Secrets in Burracombe

Book 6: Burracombe Village

by Lilian Harry

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

A seemingly sleepy Devonshire village, Burracombe is in fact full of intrigue and drama. Family secrets, budding romance, cruel twists of fate and amazing friendships all play out against the backdrop of the beautiful countryside. It's autumn 1953. The village is delighted when Joe Tozer – who left Burracombe as a young man in 1919 – returns to visit his family. His life since emigrating to the States has been a world away from rural Devon – but coming home, he falls in love with the place (and one particular person) all over again. With him is his eldest son, Russell. He sets hearts fluttering in the village – but will there be anyone on his arm when he catches the boat back to America?

Release date: August 18, 2011

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 304

Sample

‘A baby?’ Maddy Forsyth sat bolt upright. ‘You’re having a baby?’

‘Yes,’ Ruth Hodges said softly, ‘we are. Apart from the family, you’re the first to know.’

Maddy glanced away, then looked back, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘But – it’s so soon after Sammy . . .’ Her eyes filled with tears and she took a shaky breath, then said in a low, taut voice, ‘How could you? Don’t – don’t you care?’

Dan Hodges opened his mouth to make a hasty retort, but Ruth laid her hand on his arm and replied, in the same quiet tone, ‘Of course we care, Maddy. You shouldn’t even have to ask that. We didn’t really mean this to happen, but now it has, we’re glad.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘It’s like a miracle.’

‘A miracle?’

‘I thought I was too old. I was surprised when I had Linnet, and she’s seven years old now. I never expected to have another child.’

‘But you’re going to, all the same,’ Maddy said in the same bewildered tone. ‘And I expect you’re hoping it will be a boy.’ She turned away and whispered, ‘A replacement for Sammy.’

‘No!’ This time there was no stopping Dan’s outburst. ‘You got no right to say that, no right at all. There’ll never be a replacement for my Sam, never. Nor for his brother, Gordon, who you might remember I lost in the war. They were themselves, and this baby will be himself too. Or herself,’ he added as Maddy turned back. ‘And whatever it is, we’ll love it. But that don’t mean we’ll ever forget Sam.’ He stopped, breathing heavily.

Maddy stared at him in shock. She had always known that Dan had a temper but had never seen it unleashed before, and certainly not directed at herself. She felt her distress and bewilderment turn to an anger of her own, and the grief that was never far away welled up inside her.

‘All right, Dan,’ Ruth said, tightening her hand on his arm, ‘that’s enough. Don’t upset yourself, Maddy. We knew it would be a shock for you. It has been for us too, to tell you the truth. Look – let’s all calm down and I’ll make a fresh pot of tea and we’ll talk about it together.’ She held out a handkerchief. ‘Wipe your eyes, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘Dan, why don’t you go and get some more wood for the fire?’

Dan got up, but Maddy pushed Ruth’s hand away. ‘Tea? What good will tea do? It won’t bring Sammy back, will it? Nothing will ever bring Sammy back. And whatever you say, you’re going to be happy again – you’ve got each other and Linnet and your new baby – and you will forget him.’ She saw Dan’s face flush again and his mouth open. ‘Oh, not entirely, I know that. You’ll always be a bit sad, when you think of him or visit his grave in the churchyard. But your lives will go on – you’ll still have a family. What will I have? Nothing! Nobody! Just when I thought I’d have Sammy for the rest of my life. Sammy, and the family we would have had. Your life has hardly changed at all; mine’s been turned upside down like a jigsaw puzzle, and the pieces have fallen all over the place. I can’t get them all together again – I never will.’ She jumped to her feet, her voice rising to a plaintive wail. ‘Never, never, never!’

Ruth leaped up too, and they faced each other, tears streaming down their cheeks. Ruth held out both hands but Maddy turned away and felt blindly for her coat, hanging on the back of the door.

‘I don’t want any tea. I’m going back to West Lyme.’

‘But you were going to stay the whole weekend. Maddy, please—’

‘How can I stay here now?’ she demanded in a thick, choking voice. ‘Knowing this – seeing you both so happy. Don’t try to say you’re not – I can see you are. And Linnet – she must be so excited, knowing she’s going to have a baby brother or sister. How can I pretend to be pleased, when all I can think about is Sammy?’

‘Linnet don’t know about the baby,’ Dan said stiffly. ‘It’s too early to tell her yet, and anyway we haven’t told anyone else apart from Ruth’s sister and her family.’

