Page 29 of The Sapphire Child
Stella had brought her swimming costume – excited by Esmie’s reminiscences of dips in the sea – and got changed in an old boathouse. Andrew was already up to his waist when Stella ran into the water.
She shrieked. ‘It’s freezing!’
‘I told you it was,’ Lydia called out. ‘That’s why I never swim – unless I’m in the south of France.’
‘Come on!’ Andrew grinned. He thrashed towards her and splashed her.
Stella was so shocked by the icy spray that she couldn’t even scream. She chased Andrew in the shallows and pushed him into the sea. He pulled her with him and her head went under. She came up gasping and choking.
He looked panicked. ‘Are you all right?’
She had never experienced such cold or the taste of salt water in her mouth but her whole body tingled.
‘That was horrible!’ Suddenly she was laughing. ‘You’re horrible.’
Andrew sighed with relief and started laughing too. ‘I’ll race you to that rock over there.’
‘That’s enough for me,’ she said, wringing out her wet hair and shuddering with the cold.
‘Stay in, Stella,’ Andrew urged.
But she was already running up the beach.
Stella wrapped herself in a towel and watched Andrew swim to a rock and back. Lydia had already made it plain that she was there as a servant and nothing more.
Andrew came out of the sea and while he towelled himself down, Stella made an effort to engage a bored-looking Lydia in conversation. ‘What an interesting home The Anchorage must be, MrsLomax. Looks like it grows straight out of the rock, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s a bleak old place,’ said Lydia. ‘Terribly damp and cold, no matter what the time of year. I couldn’t bear to live there, but Tibby doesn’t seem to mind the lack of modern comforts.’
‘I think it’s rather romantic,’ said Stella. ‘Like the tower in Rapunzel.’ She pictured herself letting out a coil of fair hair and Hugh – a dashing knight – scaling the cliff and climbing up to meet her.
Andrew laughed. ‘Imagine if the only way in was Auntie Tibby leaning out the top window and letting down her hair.’
Lydia huffed. ‘It’s just the sort of mad thing Tibby would do.’
Stella had thought about Hugh every day since leaving the ship. She’d been hurt and confused at his sudden switch of interest from herself to Moira in the final few days of the voyage. One minute they’d been spending all day in each other’s company – and the evenings tucked away in dark corners of the deck, kissing – andthen she’d been felled by another bout of seasickness and by the time she’d emerged from her cabin, Moira had been monopolising Hugh and he didn’t seem to care. Stella hadn’t said anything to either of them and she’d left the ship without being able to get Hugh alone and discover what had caused his change of heart. Yet, as they’d said goodbye, he’d said how he’d like to visit her at The Raj Hotel and she’d been left not knowing what to think.
Stella resolved to try and put him out of her mind. Craning her neck to look up at the forbidding-looking castle keep, she was filled with curiosity; she was keen to see inside The Anchorage. She wanted to learn more about Tom’s early life there, yet knew she couldn’t ask Lydia. The woman seemed jealous whenever Andrew mentioned his father – or Esmie – so it was best to avoid speaking about either of them.
Lydia spent the rest of the week taking Andrew out for drives around the county to introduce her son to various friends and acquaintances. Minnie accompanied them but Stella was left behind.
‘Make yourself useful and help Lily with the laundry,’ Lydia ordered.
Stella struggled to hide her irritation at her high-handed manner but did as she was asked.
Stella also offered to help Miss MacAlpine in the kitchen, but on the third day of looking for things to do, the cook chased her out.
‘It’s a braw day – you dinnae wanna spend it in a hot kitchen. Away you go and breathe in God’s fresh air, lassie. Take some shortbread from the tin.’
At a loose end, Stella went to the garage where Lydia had said there was a spare bicycle that she could use if Andrew wanted tocycle around the town. Finding it, she dusted it down, pumped up the tyres and decided she would visit The Anchorage. Tibby had said to call whenever she wanted. Cook gave her a tin of her deliciously buttery shortbread to take as a present and Stella set off into a blustery headwind.
Twenty minutes later, she arrived at a set of rusty iron gates and stopped to catch her breath. One gate was ajar, so she wheeled her bicycle through. Large trees swayed above, sighing in the wind. A grassy track twisted ahead through overgrown lawns dotted with daisies and buttercups, and she was assailed by the honey scent of warm grass and wild flowers that reminded her fleetingly of Gulmarg.
But this was nothing like Kashmir. Ahead lay the castle, its ancient stone looking pinkish in the sunshine. The building was a hotchpotch of pepper-pot towers, crenulations, narrow windows high up and large casement windows down below. Half of the front wall was covered in dark creeping ivy.
Stella hesitated. Perhaps she shouldn’t be coming here on her own?
‘Hello! Can I help you?’
