One Silver Summer Page 17

  Nothing more had been reported since he left, so maybe his taking the heat had worked. Even so, every time he remembered her face, he wished things could’ve been different. He glanced at the emblazoned letter box of white stationery on his father’s desk. Should he write her a proper letter? She’d have gotten his scribble by now. His phone pinged: Google alert. Alex’s eyes flicked down the screen.

  And what he saw there made him want to throw up.

  Cressida sank her teeth into the warm heaped scone, jam and clotted cream oozing from the corners of her mouth. With a flick of her tongue, she caught a fallen strawberry and eyed the last scoop in the pot. Go on, you’re worth it! She sucked the silver teaspoon clean.

  She was staying somewhere decent in Cornwall this time, though the weather was dismal. She glanced across the bay, where a flotilla of blue-and-white boats from a local yacht club was racing toward a flag, first around the buoy. How very apt. The outcry to her latest reveal was spectacular, sales had gone crazy. Everyone was talking, except for the tight-lipped palace press office, when it was their own fault really.

  Once she’d had Saskia’s name and face, the rest of her research had been easy, helped not least by the knuckleheaded landlord in the pub, who’d let slip not just about the uncle’s name and the Chapel Gallery connection, but that he was a New Yorker to boot. So she’d started in the Big Apple with a private investigator she knew, an ex-cop called Al Bull, and what he’d dug up was the ultimate tearjerker. A story sadder than Bambi. Even for an old hack like her, the pictures were disturbing. Cressida quivered. What she’d done wasn’t strictly ethical, but her journalist’s pointy nail was always going to press SEND.

  LITTLE MERMAID ALL AT SEA. PRINCE’S TRAGIC HOLIDAY GIRL. Cressida Slater reporting.

  Helena sat with her morning elevenses, listening to the trees bend and sigh outside. A storm was rising, the bones of the house had begun to rattle, and yesterday, high fish-scale clouds had told of the old mariner’s warning: a mackerel in the sky, not three days dry.

  Time to batten down the hatches. She closed the photograph album that she’d pulled out to show Saskia later. Nobody made albums like these anymore. This one had a hand-marbled cover and thick cream pages, and was bound in crimson leather. Such a fiddle mounting photos the old way, but when she turned the pages, Helena was there again with Bo just after she was born: her wobbly, knobbly-kneed foal, who she’d named in memory of the boy Helena had loved, and lost, almost three quarters of a century ago.

  There was a knock at the door. Time for a top-up? Helena held out the empty teapot, but instead Corbett handed her a tray with that ghastly rag rolled up on it: the Daily Sun. What nonsense was it spouting today?

  “Take it away, Corbett. You know better than to bring me that.”

  He coughed and shifted uneasily.

  “If I may be permitted, Your Ladyship, you may wish to see this?”

  “Whyever … ?”

  She took it from him and shook it open. Her words a splutter of outrage.

  “How awful. How utterly dreadful! How dare they? How low will they stoop?”

  Poor Corbett backed away.

  Alex leaned forward, straining against his seat belt, both hands on the dashboard. He could barely see through the thick sea mist. Two weeks he’d been away. Two weeks that felt like a year.

  When Jim had broken the news of Sass to him in the early hours of this morning, he’d come. His bodyguard was next to him at the wheel. Not so much a friend as a solid shadow. He was staying on at Trist, but right now there was only one person Alex wanted to be with, because what the Daily Sun was reporting blew his mind.

  Sass.

  He’d had no idea.

  With a slow and awful clearness, Alex remembered his grandmother’s careful words: “Saskia doesn’t need any more heartache.”

  When they broke up, he’d been angry, stupid and arrogant, but now he saw that his ego hardly mattered. There was another explanation for the shadows beneath Sass’s lashes. Why he’d found her in a meadow with a horse as kind as Bo; the reason she couldn’t breathe when she’d told him her name. Galloping before she could ride. Something had happened in her life earlier. Something bad that she couldn’t talk about. And now the whole world knew because of who he was.

  “Jim, I’m getting out, I need some air.” His hand was on the car door handle. Happier than ever before, the newspaper had said about her, and he’d thrown it back in Sass’s face. He had to find her; to tell her that he loved her. That he’d stand by her through all this!