‘We wanted you to be one of the first.’

Maddy shook her head, half blinded by her tears. ‘Well, I wish you hadn’t. I wish I could have had this weekend – just one last weekend – with only Sammy to think about.’ She picked up the overnight bag she had brought with her and turned towards the door. ‘I’m sorry, Ruth, but I have to go. You must see that.’

‘Maddy!’ Ruth started forward and caught at her arm. ‘Not like this! Please! I can’t bear it!’

‘But I have to bear it, don’t I?’ Maddy said through her tears. ‘Just as I had to bear seeing my fiancé run down before my very eyes; just as I’ve got to bear spending the rest of my life alone. There’ll never be a baby for me.’

She jerked the door open and stepped out into the autumn afternoon. She had only been in the cottage an hour, yet it seemed as if in that short time her life had once more come crashing down about her ears. She was shaking all over with a mixture of emotions: shock, distress, a resurgence of the grief she’d been suffering for the past six months, and an obscure sense of betrayal. The cottage where she had enjoyed so many happy times, both as an evacuee from the war and more recently as Sammy’s sweetheart, had become a trap, and she had to get out of it, and away from the two people who had dealt her such an unexpected blow. She couldn’t look at their faces any more, and as Ruth tried once again to stop her, she pushed the older woman away and almost ran down the path to the wooden gate.

‘Maddy!’ Ruth cried as Maddy slammed the gate between them. ‘You can’t go all the way back to West Lyme now? Please, come indoors and let’s talk about it.’

‘Where else can I go? There’s a bus to Southampton in five minutes, and I can catch the train. The Archdeacon will send someone to fetch me, or I’ll take a taxi.’ Maddy paused and turned her ravaged face towards Ruth. ‘What is there to talk about? It’s happened. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. There’s never been anything anyone could do about what happened to Sammy and me!’

She turned away and set off down the lane, walking with fast, jerky steps. Ruth stood with both hands on the gate, hardly able to see the younger woman through the tears that flooded her eyes. Then she felt Dan come behind her, his big body warm as he took her in his arms.

‘Let her go, love. She’s in no state to listen to reason, and we knew it might upset her. She’ll come round in her own time.’

‘I don’t know if she will,’ Ruth said, allowing him to guide her gently back into the cottage. ‘She’s still grieving and we were the only people she could really grieve properly with. She feels we’ve let her down. She feels we’ve let Sammy down.’

‘Well, we haven’t,’ he said, ducking his head through the low doorway. ‘We haven’t let anyone down, Ruthie. And that young madam got no right to blow up at us like that. Look, we didn’t mean this to happen, but we got to go on with our lives. We can’t just let everything stop. And there’s Linnet to think about, too. It’s a good job we sent her up to your Jane for the afternoon. I wouldn’t have wanted her hearing all that.’

‘Nor would I, but we’ve got to try to understand Maddy’s point of view, Dan.’

‘Why?’ he asked indignantly, pausing by the range. ‘Is she trying to understand ours? Did she give a single thought to how we might be feeling? If you ask me, that young lady’s been spoiled all her life and it’s made her selfish. Oh, she’s as pretty and sweet as they come, and I’m not saying I’m not fond of her – I am, just as much as you are. But see what happens when things don’t go her way? Everyone else is wrong. And she’s always been the same. Look at that time she made Sam take your Silver out on a picnic in the woods, even when you’d told him not to. You could have lost that parrot then, and as it was it got us off on the wrong foot, first time I come here to see him. When I saw my boy, sitting at this table crying into a bowl of bread and milk, I didn’t know what to think.’

‘They were just children, Dan.’

‘So they might have been, but it was her led him on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was her led him on back last winter. A boy of his age, getting engaged!’ He scowled.

‘They really did seem fond of each other.’

‘I’m not saying they weren’t. All I’m saying is, they should have waited a bit, and it’s for the girl to hold back. They usually got a bit more sense than a boy only just twenty-one.’ He took a breath, then shrugged impatiently. ‘Anyway, that’s all over and done with, more’s the pity, and we all got to make the best of it. Now then, you sit down and I’ll make us that cup of tea.’ He lifted the steaming kettle and poured water into the fat brown teapot, while Ruth sank down on the small settee and began to wipe her eyes.

Dan went outside to the wire gauze meatsafe and brought back a jug of milk. He poured two cups of tea, added a spoonful of sugar for Ruth and two for himself, and came to sit beside her, setting the cups on a low table. He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and drew her against him.

