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

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СКАЧАТЬ I’m afraid it was egg or processed cheese. I thought eggs might be fractionally better, forgetting that you probably haven’t tasted shop eggs for years. I suppose yours are the colour of the sun.’

      ‘Well, yes. Small eggs, though, we keep bantams. These are fine, what does it matter what they taste like …’ She indicated the duck-egg-blue sea, waved her arm skyward at the cloudless sky.

      ‘Very true,’ Mark said softly.

      There was hardly a sound except the lapping of small waves. The sun glinted and danced on the surface of the water making it iridescent. Mark handed Gabby a beaker of wine and held his up to her.

      ‘To this beautiful day and to the future.’

      His eyes rested on her with an expression that made her stomach lurch. They touched plastic glasses and Gabby, feeling the heat spreading over her entire body, made herself busy stowing away little clumps of clingfilm, then she turned and studied the horizon and the small boats still making their way back and forth to the island.

      They munched the rolls in silence, washing them down with sharp white wine. Alarmed, Gabby thought, I mustn’t drink too much.

      As if reading her thoughts, Mark said, ‘An island must be the best place of all to drink at lunchtime. You can’t drive. There’s no escape, the only thing to do is relax.’

      He turned on his back and lay with his head on his sweater, his arms under his head. ‘What made you become a picture restorer, Gabriella?’

      Gabby sieved grains of sand as smooth as silk through her fingers. ‘Watching Nell, my mother-in-law. She used to let me help her with small, simple jobs that didn’t need any particular expertise. I began to get so interested that she encouraged me to train properly, get a qualification. But really it was Nell who got me started. I learnt so much from her, she was a wonderful teacher.’

      ‘So I understand. Peter Fletcher has huge respect for her.’

      ‘They go back a long way, I think they trained or worked together in London at some time. It’s been much easier for me to work in Cornwall because Nell forged the way. When she started restoring it took her years to build up a business and a reputation. She was helping her husband run the farm, too. I don’t know how she did it.’

      Gabby slid onto her back. The wine was beginning to make her sleepy. She closed her eyes. One of the reasons Nell had encouraged her to study properly was to banish her longing for another child. It just never happened. Despite months of tests and medical advice and marking the calendar religiously, she had never conceived again. She had enrolled at Falmouth College of Arts to study Fine Arts with a quaking heart, but had loved every minute.

      Through Nell she acquired a talent for something she was good at and loved, but would never have thought of doing. Her touch was light and instinctive and when Nell began to slow down she had taken over some of her work and steadily gained a reputation of her own. By the time Josh left for university she had her own clients and a fledgling business.

      ‘I owe Nell so much,’ she murmured, her body relaxing into the warm sand.

      ‘You sound close.’ Mark turned slightly on his side towards her, away from the sun in his eyes.

      ‘Yes, I guess we are.’

      Mark smiled. ‘If you’ve never had to think about it, you are. Does Nell still restore?’

      ‘She just takes on work she enjoys now, and friends’ paintings. She used to do all the museum work and the heavy and sometimes monotonous cleaning of huge paintings of local dignitaries in council offices …’

      ‘Like Councillor Rowe!’

      Gabby laughed. ‘Exactly like Councillor Rowe! Now I’ve taken over all those and I think she’s finding it fun and a huge relief to pick and choose what she wants to do for the first time in her life.’

      ‘So she’s a widow?’

      ‘Oh, she’s been a widow for twenty-odd years …’ Gabby stopped as a sudden thought occurred to her. She could not believe she had never thought of it before.

      ‘What is it, Gabriella?’ Mark propped his head on his hand and peered at her.

      ‘I’ve suddenly realized that Nell must have been a widow for almost as long as she was married. It’s such a strange concept … Nell has always seemed embedded in the farm, yet …’ Gabby tried to work it out. ‘She must have been, heavens, around the age I am now when Ted died.’ She stared at Mark, startled.

      ‘Nell could have left the farm when Ted died. She could have gone back to London and resumed her career. She could have had another life altogether, while she was still young enough.’

       Supposing Nell had longed to leave and Charlie and I never thought of asking her what she wanted?

      Mark was thinking, How startling this girl’s eyes are. They seem to mirror every emotion, leaving her guileless. At times they appear a deep forget-me-not blue, as now. At other times they seem a hazy grey like seeing the sky or sea through mist. There seem to be brown flecks in them somewhere; perhaps they turn that way when she is angry. Is this sleeping girl ever angry? And why do I think she’s sleeping?

      Had he spoken aloud? He was unsure.

      ‘I guess,’ he said, ‘it’s not really as simple as that. Can you really go back? The life you had once as a child or a student is long gone. You exchanged it, moved on to the life you have now. Whether your adult life is happy or not it takes courage to return to your roots or a memory of happiness. Most people, perhaps wisely, don’t risk it. A place and the people you left behind don’t stay frozen in time, waiting for your return. Everything changes, moves on. It can’t be recaptured. Isn’t returning a way of saying that the whole life you have lived since has not been worth the leaving?’

      ‘Or the living?’

      ‘Or the living.’

      He watched her eyes, fixed on his, cloud, change colour alarmingly quickly. For a second he was afraid of what he glimpsed, so stark it looked. He reached out his hand to touch hers and her fingers felt cold. He closed his hand firmly round hers.

      ‘Banish it. Don’t let a ghost walk over your grave.’

      She smiled and lay back on the sand, closing her eyes, letting his fingers hold on to hers. They both drifted sleepily without talking any more.

       A place and the people you left behind don’t stay frozen in time, waiting for your return …

      No. But in your mind they do. In your mind they stay exactly as you left them.

      That is why you must take such care with the life you have. It must never be taken for granted. It seemed to Gabby, sometimes, that people did not understand the importance of this. People had rows, screamed at each other, spoilt their lives in cruelty and quick tongues, in passion and in hate. It wasn’t worth it. It really wasn’t.

      She thought of Josh. Josh leaving the life he shared with her for another wider world. She was glad of it, it was how things should be, and yet they would never be so close again. He would grow away from her, the process had already begun. As his world enlarged she would grow СКАЧАТЬ