The Secret of Angel Cove

by Sheila Norton

Genres: Women's Fiction; Holiday Romance

Synopsis

'Sometimes you come across books that simply lift your spirits. The Secret of Angel Cove is precisely one of those books . . . gentle, heart-warming, and it leaves you with a smile on your face' Courier

A cosy, wintery story set on Devon's beautiful coast, by beloved, award-winning author Sheila Norton.

'I've woken up early. I really didn't want to - today of all days, the first day of the rest of my life.'

After years working all hours as a senior practice nurse, Joy has taken a well-earned retirement. She'd been looking forward to it, to leisure and time and no alarms, but now that it's happened, she's not sure what to do with herself. Her husband Terry is buried in his business, and seems to be talking to her less and less - at home she feels, increasingly, rather in the way.

But when a new neighbour, Sara, and her small son move into their remote Devon village, Joy befriends her, and inspired by Sara starts to look into the history of their beautiful Angel cove. Joy's quest brings her to new friends, old secrets and eventually unearths a history that belies their sleepy village . . .

Praise for Sheila Norton
'Thoroughly enjoyable' KATIE FFORDE
'A truly lovely read with delightful characters' PHILLIPA ASHLEY
'A charming read. Made me want to move to the country and buy a cottage with roses around the door' SARAH MORGAN

Release date: December 8, 2022

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

I’ve woken up early. I really didn’t want to – today of all days, the first day of the rest of my life, as I’ve been thinking of it. I wanted to sleep late from now on – every day if I like. I’ll never again have an alarm blaring at me, nagging me to get up, get dressed, hurry to work, hurry to my patients and spend my busy days dressing their wounds, giving them their vaccinations, checking their temperatures, their pregnancies, their babies, the boils on their bums. From today, I’m not a senior practice nurse any more. I’m retired.

‘Are you awake, Joy?’ Terry mutters as he turns over next to me. Always seems a pointless question, really. ‘Did you hear that noise?’

‘Mm,’ I say, yawning. ‘What was it?’

‘I don’t know.’ He throws off the duvet and goes across to the window, peering behind the curtain. There’s never much to see. Just the sky, the sea, the changing seasons measured by the dawn and dusk. Daylight now: it leaks into the bedroom, showing the specks of dust floating gently in the air. The thought occurs to me – and I dismiss it quickly – that I’ll have no excuse, now, for dodging the housework.

Terry stretches and shrugs as he lets the curtain fall again.

‘I’ll make a cup of tea, shall I – now I’m up?’

‘Mm. Thanks.’

I wonder if I can grab another five minutes’ sleep while he’s doing it. I hear him pad downstairs, hear the kettle being filled – but almost immediately, he’s coming back up, the sound of his surprise arriving before he does:

‘It’s next door! A removal van! They’re moving in. Did you know?’

I open my eyes, struggle to sit up. ‘Really? No, I didn’t – how would I know?’

‘It’s that young couple, the ones who came to view the house earlier in the summer,’ he says.

‘Oh, the ones with the little boy? That’ll be nice.’

‘Didn’t see the boy. But yes, them.’ He turns to go back downstairs. ‘Tea, then?’

‘Thanks.’ I lie back against the pillows, thinking how good it’ll be, after living next to an empty house for nearly a year, to have neighbours again. The house was rented for a long while, a succession of neighbours coming for just long enough to get to know them before they moved on again. Then, last year, the landlord decided to sell, but not until he’d had the whole place redecorated, which seemed a bit crazy to me, as surely any buyers would want to do up the house to their own taste.

‘It had probably been neglected for so long,’ Terry had pointed out, ‘that it desperately needed it. And he’d have wanted to maximise his profit.’

So here we are: on the very day that I begin the rest of my life, I get new neighbours to share it with. I hope they’re going to be friendly.