‘I don’t like to say this,’ he began, his voice a little more moderate, ‘and I got to admit I didn’t know the girl when she lived back in Pompey, but Jess Budd told me her sister Stella was like a little mother to her, and their dad used to treat her like a princess. And then, after their mum and dad were both killed and the two little girls got separated, young Maddy – or Muriel, as she was then – fell right on her feet, getting adopted by that actress, Fenella Forshaw or whatever her name was, and—’

‘Forsyth,’ Ruth murmured. ‘Fenella Forsyth.’

‘Fenella Forsyth, then – and being looked after down in Devon until the war was over and Fenella Forshort started to take her—’

‘Forsyth,’ Ruth murmured, with a faint twitch of her lips. ‘You’re doing it on purpose, Dan.’

‘Well, maybe I am, but I got to get a smile back on your face somehow. Anyway, what I’m saying is that life’s been pretty easy for her since then, what with living in luxury and being taken all over the Continent. And you know as well as I do, we were both a bit worried about our Sam taking up with her. He’d never known that sort of life, and he’d never have been able to give it to her, neither. I know he was a bright boy and he had his ambitions, but when all’s said and done, we’re just ordinary working people and we don’t look for that kind of thing.’

‘I don’t think Maddy did, either,’ Ruth said thoughtfully. ‘Stella told me when we saw her at Rose Budd’s wedding back in January, when it all started, that the woman Maddy lived with in Burracombe – Dottie something, wasn’t it? – is a real homebody, always baking cakes and living in a cottage not very different from this one. Maddy didn’t live a life of luxury there.’

‘No, but she’s always been treated with kid gloves. And now she’s got something to grieve over—’

‘Dan, you can’t begrudge her that! She had a terrible experience and she’s lost the man she wanted to marry. Of course she’s grieving. We’re still grieving.’

‘Yes,’ he said gravely, ‘but we also know we got to go on living. We can’t stand still for the next thirty or forty years, Ruthie. And neither can she.’

‘It’s only six months since it happened. And she’s right – her life was turned upside down. It’s only natural that she can’t believe it will ever be better.’

‘I know that. But we know she’s wrong, don’t we? We’ve both lost people, Ruth – you lost your Jack before the war; I lost my Nora, and then Gordon, and now Sam – and we’ll never forget any of them. But we found each other and now we’ve got Linnet and a new baby to give us joy. And Maddy’ll find someone else too, eventually. It might be natural that she can’t seem to move forward just yet, but she wants us to stand still with her.’

‘She came to share her grief,’ Ruth said quietly. ‘We shouldn’t have told her so soon, Dan.’

‘We had no choice,’ he answered. ‘Whenever we did it, she’d have been just as upset, and I reckon it would have been even worse if we’d left it. It’s not the sort of news you can keep to yourself for long.’

Ruth reached out at last for her cup of tea. ‘Well, all we can do now is hope she’ll come round, and keep the door open for when she does. However long it takes, we must always keep the door open for Maddy.’

To Maddy, sitting alone in the corner of a compartment of the train back to Dorset, it didn’t seem to matter if she ever went through Ruth’s door again.

Ruth had put her finger on exactly the right spot when she’d said that Maddy had come to share her grief. There was nobody else in the world who had loved Sammy as much as the three of them, nobody who had been so bereft by his death. They had been united by their sorrow, and on Maddy’s previous visits she had felt the comfort of not having to pretend that she was recovering. But the news they had given her today – almost, it seemed, as soon as she had walked through the door – had struck at her heart. It was as if they had told her, in plain and brutal words, that their sadness had ended and they were ready to live their lives again; as if Sammy no longer mattered.

Leaving Maddy with no one to turn to.

That wasn’t true, of course. Even in her misery, she had to admit that. She still had her sister, Stella, to turn to, and Dottie Friend, the warm-hearted Devonshire woman who had brought her up since the age of nine, as well as Felix, Stella’s fiancé, who had been the curate in Burracombe and was now vicar of the next village. And there were all the other villagers she had known as a child: the Tozer family at the farm; Hilary and Stephen Napier, at the Barton; dear old Jacob Prout and – oh, so many others. Their love and sympathy had wrapped about her like warm, open arms every time she went back. And there was just as much comfort to be had at West Lyme, where she lived in a tiny flat in the Archdeacon’s house and worked as his secretary. Yes, in truth she had plenty of people to turn to.

