The Shadow Falls

by Claire Lorrimer

Genres: Women's Fiction; Thrillers

Synopsis

One-time teenage sweethearts, Samantha and Greg, decide to marry. But inexplicably, Greg postpones the wedding, disappearing for days at a time and refusing to offer any reason for his disconcerting behaviour. Gradually, a disturbing picture of Greg begins to emerge. Although he eventually agrees to the marriage, he is seen with a mysterious woman soon afterwards. Then a stranger turns up asking questions. Samantha realises something very alarming is happening. Not only does she fear for her marriage, she fears for her life too.

Release date: January 30, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

I cannot remember the first time I realized Greg had changed. In the beginning I really believed I was imagining it. Now I know very well that I was not. It is shattering to have to admit to myself that I am almost afraid of him.

I am trying very hard to be rational, to think things out coolly, unemotionally to be as fair as possible to Greg. Must I make the irrevocable decision to leave him? I’m finding it almost impossible, not just because there are so many imponderable, unexplained events but because I still love him.

I want to believe I am wrong; that he is neither cheating nor deceiving me; that our relationship is as important to him as it is to me; that he is not being cruel, neglectful, secretive.

I promised him on the eve of our marriage that I would trust him. Yet how can I? He has betrayed that trust too often.

There is no one in whom I can confide. Greg’s Aunt Tibby will support Greg no matter what facts are put before her. Her blind adoration of him is equal only to her jealous dislike of me! Nor can I tell my father. He would act without thinking of the consequences if he thought Greg had betrayed me and would behave as if he were still a naval commander court-martialling a young officer who had failed in the line of duty. Father would be even more prejudiced against Greg than Aunt Tibby was against me. As for my brother Jolly, he has been acting so strangely that I am afraid to question him. I am afraid of what he might say against Greg. Jolly — who was Greg’s nearest and best friend all his life — Jolly has already advised me to leave him.

Reading that last paragraph in my diary, I realize that I am really a coward. In one sentence I want the truth; in the next I am afraid to hear it. I know why. I love Greg. I want to go on loving him. I cannot face the idea that for most of my life I may have loved a man who does not even merit my respect.

For that reason I am alone in my bedroom writing down my thoughts and feelings in the pages of an old school notebook. I hope this will clarify my mind.

In my infancy I used to toddle after my elder brother begging to be allowed to follow him and his friend Greg out into the garden or down to the beach to play. In those days I think my adoration of both boys was equal. I remember I told my father that one day I was going to grow up and marry them both! I also intended to marry Father, whom I loved devotedly. I thought him very handsome. He had a certain presence and authority in his bearing, though he is on the short side and slight. His eyes, so used to peering out at a wide expanse of water, have lost much of their bright colour. But his thin face is still handsome. He was wonderful to us. He could be stern, though, barking out orders to us children as if we were sailors under his command. His anger was always justly deserved and we respected it.

By the time I was ten I was beginning to notice differences between the two boys. Jolly, like me, resembled our Italian mother. We were both dark-eyed, dark-haired, with the same creamy complexions that turned a deep, dark tan in the summer sunshine. We were, and still are, musical, a little over emotional. We are quick-tempered, but fast to get over our angers. We are extremists in our loves and hates, adoring our father and each other and Greg, and with equal passion hating a governess we once had. We are also moderately intelligent. Jolly graduated from Dartmouth with flying colours and I did equally well in school.

But if we were both bright, Greg was exceptionally so. It wasn’t obvious when he was young. Fair-haired, fair-skinned, with brilliant, laughing blue eyes, he had a lazy, casual manner that hid the sharpness of his mind and his judgement. It was invariably Jolly who had the idea for some childish escapade but Greg who modified or improved or planned the great adventure. We were often in trouble. Jolly was looked on as the ringleader, but in fact Greg was by far the stronger character of the two boys. As I grew up, I realized that his failure to shine at school was entirely voluntary. He did not wish to outshine Jolly and be moved into a different section or put a class ahead. Jolly had to work hard for results. Greg’s school reports reiterated over and over again: He could do better. Doesn’t try! In one way it was absolutely true. He could, if he tried, always leap ahead of Jolly.

