Page 25 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay

On the train going home, Ted put down the tablet from which he’d been reading the Sunday papers and glanced at her across the laminate table.

‘I’m a bit nervous about Liam coming down, if I’m honest, Pegs.

I know he should come, and I want him to– he’s your boy, after all.

I just don’t know how it’s going to work… ’ He tailed off, a little sheepish.

Peggy was similarly torn. She really wanted her son to come, to have the chance to spend proper time with him.

But how would Liam and Ted rub along together?

She didn’t want there to be tension between them– or to be stuck in the middle, walking on eggshells, especially with the Lindy situation still a disruptive factor in their lives– if her son was planning to stay for more than a weekend.

They hadn’t discussed the detail of his visit at the party, Peggy not really believing Liam would come.

‘Listen, it might not happen,’ she said now.

‘He seemed at such sixes and sevens last night. I don’t think he knew what he was saying.

Maybe it was just a drunken flash of enthusiasm.

’ She fervently hoped it was not– she’d already sent her son a message assuring him that she was serious about him visiting– but she didn’t want to wind Ted up about something that might never come about.

Ted said nothing for a long moment. Then he straightened in the seat and seemed to reassert his positive outlook on life. ‘Okay.’ He grinned. ‘Look, if he does come, he’ll just have to follow a few house rules… Like speaking to me once in a while.’

She laughed. ‘Deal.’ She leaned back and closed her eyes, glad the party was over and they were heading home to the peace of their beautiful bay.

It was the first time Peggy was aware of being relieved to be out of the hot, busy city.

On previous visits, since the move, she’d always recognized the London streets as home, sunk into the familiarity of the place, felt a wrench when she’d left to go back to Cornwall.

But maybe the strings were slackening on the past’s hold on her.

Maybe she was finally beginning to see Pencarrow as the place she considered ‘home’.

‘By the way,’ she added, eyes still closed, ‘thank you for coming with me, Ted. It was so much better with you there.’

Peggy’s phone rang early on Monday morning.

Ted had already left for the van, keen to catch up after a weekend away.

But she’d pulled the duvet round her shoulders after he’d gone and dozed for a while, tired, she thought, from tension in the run-up to the family get-together, as well as overdoing the champagne and the late night.

Now, reaching for her phone, she hesitated to answer. It was not a number she recognized. Who will be ringing at this hour, anyway? But instinct made her click on the call.

‘Hello?’

A cool female voice with an ambiguous London accent greeted her: ‘Am I speaking to Peggy?’

Peggy acknowledged that she was.

‘Sienna Rybicki.’

Still half asleep, Peggy didn’t immediately register the name. Then she shot upright in bed. Paul’s wife: the forest-school founder. ‘Oh, yes. Hi.’

‘Can we meet? The George at nine?’

‘Umm, great.’

Sienna clicked off without another word. She was not, by all accounts, into pleasantries.

Peggy sat for a moment, bemused, then jumped out of bed. It was not yet eight, but she had to wash her hair, decide what to wear and walk to the Samson George. No time for breakfast.

As she hurried down the hill– she’d chosen white jeans and a fitted mint-green T-shirt with small buttons at the neck opening– Peggy began to rehearse how she would pitch for the job.

She was probably over-qualified in some respects, having taught English to A-level, but she would turn her hand to anything.

She just loved being with kids. That must count for something , she told herself, as she pushed open the heavy glass door of the hotel.

The quiet chink of expensive china and the low murmur of people aware of their exclusive surroundings greeted her as she entered the dining room, which fronted onto the terrace where she and Ted had lunched the previous week.

Glancing around the full room, she couldn’t see her prospective employer at any of the tables.

‘I’m meeting Sienna Rybicki,’ she told the barely smiling front-of-house, who materialized at her side, the woman’s black-framed glasses and hard red lipstick greatly enhancing her aura of power.

But at the mention of the name the FOH almost stood to attention. ‘Follow me, please,’ she said, leading Peggy outside, where more guests breakfasted in the sunshine– although a stiff wind was buffeting the large canvas umbrellas shading them, making a disturbingly loud snapping noise.

Sienna was at the far end of the long terrace, sitting alone and very still, her long fingers folded over her mobile phone, which lay on the cover of a thick leather notebook balanced on her knees– embossed, Peggy saw, with instantly recognizable Liberty print.