It would be difficult, living here, if you had neighbours you didn’t like. Numbers One and Two, Smugglers’ Cottages, are the only two houses here at Angel Cove. They’re a pair of Victorian brick-built semis, overlooking the sea, backing onto the beach. The cove is a tiny, perfectly U-shaped inlet at the end of the lane that leads up to Bierleigh village, about a mile away. Either side of Smugglers’ Cottages, the woods rise steeply away towards Bierleigh in one direction, and Angel Head in the other. It’s impossible to live in one of the cottages without your lives becoming entwined with those of the people next door. We share the decking area at the back of our houses, where we have washing lines, outdoor tables and chairs. The beach is our back garden. We put our bins out in the same place – the turning area where the lane ends outside our houses and becomes the footpath through the woods. The bin lorry can just about make it, doing a tight three-point-turn there before heading back up the single-track lane to Bierleigh.

Up till now, with Terry and I both working full-time in different towns – Terry in his office in Dartmouth, me in one of the GP surgeries in Totnes – we’ve never become particularly close to any of the succession of temporary residents in Number Two cottage. We’ve been here more than thirty years; we bought Number One, Smugglers’ Cottages, when it was the original small, two-bedroomed house. Next door is still like that, but we’ve added a two-storey extension to our side; we reached the point after a few years here when we could afford something bigger, but we just didn’t want to move away. We’d never find anywhere else that matched the location of Angel Cove.

‘I’m going to ask if they’d like some tea or coffee,’ I tell Terry later, after I’ve cleared up the breakfast things.

‘OK,’ he says without looking up from his laptop.

‘It’s Saturday,’ I remind him, as if that’s going to make any difference. ‘The weekend.’

‘Mm.’

He’s started doing this recently: working at weekends, and in the evenings. I suppose he’s just going through a busy period.

I go to knock on the back door of Number Two, introduce myself and make the offer of tea and coffee.

‘Thanks so much,’ says the young woman when I return with a tray of mugs and a plate of biscuits. She looks like she’s in her early or mid-thirties; petite and slim, with long fair hair tied back off her face in a purple spotted scarf, a smut of dust on her nose and a tired look on her face. ‘I’m Sara. And—’ she indicates the tall, good-looking man carrying in a bundle of towels and bedding ‘—this is Rob. My … um … husband.’

Um … husband? ‘Pleased to meet you, Rob,’ I say. ‘Look, I don’t want to get in your way, but if you need any help with anything at all, don’t hesitate to give me – or my husband, Terry – a shout.’

‘Thank you,’ she says a bit gruffly.

Rob puts down his bundle and gives me a smile. ‘Yes, thanks, Joy. Good to meet you. I’ll be going to collect our little boy, Charlie, later. He’s back in Plymouth with a friend while we get a bit straight here.’

‘That’s nice – I’ll look forward to meeting him,’ I say, returning the smile. ‘This is a perfect place for children. I hope you’ll be very happy here.’

‘Thank you,’ Sara says again, and she nods, squaring her shoulders and adopting a brisk, better get on with it expression, while Rob picks up the bundle again and follows one of the removal men upstairs.

I feel a bit dismissed. But, of course, they’re busy, and moving house is exhausting.

‘Well, give me a knock if you need anything, won’t you,’ I tell Sara, turning to leave.

I don’t know if she will. She seems quite brisk and capable and I can’t quite judge yet whether she’s going to be friendly or not. But, we don’t know the first thing about each other yet. And they’ll be busy settling down at the moment. I think I’ll give it a while before I disturb them again.

It’s a clear autumn day, a bit chilly but with a perfect blue sky and calm sea sparkling below us, and Sara and I are standing on top of Angel Head, the headland at one end of our cove, looking back along the coast. This is the first time we’ve got together properly since she moved in. I’ve seen her only occasionally, giving me a quick wave as she rushed in and out, taking her little boy to school and back. I haven’t seen Rob at all; I presume he must be working long hours. Sara always looked so hurried and businesslike that I felt a little bit wary of her.

But this morning I bumped into her outside and we had a quick chat. She seemed more approachable than the impression I’d had of her so far. I told her I was going for a walk and I was pleasantly surprised that she asked if she could come with me. She says she likes walking, it’s how she relaxes, taking a little time off from her work occasionally for that reason, and catching up after Charlie’s asleep. So we’ve walked up here through the woods; I wanted to show off the view to her on a good day.