By the time I was turning from child into young woman, I think I was already in love with Greg. A word of praise from him and I was happy for the rest of the day. Because my sole aim in life was to be permitted to share the boys’ lives, I naturally became a tomboy. The only time Father ever smacked me was the day I cycled into the village and had my long dark hair cropped short so I could look like a boy. I tried to do everything the boys did: row a boat, fish for lobster and mackerel, repair the outboard engine, clean the boat, climb trees, scale the rock cliffs. I did most things almost as well as they could. I think they put up with me because I was always useful. To both of them I was a kid brother rather than sister, and I was happy to have it that way.

Until my teens. Then, when I knew I was in love with Greg, I wanted him to realize that I was a girl. It seemed he never would. If I wore a skirt instead of my usual tattered jeans, he’d merely scowl and say, “How on earth do you think you can climb for gulls’ eggs in that ridiculous outfit? Better go home and change.”

That would send me rushing home in abject misery. I’d fling myself on my bed and weep tears of mortification. But because I was young and healthy and not yet quite out of my childhood, I’d end up changing into my oldest things and running back down to the beach.

Those years were ideally happy for all three of us. Our house, Tristan’s Folly, was a long stone building erected by my grandfather, William Jolland, as a bridal gift for my grandmother. Despite all local advice, he insisted on building the place out on the headland on the cliffside, close to the rocks against which the Atlantic seas beat mercilessly day and night. He paid a small fortune to construct the long, low-turreted house, despite the coastguard’s warning that when winter came, it might suffer severe damage, especially when the sou’westers blew.

Grandpa stubbornly insisted that Tristan’s Folly was indestructible. But when that first winter did come, the storms were a fury of destruction; terraces were washed away, timbers snapped, shutters torn from their hinges, carpets and furniture soaked by the giant waves and hopelessly discoloured by salt water.

It was the same every year. My grandfather would survey the debris and ignore it, sitting unperturbed in his library waiting for the first cuckoo of spring. Then he would rebuild his house. He spent a small fortune repairing, restoring, repainting his home. He was an immensely rich man, and the constant outpouring of money seemed not to concern him. When the sun once more shone on the mussel-covered rocks, and the terraces were vivid with great tubs of flowering plants, he would lie on his chaise longue and watch the passing ships through his old telescope and talk to my grandmother. There was soothing music from the waves gently lapping the foot of the rocks below them. The villagers became used to the eccentric aristocrat and many of them relied on the annual repair work as a regular part of their livelihood.

All this was history my father recounted to us children many times. When young, we took the winter’s onslaught on our home as much for granted as we took the spring influx of workmen. Jolly and I loved the Folly as much as my father did, and I suppose one day, when Father dies and Jolly is married, he and his children will live there. We are fortunate in that the family fortunes are in trust and secure. Barring some unforeseen disaster, there will always be enough money to keep Tristan’s Folly going.

Greg’s home is almost in total contrast to mine. Tristan’s Bay, a beautiful curved stretch of pale golden sand, is not very far from Bedruthen Steps on the north coast of Cornwall. Trevellyan Hall, built in the early part of Victoria’s reign, lies in the most sheltered part of the bay. It is barely half a mile from the Folly. It is a square white house with a garden full of green trees and shrubs and flowers and bird song. I suppose it could be called the manor house of the district. It has none of the weird atmosphere or charm of Tristan’s Folly but is solid and comfortable, furnished with shabby Victorian furniture and old chintzes. The Trevellyans lost their money when Greg’s uncle, a businessman, gambled the family fortune away in an Australian gold-mining venture after the First World War.