Her dark-eyed beauty was almost fascinating close up, although she was older than Peggy had previously supposed from rare glimpses at the farm shop.

Older than Paul by a good many years , she thought.

Dressed in what Peggy was sure were cashmere joggers, Chanel leather trainers and a silk T-shirt, all in muted cream, she seemed to be trying to appear low-key and casual, but was too rich to pull it off. A cup of black coffee sat on the low glass table in front of her, apparently untouched.

Looking up as she approached, Sienna straightened, sweeping wispy strands of her long ash-blonde hair back over her shoulders. She didn’t get up, just indicated the chair opposite as she greeted Peggy politely but with minimal warmth.

Peggy sat. She was gasping for some coffee, but the waiting staff were clearly not venturing to this end of the terrace, as if the area had been designated Sienna’s private office and she was not to be disturbed. For a moment she hesitated.

Then she thought, Stuff it . I’m too old to pander to anyone.

She said, ‘Excuse me while I order some coffee,’ and got up.

Collaring a curly-haired youth in a waiter’s apron, she was about to order a croissant too.

But something told her that would be a step too far– wrangling crumbs on the chin and buttery fingers was not a good look for a first interview– and she settled for an Americano, milk on the side, her stomach grumbling menacingly at the decision.

‘So you’re opening a forest school?’ Peggy took the initiative once seated again.

The ex-model’s carefully contained expression sprang to life.

‘It’s not really a “forest” school, in the accepted sense, more an environmental academy.

’ She stared past Peggy. ‘I want the kids to experience their learning through the natural world. Through the prism of the earth that supports them, the plants that nourish them, the birds and animals that help the eco-system to flourish.’ It was clearly a speech she’d delivered more than once from the way it tripped off her tongue, but it was passionate and seemed genuine enough. ‘Do you understand?’

Peggy couldn’t say she entirely did. ‘Is it a free school, then?’

Sienna nodded. ‘It falls into the category of alternative provision. I want children– all ages from eleven to eighteen– who’ve been excluded, for instance, or have long-term mental health problems, are victims of bullying, that sort of thing… Misfits.’

‘Sounds admirable,’ Peggy said, and meant it. It occurred to her that maybe Sienna considered herself to be in that category with her unusual beauty and, Peggy pondered, perhaps a touch of neuro-diversity, implied by her strangely dislocated manner.

‘Holism. The interconnectedness of this beautiful land of ours,’ Sienna went on. ‘You’ve heard of Sky Woman, the origin story of the Iroquois? The sky goddess falls to earth and the animals, birds and plants nurture her.’

Peggy shook her head, but Sienna was looking away across the water as she spoke and seemed to drift off.

Peggy wondered if she’d fallen into a sort of trance, her vision for the future acting like an intoxicant.

‘Our children will be soothed and healed by the power of nature,’ Sienna insisted, no longer dazed.

‘The feel of rich Cornish soil through their fingers, the touch of bark on their palms, the sun on their faces, the animals and birds around us. And our piskies will protect and guide them. Show the kids how to save the earth and all that lives in it along the way… including themselves.’

Her vision, despite sounding a bit bonkers, seemed oddly lovely and right. But Sky Woman? Piskies? There was silence, Peggy with little idea how to respond.

‘I can see from your face you think I’m soft in the head,’ Sienna murmured unapologetically. ‘But right now there’s a tiny pisky on your left shoulder.’

Involuntarily, Peggy shot it a glance.

‘Hmm,’ Sienna went on thoughtfully, head cocked to one side. ‘Seems to like you.’

Peggy, although pretty sure– but not hard-line certain– she didn’t believe in fairies, felt a shiver go up the back of her neck.

Then her would-be employer suddenly snapped out of it, like a switch being flipped.

She must have caught sight of something or someone on the other side of the glass doors.

She waved her hand angrily in that direction.

‘There he is. The bastard. The villain of the piece.’

Peggy, startled by the venom in her voice, turned to see Tudor Kostas, the owner of the hotel– smartly turned out, as always, in a grey bespoke suit and slicked-back dark hair– talking to the front-of-house with the red lipstick.