The Cornish Retribution : a gripping psychological drama

  The Cornish Retribution

  Amanda James

  Contents

  Also by Amanda James

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  A Note from Bloodhound Books

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2018 Amanda James

  The right of Amanda James to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Also by Amanda James

  Another Mother

  The Calico Cat

  Rip Current

  For Carrie who has supported my books and writing from day one. Thanks, it is very much appreciated!

  1

  It’s raining on the ocean. A mass of bruised clouds spread across the horizon and a fresh salt wind whips dark curls across my eyes, as if it’s trying to dry my tears. It can’t though. I bow my head, wrest my hair free and let them come. My shoulders shake, my body trembles and there’s an angry heat in the pit of my chest. I swallow hard but still there are more tears. Waiting. Building. Pushing for release. The waves swirl around my wellingtons and the tears fall too fast, too heavy, too full of despair. Somewhere in my mind, a voice says it might be nice to just let the waves come, like my tears. Let them come, rise up, take me away, end this pitiful existence. This empty life of mine that used to be so full.

  A dog barks, and freezing cold water trickling down inside my boots makes my head snap up and away from the mesmerising raindrops pelting the water. Behind me, cannoning along the wide expanse of Mawgan Porth beach, a black Labrador ignores the commands of its mistress. ‘Hattie! Hattie! Here now!’ Hattie runs on, then stops, turns her head on one side, pink tongue lolling from the corner of her mouth, and cocks her ears. The woman, round and slow moving, puffs her cheeks and tries a whistle. The wind snatches it, and the woman shakes her head, shouting to the dog once more.

  I look at the waves now at my knees and something makes me pull my feet out of the sucking sand and towards the shore. A shaft of sunlight spears the dunes. There’s just me, the dog and the woman on a windswept rain-soaked beach in March. The scene speaks to me – it feels like it’s the start of a story, not the end. What had I been thinking? I hadn’t been, had I? Just wallowing in self-pity. Again.

  Almost free of the water, except for that in my wellies, a black shape hurls itself at my legs and then wet paws on my chest complete a soaking. ‘Hattie! Hat-eee! Bad Hattie, bad dog. Come here!’

  Hattie doesn’t want to go there; she seems far more intent on licking my face. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have appreciated wet dogs barrelling into me, totally out of control, even though many dog owners seem to think it’s a privilege bestowed upon me; but today, the laughing face of the dog, the thumping tail in the waves and the mischievous gleam in Hattie’s eyes draws a bubble of laughter from my throat. It encourages the dog and she licks and paws some more.

  ‘Okay, okay. That’s enough, Hattie,’ I say, pushing the dog away and squelching a few steps up the beach. The dog stops her antics and trots alongside as if she belongs. It’s nice to imagine for a few seconds that the dog is mine. Belonging is a comfort, natural, a safety blanket that I’ve always been lucky enough to have wrapped around me. As a child I belonged to my parents, then I grew up, fell in love, had my own family – they belonged to me, and I to them. Now, though, I’ve lost the blanket and the chill stabs at my skin like ice needles… both children are grown and gone and my husband… my husband…

  ‘So sorry, dear. Hattie is being so naughty today. She’s not usually this unruly…’

  I look down at the small round woman standing in front of me. The roses in her cheeks have probably been put there by a mixture of embarrassment and exertion, but I imagine it’s mostly embarrassment, so to put her mind at rest, I say, ‘It’s honestly not a problem. Hattie seems like a very friendly dog. You’re lucky to have her.’

  The roses pale a little. ‘Thanks, I am. She’s been such a comfort to me. We’ve been inseparable since my Peter died five years ago. God knows what I would have become without her.’

  The woman looks a little too closely at my eyes, which feel like they are ready for yet more tear shedding, and before Hattie’s owner can ask if I’m okay, I mutter some nonsense about dogs and loyalty and hurry away up the beach.

  Through the kitchen window, the ocean looks indistinguishable from the grey charcoal horizon that underlines the sky. On afternoons like these it’s as if the elements have morphed into each other presenting a uniform wall of moisture – beach to water, water to sky. Thick. Deep. Impenetrable. Everything feels grey, dismal and cold. I think about Hattie’s owner who’s been without her husband for five years and wonder if it looks less grey to her. Perhaps colours are seeping back to her edges, warming away her longing and loneliness… Hattie would help too, no doubt. Perhaps I should get a dog.

