Fern Britton - Coming Home

Agra, India, 2018

Sennen was nervous. More than nervous. What was going on in Cornwall? Her solicitor had promised to phone as soon as he had heard back from Ella and Henry and she’d been restless all morning. She walked to the shuttered windows of her hotel room and looked down on to the bustle of the street market. She could almost feel the heat and smell the dust through the glass. It was monsoon season, and although the clouds had now cleared, the last downpour had left deep puddles on the muddy street and in the awnings of the market stalls. She watched as a young woman in a rose-pink sari stepped out into the busy road and neatly sidestepped a couple of hungry dogs who took a sniff at her shopping, a plastic bag filled with colourful vegetables and herbs. A passing tuk-tuk beeped his horn and she waved at the driver in recognition, rows of golden bangles slipping up her arm and glinting in the hot sun.

Sennen watched as the woman continued her journey until she was no longer in view. How jealous she was of that woman.

She began pacing her hotel room once again.

What had she done?. She twisted her wedding ring and stared at the phone by the bed, willing it to ring.

The letter that had started this turmoil was next to the phone.

A letter postmarked ‘Cornwall’.

Cornwall. She’d walked away a long time ago. She thought of a quote from The Go-Between : ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ Who wrote that? If Kafir were here he would know. Kafir … one of the most erudite men she knew. Not that she knew many men. Her life hadn’t all been roses, and right now it was just the thorns.

She sat on the bed, closed her eyes and began her private ritual of summoning Trevay in her mind’s eye and walking its narrow streets and lanes. What were the little boats in the harbour doing now? Would any of the ones she remembered still be working or were they left in the silt, their hulks rotting down to skeletons? Or perhaps they’d been dragged up to The Sheds where all boats rested, used and unused.

She could smell the seaweed and the salt.

Hear the gulls laughing.

The splash of water as children launched their crab lines into the deep harbour.

Her mother painting at her easel on the beach. Her washed-out linen shirts and faded trousers glowing in the sun.

Poppa sitting at his pottery wheel. The shiny slip of water and clay covering his hands to his elbows.

She dared, for a moment, to think about Henry but, as always, the electric nerve pain of the thought stopped her. She couldn’t even summon his face now. Or Ella’s. She had been a wicked woman. And now, with the letter from Cornwall, they had found her and would make her pay.

It had come like a ghost summoning her to her grave.

There were several old addresses written on the envelope as it had chased her around the globe, before finding her here, in India.

When she had read it, locked in her bathroom, away from any inquisition, the sense of fear had almost compelled her to run again.

The letter told her that her father had died some years ago, her mother three years ago. They had died intestate, had made no will, so she was the sole heir to the estate. The house had been sold for a good price when the solicitor, acting as trustee, had rightly thought the market was at its highest. That money was now in a high interest account and it was hers. She or her solicitor should come to Cornwall. All that needed to be done was to prove her identity and sign some forms. She didn’t even have to come to Cornwall, she could send a solicitor as her representative.

There was nothing about her children.

It took several days before she could formulate her reply. In it she expressed a desire to meet Henry and Ella and would only return to Cornwall if they wanted to see her.

The solicitor agreed to phone her when he had their answer.

She lay on the bed and allowed memories of her childhood to fill her thoughts.

She was on the beach at Shellsand Bay. Her father, nut-brown and strongly muscled, was swinging her round and round. He was smiling. His bright blue eyes twinkling in his tanned face and his deep laugh making her giggle. ‘Daddeeeee.’

‘Bill, darling, she might be sick,’ said her mother.

‘Are you going to be sick?’ he asked Sennen.

‘Noooooo,’ she giggled.

‘Would you like to come swimming with me and Mum?’

‘Yeeessssss.’

He put her down on the warm sand. ‘Get your rubber ring and we’ll look for the mermaids, shall we?’

Sennen ran to her mother. ‘Mummy, Daddy’s taking us swimming.’ She’d pulled at the slender, elegant hand of her mother. ‘Come on.’

Her father stood ready in his dark-blue swimming shorts.

Her mother smiled, ‘Of course. Let me just sort myself out.’ Adela had been painting in the small sketchbook she always carried with her, capturing the likeness of fishermen mending their nets or lobster pots piled high on the harbour or the holidaymakers napping in the sun.

‘I like that,’ said Bill peering over her shoulder at her watercolour of the beach scene in front of them. ‘Good colours.’

Adela stood up and put her hands on her husband’s bare chest. She kissed him. ‘Thank you.’

He kissed her back then held her slim body in his arms. She pressed her cheek against him and smelt the warmth of his skin.

‘I do love you,’ she said.

‘And I love you.’

Sennen bashed her mother on the back of the knees with her sand spade. ‘Come! On!’

Bill and Adela laughed and, taking Sennen in a hand each, they ran to the waves, swinging her between them. She had grown up surrounded by so much love and kindness. How could she have turned her back on them?

Adela was Cornish to the heart. Her parents had been wealthy landowners from Bodmin, her father the quintessential country squire and her mother a beauty of her day. Adela had wanted for nothing. The only awkward thing being that they were none of the things she actually wanted. Money, comfort, beauty, beaus – all were hers for the taking. But it wasn’t what she longed for. She dreamt of being a great artist, living a rackety bohemian life in London, preferably Pimlico, which she had heard about and liked the sound of.

When she finally told them, it had caused much consternation for her parents, who had planned a husband, Anthony, handsome and untroubled by intellect with a rather lovely medieval manor house on the banks of the Tamar.