But none of them were quite the same as Dan and Ruth Hodges – Sammy’s father and stepmother. None of them had lost Sammy in the way that she and the Hodges had done. None of them could share her sorrow and grieve with her.

The train was drawing near to the station where Maddy must change for the little branch line that would take her to West Lyme. She got up and reached to take her overnight bag down from the luggage rack above her head. Then she hesitated.

If she stayed on the train, it would take her straight to Tavistock, the nearest station to Burracombe. She would be there by early afternoon and she could pay the extra on her ticket and spend the rest of that day and the next with her sister and Dottie. The Copleys weren’t expecting her back at West Lyme until Sunday evening, and she was sure Felix would run her back to the station in his sports car. And he, Stella and Dottie would all understand why she couldn’t possibly stay at Bridge End with Ruth and Dan. They would give her the comfort she so badly needed. She might even see Stephen Napier, if he happened to be at home on a weekend pass from his RAF station.

She pushed her bag back on to the rack and sat down again, watching the Dorset hills roll by as the train steamed along on its journey into Devon.

In Burracombe, folk were celebrating happier news.

‘Hullo,’ Alice Tozer said, pouring tea as her son Tom walked through the farmhouse door, a pile of envelopes in his hand. ‘Be that the post you’ve got there?’

‘Well, ’tisn’t a loaf of bread,’ he said, and caught his wife Joanna’s look. ‘All right, Jo, I’m not being rude. Here you are, Mum. Hey – what’s this one? It’s airmail – got an American stamp on it.’

‘American? That’ll be from your Uncle Joe.’ Alice wiped her hands down her apron and took the envelope, scrutinising the address on the back. She went to the door to the staircase and called out, ‘Ted! There’s a letter here from your brother Joe.’

‘Our Joe?’ Ted clattered down the stairs and came into the kitchen, tucking his shirt into his trousers. ‘What’s he writing for? Bit early for Christmas, isn’t it?’

‘He do write other times as well. Why don’t you open it and find out?’

Ted thrust a big thumb into the flap and tore the envelope open. He drew out three sheets of flimsy airmail paper and read them, while Alice waited impatiently. The rest of the family gazed at him with expectation.

‘Bless my soul,’ Ted said after a minute or two. ‘He’s coming over to see us. Bringing young Russell and all. Well, if that don’t beat the band!’

‘Coming over?’ Alice’s face flushed with delight. ‘That’s good news. When? Bringing the girls as well?’

‘No, just Russell. He don’t say exactly when. But they must be on their way now – he says they’m coming on one of they Queens. Don’t say if it’s the Mary or the Elizabeth, but I dare say us could find out. They dock in Southampton, don’t they? Or is it Liverpool?’

Nobody was quite sure. Folk in Burracombe didn’t follow the doings of the great transatlantic liners much. They looked at each other doubtfully.

‘I seem to remember young Maddy Forsyth telling me she’d seen the Queen Mary going through the Solent when her lived that way as a kiddy, before the war,’ Alice said at last. ‘But there, her could only have been tiny then, I wouldn’t go by that. And it don’t mean to say they still go that way. You can find out, Tom, can’t you? See when they’re due in next, then us’ll have some idea when Joe and Russell might be arriving. I’d want to have summat special on the table to welcome them.’

‘Best thing would be for you to get their beds ready and just wait till they shows up,’ Ted said, passing the letter over to her. ‘They won’t want no special preparations. ’T isn’t like Joe didn’t grow up here, he knows what the place is like.’

‘Mother’s going to be some pleased,’ Alice said, skimming quickly through the pages before laying a breakfast tray ready for Minnie Tozer. Since her bout of pneumonia during the winter, Ted’s ninety-year-old mother had been persuaded to get up later in the morning, although she still insisted on doing her share of the cooking and even a little housework if Alice didn’t keep a sharp eye on her. She also took a nap in the afternoons, though she strenuously denied it, claiming that she was ‘just resting her eyes’. Apart from that, she was as busy and energetic as ever, planting seeds in the vegetable patch, preparing vegetables, paring apples, baking cakes, mending the men’s socks and working out new harmonies for the hand bells that hung from the beams above the kitchen table. She also wrote to Joe every week in the beautiful copperplate she had learned as a child, which would have been the envy of Miss Kemp had she seen it.

‘Take her the letter,’ Ted said, putting it on the tray. ‘And there’s a note specially for her, too – put it on top, so she sees it first.’

