Jun 30

Jun 30 Half A Rainbow

Half A Rainbow - book excerpt

Prologue

Just a mobile number. Probably a disposable burner phone. No instructions. She was trembling with nerves and excitement. This was her one chance to make a large amount of cash very quickly and she couldn’t afford to slip up.

That evening, with nothing but coffee in her system, as alcohol might dull her senses and she didn’t want to be outwitted by a man who, from his public profile, she knew to be intelligent and on the ball, she wrote out and practised her script. Then she dialled.

She’d expected it to go straight to voicemail, but he must have been waiting for her call.

“Clyde!” he barked.

She inhaled sharply. “Paula.” She spoke her false name quickly, hoping he wouldn’t hear the nervous quaver in her voice.

“Just how much are we talking about?”

She grinned to herself. She was enjoying this, her first ever attempt at blackmail; even more so because he had just tripped up and incriminated himself. She had already decided on a sum, not preposterously large but not so small that he would take her for an idiot, an amateur. She knew he could easily afford it as his father was a millionaire.

“A hundred thousand will do nicely.”

Chapter One

On a turbulent Tuesday in late March, with horizontal rain and a wind that battered the fluff off the pampas grass in the front garden, Leah Mason moved into Shangri-la. She was fulfilling a promise she had made to herself: that once it was all over, done and dusted, dotted lines signed on and conditions met, she would leave London and find herself a home by the sea and begin a new and very quiet life.

Bloody Stephen! She shook her head to clear it of memories, both the good and the heartbreaking, and felt her thick chestnut plait thump between her shoulder blades. It wasn’t all his fault, she reminded herself. It had been her own stupid choice to get involved with a married man, after all. She could have said no…

Shangri-la was nothing to look at, just a small grey Sixties bungalow in Trenown Close, a street of identical houses, which had that slightly wistful air of a house that hasn’t been lived in for months, a fact that was emphasised by the heap of yellowing junk mail kicked aside by the agent as he’d unlocked the front door.

The rent was reasonable as the elderly owner had gone to live with his son in Scotland, leaving the house shabby and unfurnished. They were willing to rent it cheaply to someone who would do it up for them, with a view to their letting it to holidaymakers once the year’s lease had ended. Leah had said yes immediately. After spending the last two months in a B&B whilst looking for somewhere to live, she needed something to do; something to get her teeth into that would help her forget about the last few months. If she ever could.

The wooden name-plate, which bore the name Shangri-la in faded white lettering, was hanging askew, its split wood suspended by one nail. While the dripping wet removal men were trooping past her, hefting furniture up the cracked concrete path, Leah tugged at the plaque, trying to remove it.

“You there! Don’t do that!” Leah looked round and found herself shrivelling in the full-on glare of a small elderly woman with immaculately styled, pale-golden hair who was standing, arms folded, in the front garden of the house next door. “Do you know what Shangri-la means?”

“Sorry, no, I don’t.”

The woman tutted. “It means a remote and beautiful paradise. Mr and Mrs Edwards chose that name when they moved in. They were my neighbours for many years. Very good people, too.”

Leah bristled. Is she implying I’m not a good person? She doesn’t even know me! “I’m sorry. It’s just that it was about to fall off. I’ll replace it. In fact, Mr Edwards is my landlord and I shall be doing the house up for him. I’m Leah Mason, by the way. I’m going to be your neighbour for the next twelve months.”

She walked towards the low wall that divided their front lawns, her right hand outstretched, but the woman retreated into her house and pulled the door shut, leaving Leah standing there feeling foolish and a bit guilty. She hadn’t wanted to upset anybody, especially someone who lived right next door. She could feel tears pricking her eyes and blinked them away. She had cried far too much over the last few months.

“Hey, Miss, where do you want this bookcase?”

By the time she had directed the removal man, located the kettle and mugs, grubbed around in the backpack containing groceries she had bought in the village and provided the men with tea and biscuits, her dark mood had changed to one of brisk purposefulness as she searched for the box she had packed her sheets and duvet in.

But once the movers had gone… once the gloom of the wet afternoon had faded into the thickest, darkest night she had ever known… once the bad memories that had followed her from London to Cornwall had come swirling into her mind like evil vapours, like plaguing demons, she found herself wondering if she had, by one careless act, got off to a very bad start.