‘Why do you think it’s called Angel Cove?’ she asks me now.

‘I honestly have no idea,’ I admit. ‘I know there’s a local legend about it – about an angel that’s supposed to watch over the cove. But I’ve never found out exactly how it all started.’ I shrug. ‘Some people say the angel protects the sea at the cove. They say bathing in the sea is lucky, and I’ve even heard it said that it’s impossible to drown here.’ I grin at her. ‘I like swimming here myself, when it’s warm enough, but I wouldn’t want to put that to the test! It’s nonsense, obviously, just some old legend. I’ve never got around to trying to find out exactly how it started.’

Never had time, to be honest. Never had time for anything – until now.

‘I like things like that,’ Sara says, nodding her head enthusiastically. ‘It’d be nice to know what the story is. I’d be tempted to do some research on it if I had time.’ She shrugs. ‘But I need to keep to my deadlines.’

Sara works from home; she’s told me she’s a freelance book editor. She says she loves her work and can fit it around Charlie’s school hours.

‘Well, I could have a go at researching it myself,’ I say. ‘It would be interesting to try to find out more about it.’

The idea quite appeals to me, now I’ve started thinking about it.

‘Perhaps there might be something online?’ she suggests.

‘Yes, I could try that first. Or the village library might have some local history books.’

‘Let me know how you get on, won’t you.’ She smiles at me. ‘Shall we finish the walk now? Do we go this way?’

‘Yes, come on. It’s downhill now.’

This next part of the path is quite gentle, and we reach the shingle beach at the bottom fairly quickly.

‘It’s deserted!’ Sara says, staring around her.

‘The only access down here is the way we’ve just come.’ The red Devon cliffs stretching along the beach from here are steep and hazardous. ‘There are rockfalls along there nearly every year,’ I add, pointing to the scar of the most recent fall. ‘The coast path just here went into the sea a few years ago; it detours onto the road a bit further inland.’

‘So we can’t walk any further.’ She looks disappointed. I get the impression she’d be up for a route-march. I like walking myself but I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll keep up with her!

‘Only along the beach and back, if you want to – but the tide’s coming in. We can do plenty of different walks, though, other days, if you’re up for it?’

‘Yes, definitely, I’d like that. Thanks, Joy,’ she says.

‘Well, I’m enjoying it too. I didn’t often get time to do this before I retired.’

We turn and start to walk back. The sun is beginning to peek out cautiously from behind the clouds, and a shaft of sunlight suddenly arrows its way across the sea, glinting the tips of the waves with sparkling diamonds.

We stand in silence for a moment, admiring the view.

‘Beautiful!’ Sara says. She gives a strange little chuckle. ‘Well, if nothing else, my childhood dream has come true – I always did want to live by the sea.’

‘If nothing else?’ I query, a little taken aback.

At first I don’t think she’s going to reply. She shakes her head as if she’s cross with herself.

‘I’ve been an idiot,’ she says finally, turning to look at me. ‘The thing is, Rob and I always loved this part of the coast. We used to talk about how much we’d like to live here. So when I found this house, and Rob seemed so pleased about it … I know this is going to sound totally idiotic, but I somehow managed to deceive myself that he’d change his mind and settle back down here with me and Charlie after all.’

‘Oh, Sara!’ I stare at her. I feel stupid now. It should have been obvious – I haven’t even seen Rob since their moving day. ‘I’m sorry, I got totally the wrong impression. I thought perhaps Rob was working away—’

‘No. Playing away would be more accurate,’ she says with an attempt at a laugh.

‘But you say you thought he might change his mind? When did you finally realise that he wouldn’t?’

‘Only on the day I moved in,’ she says. She looks at me and gives a little self-deprecating snort. ‘It was ridiculous; I should have known perfectly well he wasn’t going to ditch Jade, his girlfriend. He’s been seeing her for a year now, and when I found out, he actually told me he couldn’t live without her. I was so stupid; I got taken in by the fact that Rob was still being fair and decent about everything, going on about staying friends, agreeing with everything I suggested about co-parenting Charlie. He came with me to look at properties … and, well, when we looked at this place, this house, he seemed so excited … ’

She stops and shakes her head. ‘I don’t know whether to be angry with him, now, for … well, for being so bloody patronising, trying to keep me sweet and make it easier for him to get what he wanted, or angry with myself for being taken in by it!’

