Sara MacDonald - Another Life - Escape to Cornwall with this gripping, emotional, page-turning read

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers in 2004

Copyright © Sara MacDonald 2004

Sara MacDonald asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007175772

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007388028

Version: 2017-03-13

For Lizzie and John Cynddylan with love.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Montreal, Quebec 1998

Mark went down to the basement to take one last look at Isabella before he wrapped her up in bubble wrap and placed her in the crate. He had become so used to her being down there that it would seem strange not to have her dominating the room. Despite the ravages of her age and the sea, her presence filled the space. Her eyes in the damaged face watched him with a look that was mysterious and resolute, as if she had seen everything and nothing could surprise her any more.

Her expression seemed to change in the varying light. A face that was made up of such a multiplicity of emotions that Mark thought the carver must have known his model well. This was not a face merely glimpsed or remembered. This face he had created was mobile and frighteningly alive. Her carver had seen and captured the essence of the woman, and even now, a decade later, Mark believed he could glimpse an innocent sensuousness. A consciousness of self that was part of being a beautiful woman and seeing herself reflected in a man’s eyes.

The paint had flaked on the left cheek giving her an air of having been abandoned. There was a deep cut in the wood above her right ear, probably made by a propeller. When Mark first saw her in the garden of a house he never meant to revisit, he had been startled, for it seemed to him that he must have been guided there solely in order to rescue her.

Who better than a historian to discover her origins? His exasperated family admitted that no one else would be foolish enough to ship her from Newfoundland to a basement in Montreal in order to find out who she was and where she had come from.

‘You’re so fanciful, Dad. I guess you believe she was waiting for you to come along, huh?’

Of course, he wouldn’t admit to it. Neither could he quite understand how his family were not equally enchanted by her.

‘In the right place, I might be,’ Veronique said. ‘But not in my basement, watching me. Her eyes follow me about. I forget she is in here and at night when I switch the light on she gives me a terrible fright.’

‘This is one of the loveliest figureheads I’ve ever seen. It’s worth preserving,’ Mark said. ‘Pity she belonged to a British schooner, not one of ours … Various bodies in England are funding most of the cost, but it’s the same over there as it is for us here, they have to fight for every penny they get.’

Mark turned and Inez was standing behind him, hip jutted out to support Daisy who was sleepily sucking her thumb. Inez put her on the ground and they carefully started to wrap the figurehead in layers and layers of bubble wrap, until she resembled a mummy and her face and features were distorted by plastic.

Sitting on the floor, Daisy looked up and pointed. ‘Poor lady gone?’

Mark picked the child up. ‘Yes. She is going to fly on an aeroplane over the sea and someone a long way away is going to make her better.’

‘I like lady,’ she said. ‘What name?’

‘Isabella.’ The child’s hair smelt of butter. ‘The lady used to stand on the front of a ship and swim through the waves and look very beautiful. Her name is Isabella, and we have wrapped her up in a thick coat of bubbles so she won’t get hurt on the aeroplane.’

‘Poor lady,’ Daisy said again as they went up the stairs, and Mark wondered how he could appease his wife for flying off with his wooden angel.

He was not ready to give her up yet; and he needed to know who he was going to give her up to.

Through the trees Gabby could see the yellow arm of the mechanical digger in the top field. It was the end of an era. No more cattle or the sweet grassy smell of them bringing the flies into the garden in summer. No sound of cows’ teeth munching the new green blades in sharp little stretch and pulling sounds. No wheezy human-sounding bovine coughs making them jump in the dark.

Charlie had occasionally ploughed a portion of the top field for cabbages or kale, and when Josh was small he and his friends had wrinkled their noses at the smell of rotting greens. But cabbages had been infinitely better than executive houses.