Phillipa Ashley - A Perfect Cornish Christmas

‘ Ellie ?’

‘Not since she came to stay a couple of weeks ago. I’ve spoken to her on the phone plenty of times. She called me from work. I’ve spoken to Dad, too.’

‘And? Have they come to any decisions?’

‘Not yet. They’re still sleeping in separate rooms from what I can work out. Scarlett paid them a visit a couple of days ago.’

‘I’m surprised they let her in the house!’

‘Dad invited her … but Mum was there too. Marcus, how many times do I have to tell you that this mess isn’t Scarlett’s fault?’

‘I know it’s not totally her fault, obviously, but if she’d never bought that bloody test kit, none of this would have happened. She does have a tendency to put her foot in it, ever since she was a kid.’

‘Don’t blame Scarlett. This whole thing has hurt her more than anyone.’

‘She’s still not speaking to Mum, then?’

‘Not really. She still sees Dad and phones him, but I don’t think she and Mum are on speaking terms.’ Ellie wasn’t sure just how the revelations had changed Scarlett’s relationship with their father, but she wasn’t going to complicate things by voicing that to Marcus.

‘Humph.’

‘Marcus?’

‘I still say that the test was wrong.’

‘What? Both of them?’ Ellie replied, shuddering at the memory of Scarlett’s fresh disappointment when they took a private DNA test that proved she was ‘only’ Ellie’s half-sister. Their mother had been angry and hurt but continued to insist there had to be a mistake.

‘I wish none of this had ever happened. If Mum did – you know, with another bloke – then why won’t she admit it?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s obviously a deeply painful experience for her as well as the rest of us. Until, and if, Mum is willing to share the truth, how can you expect Scarlett – and Dad – to start understanding and forgiving her? We don’t know any of the circumstances.’

‘I suppose not …’ Marcus said grudgingly. Ellie hated to see the turmoil the family was going through, but as the eldest, she felt obliged to try and keep the peace. Her travels over the years had also, she admitted, given her a slight distance – and a fresh perspective on family life. She’d seen a lot of unusual family set-ups while she’d worked and lived all over the world, enough to remind her that no one’s circumstances were ever as smooth as they might appear.

The old grandfather clock struck the half hour, startling Ellie.

‘Marcus. Can we talk about this later, please?’ she asked. ‘I have to go to work. Someone’s off sick at the café and they want me for the lunch service.’

‘The café? I thought you were working on a yacht.’

‘It’s a vintage sailing trawler actually, but it’s the end of the season so I’m only helping in the office two days a week. I’ve started doing some shifts in the Harbour Café again.’

He huffed. ‘Oh, well, I suppose you need a bit of money for extras and stuff. Lucky you don’t have to pay a mortgage or rent.’

‘Mum and Dad seem OK with the arrangement at the moment, and they’ve got enough on their plate without worrying about whether or not to sell this place. It’s not good to leave old houses like this empty, especially over the winter. I’m keeping the place safe and secure until they decide what to do with it, and I’m doing the garden and small maintenance jobs.’ Which took up a lot of her time, she could have added, not that Marcus would realise, because he didn’t know one end of a screwdriver from another.

‘They can’t even decide whether they want to stay married, so I shouldn’t hold your breath. Although if they do get a divorce, they’ll have to sell the manor and you’ll have to move out.’

‘Sorry. What was that?’ Ellie held the phone at arm’s length, fuming quietly that her attempts to soothe him had obviously failed. ‘I can’t hear you, the signal’s really bad down here.’ She heard his tinny voice say something about ‘being prepared for the worst’ then banged the handset on the hall table. ‘Oh no! Damn! I’ve lost you. Speak soon!’

She hung up.

Swearing under her breath, Ellie scooped up her car keys from the hall table. With a bit of luck, Marcus would be too wrapped up in his waste-management meeting to remember he’d called her landline.

As she drove, she thought back on her conversation with Marcus – it had renewed her worries about everyone involved, especially Scarlett. While Marcus had gone into a similar path of denial to their mother, choosing to blame Ellie and Scarlett for opening up a can of worms, Scarlett had taken the opposite and perhaps more understandable route: retreating from their mum and blaming her. Ellie understood this, even if she thought it wouldn’t help the rifts to heal any faster, or encourage their mum to open up. Not only did Scarlett have to cope with the turmoil of their parents’ estrangement, she also had to come to terms with finding out that her dad wasn’t her biological father. Scarlett couldn’t even begin to do that while their mother refused to be honest with them.

At least Ellie’s work at the bustling Harbour Café, with its cheerful boss and quirky clientele, kept her mind off her problems for a while. She loved Porthmellow in all its moods, even on a foggy autumn evening such as this, with mist wreathing around the old clock tower and the waves slip-slopping against the harbour walls. With its cosy beamed interior, the café was at the heart of village life; bustling with locals and visitors from breakfast till teatime.

Twilight was falling by the time she walked out of the old building onto the quayside. It was almost completely dark when she reached the dead-end lane that followed a stream down one side of the steep valley to Seaholly Manor and then the tiny cove itself.

The bare branches of the trees lining the cove lane were spidery in the gloom. Some people might have found the manor spooky on their own, but Ellie had spent nights in some ‘interesting’ places around the world and ghosts didn’t bother her. In fact, she wouldn’t have minded a chat with Auntie Joan again, bless her. Ellie hadn’t seen her that often, but it was enough to miss her witty, sharp conversations and anecdotes about famous authors. Joan had never been shy about relating her romantic adventures either. Their mother would probably have been horrified to hear what she’d shared once the girls were over eighteen. Even before then, they’d delighted in reading her novels, especially the ones in black and red covers that were written under another name that Joan kept in a chest in her room and didn’t think they knew about.

Seaholly Manor had so many happy associations that Ellie felt she could never be afraid there. It was also unlikely that anyone would find their way down to the manor by accident, as it wasn’t signposted from the road. Unless the burglars had a thing for first editions and filthy fiction, there was nothing worth nicking anyway. Still, on such a gloomy night, she was looking forward to getting inside and making up the fire before phoning Scarlett to see if she was OK.

The road levelled out and narrowed over the last few hundred yards to the manor. From nowhere, a shadow darted out from the bushes and across the road.

Ellie let out a cry and swerved to avoid the fox. A heartbeat later, there was a bang as the car slammed against the hedgerow. The seatbelt tightened across her chest and there was only silence.

It took a few seconds for Ellie to get her breath back. Gingerly, she flexed her wrists and hands and waited for any stabs of pain in her neck or back. The seatbelt had done its job, which was why she was out of breath, but otherwise she seemed to be OK. The car, however, probably wasn’t. That sickening crash hadn’t been the sound of metal hitting mere twigs. Like many Cornish hedgerows, this one had an earthen bank, reinforced with stones, at its heart.