‘You must have felt so let down when you realised,’ I say.

‘I was gutted,’ she admits. ‘I’d imagined this scenario where he suddenly said, when he helped me move in, that he’d realised what he was throwing away … Huh! He did help me, but the whole day, his eyes were constantly straying to his watch, and to his phone, thinking how soon he could go back to her.’

I think she’s sounding incredibly strong, considering what she’s telling me. Her face is pink with the indignation she obviously feels, or perhaps the frustration of having deluded herself. At the moment, our acquaintance is so new, I can’t quite work her out, and I wonder if she’s really as strong as she appears. Even her style of dressing seems to be promoting herself as a person who faces the world square on: today she’s wearing purple jeans with a bright green sweater, and she has bold streaks of red in her blonde hair.

‘But I’m OK, Joy,’ she says firmly as we start to walk on. ‘I can’t deceive myself any more: it’s over. He’s living with Jade, in her flat, while they look for a place to buy together – their next step. The final step, I suppose … apart from divorce.’

‘Has that been mentioned?’

‘No, but it’s bound to be what he wants, isn’t it? What she’s going to want. And I can’t let this ruin the rest of my life. I have to make a life for myself and Charlie now.’

‘Good for you,’ I say. ‘And you’re not on your own here, you know. If you want someone to talk to any time, just give me a shout. I’m always happy to stop for a quick cup of tea or coffee and a chat.’

I must admit, the occasional chat over a cuppa might help me too. Like most people of my age – sixty-five on my last birthday – I’d been looking forward to my retirement for some time before I finally took the plunge. My work had been exhausting me for longer than I cared to admit. I always used to drive home from work in a hurry, anxious to get indoors and start cooking dinner, pour myself a glass of wine, put the TV on and my feet up. But I’d also usually still be preoccupied by the day’s events at the surgery. It was hard to put the patients out of my mind completely after I’d finished my day’s work.

But I’ll never have to rush anywhere again now, whether it’s to fetch a defibrillator because of an emergency, or simply to make a cup of tea in a two-minute break between patients. I’m free! I’m still not sure what to do with all this freedom, but at the moment, I don’t really care. I just want to take my time, gaze at the sea, and the autumn leaves in the woods, watch the squirrels in the trees and the seagulls swooping overhead, and remember why we love this place.

‘We’ve always considered ourselves so lucky to live here,’ I say out loud now to Sara as we finally arrive back at Smugglers’ Cottages. ‘We like to think of the cove as one of South Devon’s best kept secrets.’

‘The beach certainly doesn’t get crowded, does it,’ she says.

‘No. Not many holidaymakers come down here – there’s nothing for them to do. No cafés, restaurants, public loos or anything. And the nearest pub, of course, is the Angel, up in the village. But we do get plenty of people from Bierleigh coming down to swim here during the summer.’

‘Knowing they’re safe from drowning?’ Sara says, grinning at me. ‘The Angel of the Cove protects them?’

‘Well, you never know, there may be some truth in it.’ I grin back. ‘I’ll see what I can do to find out.’

‘What are you going to do today?’ Terry asks me as he’s getting dressed. He asks me every day. It makes me feel a bit defensive. I feel like saying, I’m going to lie around all day doing nothing, if that’s all right with him, just to see the expression on his face. But I can’t bring myself to say it.

‘I’m thinking I could go for another walk,’ I say, ‘but I don’t suppose Sara will have time to join me again today – Charlie’s home, and—’

‘Yes, you need to be careful you don’t intrude,’ he says. ‘Of course Sara’s busy. She’s got her work, and Charlie.’

‘I know, Terry. I won’t intrude, but going for walks together was Sara’s idea. She’s aware that sitting all day is bad for her.’ I pause, and then go on, ‘I keep warning you about it, don’t I? You ought to do some stretching exercises, at least, if you haven’t got time to get up and walk about a bit.’

