Page 1 of Don't Believe A Word

Prologue

‘Tell me I’m seeing things.’

Mia, who’d spoken, didn’t look round as her sister, Lottie, came quietly into the room behind her. Her eyes remained fixed on the mystery of what she was studying through the picture window of their hilltop home. Rented for the summer season.

Amused, perhaps a little irritated, by the way Mia was peering around a curtain as if afraid of being seen – it would have to be by a bird, or a paraglider or someone hanging upside down from the roof to get eyes on her here – Lottie took centre stage to investigate the focus of interest.

‘Where are you looking?’ she asked, searching the sunlit slopes of lush green fields that rolled from their outside terrace down to the scrubby beach below.

‘You’ll see,’ Mia said softly.

Lottie already had and as her heart slowed with surprise she blinked uncomprehendingly at the sight of a small child in a blue anorak and yellow wellie boots sitting all alone on the gritty sand. Her back was turned so they couldn’t see her face – she was too far away for it to be more than a blur anyway – and her white blonde curls were being tossed about in the breeze. Her tiny hands looked to be clutching her knees.

What on earth was she doing there all alone? That was how it appeared. And what could she be staring at? There was nothing to see apart from the churning might of the Severn Estuary and mountainous terrain of South Wales on the horizon.

Had someone gone into the water and not come out again?

There seemed no panic in the child, so presumably not that.

‘How did she get there?’ Mia asked, almost peevishly, as ifsomeone might be playing a trick that she couldn’t quite get a handle on.

Lottie looked up and down the coast as far as she could see. There was no one else in sight, no parent or fishing boat, no sign at all of how the child might have got to the bottom of their hill and onto that godforsaken stretch of stony shoreline. It was as if she’d been washed up by the waves and simply left there like flotsam – or some kind of offering?

Mia would like that.

So would Lottie, although maybe for different reasons.

Of course, the child must have walked, it was the only way, but she was surely no older than two so she couldn’t have done it alone.

‘Her mother, or someone, must be nearby,’ Lottie said, ‘we just can’t see them from here.’

They continued to watch and wait.

Eventually, the little girl stood up – she really was tiny. She turned towards the long grass that swept up the far side of the field towards a small spur of a track that wound on up to the South West Coast Path. There was a stile, not visible from the sisters’ window, where the occasional hiker or rock pool explorer could gain access to this remote, rather dismal bay. Lottie expected the child to wave, and maybe start running to someone coming her way – a parent who would appear from the wings any second to scoop her up and carry her away.

No one came, and after a few stumbling steps the child sat down again, her back still turned. This time her tiny hands seemed to be covering her face.

Mia’s deep brown eyes moved to meet Lottie’s.

Both women were in their mid-forties, their birthdays just a year apart, Mia – Emilia – being the eldest. Both were tall and slender, with a regal sort of bearing. There the similarities ended. Mia was brown-haired and pale complexioned, with a slightly too prominent jaw and close-set eyes. Lottie – Carlotta – with her lustrous dark curls and fine-boned features, was often described as a beauty.

‘She can’t be alone,’ Mia said, disbelievingly.

Lottie continued to watch and wait. This was all wrong, a tiny speck of humanity alongside a vast, amorphous sea with no one to mind her. It was making her heart thud with unease, and stir with a sense of protectiveness – something she instinctively felt towards children, in spite of having none of her own.

‘It’s starting to rain,’ Mia said, noticing a gauzy mist drifting like a veil across the landscape. There was a small crease between her brows as she created all manner of scenarios to fit the tableau of small child seemingly abandoned on a beach.

Lottie didn’t answer, simply dug her feet into a pair of old hiking boots and tied the laces.

Mia said, cautiously, ‘Edwin won’t like it.’

Lottie regarded her sister in scornful dismay. Her tone was cool as she said, ‘Your husband isn’t here.’

Mia flushed and seeing how much she’d hurt her Lottie was momentarily torn between contrition and an urge to slap her.

Pulling open the door she paused and turned back. ‘She’s probably too young for tea,’ she said, ‘so heat up some milk,’ and stepping out into a lively gust, she crossed the terrace to begin the descent to the beach. It wouldn’t matter, she told herself, if someone showed up when she got to the child and told her to mind her own business. She didn’t mean any harm, and besides, if anyone should be indignant about the situation it ought to be her. After all, what right-thinking person allowed a little mite like that to venture close to the sea on her own, even if the tide wasn’t likely to come in any further today? All she, Lottie Winters, wanted was to make sure the child was in no danger then she’d go happily on her way. Well, maybe not happily, for her curiosity would want to be satisfied by the reason the girl had come to be there in the first place.

As she strode effortlessly down the hillside she could feel Mia’s eyes boring into her back, and could actually sense her unease. It wouldn’t be so much about the mission Lottie was bent on, although that would be a part. It would be all tied up in Mia’s constant fear of what she’d do if Lottie ever found a husband of her own – someone whose need of Lottie, whose right to her time and devotion, would necessarily trump Mia’s own.

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