  “… Catch me if you can?” Her whisper in the sea. And he had, and then dropped her like a stone.

  “Sit still, Alex,” Jim said levelly, his foot to the accelerator. “You’re not going anywhere, not yet. We’re expected at Trist and the weather’s closing in.”

  Alex remembered the first time he saw Sass peering through the hedge into his world. Standing in the trailer like a gawky deer. The tear streaks that he’d missed, or maybe he’d have noticed if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in himself. And now this. Cressida Slater’s latest “reveal,” a leaked accident investigation report. So real it made him physically sick. Black-and-white photographs of the upside-down carcass of a delivery van. Zigzag-parked emergency vehicles. A police cordon and two big arrows with accompanying distances pointing to a chalk outline where a thirty-seven-year-old mother was killed on a busy New York sidewalk, shielding her teenage daughter.

  Sass didn’t know about the latest “news” until later that morning. Until then, she’d been okay: really, she had. Jessie and David had done their best to keep it from her, but at lunchtime she’d overheard them talking, so she’d stolen Jess’s phone from her purse and found out for herself. She’d climbed a hill until a signal reached her like a laser beam and then so much had spilled out of that tiny screen. A hemorrhage of hurt, and pain, and guilt. Why would anyone want to know her sad story? Because she’d kissed a prince?

  In themselves, the photos were nothing: just grimly clinical shots. The kind kept on some official file. Not like in a big TV drama where everyone in the courtroom covered their mouths, or fainted. This was what a real crash scene looked like after the dead people had gone. Lumps of twisted metal, strange arrows and skid marks. Just another forensic day for real-life CSI: New York.

  By then she’d been in the hospital. And Mom. Where had they taken Mom?

  Sass sat on the wet grass and let the rain drip down her face. Why was all this happening? Had she been too happy too soon? Or was the truth much simpler? That she deserved all this because … because she should have died instead.

  Sass had thought briefly of going to the meadow to hide. A trickle of light had seeped into her mind: a mental picture of sunshine, a gray pony’s nose, a wild hedgerow of strawberries, and a musty horse trailer with an imprint of a boy on a cot, where she could curl up for a hundred years. Her head was aching and her heart was drained; she was too young for all this.

  Head down in the wind, Sass had already missed the muddy turn inland, and pretty soon she was past the beach too: the place where she’d galloped and been kissed. Both mistakes, she saw now.

  David had told her about Cornish smugglers long ago and it had sounded so romantic; all kegs of French brandy and bolts of silk and lace. But she’d read about wreckers too. People who lured ships onto rocks with flaming lanterns. She imagined the cries of sailors, the sound of tearing canvas and the crack of a falling mast. The world, Sass decided, divided into wreckers, survivors, and those who drowned. But which one was she?

  She turned away from the broken image and shaded her face from the wind-whipped spray, her ears filled with the sound of the sea. Her eyes traveled up to the top of the ridge that loomed above the path she was standing on, where a dark silhouette seemed to defy gravity as if in some deal with the weather. The tower. She’d stood there with Alex and looked dizzily down. If she could find a way up, that was where she would go.

  It was a steep climb. Sass hung on to the roots
of squat trees and bushes, and as the black stack came nearer, she remembered her first excitement at seeing the turret with Alex. History not so much peeping through paint cracks as leaning out and waving for all to see. Now the tower seemed to float in a moat of wet mist. Pushing on the last few feet, Sass staggered inside the doorway, where she sat with her back to the wall and her knees drawn up, the noise in her head switched off at last.

  No more wind and sea, or shouts and sirens. This was the place where Alex had touched her and whispered about hopeless love, his hands at her back. Was she ready to climb the stairs on her own to see for herself?

  Sass stepped into the claustrophobic stairwell. Hugging the central pillar, she crept up the crooked stairs. And when she was so far from the bottom that she could scarcely look down, she scrambled the rest of the way on her hands and knees, her focus on the circle of light ahead.