He’s bringing work home every night now. It seems odd that he’s mostly been doing this since I retired – not that I’m reading anything into it. Well, I’m trying not to, anyway.

‘I hope you’re not going to start lecturing Sara with all your nursing advice.’ He gives a little laugh, pretending he’s joking, but the tone of his voice doesn’t match the smile.

‘I won’t.’ I stare back at him, hurt. Is that what he thinks of me? ‘I’m just trying to help. She’s just separated from her husband, and she’s probably a bit lonely.’

To be honest, I’m not even sure whether that’s true. Sara seems perfectly fine with being on her own, and more angry than upset about the situation. But I’m not ready to admit that maybe I’m feeling a bit lonely myself.

He turns to face me, just in his pants, with one arm in his shirt. ‘OK. But I think you need to find interests of your own, too. As well as seeing Sara.’

I turn away from him, sitting on my side of the bed to pull my socks on.

‘All I’m trying to do is be a good friend and neighbour,’ I say, a bit sharply. ‘I am getting some interests of my own too – give me a chance, OK? I’ve only been retired a few weeks.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘And in fact, I’ve already decided on another new interest,’ I add.

‘Go on?’ he says. ‘What’s that?’

‘I’m going to research the history of this cove. And the legend of the angel.’

‘Oh! Well, good luck with that. I don’t suppose there’s much to discover but at least it’ll keep you occupied.’

Occupied? Or out of his way? I’m beginning to wonder. Well, I’ll show him! I will start to research the story of the Angel of the Cove. I’ll bloody well start today.

After breakfast, I set up my laptop on the kitchen table and decide I’m not moving until I’ve made a start on this research. My first few Google searches for ‘Angel Cove, Devon’ don’t result in anything beyond some descriptions of the location of the cove, several results referring to Bierleigh and review site listings of the Angel Inn. Something prompts me to go over to Facebook and, without much conscious thought, I put ‘Angel Cove’ into a search on there. Nothing. Sighing, I put in ‘Bierleigh’ instead and, to my surprise, it turns out there’s a Bierleigh Facebook group. I don’t use Facebook a lot, but even so, I’m surprised I never realised before that this existed. I suppose, having spent my life working in a different area, I don’t know half of what goes on in the village here.

I request permission to join the group straight away, and by the time I’ve spent a bit of time on some more fruitless searches elsewhere, the admin of the Facebook group has already accepted me. I start reading recent posts but they’re mostly from local people asking for recommendations for plumbers and tree surgeons. Scrolling down the feed, though, there are occasional posts about local history. Someone has posted old photos of their class at the village school back in the 1950s. And there are pictures, too, of Fore Street and the various shops and houses through the decades. I get sidetracked for a while by looking at these, and by reading some of the posts.

‘Does anyone remember the name of the lady who ran the sweetshop back in the early seventies when I was at the village school?’ someone asks. ‘I remember her giving a bag of sweets to every child at Christmas.’

There are lots of replies. I find myself smiling, thinking what a nice tradition that must have been. I didn’t live here myself in the early seventies. I was in my late teens then, doing my nurse training in Exeter, where I grew up. My memories of the seventies are largely bound up with the three-day week, power cuts, rubbish piling up in the streets when the binmen went on strike and – on the other hand – nights out in the city centre with the new friends I was making as a student nurse. I’d never been to Bierleigh, let alone Angel Cove. I’m not even sure I knew where it was.

I post a ‘thank you’ for being accepted, and over the course of the next hour or so there’s a trickle of replies, welcoming me to the group. There are even a couple of posts from people who know me, asking how I am and seeming to be surprisingly pleased that I’ve joined this Facebook group. So, next I pose my question:

I’ve been wondering if anybody knows anything at all about the legend behind the name of Angel Cove? Although I’ve lived here a long time, all I know is there’s supposed to have been some story about an angel, people say it’s lucky and you’re not supposed to be able to drown here. Any info would be much appreciated.

I stop to make a coffee, and when I return to my laptop, to my surprise there are already a couple of responses to my question.

