Page 1 of The Key to the Last House Before the Sea

NESSA

PRESENT

The sea was calm today. Water was washing against the shoreline with a gentle slap, and gulls seemed to float overhead. Nessa breathed in deeply and tasted salt on the roof of her mouth as she looked around her.

This place, so long abandoned, was a familiar sight. Her family’s derelict cottage stood to her right. In front of her were tumbledown walls and scattered stones – the ruins of the rest of the settlement that had once stood here. The village that had disappeared on a day the sea turned. When the water was whipped by storm winds into a malevolent force. It was hard to believe on a peaceful day like today.

Nessa walked to the edge of the land and looked across the rocky shoreline towards the horizon. The sun was rising in a pale blue sky scudded with wisps of white cloud, and boats were bobbing far out to sea. It was just the kind of summer day that her grandmother had loved. And would never see again.

Nessa swallowed and opened the plain box she was carrying. It was surprisingly heavy and had weighed down her arms, as well as her heart, on her walk here, to this forgotten village filled with ghosts.

Suddenly, she was desperate for company. She didn’t have to be alone today.

Rosie, such a good friend, had offered to come with her more than once. But she was always busy, and was already doing more than her fair share to help. And Lily… Nessa smiled at the thought of her five-year-old daughter, who’d skipped into school half an hour earlier.

Lily was too young to handle what Nessa had to do today and she’d had enough to cope with recently. In the space of one month, she’d lost her beloved great-granny and her home. Only Rosie’s offer of a room at her bed and breakfast place, Driftwood House, had saved them from who knew what fate.

Nessa shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun and looked along the coast. The village of Heaven’s Cove nearby was huddled close to the shore and there was Driftwood House, standing on top of the cliff that rose above the quaint cottages.

It was a wonderful old building, with magnificent views of the sea to one side and a sweep of land towards Dartmoor on the other. But she and Lily couldn’t stay there for long. It wouldn’t be fair on kind-hearted Rosie, who had a guesthouse business to run and couldn’t afford to take in waifs and strays.

Nessa shivered before turning her attention back to the task in hand. This was going to be hard, but it was what her grandmother had wanted. It was what she’d asked of Nessa, as she lay in a hospital bed, her white hair fanned out across the pillow.

‘My final request,’ was how she’d described it, with the ghost of a smile.

It was strange, thought Nessa, slowly tipping the box she was carrying into the soft breeze. Her gran had refused to set foot in this place for seventy-five years, yet it seemed she’d always planned to come home eventually.

‘Goodbye, my darling gran,’ she whispered as a stream of ash fell from the box and was caught by the wind. It danced out across the ocean. ‘Goodbye, Ruth Mariana Paulson. Rest in peace, you wonderful woman.’

Some of the ash fell onto the stones around her. But most rained down into the water that Nessa knew covered the ruins of homes swallowed by the sea one night long ago – the night of the big storm that had changed her family’s fortunes forever.

Her grandmother had been left motherless and homeless by that storm. And now, decades on, here was Nessa in the same predicament.

Stifling a sob, she tipped out the remainder of the ash, all that was left of the grandmother she adored, as sunlight sparked on the golden bangle around her wrist.

She ran her fingers across the unusual bracelet – an overlapping circle of gold with a snake’s head at one end and its tail at the other. She’d been fascinated by the bracelet as a child and loved hearing the story of how her great-grandmother had found it here, at Sorrel Cove.

But there would be no more stories of the old days now.

‘I’ll miss you so much, Gran,’ gulped Nessa, above the screeching of the seagulls wheeling overhead. ‘I’ll look after Lily and keep her safe, I promise you. So you can rest now. You can rest with your mum.’

She bowed her head for a moment, overcome with sadness. Then she wiped away her tears and turned to the cottage that had once been her family’s home.

It was easy to imagine her young grandmother standing in the doorway, snuggled against the leg of her mother. The mother she would lose only a few years later when the weather turned.

Five people had died here that night, as the wind howled and the black sea rose up. No wonder the village’s name was rarely used and most locals called this place ‘the Ghost Village’.

Children never came here, scared that the ruins truly were haunted. But Nessa, in spite of her grandmother’s tales, had always found it a place of comfort. Especially on days like this when life seemed almost too much to bear.

She ran her hand along the rough stone wall of the cottage that her grandmother had once called home. Farthest back from the sea, and sheltered by land rising behind it, the building had fared better than its neighbours over the years. Its walls and roof were still intact but years of abandonment and neglect had taken their toll. The front door was swollen shut and windows were boarded up.

There was a gap in one board and Nessa peered through into what must once have been the main living room. Beams of sunshine had found chinks in the wood and were throwing light across a flagstone floor and brick fireplace. A wooden ladder lay abandoned against one wall, and Nessa could make out a stone staircase in one corner.

Once, this cottage had echoed with adult conversation and children’s laughter. But now it was gloomy and empty.

Nessa could understand why her grandmother had never wanted to come back here. She’d listened, wide-eyed, to her gran’s tale of fleeing the sea that engulfed everything in its path. And she’d realised Sorrel Cove held too many memories of what young Ruth had lost.

But at least her grandmother had returned in the end. And Nessa knew that the old lady’s presence in this quiet place would be of comfort to her in the months ahead.

‘Bye, Gran,’ she said one final time, wiping away more tears. Then she began to walk away from the Ghost Village, away from memories of the past towards her current life, with all its problems.

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