Greg’s parents died about the same time as my mother, soon after I was born. Greg’s Aunt Tabitha, came to live at the Hall and look after the little boy. I sometimes used to be frightened of Aunt Tibby. She could be so cold and sarcastic. Her face frightened me, too: it’s hatchet-shaped, and she has narrow penetrating eyes and a wart on her chin with hairs on it. But she had, and still has, a slim, graceful figure, and she can smile suddenly when she is in a good mood. In those days she was kind as well as cruel. In those days she didn’t like me. She preferred my brother. Greg she adored.

When she first went to live at the Hall, it was an act of great personal sacrifice. As a young girl she had been engaged to my father, and the wedding day was only a few weeks off when he met my mother. He fell madly in love with her and virtually eloped with her, leaving poor Aunt Tibby jilted and broken-hearted. She never forgave him. Unable to stand local gossip and sympathy, she went to live with a cousin in Scotland and no doubt would have remained there but for the death of Greg’s father. Duty brought her back to live once more in Tristan’s Bay. She never married.

But I could never truly dislike her; she had such total, unselfish love for and devotion to Greg. For that I tolerated her, and Greg adored her. That she hated me he shrugged off with a laugh. “You’re your father’s daughter, Samantha. How could she like you?” he’d say reasonably enough. I felt sorry for her, especially when Greg finally fell in love with me and told Aunt Tibby he was going to marry me.

But that is leaping too far ahead of my story. I think it began when I was on convalescent leave from the hospital in Newquay where I was training to be a nurse. I had had an attack of glandular fever during the summer and was living at home with Father. This was when Greg finally noticed me as a woman. I think it was the happiest time of my life. I was virtually in heaven.

It was the night of the annual entertainment of the Cavern Concert — an event of great interest to locals and tourists alike. It took place in the great cave beneath the west headland of Tristan’s Bay when the cavern would be dry for the best part of an hour before the tide came rushing in. A mini piano was dropped by ropes through a hole in the roof onto a stage formed by a natural platform of rock at one end of the cave. A hundred people could attend, and stand in the cave, each holding a lighted candle.

Whenever I was at home for this particular event, I was invited to sing. I could accompany myself on my guitar, and though I was untrained, I suppose from my Italian mother I had inherited an ear for music. That evening I was not in any way excited at the prospect of the concert because Greg and Jolly were away. They were both at a naval establishment in South Cornwall. No event had much meaning for me if Greg were not present. But to please my father, who had begun lately to take pride in my appearance and frequently told me how like my mother I was growing, I took trouble with my clothes, wearing a deep crimson skirt and white full-sleeved blouse that showed off my tan, acquired after a lazy summer in the sunshine. I pinned my long dark hair on top of my head.

Before I left the house, I stared at the oil painting of my mother that hung in the hall. How like the woman I’d never known I was in feature and colouring. Perhaps, I thought, she could have told me how to make Greg fall in love with me as passionately and instantly as my father had fallen in love with her!

I wasn’t the only one to be thinking of Greg. As Father and I climbed slowly down our rocky path to the sands — he suffered sometimes from arthritis and could not move with his former agility — he took my arm and said:

“You look very lovely, my dear. My little duckling has really blossomed into a swan! I wonder what young Greg will think of the transformation!”

“I don’t suppose he’ll notice, far less approve!” I said. I spoke tartly to hide my embarrassment at the compliment and shyness because he had inferred I had changed my appearance to attract Greg.

Father smiled.

“If he doesn’t see it he’ll be as blind as a bat and far from the hot-blooded young fellow I think him,” he replied.

Suddenly I felt miserable.

“Such speculation hardly matters very much, Father, since Greg won’t be at the concert!” I muttered. He did not reply, but pointed to a lone seagull flying low across the gentle, white-rimmed waves that lapped the outgoing tide.

“The most beautiful spot in the world!” he said sighing. “I could never live anywhere else. Even after your mother died, I never considered moving away from Tristan’s Bay. You, Jolly, Greg and I, we’re all children of the sea. And you, my dear, are like this place — beautiful! I’m proud of my Samantha.”