One says:

No idea, sorry.

Another says:

Never knew there was a legend about it.

I wonder, somewhat uncharitably, why they bothered to reply if that’s all they have to say. I can’t believe how disappointed I’m feeling already. This is silly, I tell myself. I have to give it time. There’s bound to be more responses in due course, and hopefully some of them might actually be helpful!

It’s really warm this afternoon so I take my laptop outside to try some more research, but I soon become pleasantly distracted by watching little Charlie from next door as he jumps from one rockpool to the next, nimble as a goat. He’s got a bucket in his hand, and every now and then he squats to peer into a pool with the unhurried concentration of the very young. I can still remember the pleasure of being seven years old at the seaside. How it felt to be able to clamber over the rocks, as Charlie’s doing now, in bare feet, without slipping, without fear, and to squat like that without making my legs ache, or lose my balance and topple into a rockpool!

He stands up, shading his eyes against the sun as he stares out to sea, and then turns and catches sight of me on our shared decking, and carries his bucket back up the beach.

‘Hello, Charlie,’ I say as he approaches. ‘What have you found there?’

‘Shells.’ He jumps two at a time up the six wooden steps to the decking, sits down on the floor and rummages through his bucket. ‘This is the best one,’ he tells me solemnly, holding out a small pearly white shell, perfectly intact.

‘It’s very pretty. What sort of creature do you think lived in that?’ I ask him.

‘A fish. A very, very small one. He was very lonely and sad.’

‘Why?’

‘Because his mum lived in a different shell,’ he says, looking at me in surprise that I should ask something so obvious. ‘So did his dad, and all his friends.’

‘Ah, I see. Good point.’ I smile at him. ‘Well, I’m glad we’re not shellfish, then. You’re right, it must be quite a lonely thing to be.’

‘Me and my mummy are lonely too,’ he goes on after a moment, still looking at the little shell in his hand. ‘Now that we don’t live with my daddy any more.’

What on earth do I say to this?

‘I know, Charlie, it’s difficult, isn’t it? When things change, and we don’t really like them.’

‘I like being here,’ he says. ‘At the seaside. But I wish we still lived with my dad. And I wish I still went to my old school, with my friends.’

I want to say that I’m sure it’ll soon get easier. That he’ll get used to only seeing his dad on weekend visits. That his mum will manage to find more time for him, once she’s more settled in their new home, and then he won’t feel so lonely – wandering around out here on the beach on his own. And that he’ll soon make friends at his new school. But although I don’t know much about children, I’m sure they can tell when we’re just saying what makes us feel better, even if it does nothing whatsoever to help them.

‘Change is never easy,’ I sympathise instead. ‘But I find chocolate biscuits always seem to help.’ I give him a smile. ‘Would you like me to see if I’ve got any?’

He smiles back. ‘Yes please.’

‘Go in and ask Mummy if she’s got time to join us. I’ll make her a cup of tea, and – orange juice for you?’

‘Thanks!’ He jumps up and runs into his kitchen, calling for his mum.

‘Want a cup of tea?’ I call into the living room, where I know Terry will still be staring at his laptop, piles of paperwork on the table next to him.

‘Thanks, love,’ he calls back.

What the hell is going on with him? He insists he’s just busy, but he seems so distracted all the time these days, staring at his phone or his laptop, frowning, miles away. Terry’s an accountant, and he’s always worked hard, always been busy – that’s what you have to put up with when you’re a partner in the business. But I’d hoped, to be honest, that once I retired, he might find a bit more time for us, to spend doing things together. Perhaps I was being naive. After all, it was my decision to take retirement at sixty-five, so it’s true, it’s up to me to keep myself occupied.

I head back outside with the drinks and biscuits on a tray. Charlie’s looking up in expectation of a chocolate biscuit, as Sara comes out to join us, wearing a bright pink shirt with cropped jeans.

‘Hi, Joy,’ she says, sitting down next to me. ‘Thanks for this. Phew, it’s hot! Just been up in the attic, putting some boxes of stuff out of the way. I might get straight some time next year at this rate!’

She’s sounding bright and chirpy today, but perha. . .