Page 6 of An Ill Wind in Seabury
Tank was more like it.
Urgh!
She’d have been so much happier making the trip in her trusty little banger, but her mother had put paid to that.
“Why must you always insist on being an embarrassment to this family?!’
Still, at least she’d paid for the awful thing. With divorce number two newly finalised, Claudia barely had two pennies to rub together. If shedidhave any money right now,she sure as hell wouldn’t be wasting it on keeping up appearances… she’d be too busy moving out of her mum and stepdad’s pool house!
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she muttered, scowling at a seagull as it dared to swoop in front of her. ‘I wasn’t always this pathetic, you know!’
The bird glared at her with a decided lack of sympathy before soaring back out towards the sea. Claudia stuck her tongue outat it. If she wasn’t wearing this pair of ridiculous heels, she might actually be tempted to stamp her foot too. Anything to let off a bit of steam! As it was, she was having a hard enough time keeping her balance while putting one foot in front of the other. A temper tantrum would probably topple her over completely.
Even so… itwastempting!
Claudia was already at the end of her tether, and she’d only just arrived in Seabury. She should never have agreed to come in the first place. If it wasn’t for the fact that she had her own agenda while she was in town, she’d have told her mother where to stick her ridiculous demands.
‘Yeah, right! Like you’d have had the guts to say “no”,’ she huffed, doing her best to ignore the hot prickle behind her eyes.
It had been years since Claudia had had the strength to stand up to her mother. In fact, the last time she’d dared to try it was when her dad had been alive… and back then, life had looked very different.
Of course it had. She’d been a mere baby of nineteen!
With dreams of becoming an artist, Claudia had said a tearful final farewell to her first boyfriend, and—egged on by her wonderful, maverick father—she’d headed off to Europe on a solo interrailing trip.
Unfortunately, her grand adventure hadn’t lasted long. In fact, she’d been in Paris just three hours when she received a phone call from her heartbroken sister. The call had promptly put an end to life as she knew it. According to her sister, their dad had finally snapped. That morning, he’d packed all his worldly possessions and walked out—promising their mother that divorce papers would be in the post the minute he got back from a skiing holiday in the Alps.
Claudia had dutifully returned home on the next train.
The divorce papers had never arrived… because her dad had never made it home.
‘Don’t think about that now!’ she muttered, doing her best to steer her thoughts away from the avalanche that had ended her father the minute he’d dared to claim a bit of freedom.
Claudia shook her head. She needed to keep it together. Right now, she had some serious meddling-by-proxy to do. She needed to find the Pepper brothers, and she didn’t fancy facing them with red eyes and a snotty nose.
According to her research, Seabury House was meant to be on this side of town somewhere. It had looked easy enough to find when she’d studied the map, so where on earth was the blasted drive that led to it?
Claudia had already driven up and down what felt like every lane and cart track in the county… and not one of them had led to her final destination. All she’d found so far were tight u-turns and angry locals.
That farm had been the last straw. It was hard enough making the stupid SUV do what she wanted at the best of times, and turning the thing around was like some major military manoeuvre. Add a sea of chickens into the mix, and her shredded nerves had completely given out.
That’s when she’d spotted the layby and decided she’d be safer doing a bit of exploring on foot instead.
‘I should have changed my shoes first,’ she muttered.
Pausing briefly, Claudia closed her eyes and did her best to let the feel of the soft sea breeze on her skin calm her down a bit. Unfortunately, it did nothing of the sort. Instead of gently cooling her as strands flew around her face like she was in a soft-focus romcom, the wind simply pushed her entire fright-wig to one side in a solid block.
Claudia let out a growl as she patted her stiff, crunchy hairdo back into place.
Stupid wind.
Stupid sea.
Stupid cute-as-a-button beaches!
It was all wrong. Her hair was wrong, this trip was wrong… hell, her entire life was wrong!
All she had to show for her life so far were two failed, loveless marriages and a mother who was more than happy to point out every single mistake she’d ever made at every given opportunity.
