor had so many happy associations that Ellie felt she could never be afraid there. It was also unlikely that anyone would find their way down to the manor by accident, as it wasn’t signposted from the road. Unless the burglars had a thing for first editions and filthy fiction, there was nothing worth nicking anyway. Still, on such a gloomy night, she was looking forward to getting inside and making up the fire before phoning Scarlett to see if she was OK.
The road levelled out and narrowed over the last few hundred yards to the manor. From nowhere, a shadow darted out from the bushes and across the road.
Ellie let out a cry and swerved to avoid the fox. A heartbeat later, there was a bang as the car slammed against the hedgerow. The seatbelt tightened across her chest and there was only silence.
It took a few seconds for Ellie to get her breath back. Gingerly, she flexed her wrists and hands and waited for any stabs of pain in her neck or back. The seatbelt had done its job, which was why she was out of breath, but otherwise she seemed to be OK. The car, however, probably wasn’t. That sickening crash hadn’t been the sound of metal hitting mere twigs. Like many Cornish hedgerows, this one had an earthen bank, reinforced with stones, at its heart.
The vehicle was at an angle, so she was able to open the door and swing her legs onto the tarmac. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, the road lit only by a sliver of moon appearing now and then from behind the clouds.
She shone her phone torch on the front of the car. The bonnet was warped and the bumper was crumpled and pushed back into the engine.
‘Oh f-f—’ It looked pretty bad and she already guessed that the insurance company would write it off. That was all she needed. She also had the problem of what to do next, because she doubted it was driveable. She’d have to call out the local garage to tow it, if she could get hold of them. She was blocking the road too, not that anyone else was likely to use it.
The car wouldn’t start, so she was about to phone the Porthmellow Garage when she heard the low rumble of another vehicle coming down the lane. Two headlights wavered in the gloom and her heart sank further.
They belonged to a Ford Transit of the kind Scarlett loved to call a ‘kidnapper’s van’. Hairs stood up on the back of Ellie’s neck and she prepared to jump into the Fiesta and lock the doors. It stopped a few feet away, the door opened and a man got out. She didn’t recognise him but she knew one thing: he cut an unnerving figure in the dark. He was over six feet, wearing a black leather jacket and built like the proverbial brick outhouse.
She debated whether to jump inside while she had the chance, but told herself to be sensible and assume he had a rational explanation for being on the lane. A wrong turn in the fog was surely more likely than him looking for people to abduct?
‘Hello. Are you OK?’ he called as he approached. His accent wasn’t broad, but more importantly, his tone was concerned. Ellie let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.
‘Yes. My car isn’t though. I swerved because of a fox … It was instinct. That’s why I’m blocking the road.’
‘That doesn’t matter, as long as you’re not hurt. You’re sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Ellie gave him a closer look. ‘Did you take a wrong turning down here in the fog? Porthmellow’s the next road.’
He smiled. ‘No, I meant to drive down here. I’m Aaron Carman. I’ve just moved into Cove Cottage.’
‘Really? I had no idea …You weren’t there yesterday