***

Leah had looked forward to being alone – even to being lonely. It was what she needed; time to herself, to come to terms with things, to think, to heal. She didn’t care if nobody spoke to her. She was back in St Jofra, the Cornish village she loved; the place where she had spent so many happy childhood holidays with her parents and sister. She felt happy and safe here. In previous years, she had explored every little footpath and all the narrow, stony lanes that led between shops to the houses up the hill near the Lookout, the highest point in the village, from which there was a wonderful sea view in all directions.

She loved the higgledy-piggledy quality of an ancient village that had grown organically; the way one dwelling butted up against another at an odd angle in a strangely haphazard way, more like a herd of animals than buildings. She loved the little river that tumbled over rocks all the way to the sea; the cottages, the window-ledges bright with geraniums; cats sitting on doorsteps like guardian spirits; steep streets that swooped down to the lower part of the village, where the surfers’ bar, Surf’s Up and the shops selling wetsuits and boogie boards and baggy, tie-dyed, hippy-ish clothes were located and the road wound down to Jofra Beach. She felt at home here. It was such a relief to get out of London where so many bad things had happened.

However, she soon realised that, much as she wanted to keep herself to herself, an incomer was an object of curiosity to the villagers and one by one, a string of people presented themselves at the door of No. 36 Trenown Close, ostensibly to introduce themselves but mostly trying to drum up custom for whatever service they hoped to sell.

One of the first had been the local vicar bearing a list of services and saying that he hoped to see Leah amongst his congregation soon. Then there had been the small, bouncy blonde with the tinsel-like curls who organised dance and exercise classes and yoga in the village hall. Leah had taken her leaflet with a bit more enthusiasm than she had the vicar’s. Next day, it was the turn of two sweet, smiling elderly ladies who ran a quilting group and asked her to consider joining.

The man who owned Sea Deep, the fish shop in the high street, had also called round. Handsome in a sleazy way, with silver grey hair so thick and wavy that it looked as if he had a poodle curled up on his head, he had handed Leah yet another leaflet, this one listing Special Offers. “I’m John. We do home deliveries. Anything you fancy?” he’d said. And he had winked – actually winked, in a leery, Benny Hill way that made her feel queasy.

And so it had gone on.

“Nose disease!” her sister Emma said when Leah rang up to complain.

Leah giggled. It was a term they had invented as children, so they could say someone was nosy without that person knowing what they meant, as ‘nose disease’ could have meant anything from a bad cold to a deviated septum. There was certainly a plague of nose disease in St Jofra, of Cyrano de Bergerac proportions.

“Are you sure you’re all right on your own down there?”

There was a croak of concern in Emma’s voice that Leah picked up on and she knew her tone was too loud and hearty as she assured her younger sister, “Yes, of course. I’m fine. It’s great here, you know that. I came to the right place.”

“I miss you,” Emma said. “I’ll come down and see you in the summer hols. Big hug. Love you. I still don’t know why you left London though.”

Leah ignored her last words. “Big hug to you, too and give Poppy a sloppy kiss from me. You know how she hates those. I do miss you and Mum. Speak to you soon.”

Emma, her husband Alan and their five-year-old daughter Poppy, lived a few roads away from their mother in Canterbury. None of them had been told the real reason for Leah’s sudden defection from London, where she had seemed to be so happy and doing so well as a designer for an advertising company. She had stuck to her story of being made redundant, getting a good pay-off and deciding to take time out and see if she could make it as an artist, and her family had swallowed it. She had also told her mother not to give her address or her new phone number to anyone, not even her old friends from Canterbury, and especially not Cassidy, as she was hiding from a jealous boyfriend and didn’t want him trying to trace her.

When her mother had voiced concern, Leah had laughed it off.

“I just want to make a fresh start, Mum.” That, at least, was true.

***

The house to Leah’s right was a holiday let and empty most of the time. It was three weeks before the neighbour at No. 38, the elderly lady Leah had clashed with on moving-in day, finally introduced herself as Nat Fleming and invited Leah in for coffee. Nat handed Leah a fat slice of home-made carrot cake, moist and speckled with vivid orange which made her think, somewhat bizarrely, of shredded goldfish and she settled herself against a pale gold cushion on the pale green sofa, to eat it. Nat was nestled in an armchair that seemed much too deep for her. Her legs dangled over the edge like those of a doll on a shelf. She was wearing sky blue slippers edged with fake fur, that matched the blue of her jumper – and her eyes, too, Leah noticed.

“Round here, we take our time getting to know someone,” Nat said solemnly.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Leah said. “I’ve lost count of the number of visitors I’ve had.”