  As she emerged from the darkness, a great gust of wind caught her and she crouched away from the edge, keeping her back and her heels to the wall, until she reached the place where Alex had lifted her onto her toes and whispered about Tristan and Iseult.

  Her hands flat to the beaten stone behind her, she crept around until she was directly opposite the crumbled, toothlike gap that yawned over the drop below. It had been blustery the last time she stood there, but now the wind was screaming through it.

  There had been no happy ending for Tristan and Iseult, so why did she think that she and Alex could ever work out? Why had Alex even told her such a sad story? It was as if he knew. Sass bit her lip and felt herself burn up. She stood up and faced her fear, and a new anger rose inside her.

  How dare he think she’d have given their secret away!

  How dare he not listen and leave her like this!

  She pulled at the neck of his stupid, black sweatshirt, the one she still wore. One sleeve at a time, she wrestled it off, frightening herself when, hoodlike, it still covered her head, and she imagined the brush of a gull sending her tumbling forward.

  Think, Sass, think.

  A black sail for Tristan. A black sail for her. Alex wasn’t coming back. She balled up the top and threw it. A feel-good moment as it flapped through the air that soon passed. Her only question now … the real question: Should she stay, or fly some other place? She looked down into the gaping space.

  The call came on the landline at about two. Corbett had answered it and Alex knew it was serious the moment the butler came over and whispered in his grandmother’s ear.

  “What is it, Gran?” Alex stopped pacing.

  “It’s Saskia,” she murmured. “It seems she’s … run away.”

  Alex was out of there. Gone. The great front door slamming behind him.

  He dragged on his old drover’s coat and boots in the tack room. He looked for the keys to the quad bike, but they’d gone from their usual place. Dancer’s bridle was hanging on a nearby hook. He couldn’t ride him, not this time, but he could take Bo. Steady, reliable Bo.

  The mare was surprised to be treated so roughly; it wasn’t what she was used to. She flattened her ears when the unfamiliar bit went in her mouth and Alex led her out of her stable. No time to saddle up, he vaulted on her bareback and kicked her straight into a gallop. She answered, thundering down the grassy park in a thud of mud and flying turf, her hooves forging with sparks. His hands stayed light on the wet reins, which were slippery to hold, and the veins in Bo’s neck bulged with the effort. Alex had some idea of where Sass might have gone, the places he’d have chosen. Three possibilities: the meadow, the beach, or the tower. Anywhere else, he didn’t want to think about.

  Bo slid down the path from the top of the meadow, blowing hard. It wasn’t late in the afternoon, but the daylight seemed to have fused in the wet. Alex jumped off by the trailer, shocked to see how high the creek had risen. Taking the reins over Bo’s head, he went to the door. Was she in there? His eyes took a while to adjust, but when they did, he could see that it was empty.

  Biting back his disappointment, he remounted. He stroked Bo’s neck and withers. The old horse was tired, but he still urged her down the long track by the creek to the beach. Water slopped over the banks and the going was soft and boggy.

  The beach was a cold blast of emptiness; it was almost impossible to sit upright. Tufts of grass lay flattened on the sand dunes and any dry sand was now a swirling mass of grit. The daylight was beginning to run out and the only place left was the tower. Alex’s throat went tight.

  Why would she go up there? She’d been frightened enough last time.

  “Heights aren’t my thing!” she’d half laughed, but he’d made her go up the turret, desperate to impress without even knowing it.

  Bo shied away when Alex turned her onto the coast path that was never meant for horses. She reeled back until he made her go there, his hands gripping her mane, his heels hard at her sides as her hooves slipped on the rockiest parts, the sea hungry below them.

  At a copse of bent trees, Alex turned off the narrow track and followed a sheep’s path up on to the ridge. Bo scrambled up, grateful to have grass beneath her feet, and through the thorny gorse, Alex could see the tower ahead.

  Be there, he willed. He was all out of chances.

  At the summit, he left Bo in the shelter of the wall. Stepping inside the low stone archway, he called out her name.

  “Sass? Sass are you in here?” he shouted, ice in his veins when only his voice echoed back. As his eyes adapted, he saw a huddle at the foot of the stairs. Oh god, had she fallen?

  “Sass? Is that you?”

