Page 48 of The Diary at the Last House Before the Sea

A rush of overwhelming anxiety suddenly whooshed through Geoffrey, from his head to his toes. He couldn’t breathe. This was too much emotion for him to cope with. It made him feel sick, as though he might be dying.

He turned on the bench to face Bartie and tried to keep any panic from his voice as he sought reassurance.

‘Selling this place is the right thing to do, isn’t it? I keep thinking I’m making a dreadful mistake, that I’m missing an obvious way to maintain the status quo.’

Bartie put his head on one side, as though he was seeing Geoffrey in a whole new light, and sucked air between his teeth.

‘I think we have to face hard facts here, Geoffrey. You’ve lost a lot of money on business deals that didn’t pan out, and the costs associated with securing financial loans would be prohibitive. They also wouldn’t solve the issue of how this house continues to thrive as you grow older and – forgive me for being blunt – become less able to cope, with no son around to provide support.’

He smiled. ‘But, looking on the bright side, you’ll have enough money from the sale to fund a very comfortable life for yourself elsewhere. Perhaps you could consider emigrating to Australia so you’re closer to River.’

Geoffrey couldn’t imagine moving to the other side of the world at his age, and River wouldn’t want him closer anyway. But he nodded, even though he knew that he would end up living alone in a part of England he didn’t know, surrounded by people who were strangers.

‘Hannah, my developer contact, will be here the day after tomorrow,’ Bartie continued, ‘and I have high hopes that she’ll see the potential in this place and will make us a great offer.’ He patted the older man’s hand. ‘It really is for the best, Geoffrey. You’re doing the right thing.’

‘Yes, of course I am.’

Geoffrey breathed deeply in and out, relieved that the surge of anxiety was lessening. He only hoped that Bartie hadn’t realised how panicky he’d felt, as if everything in his life had turned on its head and nothing made any sense. How his father would have berated him for displaying such weakness.

‘That’s all OK then.’ Bartie got to his feet. ‘I’d better go and check that everything’s in order for Hannah’s visit.’

‘Thank you so much for all of your hard work on this, Bartie. It’s good of you to go to so much trouble. I won’t forget it.’

Bartie smiled. ‘You’re welcome, Geoffrey. I have such fond memories of my time here and I love being a part of the Brellasham family. You’ve been so good to me. I’ve almost felt like a surrogate son since River disappeared from your life.’

Had he? Geoffrey tried to hide his surprise. He’d hardly seen Bartie over the last few years, but he felt warmed by his words. He’d got so much wrong with River, but perhaps he had done something right with Bartie.

21

CLARA

Clara sat in the middle of her bed with Audrey’s diary on one side, the paper bearing numbers written by her grandmother on the other, and the ancient dictionary found in Audrey’s room on her lap.

There had to be some link between all three – she could feel it in her bones – but she couldn’t, for the life of her, work it out.

She leafed through the dictionary again, being careful not to damage its pages that had become fragile with age. She shouldn’t have brought the book home with her, after rescuing it from the coat cupboard when her mother wasn’t looking. But, then again, she should never have removed it from the drawer next to Audrey’s bed in the first place.

As for breaking into the manor’s ‘ghost floor’…Did using a key constitute breaking in? she wondered. Especially if the son of the man who owned the house – for the time being, at least – was with her.

She smiled at the thought of River exploring the forbidden rooms too. For a while, it had been just like the old days, and she’d felt safer with him beside her.

In her mind’s eye, she saw him turning towards her, his body silhouetted in the soft light falling through Audrey’s bedroom window. In some ways he was so familiar and yet, after so many years away, he was a stranger too.

Their friendship was broken, so why had he bothered to look out Audrey and Edwin’s marriage certificate for her? It was kind of him, which was why she hadn’t revealed that she’d already found the certificate online, along with Audrey’s birth certificate. They had revealed that Audrey’s maiden name was Greene, but a search for that name had yielded few facts, and none of them useful. Audrey seemed to have had no close living family left by the time she walked into the sea so there were no descendants to track down. It was another potential avenue of information that could be crossed off.

But the old photographs that River had given her were perhaps a different matter. The stiff poses of husband and wife hinted at a marriage less than happy, but maybe Clara was reading too much into a formal photo taken so long ago.

Clara rubbed her eyes, yawned and focused again on the dictionary lying nearby. This might be her last chance to work out the truth about Audrey and she wasn’t about to give up.

Twenty minutes later, Clara was ready to renege on her ‘no giving up’ resolution. She’d tried various ways to make sense of the numbers but they remained just that – numbers whose meanings were lost in time. Perhaps they didn’t mean anything at all. Unless…

Clara looked at the first hyphenated figure written on the piece of paper by her grandmother: 49-6. She turned to page 49 in the dictionary and ran her finger down the first few words described. The sixth one was ‘boat’, which she jotted down.

That word seemed random but she did the same with the next figure, more in desperation than hope. It led to the word ‘off’, and the third was ‘headland’.

Clara’s heart began to hammer as she continued with the remaining figures, and then she sat back against the pillows and looked at the phrase she’d jotted down. It read: Boat off headland point at seven on Tuesday.

On what day of the week had Audrey disappeared? Clara reached for her laptop, googled the information and her jaw dropped. Audrey Brellasham walked into the sea on the seventeenth of September 1957, and that happened to be a Tuesday.

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