“Oh, take no notice of that lot. They’re always the same with incomers. Once they think they’ve got the measure of you, they’ll leave you alone. Anyway, most of them are on the make, one way or another. A new arrival means a potential new source of income. By the way, I’m sorry I was so crotchety on the day you moved in. I wasn’t feeling too well and there was so much shouting and banging going on.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Leah confessed.

She was rewarded with a high-wattage smile and a sparkling flash from her neighbour’s animated blue eyes. “I didn’t know what sort of person was coming to live next door to me. You might have been the sort to have wild parties and a string of unsavoury young men visiting you.”

“How do you know I haven’t?” Leah teased, warming to this spirited woman.

Nat laughed. “I pride myself on being a good judge of character. It doesn’t take me long to get the measure of someone. Sometimes, a few seconds are all I need. It’s the aura. The vibes.” She was still staring into Leah’s eyes. Leah found she couldn’t look away, especially as she knew exactly what Nat meant. She was the same.

Nat blinked and seemed to shake herself. She slipped out of the chair, crossed the room and touched Leah lightly on the arm. “Come and see what I’ve done to my house. Yours is in a pretty bad state, isn’t it? I should know. I’ve been inside it often enough. I used to clean and dust for old Mr Edwards after his wife died. He had no-one else as his son’s family live in Aberdeen. Nina, shoo!” She clapped her hands and a dainty white cat with eyes as blue as Nat’s scooted away from the plate she was trying to lick.

As Leah followed Nat around, admiring the oak floors, the large country kitchen and the conservatory which had a sea view, owing to the fact that No. 38 was several feet higher up the hill than No. 36, she enquired, “How long have you lived here then?”

“Thirty-two years. We moved down from Birmingham when my husband took early retirement from the police force. We used to come here for holidays and fell in love with it.”

Leah wanted to ask if Nat had a family, but felt she might be overstepping the mark. Perhaps, once they got to know each other better, Nat would mention sons, daughters, grandchildren, though there were no family photos on display.

“I see you don’t have a car,” Nat said. “Did you know that the supermarket in Truro delivers to this area?”

“No, I didn’t. Thank you.”

Leah was genuinely grateful. She probably would get a car at some point. She hadn’t really thought about it. She hadn’t bothered with one in London as the public transport was so good and the parking so dreadful. In any case, she was still too busy adapting to her changed circumstances to think about practicalities. She might be a lady of leisure at the moment, but doing up the house would constitute a full-time job. A car could be a help to her when it came to transporting pots of paint, but she was managing for now. The local DIY shop would deliver most of the things she

needed. The rest, she ordered online.

“I rely on their deliveries,” Nat continued. “I had to give up driving when my eyesight got so bad. I haven’t been behind the wheel for five years. I miss it. But the bus service isn’t bad, once you get used to the fact that it only comes once an hour. It’s not like in the city, when you know there’ll be another one along in a few minutes. Though I don’t use the bus much these days.”

Nat sighed and, just for a moment, looked quite frail Leah thought. Pale, too, with purplish shadows like bruises under her eyes.

“Have you been here before? To St Jofra, I mean?” Nat’s polite question broke in on Leah’s musings.

“Yes, several times with my parents, when I was a kid. They were the best holidays I ever had.” Leah smiled at the memories. “That’s why I decided to move here.”

Once she had reminisced about the holidays and Nat had responded with holiday memories of her own, trips with her late husband to Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Leah found herself cautiously warming to her neighbour, ‘cautious’ being the operative word. It wouldn’t do to rush anything any more. She knew only too well where that could take her. ‘Impetuous’ should have been her middle name. Or her first name: Impetuosity Mason, like Endeavour Morse, the Christian name that the famous fictional detective always kept a secret.

Cassidy never used her first name, either, but then, who would want to be known as Tuesday Cassidy? She really missed Cassidy. They had been close friends for four years, ever since Leah had landed her job in London. She must have thought Leah was dreadful, disappearing without a word, but that was what Stephen had insisted on: that nobody must know where she had gone – that, as far as possible, she should be untraceable. He had even suggested Australia.

Nat was still talking, pointing out things, giving Leah the names of kitchen fitters, decorators, plumbers. A bumble bee was caught behind the yellow and white checked kitchen curtains. Its frantic buzzing distracted her. Nat picked up a glass, deftly trapped the bee and shooed it out through the open transom. “There. You fly free, my beauty.”

Leah sighed deeply and, as she exhaled, it felt as if she were blowing away months of pent-up tensions and anxieties, getting rid of all the toxic things that had infected her in London – like Stephen.

She realised that, like Nat’s bee, it was time for her, too, to fly free.