Page 20 of The Sisters at the Last House Before the Sea

‘We’ve all done that. Maisie never takes her key with her when she goes out. Ever.’

Isla shrugged. ‘Paul cares about me and worries about me. That’s all.’

‘And that’s great. It’s just…’ Caitlin hesitated but she had to ask. ‘Is everything all right between the two of you?’

‘Of course,’ said Isla, bristling as Caitlin knew she would at her sister poking her nose into her life. ‘How are things going with you and Stuart?’ she shot back.

Now was the perfect time to tell her the truth, and Caitlin was tempted. But how could she admit that the choices she’d made – choices with consequences for both Isla and their grandmother – had ultimately backfired on her?

‘Fine,’ she said, sitting back in her chair.

‘Only you’ve hardly mentioned him since you arrived.’

Isla always was canny when it came to wheedling the truth out of Caitlin, but not this time.

‘He’s away at a work conference in Gran Canaria and is probably spending a lot of time on the golf course nearby. He’s been in touch. Anyway, what about this riddle, then?’ Isla’s mouth tightened at the change of subject but she picked up Jessie’s riddle. ‘Can you read it again?’

‘Don’t get in a spin, girls, though mistakes can cost you dear. This one brings good fortune and, I hope, will make you cheer,’ said Isla, gently brushing her fingers across their grandmother’s spidery writing.

‘What did Gran mean by “good fortune”? I don’t see how the letter can be worth any money, unless…’ She bit her lip.

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless Great-Great-Aunt Edith…oh, what a mouthful! I vote that we drop the extra “great”.’ She began again, ‘Unless Great-Aunt Edith made her fortune in the States and we’re inheritors. Or perhaps this American man she married was absolutely loaded and the letter is giving us a clue about how we can lay claim to some of it.’

Isla sighed and pulled her feet up beneath her on the sofa. ‘Why are you so fixated on money? You’re the last person I know who needs it.’

Her sister obviously thought she was a dreadful money-grabber. Caitlin’s heart sank at this latest black mark against her.

‘Anyway,’ Isla continued, ‘Edith didn’t go to America in the end. Or if she did, she came back.’

Caitlin frowned. ‘How on earth do you know that? You said you’d had no luck on the internet.’

‘I didn’t. I can’t find any mention online. But I actually found her today. Great-Aunt Edith, in Heaven’s Cove graveyard.’

For a split second, Caitlin thought Isla meant she’d bumped into Great-Aunt Edith near the church. She shook her head to banish the ridiculous notion. ‘You found her grave, you mean?’

Isla narrowed her eyes. ‘What else would I mean? It’s behind the church, near the wall and quite hidden away. It’s with a few tumbledown stones which look as if they’ve recently been cleaned by volunteers from the residents’ association. Her stone said she died in 1922, at the age of twenty-four.’

‘That’s so young.’

‘I know, right?’

‘Perhaps she and William were over here, visiting family at the time.’

‘No, that’s the strange thing. Her surname wasn’t Columbus. It was still Anstey.’

‘Are you sure it’s the same woman?’

‘The birthdate was the same: born on the seventeenth of January1898. So it must be her.’

Caitlin sat up straighter in her chair. ‘That is very odd, then. I wonder what happened between her and William? He sounded devoted to her in the letter but perhaps Edith wasn’t as enamoured.’

‘Who knows, but the epitaph on the gravestone was strange. It was hard to read because it was so weathered by a hundred years of Devon storms, but it looked like: Beloved daughter and aunt, who died of a broken heart.’

‘A broken heart?’ Caitlin frowned. ‘Was she broken-hearted about William? Thinking about it, she must have cared a great deal about him or she’d never have kept his letter. So I wonder why she didn’t go with him back to America?’

‘Perhaps she lost her nerve,’ said Isla quietly.

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