Page 6 of Letting Go of Yesterday
‘I did say that, but I was wrong and there’s never any excuse for using bad language.’ Rowan had to look away so that her daughter couldn’t read her expression, because if anything gave her an excuse to swear, it was finding out that her whole life had been a lie. ‘I’m sorry I said it and that you heard it, but I promise I’ll never use language like that again and I want you to promise me the same thing.’
‘I can’t, because I don’t like it here and I never bloody will, not without any of my friends and especially not without Dad.’ Bella put her hands on her hips in a show of pure defiance and Rowan blinked furiously against the tears she was determined not to cry.
‘I know you miss him, but you’ll be seeing him in a couple of weeks. He’d hate to hear you talking like this and it’s not who you are either. You’re allowed to be angry and upset, of course you are, but there are other ways of letting those feelings out and I’m just asking you not to swear.’ Rowan was amazed at how calm she sounded. It wasn’t that using that particular word was terrible, she was sure there were plenty of ten-year-olds who used far more shocking language, but this behaviour wasn’t Bella. It was the hurt on her daughter’s face she couldn’t bear to see, or Bella’s new found belief that it didn’t matter any more what she did, because her life was already ruined. Rowan couldn’t allow either of her children to feel that way and she’d do whatever it took to make sure they didn’t.
3
Port Agnes in August was a bustling place. Despite still being a working fishing village, it was a popular tourist destination, due to both its natural and architectural charm. The harbour and surrounding beaches were carved into a dramatic coastline that rose and fell with the cliffs on either side, with neighbouring Port Kara and Port Tremellien completing a trio of picture-perfect villages on the Cornish Atlantic coast. Narrow, winding streets led up from the harbour, lined with pretty whitewashed cottages and some more colourful ones dotted in between. At the height of summer, the sea was more often than not a vibrant turquoise, reflecting the blue skies above it, and it had a timeless beauty that Rowan hadn’t been able to appreciate as a child. She’d loved life in Port Agnes back then, but for her it had mostly been about the beaches, wild swimming whenever the mood took her and rock pooling, or taking her father’s metal detector down on to the sand to search for treasure when she was younger. It had been rare for him to take time off from the business, so the times they’d spent down there together had been all the more precious.
Then, when she’d hit her teens, there’d been parties and BBQs on the beach. She hadn’t always had the confidence to dance with the others, but when her friends disappeared into the crowd, she would sit on the sand and watch the sunlight dancing on the water and she didn’t need anything else to feel okay. When things finally started to change for her and she began to shake off the cloak of self-consciousness, she’d started to dance too. There’d even been the occasional stolen kiss in one of the caves hollowed into the rocky backdrops that flanked the sand. She hadn’t wanted to escape Cornwall back then, as some of her friends had expressed a desire to do. Rowan had thought she’d live there forever, within walking distance of her parents’ house, and raise her own children in the same idyllic place, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
Now she was back, with Bella and Theo in tow, and they didn’t look as if they’d been transported to paradise. Not one little bit. Even before her daughter opened her mouth to speak.
‘God, I hate it here.’
‘How can you possibly hate it? Every time we’ve been to visit Nanny Kat or Grandpa you’ve loved it.’ Rowan knew that trying to cajole her daughter almost certainly wouldn’t work and that the best course of action was to let Bella feel the way she was feeling and allow her emotions to play out. The trouble was, that wasn’t how Rowan worked. She couldn’t just let the expression on her daughter’s face pass, or ignore the effect it was having on Theo, who looked close to tears.
‘I didn’tloveit, I thought it was okay.’ Bella had her hands on her hips again, sounding closer to thirty than ten. ‘But that was when I knew I was only going to be here for a week. I don’t want tolivehere. The shops only sell ice cream and tea towels, or Cornish pasties and Ihatepasties. I can’t understand why everyone’s queuing for something so gross.’