  “Alex?” The huddle moved.

  “Yes, it’s me,” he said, as he ran over and took her hand.

  “You’re here … You came to find me?”

  He stroked her hair. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “Not after what I did … what you said …” She sat up and he could see the whites of her eyes in the darkness.

  “I should never have left, but I’ve come for you now, if you’ll let me.”

  Turning to him, she took a deep breath. “I didn’t tell you about …”

  “I know what happened.”

  “You read it?”

  “Yes.” He felt ashamed. The accident report in the paper. He shouldn’t have looked.

  “I wanted you to hear it from me, but I didn’t know how to say it.”

  Her face was so open, the fear written on her forehead.

  She reached out for his hand, her fingers even colder than his.

  “I’m here, not just for the summer, but maybe forever. In England, at least. My mom died. It’s true. She was in a car wreck a few months back. We were arguing over nothing … hair conditioner. Imagine? The chlorine, you see, from swim training …” She trailed off.

  “I was walking in the street, so I didn’t have to walk next to her on the sidewalk”—she hung her head—“like a stupid baby, when this car, this big car came around the corner too fast. And Mom … Mom …” Sass doubled over, her face buried in her lap. “She pulled me out of the way but the car … it skidded across the path of a truck coming in the other direction, and it …” Her voice tight-muffled. “She died, so I could live. It was my fault, don’t you see?”

  He wrapped his arms around her and she hugged him back, squeezing the breath from his chest. “No, Sass. It wasn’t your fault. It was just a terrible accident.”

  “I pretended that I was okay, but I wasn’t, and then I missed you so much …”

  “Sass, I should never have left. I’m so very sorry.”

  “You … you’re always apologizing.” A watery smile.

  Love made him braver. He took her hands; he wanted to warm them. He kissed the base of her thumb and leaned forward. They bumped noses. They touched lips. His on hers, breathing her in.

  “You’re freezing,” he said, and she curled in his arms like a cockle in a shell.

  Outside the wind fought with the trees that seemed to twist around the tower and hold it upright. Bo stamped her foot, tired of
waiting.

  Alex looked up when he heard the shrill whinny.

  “Sass, it’s time to go.”

  “You brought Dancer with you?”

  “No, it’s Bo.”

  That seemed to lift her.

  He took off his coat and put it on her, caught Bo’s reins and hoisted Sass on her back. He’d take her home the quickest way he knew, the most direct route, the steep track that wound back down and along the creek to Trist.

  Down they went, following the brown smear that had once been a bridle path. Halfway down, Sass slid off Bo; it was impossible to ride her with the mud sucking at their feet. Besides, it wasn’t fair; she and Alex could lead her home.

  But when they reached the edge of the creek, neither of them could believe their eyes. The fat twisted thing that met them was no longer the stream of daydreams. Gorged with water, the creek reminded her of a boa constrictor that Sass had once seen at a zoo. It had slithered down behind its glass wall to be fed dead mice by its keeper, its belly stretched and bloated.

  Not far from the horse trailer, Bo planted her feet and refused to go any farther. She lifted her head in the air with her nostrils flared and snorted at whatever was spooking her.

  Alex tugged wearily at the reins.

  “Come on, Bo, it’s nothing, get on with it!”

  Wiping at her face, Sass thought she heard something too.

  “What’s that? Can you hear it?”

  “I don’t know. Thunder, maybe?” Alex took a firmer hold.

  Sass waited for another rumble, or a lightning flash, but the noise didn’t recede; it was getting louder and coming toward them like a nonstop train through a station. Sass felt the ground shake … and then shift, and slide. The earth was moving. She heard a scream. The terrified neigh of a horse as Bo reared up, only to be swallowed by a serpent of mud and rocks and water.

  When the flood came, Alex instinctively scrambled backward, his heels digging in the ground.

  “Sass, get back!” But his shout came too late as he watched her get swept away by the current. He’d hung on to Bo, but in her terror, the horse had reared up on her hind legs, desperate to be released. Pulled off his feet, his last image was of the falling animal, gray fading to black, as he too fell back and smacked his head hard on the ground. There was a brief hideous rush in his ears as he passed out cold.