  On the balcony, tea in hand, wrapped in a blanket, I inhale the damp salt air. A dog would be more trouble than it would be worth, I decide. They are tying, need walking, and jump all over the furniture with half the ocean dripping from their fur… and how much would a dog really help? When I’m lying awake at 2am in the bed that’s too big, it’s Adam’s arms I want around me, not a dog across my feet. It’s early days. He’s only been gone six months. Give it time, everyone says. People seem to know about time and healing. I’ll be buggered if I know how. Even people, who as far as I know, have never lost anyone, all seem to be authorities on grief and “moving forward”, as they say. Moving forward to where and to what? I don’t want to move forward. I wanted to move back to the day my husband’s car came off a country road and into a tree. Wanted to warn him. Rise up like an apparition from the white line and shriek at him, wave my arms, make him stop before it’s too late.

  Adam had apparently been going too fast round a bend, obviously not expecting a herd of escaped cows in the road. The times I’d told him about driving too fast on those little Cornish lanes… I swallow a mouthful of tea and hold the warm mug to my chest. What’s the point in going over it all again? I do this most days and it’s getting old. Ancient. Standing out here looking at the wall of grey in the damp won’t help either. I ought to get on with the new novel really. I’d been three chapters in when Adam was killed… I’m still three chapters in.
Each day I resolve to pick up where I left off and each day I fail. Come on, Sam, at least open up the document and look at the words… even if you don’t write anything, it beats what you’ve done so far today.

  But my attention is diverted, and my God, Abi Harper hasn’t changed one bit! Still with the little furrow in her brow, even when she’s smiling, leaving her with a permanently puzzled expression. Mind you, on closer scrutiny of her new Facebook profile photo, I see she has actually changed quite a bit. There are deepish lines under her make-up if you look closely and strands of grey in her chestnut hair. She’s not aged as well as she might have, but brave of her to update the old profile photo that she’s had for ages. And anyway, thinking about it, she’s forty-five like me, what do I expect? Sometimes I disregard the passage of time – in my head I’m still eighteen. A glance in the living room mirror tells me I still look like I’m in my late thirties, despite the harrowing past six months. There isn’t much grey in my dark hair and my lines… okay, so there might be a few more than there were before Adam died. I sigh. This is not getting on with the novel, is it? No. I’d fully intended to go straight to documents and bypass Facebook, but lately I’ve turned procrastination to a fine art.

  Just as my finger hovers over the minimise symbol at the top of the screen, Abi posts again. It’s a reminder invite about a reunion at her old school in a few weeks’ time. I didn’t see the original post, for some reason, so scan the information. It’s for anyone whose last year at Hind Grange was 1990 and 1991. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight years… how is that actually possible? Further down the page is the original posting along with who is going, who can’t make it and who the maybes are. Two names stand out from the list of those going. Penny and Dan Thomas. Still together then? Funny, I wouldn’t have given them more than a few years. Perhaps that was just sour grapes though. Even after… I do the calculation, twenty-nine years, the sting of rejection and betrayal niggles away when I think of how my best friend and first love went behind my back. It’s faded and normally forgotten, but shreds of it are still there, hidden, sulking, waiting for recognition at moments like this. They say the first cut is the deepest, don’t they? What I did in revenge is still lurking too – though I wish it wasn’t.

  I click on Dan’s profile photo and my breath is taken by the familiar twinkle in his dark eyes and the sexy lopsided smile that used to make my heart skip a beat. Yes, the eyes are sitting on a good few crinkles but, somehow, he’s grown more handsome. Men tend to do that. Bastards. Because we aren’t Facebook friends, I can’t access his timeline, so switch to have a closer look at Penny Thomas-was-Kershaw’s photo. A tickle of glee capers in my tummy as I see the years have not been nearly as kind to her as they have to her husband. The jade eyes have faded to blades of winter grass and under them, the crinkles are pronounced and very noticeable. The red hair is still lustrous but has had considerable help from a colourist. Then I tell myself off. What’s the point in thinking mean thoughts? Mean thoughts make a mean person. Yes, Penny betrayed me in the worst way when we were sixteen, but 1989 was a long, long time ago. Another lifetime. Time to forget. But a vindictive little voice that I try to keep silent whispers in my ear – Yeah, and the bitch paid for it at the time.

  The document is opened at last and I type Chapter Four, and then read back over the last three chapters of the suspense novel – just as I have done every few days for the last month. Okay, now time to move the story on. This is the chapter where the baddie is introduced. He, of course, can’t be seen to be the bad guy at first, that would give too much away. There will be a second bad guy too with different motives, and he must appear as the one that has the solution to all the heroine’s problems, the knight in shining armour. Near the end, the readers will see them in all their terrible glory. But which one is the killer? They will have to wait until the last few pages when the final twist is revealed.

  I watch my fingers hover over the keys, type a sentence and then delete it. Type and delete. Try as I might, I can’t get Dan and Penny out of my mind. How come they are still together, have each other, are candidates for the happy ever after, while I’m misery personified? Their foundations were built on lies and deceit. Mine and Adam’s were built on honesty and trust; yet, he has been taken. He has been ripped from my side, my heart – lost forever. They are together. I am alone.