Rowan had to suppress a smile at the look of pure indignation on her daughter’s face as she took in the line of people outside a shop that had opened since their last visit and which proclaimed itself to be ‘The home of the best pasty in Cornwall.’ She remembered how envious some of her friends had been when she’d told them about her other life in London, during her visits back to Port Agnes to see her dad. She’d regaled them with tales of having every high street fashion chain within walking distance, and her friends had been agog, telling her how lucky she was and how much they wished they lived somewhere like that. Rowan had smiled and tried to convince herself they were right, and that her parents’ divorce reallyhadmade her lucky, but she’d never truly believed it and she’d envied them for still having the life she’d been forced to say goodbye to. She wouldn’t have swapped life in Port Agnes for access to any high street chain, and it saddened her to think that her daughter felt the reverse. Lowescastle, the town nearest to Membory Grange wasn’t huge, but it had all the major retailers that an almost teenage girl probably considered essential. It was also where Bella had lived her whole life and where all of her friends were. Rowan could empathise all too easily with what it was like to be wrenched away from that.
‘Just give it a chance. I know you miss your old friends and that it all feels really strange, but wait until you’ve been at your new school for a couple of weeks and I’m certain you’ll feel differently.’ Rowan dropped her hand to her side and crossed her fingers, hoping to God she was right but lying through her teeth about being certain.
‘I don’t know why we couldn’t just stay with Dad.’ Bella wrapped her hands tightly around her body, as if she was freezing cold, despite the fact it was twenty-eight degrees and Rowan felt hot even in a loose-fitting cotton summer dress. Everything was loose fitting these days. She’d lost more than twenty pounds since discovering James’s double life, but it was no cause for celebration. She felt haggard and old, and as if the trauma of the past few months had been etched on to her face.
‘You know why you couldn’t stay with Dad, because he might be applying for a job in the community and, if he does, he has no idea which parish he’ll be assigned to. Wherever it is, it’s very unlikely to be anywhere near Lowescastle.’
‘He wouldn’t be leaving the school at all if it wasn’t for you. He’s only doing it because you didn’t like it there and wanted to drag us here.’ Bella’s face was hard and she looked far older than she should have done. Anger and sadness rose up inside Rowan as she looked at the girl, who until a few months ago had been so innocent and childlike, and who almost overnight had become bitter and melancholy. She wanted with all her heart to turn Bella back into that girl, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even tell her daughter that the choice to leave Membory Grange hadn’t been a choice at all, it had been about survival. Rowan couldn’t defend herself either, because she and James had agreed that they wouldn’t even consider telling the children everything until he’d made a firm plan for his own future. She wanted to believe that his reticence was about protecting their children too, by waiting until the time was right, but she knew his primary concern was keeping the truth from his father for as long as possible.
‘It would kill Dad if someone tells him and it would end our relationship. Please Row, don’t make me face that.’ James had repeated that same plea over and over again when he’d asked Rowan to keep the truth from their colleagues and the school governors, in the days after his affair with Euan had first come to light. If they discovered what had happened, the information would definitely have found its way to her father-in-law too. She might have told James where he could shove his impassioned pleas if she hadn’t known he was telling the truth about it ending his relationship with his father. She’d heard Michael spouting awful things about same-sex relationships and condemning the couples involved to eternal damnation. She’d argued with her father-in-law on numerous occasions about the subject, but she’d never once been able to make him yield any ground. It was strange, because he seemed fairly liberal about other things. He’d stood by James’s sister, Helena, when she’d divorced her cheating husband, barely batting an eyelid that his daughter was very obviously pregnant by the time she remarried eighteen months later. She’d heard Michael preaching about the importance of tolerance and forgiveness, but he’d actively campaigned against the church employing openly gay vicars and recognising same-sex marriages involving a member of the clergy. It had been one of the reasons for his retirement, jumping before he was pushed probably, and she had no doubt that her father-in-law would react every bit as badly as his son was anticipating.
It wouldn’t stay a secret forever, but as much as James had hurt her, she didn’t want to be the one to force him to come out to anyone, least of all his father.
‘Your dad and I decided that it would be impossible for both of us to stay at Membory Grange and it’s not really surprising that Dad might want a fresh start somewhere too, just like us. Then you’ll have two new exciting places to get to know.’
‘I don’t want to get to know a new place, I want Dad to stay at Membory Grange so I can go back there to live.’ Before Rowan could even respond to her daughter, Theo cut in.
