Page 75 of The Key to the Last House Before the Sea

VALERIE

Valerie sat at the side of Lily’s bed, gently stroking her granddaughter’s soft hair.

She’d had a bad dream, Valerie presumed. Something had woken her with a start in the middle of the night, even though she’d slept through the storm earlier.

Maybe it was because she had a cold and was finding it hard to breathe through her nose? Valerie leaned down and listened to her breathing, in and out. At least the asthma that had plagued her as an infant was under control these days.

Whatever had roused her from slumber had caused her to cry out for her mother. But her mother wasn’t here. She was living in a run-down cottage in that spooky village, which would definitely give Lily nightmares.

But at least Valerie was here now. She’d always be here for her darling girl.

She glanced at the clock with its nightlight that was casting an amber glow around the bedroom. Almost two a.m. The dead of night.

Valerie shivered in spite of herself, as a cold draught snaked under the door and wound itself around her ankles.

Through the wall, she could hear the low rumble of Alan’s snores. She’d be awake for hours, she realised, even after she was sure that Lily was fast asleep again. She’d never get back to sleep herself while Alan snorted and grunted next to her.

She’d asked him to go to the doctor about his snoring, which was getting worse. But he said his snoring wasn’t a problem. Which it wasn’t for him, clearly, since he was resistant to the gentle kicks that Valerie aimed at his shins to make him stop. Truth be told, the kicks weren’t so gentle these days but he slept and snored on, regardless.

Valerie sighed and ran her finger gently down the bridge of Lily’s perfect, bunged-up nose.

‘Never marry a snorer,’ she whispered into the semi-darkness.

Or a man who’ll abandon his own child.

The thought came out of nowhere, as it sometimes did these days, when she saw Lily growing and changing. How could Jacob bear to miss out on his daughter’s life? What could be more important than family?

Valerie trampled down the traitorous thoughts until they slid back to where they came from. During the day, when life was busy, she could reason with herself over Jacob’s choices: he was young; he was tricked into fatherhood; his work was important at this stage in his life.

But when she woke in the night, burning hot with her heart pounding, and the house was silent – apart from Alan’s snores – she sometimes felt a rush of disappointment about her only child. Disappointment that he wasn’t the man she’d hoped he would become. And an uncomfortable realisation that he was like his father in some ways.

Alan hadn’t moved out when she’d had Jacob, but he had left all the childcare to her. Every nappy change. Every broken night. Every grazed knee. But times were different back then, thirty years ago, she reasoned with herself.

When Lily snuffled softly in her sleep, Valerie smiled and brushed hair from her granddaughter’s eyes. At least she had this child who loved her.

But for how long? Cold fear lodged itself in Valerie’s chest. Soon this child she loved so much would be back with Nessa, living in that dreadful cottage, and Valerie’s home would go back to being quiet and oh so boring.

Nessa, for all her faults, seemed to be making a good job of staying in the cottage. She’d presumably stayed put during tonight’s awful storm and, if she could manage that, nothing would faze her. The thirty days and nights would soon be up. And Lily would leave.

If only she could have her here for good. Valerie would give her everything that her mother couldn’t. And Jacob would surely visit more if his daughter was living here all the time. He didn’t come home for his mother. But he would come home for his child.

If only Nessa’s plan would fail.

My life is filled with if onlys, thought Valerie sadly.

But it was true enough that Lily and Nessa couldn’t stay at Driftwood House forever, and finding a decent new place to live wasn’t easy with so many local properties now changed into holiday lets.

Tourists, according to Paula in the village, would pay top whack to stay in a pokey two-bed flat with a dodgy internet connection. That’s what she’d bought as a holiday let with money from her late mother’s estate, and she reckoned she was quids in.

There was the flat that had come up above the ice-cream parlour but Nessa had totally dismissed that idea, claiming she couldn’t afford it. Surely she was being foolheaded?

Valerie huffed and stretched her neck from side to side. The top of her back was starting to ache from sitting hunched over Lily’s bed.

If Lily lived here permanently, Valerie would turn this into her special bedroom, rather than a bland spare room for people who never came to visit anyway.

If only Nessa’s plan to secure the cottage came to nothing.

An idea wormed its way into Valerie’s head as she sat in the quiet room, watching Lily’s chest rise and fall. An awful, unforgivable idea, which she tried to bat away.

But it kept coming back after she climbed into bed next to snorting Alan and tried to drift off. And after a sleepless hour, she’d come to a decision. Securing Lily’s future was the most important thing in Valerie’s life. And she would do that by any means necessary.

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