‘I wonder how long they’ll stay,’ Tom speculated, sitting down to the plate of eggs, bacon, mushrooms and fried mashed potato that Joanna set before him. ‘You’ve never met Uncle Joe, Jo. Here, that’s going to be a bit confusing, having two “Joes” in the house!’ He laughed. ‘What does Russell do? I’m surprised he can afford the time to come over here for his holidays. Or the money, come to that,’ he added with a mouth full of potato.

‘Can’t recall if Joe’s ever said,’ Ted answered. ‘If he has, I dare say your mother will remember. Ask her now.’

‘Ask me what?’ Alice bustled into the kitchen, beaming. ‘I told you her’d be pleased. Over the moon, she is, and all for getting up straight away and going into Tavistock to buy wallpaper.’

‘Wallpaper?’ Ted stared at her, his fork halfway to his mouth. ‘What on earth do she want wallpaper for?’

‘To put on the walls, of course. The spare bedroom,’ Alice added impatiently. ‘She says it’s not fit to be seen, and she’s right, it isn’t. Not been decorated since before the war, to my knowledge. I wouldn’t be surprised if your Joe don’t remember the pattern from last time he were here, and that were back in nineteen twenty-three.’

‘He’ll have a better memory than me, then,’ Ted grunted. ‘I’m not sure I can remember it now, and I was in there only last Wednesday, looking for that old screwdriver we lost.’

‘Anyway, Mother says it got to be done before they come, and since us don’t know when that is, us better get on with it sharpish. Me and Joanna will go in on the bus on Monday, soon as Robin’s gone to school.’

‘But they could be here next week!’ Ted expostulated. ‘How are we going to get it done in that time? You don’t want them to come and find us all stuck up with paste and wallpaper.’

Tom grinned and began to sing the old music-hall song, ‘When Father papered the parlour, you couldn’t see him for paste. Sticking it here, sticking it there, paste and paper everywhere. The kids were stuck to the ceiling, and Ma was stuck to the floor. I never saw a blooming family so stuck up before . . .’

Alice gave him a look and turned back to her husband. ‘By getting on with it, like I said. You will come with me, won’t you, Joanna? You can bring Heather in that sling you and Val made. I’m no good at choosing that sort of thing on my own.’

Ted cast a glance of resignation at his son. ‘No use fighting these women once they gets ideas about decorating,’ he said gloomily. ‘And just as if us haven’t got enough to do, what with all the ringing competitions coming up, not to mention Deanery Day, and that’s not even taking farm work into account. Just you make sure you choose one that’s easy to match,’ he added to his wife. ‘I don’t want to be trying to figure out all those trailing ivy and roses like the paper we got in our room. I still haven’t made out what’s wrong with that bit over the door.’

‘It’s upside down, that’s what’s wrong with it,’ Alice retorted, refilling his big teacup. ‘Irritates me every time I look at it, that do. And now you’ve brought the subject up, you might as well strip that bit off while you’re doing the spare room, and do it again – there’s a couple of yards of that paper left in the cupboard, you’re bound to find a match.’

Ted rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to protest, but Tom roared with laughter and said, ‘You might as well admit she’s got you there, Dad! You shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ Ted agreed with a sigh. ‘I never learn, do I? Take a tip from me, Tom – only open your mouth to put food in it. That’s the only way to stay out of trouble round this place!’

Stella Simmons, with no idea of what was happening to her sister Maddy, had just finished her breakfast in Dottie Friend’s cottage when Felix arrived in his sports car, Mirabelle. She looked up in surprise as he came in through the back door.

‘We’re having a day out,’ he announced. ‘Get your coat and we’ll drive down to Cornwall. The autumn colours are just beginning to look really good and it’s a shame to miss them.’

‘But it’s Saturday. You’re usually so busy.’

‘I know. But I’ve got my sermon written for Matins, and with Uncle John preaching at Evensong there was only that one to write. And everything else is ready for tomorrow’s services, and as there are no weddings – not that we get many at Little Burracombe – I thought I could take a few hours off to be with you. As you say, it’s not often we get the chance.’

‘We will once we’re married,’ Stella said, following him outside and settling into the passenger seat. ‘I shan’t be teaching then, so we can have your midweek day off together.’

