Page 61 of A Letter to the Last House Before the Sea

Corey sighed and looked up at the sky. The weather was turning.

‘We’d better be heading back before we get caught in a downpour, and I’m on lifeboat duty this evening.’

Dark clouds had gathered above them and Lettie shivered. The woods, on their trek back to the car, seemed dark and threatening now the sun had gone. And though they talked most of the way back, the ghost of Elizabeth Allford seemed to hover between them, lowering the mood.

Back in Heaven’s Cove, at the turn off for the cliff road, Corey pulled the car up onto a grass verge.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to take you back to Driftwood House?’

‘No, I can walk and you’d better save your gran’s suspension. Thank you so much for a lovely afternoon.’

‘You’re welcome. I enjoyed myself too.’

He hesitated, as though he wanted to say more, but when he stayed silent, Lettie opened the door and stepped out into the lane.

She bent down into the car. ‘Give my best regards to your gran, for what they’re worth.’

Corey nodded. ‘I will. I expect she’s got more jobs for me to do on the cottage before I head over to the lifeboat station. The cottage is more than two hundred years old and falling down. It’s quite a headache for her.’ He twisted his mouth. ‘And for me.’

He looked tired and sad, and Lettie’s heart ached.

‘It’s a shame in a way because if your gran did sell the headland, she could afford to have the cottage completely repaired or even move somewhere else. Then you’d be more free.’

Lettie only meant to be sympathetic but Corey’s posture stiffened. ‘She doesn’t want to move somewhere else.’

‘No, I appreciate that.’ She was putting her foot in it big time but it was too late to take the words back. ‘I just meant the money might make her life, and yours, easier if it was all getting too much. But I know she doesn’t want to sell, and why.’

‘Gran’s adamant about it. Contrary to what Simon says, I haven’t been whispering in her ear, instructing her to turn down his offer.’

‘I know you haven’t been. I just meant that selling the land might have been a way for you to move on. That’s all.’ A sudden gust of wind rocked the car as Corey stared through the windscreen at the churning ocean in the distance.

Lettie sighed. ‘Well, thanks again and I’d better let you get back to your grandmother.’

She closed the door and watched while the car pulled away towards the centre of Heaven’s Cove.

‘Nice one, Lettie,’she muttered to herself. How to spoil a perfectly good afternoon by bringing down the mood: first, ask about a poor, desperate woman who’d walked into the sea, and then sound like Simon’s mouthpiece. Why did she bring up the blessed headland? Perhaps her family was right and she’d be better off back in London – rather than upsetting the locals in Heaven’s Cove.

Fat raindrops had started to fall and Lettie hurried up the cliff path, berating herself all the way.