Page 49 of The Key to the Last House Before the Sea

‘No. She painted all the time. I’ve still got some of her pictures. But she’d never come back here, however hard I tried to persuade her. Too many traumatic memories, I suppose. She told me a few stories about the place and people, though.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like Ernie Jenkins, who came back from the war with only half an arm, and Minnie Brown, who used to sit outside her cottage making thread on an ancient spinning wheel, and the men who’d sing sea shanties together while they gutted their catch of fish.’

‘It all sounds very… rural.’

He said ‘rural’ as if it was a bad smell under his nose.

‘I think it sounds like an amazing community of decent people whose lives were shattered on the twentieth of March, 1946.’

Gabriel sucked his lip between his perfect white teeth. ‘So what would your grandmother think of you living in Sorrel Cove, if she wouldn’t set foot in the place?’

‘She knew how much I loved it here and she wanted me to come back and live here for good.’

He shifted round until he was facing her. ‘How do you know that? You found a lease, that’s all. Did your grandmother actually tell you she wanted you to live in that derelict cottage?’

‘In a way.’

When he frowned, not understanding, Nessa pictured her gran’s writing from her box of treasures: I was never brave enough to return. Maybe one day you will be.

‘As well as the lease, she left me a message from beyond the grave.’

‘Is that right?’ Gabriel frowned. ‘I’ve never met anyone quite like you before. You’re very strange.’

Was that insulting or a badge of honour? Nessa, who’d been called worse, couldn’t decide.

‘What do you mean by “strange”?’ she said, trying to ignore the fact that her backside was so wet and cold, it was going numb.

His pale eyes met hers. ‘A strange mixture. Unfriendly, vulnerable, quirky.’

Quirky, she’d take. Unfriendly was also fair enough. She hadn’t been very nice to him, for good reason. But vulnerable? She tried so hard to hide her fears and cluelessness from everyone. What had he seen that others had missed?

‘Well,’ she said, feeling rattled. ‘You’re pretty strange yourself, actually.’

His eyebrows shot towards his hairline. ‘Really? I’m a businessman chasing down a deal. I’m as normal as they come.’

‘You’re a normal, everyday businessman, who wears his suit like a coat of armour. Why? What are you hiding?’

Gabriel got to his feet, brushing off blades of grass. The slight thaw between them had vanished and corporate Gabriel was back.

‘I’d better leave you to get on with your day. You have lots to do,’ he said coldly. ‘I’ll be back at ten tonight.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ she answered, pulling her knees up under her chin. She watched him as he walked away.

She thought back to her last birthday, with cards from Lily and her gran, and a trip to The Smugglers Haunt in the village with her friends.

Gabriel Gantwich might be a successful businessman. He probably had a fancy house in London and enjoyed exotic holidays to places Nessa would never see. But, for all his money and privileges, he didn’t seem to be having a very happy birthday.

* * *

What was he hiding? Nessa Paulson had a cheek, Gabriel fumed as he strode back towards Heaven’s Cove.

There she was, messing up his life by pretending to be all tough and uncompromising. But he knew what she was really like. He’d glimpsed it in the flash of fear in her eyes and the wobble of her chin.

He knew it because he was an astute businessman trained to identify vulnerability in opponents. He knew it because she wasn’t as good at concealing her demons as she thought.

He knew it, he admitted with a flash of clarity, because he recognised it in himself. Nessa acted as if she had life all worked out when, in fact, the truth was very different.

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