‘I miss my friends.’ His words twisted the knife even further into Rowan’s gut. He’d been so quiet since she and James had split and, unlike his sister, he’d barely complained. Instead he seemed subdued and cloaked in sadness, making his words far more impactful when they came.
‘I know, sweetheart, but I promise things will get better and that you’ll make loads of new friends.’ Rowan crouched down to her son’s level, silently praying that this wasn’t another lie she’d been forced to tell him. ‘Later on we’ll find out if there are any clubs you can sign up to in what’s left of the holidays, so that you already know some people at school before you start. But first let’s go and order the biggest breakfast that Mehenick’s have on the menu and start the day as we mean to go on.’
Hugging her son, Rowan tried not to think about just how much she was missing her own friends too. Pippa and Odette were only at the other end of a phone, but it wasn’t the same as seeing them every day and being able to talk to them about everything she was going through. If Rowan was feeling the wrench this much, it was no wonder her children viewed a move to the village where she’d grown up as the worst thing that had ever happened to them.
4
It had been almost two years since Nathan Lark’s release from prison, having served a six-month sentence for VAT fraud, but he could still sense the silence that fell over a room the moment he entered. That was the downside of coming from a village like Port Agnes. Everybody knew everybody else’s business and there was a small but noticeable proportion of residents who believed he should still be locked up. He’d considered not coming back at all, and making a fresh start where not everyone knew his name and associated it with that ‘nasty business’ as his mother insisted on referring to it. But Port Agnes was where his family and friends were, those he’d managed to hold on to in the wake of his fall from grace. It was also where his brother, Will, and his family lived, and nothing on earth would have persuaded Nathan to live anywhere else, for that reason alone.
The Lark brothers had been inseparable from the moment Will had come kicking and screaming into the world, just eleven months after his big brother. It had earned them the nickname of ‘the Irish twins’, which still made their mum, Irene, blush to this day. They’d been as close as any real twins could possibly have been, sharing the same friends, the same interests and eventually starting a very successful business together, as building contractors. Life had been pretty perfect, even before they’d both fallen in love and got married eleven months apart. When Will’s son, Leo, had arrived, Nathan had been certain that it was the start of the next adventure they’d share, but then the diagnosis had come that had shattered their world and changed the course of both of their lives forever.
‘Hello, my love.’ Ruth Mehenick stepped into the bakery from the café side of the business she ran with her husband, Jago, wrapping her arms around Nathan and giving him a tight hug. He could almost sense the disapproving looks from some of the customers around him and he definitely heard at least one loud tut. If Ruth had picked up on it, she clearly didn’t give a damn. She was good friends with his mother, and she was one of the few people in Port Agnes who’d offered support to Irene during ‘the nasty business’. Ruth had even driven Nathan’s mother to Devon to visit him in prison and, when he’d thanked her once for giving him a second chance and seeing past what he’d done, she’d looked at him and shaken her head.
‘You don’t need to thank me. Everyone deserves a second chance, but as far as I’m concerned you did nothing wrong. Dickens had it right when he said that the law’s an arse.’ Ruth had shaken her head again then and he’d been more grateful than ever for her support. He knew a crimehadbeen committed, but at the time he’d truly believed that there hadn’t been a choice and that circumstances and bad timing had created a perfect storm. Ruth’s opinion that he’d done nothing wrong put her in the minority, and a lot of people didn’t even think he deserved a second chance. That made life very difficult when you were trying to run a business which relied on you being able to secure clients. It had been a tough couple of years, but he and Will had got through it by the skin of their teeth and things had picked up when they’d started taking jobs a bit further afield to places where the Lark surname wasn’t synonymous with a criminal conviction.
‘It’s always good to see you, Ruth.’ He hugged her back, before pulling away. ‘I’ve come to collect Mum’s order and I wondered if I could put a poster in the window, please? It’s about the half marathon.’
‘Of course you can. How’s the training going?’
‘Will and I have both managed the full distance twice.’ Nathan gave her a rueful smile. ‘Although that was with a couple of rest breaks, so it might be a bit more of a challenge if we don’t want to stop.’