I felt a sudden rush of love for him. And I thought he was so right about Tristan’s Bay. Our roots were indeed firmly planted here. Mine had been an idyllic childhood, my nineteen years the happiest a child could know. If only …

The crowd was filing into the cavern. We went in as twilight fell. Their many candles flickered and glowed, illuminating the interior of the cave in a mysterious and beautiful way. The wet walls glittered. The acoustics in the cave were magical, slivering the music. As Father and I entered, a girl student who taught the local children the piano, was playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I made my way to the platform to stand with the other performers to take my turn, and thought of the brilliant yellow harvest moon that would later flood a path over the sea and across the lonely sand dunes. Soon I would have to return to work at the hospital, and my chances of seeing Greg on one of his rare leaves would be considerably lessened. Tears suddenly filled my eyes. I brushed them away and greeted my fellow musicians as cheerfully as I could.

Farmer Penreddy, who had a deep bass voice, sang one of his ballads. Miss Tremence, the organist at the little chapel, played her favourite Chopin prelude. The next on the rota was the primary school master conducting a trio of students. The person to perform before I did was old Dai, the Welshman who had made his life here on the Cornish coast. He took his place on the platform and sang a song he had set to music. His voice, a wonderful mixture of Welsh and Cornish dialect, lent an added excitement to words I already knew so well:

And all night long the stone

Felt how the wind was blown

And all night long the rock

Stood the sea’s shock;

I looked out and wondered why

Why at such length

Such force should fight such strength.

I felt the words and the deep, rich cadence enter my heart and touch me with a great melancholy. Then someone whispered that it was my turn, and I picked up my guitar and stepped onto the platform, into the glow of a hundred candles.

I had chosen a Brazilian song about the mountains. It had a gay yet haunting melody. My heart lifted, and I was carried away as I looked at the many tanned weather-beaten faces before me, most of them familiar and dear. Some of the people in the audience hummed the chorus with me. I smiled as I sang and played the last chorus, my voice sounding as impressive as a great soprano’s as it echoed from the rocky roof.

Then I saw Greg. He was with Jolly near the entrance to the cave, tall, slim, beautiful, in his uniform. He was watching me, a half smile curving that wide laughing mouth I loved so much.

The blood flared in my cheeks. My heart jolted and my voice faltered just for a second. Then, with wild exhilaration, I concluded my song. My long dark hair tumbled down from its pins and fell across my face. I sang and played for Greg.

Minutes later he was beside me, pressing my arm against him, lacing his fingers with mine. Neither of us spoke. We stood together through the rest of the performance until someone shouted:

“All out!”

The tide had turned. The audience began to run in single file out onto the shadowed sand. Strong arms had already begun to hoist the piano up through the roof. The candles guttered and went out. The concert had ended for another year.

Jolly took my other arm. Father was talking to the landlord of the Saracen’s Head so we began our walk across the sands without him. Still no one had spoken. Then Greg said to Jolly:

“Beat it, old boy. Two’s company, three’s a crowd!”

The amazement on Jolly’s face can only have equalled my own. We had always, always done everything as a threesome.

“Jolly, I would like to talk to Sammy alone!” Greg said calmly and slowly, a glint of a smile in his eyes.

Jolly’s face broke into a grin.

“Okay, okay!” he said. “I know when I’m not wanted!”

With a laugh he turned and strolled back toward Father. Greg and I began to walk. Suddenly he took a firmer hold of my arm and said:

“Six bells!”

It was our kid’s code word for danger, and the formula was always to run for the nearest cover. I had been trained early by the boys never to ask questions when the warning was called but to run as fast as I could after them and ask why later. So now I instinctively grabbed my skirt, kicked off my shoes, and, barefoot, chased after Greg toward the sand dunes.

He ran a good deal faster than I could. Greg was now six foot three, and his long legs could always give him the advantage. By the time I reached the sand dunes I had lost sight of him. The next thing I knew, I was tumbling head first into the sand. Greg had brought me down with a tackle, and I fell so suddenly and heavily I was winded and stunned. . . .