  The cursor flashes on and off, on and off, as if taunting me. I need to either knuckle down to write, or go for a walk or… something. Anything but this reopening of old wounds and re-examining new ones left by Adam’s death. Perhaps I should send friend requests to both Penny and Dan, start afresh, put the past behind me. I don’t want to be a bitter and twisted lonely old cow, but if I keep this up, I soon will be. Maybe they won’t accept me, Penny especially, but at least I’ll have tried to move forward.

  Cold, shaky and a bit foolish is how I feel after sending the two friend requests. Perhaps I’ve been a bit impetuous. What good will it do anyway? It isn’t as if I’d ever see them again.

  The kitchen clock says it’s almost wine o’clock, and who am I to argue? The day has flown, and I’ve done absolutely nothing with it. Tomorrow is another day, however, a Saturday, and after I’ve seen my daughter and grandson for breakfast, I’ll make a start on chapter four if it kills me.

  Sipping the wine, I draw the curtains on the dark and switch on all the lights. Would I ever get used to living alone? I heave a sigh and plop down on the sofa in front of the TV. A takeaway and Netflix will help me feel better, along with a few more glasses of wine. As I retrieve the remote for the TV from under the cushion, my arm nudges the laptop and the screen lights up. It’s still on my Facebook page, and there are two little red icons on the screen. Clicking on them, I discover that both Penny and Dan have accepted the friend requests. This makes me ridiculously pleased. For goodness’ sake, we aren’t schoolkids any more. About to shut down the laptop, I stop when I see I’m tagged in a post.

  Sam! How the devil are you? So pleased that you got in touch. Tell me I’ll see you at the reunion in a couple of weeks! xxx

  Dan’s three kisses throw me a little. Even though kisses have become part of everyday punctuation over the last few years, isn’t that a bit over the top? And go to the reunion – not in a million bloody years! I can think of nothing more cringeworthy. I can’t say no though just like that, can I? It would look a bit rude. Perhaps I’ll shut down Facebook and pretend that I’ve not seen the message until tomorrow. By then I’ll have thought of the perfect excuse as to why I can’t attend. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

  Later on, full of takeaway, wine and a feel-good movie, I wish that my thoughts would stop wandering to where a perfect excuse might be hiding. If I wasn’t so lonely I’d never even consider going. Cornwall is a long way from Sheffield after all. In fact, that’s the perfect excuse right there – no need to look any further. I also wish my thoughts would stop wandering to those three little kisses at the end of Dan’s message.

  2

  ‘Mum, come and see what Adam’s doing!’

  I hurry from the kitchen just in time to watch my five-month-old grandson attempting to crawl across the rug. Upon seeing me, he collapses in a heap, his chubby legs waving in the air and chortles in that way that makes his grandma’s heart melt. I pick him up, inhale that fantastic baby smell and look into his grey-blue eyes, so like his namesake’s. ‘Is that the first time he’s done that, Helena?’ I look across the room at my daughter’s beaming smile.

  ‘More or less. He tried it yesterday but only for a second or two.’

  ‘It’s early to be crawling.’ I boost Adam in the air and smile at him. ‘We have a genius on our hands, don’t we? Oh, we do. Yes, we do.’

  ‘To be fair, Mum, he wasn’t really crawling, just trying.’ Helena tilts her head, gives a wry smile.

  ‘Nonsense! He was crawling, so make sure you put that in your progress book thingy you keep.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’ Helena grins and hurries into the kitchen to retrieve t
he pancakes we can smell burning.

  I follow her in and place Adam in his highchair. ‘Do you want me to take over now?’

  ‘No, I’ve rescued it. Do you have maple syrup?’

  ‘In the cupboard.’ I put a selection of toys on the highchair tray to keep Adam occupied until his pancake is cool enough and think about how much I treasure times like this. It’s so nice to have other people in the house on the cliff again. Though I adore the place, it’s massive, and even when my husband was alive it did feel a bit too big for just the two of us, but it was left to us in Adam’s parents’ will. They had bought it not long before they got ill. Two years later they were sadly gone.

  Even though their home was too big, Adam used to talk about plans to extend it and make it into a small guest house for when he retired from his job as an architect, because he would be so bored doing nothing. I smile at thoughts of me and Adam in our sixties running a guest house, it was a ridiculous idea at the time and I always told him so, but now I’d give anything to do that with him. I’d work from dawn until dusk if I could have him back. No point in wishing for things that will never happen, is there? I shelve the thoughts and help my daughter put the breakfast things on the table.

  ‘Did I tell you that Carl is up for promotion?’ Helena shoves a forkful of food into her mouth. It’s like I’m looking into a mirror. Well, a mirror set back to when I was twenty-four.