Page 12 of The Diary at the Last House Before the Sea

‘Poor Gran,’ said Clara quietly.

‘Poor Gran, indeed. The whole thing was totally ridiculous. She’d hardly have stuck around here, cooking and cleaning for the Brellashams, if she’d had tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of diamonds stashed away. We’d have all been living it up in the Bahamas.’

Clara agreed that they would have, biting down her anger that such an unfair accusation had ever been made. Violet Netherway had given years of her life to making the Brellashams’ lives more comfortable. She’d continued working after getting married and having a child, even though that wasn’t the done thing back then, and yet that was how they repaid her.

‘The maid was mistaken, of course. I doubt Mum was anywhere near Audrey Brellasham’s bedroom,’ continued Julie as the stew grew colder beside her.

‘Unless she went into Audrey’s bedroom for the diary.’

Julie stared at Clara, blinking rapidly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She must have taken Audrey’s diary. How else would it have ended up in her bedside table?’

‘But why would she—’ Julie stopped mid-sentence and shook her head. ‘None of it makes any sense. It didn’t then and it doesn’t now, and all I know is that Audrey Brellasham’s diary will drag everything up again so you need to leave it well alone.’

‘OK, Mum,’ said Clara gently, reaching across the table to pick up the diary which she placed back into its velvet bag. ‘Perhaps I should give it to Geoffrey.’

‘No. Absolutely not. That man has suffered enough. He was only a young boy when his stepmother drowned and I don’t want this diary dredging it all up again for him. Or reminding him and other people in the village about the dreadful rumours about my mother and the Netherway family.’

Clara weighed the book in her palm. It felt heavy with secrets.

‘So what do we do with it?’ she asked.

‘We throw it away, with the rest of the rubbish in that carrier bag, and pretend that it was never found.’ Julie got up from the table and held out her hand. ‘Give it to me, please.’

When Clara handed the diary over, Julie went out of the room and, after a few moments, Clara heard the lid of the kitchen bin clang shut.

‘That’s done,’ her mother declared, coming back into the sitting room, a flush staining her cheeks pink. ‘Now, let’s eat our meal and talk about something else.’

She ladled out lukewarm stew and Clara, noticing a faint tremble in her mother’s hands, changed the subject to River and Bartie’s return.

Clara couldn’t sleep. The clock at Heaven’s Cove church had just struck three chimes to mark ten forty-five, its sound carrying faintly on the wind, but Clara was still wide awake.

Her mother had retired to bed early, after a bizarre evening spent making small talk and never mentioning the elephant in the room – or, rather, the diary in the bin.

Clara had stayed up a little later but had now been tossing and turning in bed for almost an hour as sleep eluded her. There were too many thoughts racing through her mind: thoughts of River and Bartie’s return, her grandmother’s ordeal regarding the missing necklace, and Audrey Brellasham’s final written words.

After another five minutes of not sleeping, Clara got out of bed and padded to the window. Navy clouds were scudding across an inky sky, and a pale moon was peeping from behind them. Dark water glinted through the trees and a bat flitted past, making her jump.

Clara shivered as moonlight cast shadows across the grass. Were there ghosts in this cottage, which was built at the same time as the manor? Spectres of ancestral Netherways, perhaps, who were for ever tied to this place?

Fortunately, she’d never felt spooked in her home. But Brellasham Manor was another matter.

Clara often caught a shadow at the corner of her eye when she walked through the elegant rooms of the stately home. The manor definitely felt haunted – still inhabited by the souls of people long gone. People like Edwin, Geoffrey’s father, and Audrey, whose bedroom remained out of bounds behind a perpetually locked door.

River was still breathing but he seemed like a ghost, too, back in the manor house that he’d left behind so long ago.

Clara’s mind spooled back through the years. She’d known that River’s mother, Lucia, had been thinking of leaving Brellasham Manor for good – just as Audrey had done, though Lucia was planning a less tragic exit. River had taken her into his confidence and sworn her to secrecy, and it was a secret she’d kept. But when their departure came, it had been swift and unexpected.

He’d promised, if he and his mother left, that he would keep in touch but there had been no letters or photographs from his new life in Australia. Nothing but a postcard a few weeks after he’d gone, with no return address, that said: Dear Clo (his nickname for her at the time), Probably best not to keep in touch now I’ve moved on. I really hope you have a good life. R.

The brusque finality of it still made her heart hurt. I really hope you have a good life. As if he cared. He had disappeared, and Bartie had soon followed suit. Clara, an emotional fifteen-year-old with a crush on eighteen-year-old Bartie, might have thought she would miss River’s cousin the most. But, in fact, it was shy, awkward River whose company she most craved.

Clara did her best to banish both men from her thoughts and turned from the window. She should go back to bed and try to sleep, but she couldn’t stop picturing Audrey writing in the diary that was now lying in the kitchen bin.

Perhaps her mum was right and it was best forgotten. But Clara wanted to find out more about Audrey, whose perfect life had ended in such tragedy. A woman who had seemingly been almost airbrushed from the Brellasham family history ever since. Didn’t her voice deserve to be heard?

Opening her door quietly, Clara walked down the stairs, switched on the hall light and went into the kitchen. A potent smell of old meat and decaying vegetables hit her nose when she opened the bin. The diary was nowhere to be seen so she put on the rubber gloves beside the sink and pushed her hand into the mess.

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