Amanda Jennings - The Cliff House

‘Hello,’ I whispered. ‘I met your daughter this morning. Isn’t she beautiful? Just like you.’

Eleanor was lying on her sun lounger with a glass beside her and a glossy magazine in her hand. I twisted the dial to make her bigger, then refocused on her outstretched legs, which were scattered with beads of water like glitter. Her scarf was wrapped around her body and I felt the phantom touch of the silk against my skin. I imagined lying beside her, my leg bent like hers, my toe stroking the lacquered surface of the pool.

A movement over by the house caught my attention. It was him. Max Davenport. My stomach knotted as I watched him stroll over to her. He wore a pink collared shirt, beige shorts, and his blue shoes, and he carried a newspaper tucked under one arm. He stood above her, speaking words I couldn’t hear. She tilted her head to look at him, raised her sunglasses on top of her head.

‘You look comfortable, darling,’ I said under my breath. ‘Oh, I am , darling. Isn’t it bliss ? Would you like me to fetch you anything? No, my love, I’m perfectly happy. I do love you so. Oh darling ! I love you too. Who in the world could be happier than us?’

Eleanor Davenport lowered her sunglasses and returned to her magazine and he crossed the terrace to sit at the table where he shook open his newspaper.

Then I remembered Edie.

I lifted my sights to the windows on the first floor. Scanned them from left to right. Which was hers? I knew the one with the largest window on the far left was her parents’, but which of the other three rooms was Edie’s?

I moved the binoculars across and inhaled sharply. She was there. Standing at the window two along from theirs. Her palm rested against the glass. Was she looking at me? I dropped the binoculars as if the metal was molten and threw myself forward to flatten my body against the grass. I held my breath and, keeping myself hidden, I slowly lifted my head and raised the binoculars up again. I parted the grasses and manoeuvred so I could see through the vegetation for a better view of her window. I focused on her face. I exhaled. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking down at her parents on the terrace below. Her gaze fixed. Face blank. As I watched she turned away from the window and slipped backwards into the shadows behind her.

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the sky. White clouds raced across the blue. I rested the binoculars on my stomach and coiled my fingers into the grass. I closed my eyes and the sun danced in patterns on my eyelids as I listened to the seagulls and insects scurrying in amongst the heat-dried grasses. I conjured Edie and allowed my mind to drift into daydream. I pictured her back at the window and instead of slipping into the darkness she caught sight of me and waved. Then she opened the window and leant out to call my name. My chest swelled with joy as I waved back at her. Then she beckoned to me. I heard myself laughing as I skipped down the grassy slope and ran along the path to the gate. I threw it open and strode up the lawn. Edie burst out of the house and ran down to greet me whilst Mr and Mrs Davenport stood arm in arm, her with the silk scarf wrapped around her, him in his soft blue leather shoes. They were telling me to hurry up. Telling me how pleased they were to see me. Then in the background I saw my father. He was sitting at the table on the terrace. He held a cigarette in his long slim fingers, a ghostly trail of smoke wending its way upwards, the sun draping him, lighting him up like an angel.

He smiled at me and, as I approached, he nodded his approval.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tamsyn

July 1986

All I could think about was going back to The Cliff House to see Edie again. Reasons to go tumbled over and over in my mind as I lay in bed and stared at the cracks that fractured the ceiling.

Perhaps I could tell her the green-tagged key had fallen out of my pocket and my mother was furious and had ordered me to retrace my steps? Or I could tell her I’d lost a ring, or a bracelet, or a pair of socks. Maybe I could offer to show her around? Be her guide. Take her to Porthcurno and the Minack, to St Ives and Logan’s Rock, to Land’s End, or to Penzance to buy paper bags of penny sweets and watch the helicopters take off on their way to the Scilly Isles. I imagined walking her around St Just, our postcard-pretty town. Imagined my patter: Population four thousand, most westerly settlement in mainland Britain, until recently home to a thriving mining industry…

But even if I found the perfect excuse I still couldn’t go. It was Friday morning and on Friday mornings Mum cleaned at The Cliff House in preparation for their possible arrival. Of course, she had no idea they were already there, that they’d arrived early and with a daughter she didn’t know they had.

I lay on my bed and watched her through my open door as she got dressed on the landing. She took her cleaning clothes out of the airing cupboard, her stone-washed denim jeans, white T-shirt, a grey sweatshirt over the top. For work she always tied her hair into a tight ponytail, high enough to be out of her way, and her earrings were simple gold hoops. She didn’t wear any make-up, just some briskly applied Oil of Ulay.

‘You okay?’ she asked with a warm smile as she caught me watching her.

I turned on my side on the pillow and nodded.

‘You look happy snuggled up there,’ she said. ‘I wish I could come and jump in with you. But’ —she sighed— ‘no rest for the char lady.’

I was desperate to share the fact they had a daughter. A girl with white-blonde hair who was called Edie after tr ès glamoureux Edith Piaf. But I stayed quiet. If I told her, she’d ask questions and I might let slip I’d been taking the key and letting myself in, which I knew would send her mental.

She closed the front door and I listened to her footsteps ringing on the pavement until they faded to nothing. My immediate thought was to get out to the rock with my binoculars and watch her in the house with them, but it wasn’t worth the risk. She knew about the spot where Dad used to take me. He’d taken her there too. Even as a boy it had been his favourite place to watch the sun set over the sea and spy on the gulls and kittiwakes and choughs. The chances of her glancing in the direction of the point were significant and if she saw me I’d have to explain why I was there. So I tried to ignore the gnawing lure of the house by keeping myself busy. I cleaned the kitchen, washed-up and dried, changed the sheets on Granfer’s bed then sat with him a while, listening to him attempting to breathe whilst grumbling about the godforsaken government who murdered the tin mines and this being the hardest jigsaw he’d ever tried to do. Then I made him a cup of tea with two and a half sugars in which made him wink and flash me his gap-toothed smile.

When I finally heard the latch click and the front door open, I ran to the top of the stairs, desperate to hear about the house and the Davenports and Edie.

She was hanging her coat on the hook.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Good time?’

‘Cleaning?’ She raised her eyebrows and wiped her forehead with her hand. ‘It’s hot today. And I nearly missed the bus and had to run.’ She paused, stared up at me, her brow knotted. ‘The Davenports were there.’

It was then I noticed she held an envelope.

‘What’s that in your hand?’

She looked down as if confused by it. ‘It’s for you.’

‘For me?’

She hesitated. ‘Their daughter asked me to give it to you.’

‘What?’ I squealed and ran down the stairs taking them two at a time and when I got to the bottom I thrust out my hand.

She didn’t give it to me. Instead her hand moved fractionally closer towards her body.