Page 1 of The Diary at the Last House Before the Sea

PROLOGUE

SEPTEMBER 1957

Audrey gasped as water swirled around her knees. It was cold. So much colder than she’d imagined. But she kept on walking, through cresting waves, into deeper water that glistened navy under the darkening sky.

Behind her, lights were starting to shine from the manor house that sat protected in a fold of the land. Soon, Edwin would be looking for her – going from room to room, calling her name and wondering why she wasn’t answering him. Her silence would be deafening.

She glanced over her shoulder, her body buffeted by the full tide. What if he saw her from a window, wading through the water that was now swelling around her waist? She was sure he would try to stop her. He would run from his grand house and drag her back onto dry land. But that couldn’t happen.

Audrey pushed on more quickly, her body going numb as her shoulders sank beneath the waves and currents beneath the surface snagged at her clothing.

Suddenly, an image of the leather-bound diary sitting on her bedside table swam into her mind. She had forgotten to destroy it. ‘Stupid! Stupid!’ she muttered, as tears began to stream down her cheeks, mixing with the salt water that was trying to pull her under.

She had always been careful about what she wrote down. But Edwin would find the diary and he might put two and two together. Her oversight had put someone she cared for at risk but there was nothing to be done about it now. There was no way of putting it right.

On the horizon, black clouds were massing – huge, menacing shapes lit from within by forks of lightning. A storm was coming but, when Audrey glanced behind her once more, the manor house remained eerily calm and quiet, as if it was watching her and ready to pass judgement.

The current was tugging at her feet now, lifting them from the sand, but she tried to stand still for a moment. Her mind was whirling with the enormity of what she was doing. The finality of it all.

No more life at Brellasham Manor. No more life as Edwin’s wife or Geoffrey’s stepmother.

‘I can change my mind,’ she murmured between frozen lips. She could go back and pretend that this moment of madness had never happened. She could continue with the gilded life she had chosen – a life of luxury, privilege, and secrets. But she knew in her heart that it was too late.

Audrey touched the diamonds at her throat and began moving forward again, into the deep water, and felt her body relax as she surrendered to the push and pull of the heaving sea.

Edwin wasn’t coming for her, and this was how it had to end.

1

CLARA

PRESENT DAY

‘Clarissa, are you up yet?’

Clara groaned, rolled over and blinked as her alarm clock swam into focus. It wasn’t quite seven o’clock and yet her mother was yelling up the stairs for her. And she was using her full name, even though she knew how much it wound Clara up.

Perhaps precisely because she knew, and it was a ploy to make sure her daughter was fully awake. It was an effective tactic, Clara had to admit, because sleep was impossible when irritation was shooting darts of adrenaline into your bloodstream.

‘I’m up!’ Clara yelled back, wishing she belonged to the sort of family who woke loved ones with a cup of tea and a whispered ‘Time to get up, darling.’

No such luck. Clarissa Netherway had been born into a family who rarely spoke if they could yell instead. They weren’t necessarily annoyed with each other. But some Netherway gene, passed through the generations, appeared to dictate that family voices should be raised regularly when communicating. Or maybe it was nurture, rather than nature, and succeeding generations had learned to make their presence felt.

Whatever the reason, the Netherways were loud – her mum, her dad when he was alive, and her brother, Michael, who had the good sense to now live in Canada. He hadn’t been saddled with a posh name that got him ridiculed at school.

The bedroom door was suddenly flung open and her mother strode in.

‘You’re not up,’ she declared, yanking back the bedclothes. ‘River will be arriving soon and we need to make sure that everything at the manor is shipshape and just so.’

‘Why?’ muttered Clara, scrabbling the duvet back over her legs. ‘It’s not a royal visit.’

‘It might as well be.’ Julie Netherway gazed into the distance. ‘The prince returns to his ancestral home after years in the wilderness. It’s rather wonderful, don’t you think?’

Clara rolled her eyes. ‘Nope. Australia is hardly “the wilderness”, and River is definitely not a prince. How could he be with a name like that? His Royal Highness Prince River of Heaven’s Cove.’

Her mother sniffed. ‘I don’t know. It has a rugged sound to it, and it’s not his fault that his mother saddled him with a name he doesn’t like.’

‘Mmm.’ Clara pondered commenting but thought better of it. ‘What are you doing, Mum?’ Julie had dropped to her knees and was rifling through her daughter’s underwear drawer. ‘I can sort my own clothes out.’

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