He started the engine and they set off through the narrow lanes out of the village. The high Devon banks rose on either side of them, topped with hedges that were turning brown and gold with the shades of autumn. Now and then, as the lane led down through a steep little valley, they dipped below arching branches that would soon turn to a tunnel of fiery bronze.

‘Will you miss teaching very much?’ he asked, pulling close against the high bank to let a horse and cart trundle by.

‘I suppose I’m bound to. All the children – it’s been so good to watch them progress, from tiny infants to big, confident seven-year-olds. And, of course, in such a small village I see a lot of them even after that, until they go to school in Tavistock. It will seem very strange to be cut off from all that. Burracombe School has been a big part of my life – it’s the reason I came here in the first place.’

‘And very glad I am that you did,’ he said, smiling sideways at her. ‘We might never have met if you hadn’t.’

‘And I might never have found Maddy, either. Why do you think the authorities ever thought it was a good idea to separate little children like that? Sending us to different orphanages when we’d already lost our parents and little brother – it was cruel.’

‘I know, and it still goes on,’ Felix said soberly. ‘I know a boy who was separated from his sister when their parents died only five years ago, and they completely lost touch. He’s about fourteen now and determined to find her once he’s an adult, but even if he does, they’ll have lost so much of their childhood together.’

‘That’s how I felt about Maddy. And I think it’s partly why she’s finding it so hard to get over Sammy’s death. We knew him when we were children – he was her special friend even then – so as well as losing her sweetheart, she’s lost yet another link with the time when we were together. She tries so hard to be independent, you know, with her job at West Lyme and everything, but inside she’s still a little girl who needs someone to look after her.’

Felix was silent for a moment or two. Then he said, ‘It’s still only six months. That’s no time at all to recover from the sort of experience she had.’

‘I know. I just wish she’d let me help a bit more.’ Stella stirred restlessly. ‘She ought to have stayed in Burracombe a bit longer at the start. Dottie and I could have looked after her.’

Again, Felix was quiet. He glanced sideways again at Stella and then said, ‘I’m not sure that would be such a good thing, you know. Maddy has to grow up and maybe too much mothering is bad for her.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stella demanded indignantly. ‘Are you saying we shouldn’t look after her when she’s so unhappy? We should just turn her away?’

‘No, of course not. But maybe you shouldn’t look after her quite so much. The sort of grief Maddy is suffering now is something that can’t be shared. It’s her own special grief, and although I believe we should give her as much support as we can, we shouldn’t try to stop her feeling it. To my mind, she’s entitled to feel it – she’s entitled to be sad. It doesn’t help her to try to pretend that life is still good, when she clearly can’t believe that yet, or to make her feel guilty for being unhappy—’

‘I don’t make her feel guilty!’

‘No, of course you don’t,’ he said gently. ‘Not deliberately, anyway. But I think sometimes that just trying to cheer someone up makes them feel guilty for not being able to be cheerful. Grieving can be a very lonely thing. The best we can do for someone in that situation is grieve with them. Or, at least, allow them the freedom to grieve.’

Stella was silent as they emerged from the lanes on to the main road and Felix stopped the car. At last she said, ‘Well, Maddy will be able to share her grief this weekend. She’s gone to stay at Bridge End with Ruth and Dan Hodges. But I’m not sure you’re right, Felix – it seems to me that that’s just wallowing in it, and I really don’t believe that’s a good thing at all.’

He sighed. ‘I’m afraid it’s two steps forward and one back when you’re trying to get over a loss. But as long as you end up having taken one step, it’s a little bit nearer to recovery. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it today, so let’s enjoy the few hours we’ve got together.’

‘Perhaps it’s just the way we are,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’m a teacher and I’ll soon be a vicar’s wife – looking after you and helping you to look after your parishioners. It comes naturally to me to look after people. And Maddy is the sort of person everyone wants to look after – as if it’s a part of her nature to draw people to her.’

‘You may be right,’ he said, smiling. ‘Lookers-after do need people to take care of. Maybe we shouldn’t try to fight it.’

‘But you’re right, too,’ Stella went on. ‘Maddy needs to share her grief with Ruth and Dan, who must feel it just as much. They can help each other in a way that I never can,’ she ended rather wistfully.

‘In which case,’ Felix said as he stopped the car at the head of the steep combe running down to Polperro Harbour, ‘she’s in the right place this weekend, and let’s hope she’ll manage to take two huge steps forward and no steps back.’

Maddy took a taxi from Tavistock station to Burracombe. It was an extravagance, but there was nobod