The Watchers of Pencarrack Moor

by Terri Nixon

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

1931, Cornwall.

Gwenna Rosdew had no choice but to step up as head of the family after her father was arrested for his role in a smuggling scandal. As his release date nears, she must start planning her own future - but when her journey of self-discovery leads her down an unexpected path, Gwenna must decide just how much danger she is willing to endure.

Meanwhile, a menacing discontent grows within Dartmoor Prison, and a young convict must quickly find his feet after making powerful enemies on both sides of the wall. As the rumblings threaten to erupt into a full-scale riot, Daniel must put his faith in an unlikely ally or risk not making it out of the prison alive.

When explosive events cause their two worlds to collide, the lines between right and wrong begin to blur, and both
Gwenna and Daniel must decide which side of that line they are prepared to stand on . . .

Praise for Terri Nixon:

'A brilliant read' RoNA award-winning, bestselling novelist Tania Crosse

'Love, loss and old rivalries are skilfully woven against an atmospheric coastal backdrop holding a promise of new beginnings. A five star page turner from the start' Kay Brellend, author of A Workhouse Christmas

'I guarantee their story will stay with you long after you have finished reading this beautifully written book' Lynne Francis, author of A Maid's Ruin

'A moving story of tragedy, deception and one woman's determination to protect her family. I couldn't put it down!' Charlotte Betts, author of The Light Within Us

Release date: December 5, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

Devonport, Plymouth

26 November 1931

The Red Cow Inn was a mass of white uniforms at one end, fresh from the ship that had docked earlier that day, and, at the other, a shifting swell of off-duty matelots. It was only a matter of time before someone looked at someone else the wrong way, and then the two groups would inevitably clash, in a fury as manufactured as it was gleeful. Any bloody excuse, this lot. Daniel Pearce couldn’t be doing with it, not tonight. He hadn’t even wanted to come. He’d protested, argued, but finally given in, and now here he was, his head already aching, his stomach uncomfortably bloated, and his vision taking an age to catch up with each dizzying turn of his head.

He began shouldering his way to the door, but a friendly arm slung around his shoulder stopped him, and the beery breath that blew into his face made him reel back. Knowing his own would be equally foul only made it worse.

‘Midshipman Pearce,’ the voice bellowed, ‘where’d you think you’re going, lad?’

Daniel jerked his head towards the door. ‘Fresh air!’

‘Bit fresher out there than’s good for you!’ Micky Frier went off into drunken honks of laughter, and slapped Daniel on the back as he withdrew his arm. ‘Good luck, mate!’

Micky wasn’t wrong, Daniel reflected, as he pulled open the door and stepped out into the night; wind and rain blew down Barrack Street as if it had sought him out personally, but it felt good on his hot skin and he didn’t turn away from it. He leaned against the wall, listening to the shouts from inside the pub, and wishing he’d stuck to his guns and refused to come out.

‘But it’s your birthday,’ Micky had pointed out reasonably. He was some kind of cousin on Daniel’s mother’s side, so privy to the information Daniel had preferred to keep quiet, but it was out now; others had taken up the call, and there was nothing to be done but agree. He was under no illusion that it was actually a celebration for his birthday – he hadn’t acknowledged one of those for seventeen years – but the B-class destroyer, Brazen, had docked that morning at Millbay, and it didn’t take seven years of naval experience to know which way that particular wind would blow; the breeze was already stirring. The Brazen boys had clearly been just as keen on squaring up; otherwise they wouldn’t have come down to Devonport to drink.

Daniel squinted through the rain, weighed up the options behind and ahead of him, and pushed himself away from the wall; he wasn’t going to get involved in this, tonight of all nights, when he couldn’t work out whether the real pain was in his head or his heart. The loss of his father, on Daniel’s tenth birthday, had bitten hard, and it showed its teeth again on some birthdays more than others. He never knew when that would be, but today was one of them. He made his way up Barrack Street, glad the dockyard was only a few streets away. Let them get on with it. He shook his head, a soft laugh escaping into the night, as his feet tangled and he almost fell over the debris that littered the road from a new building that was under way near the junction.

The rain drummed on the roofs and the pavement, running down the gutters in ever-widening rivers, and Daniel pulled his coat closer around himself, glad he was on his way back to his bed and not still stuck in that heaving mass of bravado and beer. He’d definitely made the right decision. He’d rag the other lot to shreds reporting for duty tomorrow morning, when he’d be the only one even close to sober, and hopefully not too hungover either. As he drew close to the end of the street, however, his footsteps slowed and his good feelings vanished.

A car idled at the end of the road, the back door open and the driver standing beside it, waiting for the man who’d just left the pub to finish adjusting his hat and overcoat in preparation for his brief sprint through the rain. Daniel knew that man. He’d never forget the heavily jowled face, and the small, close-set eyes that regarded everything around him with visible disdain: Alfred Dunn; owner of Dunn’s Drapery and Homewares. Spreader of lies, and destroyer of lives. His mother’s erstwhile employer.

Around ten years ago, Daniel had watched from his vantage point on the stairs as Dunn had fixed those mean little eyes on his bewildered and tearful mother, delivered the blow that she was dismissed, her reputation in shreds, and added that she would receive no severance pay from her job, so she needn’t even ask. That same shouting bully, who was now hesitating to get his shoes wet, had been wearing a thin smile that had haunted the then sixteen-year-old Daniel since that afternoon. If it hadn’t been for his father’s naval pension, Daniel and his mother would have lost everything. They had barely scraped through that year, and though things had improved slightly when Daniel had been old enough to join up, they still struggled on his meagre pay, and Cathy Pearce would never work in a Plymouth shop again. All thanks to Alfred bloody Dunn.

Daniel lengthened his stride, and managed to reach the car at the same time as Dunn was ducking his head to climb into the dry vehicle. As they collided, Dunn straightened and planted his walking cane between his feet.

‘Watch out!’ He looked Daniel up and down, scowling and impatient. ‘Matelots.’ The word was dense with distaste, and Daniel only just managed to resist hitting out.

‘Why did you do it?’ he demanded. His words ran together, and he bit back a curse and tried again. ‘Why did you lie about my mother?’

Dunn evidently couldn’t place him, or perhaps he simply couldn’t be bothered to listen. He threw up a dismissive hand and ducked into the car again, rain streaming off his hat brim. ‘Get a move on, Robertson,’ he grunted at the driver, who shot Daniel a mistrustful look and shut the car door.

‘Why?’ Daniel raised his voice and seized the handle, yanking the door open again.

‘Get away!’ Dunn grabbed it from his side and pulled, but Daniel held on, feeling the metal sliding beneath his wet fingers. It ripped free from his drink-weakened grasp, and slammed shut again. All the anguish of the day, and the fury of re-surfacing memories, rose up through Daniel in a wordless shout. He slammed a hand onto the roof of the car, dimly aware that he would feel the pain of that tomorrow. As the car began to lurch away, he saw Dunn twist in the back seat to stare back at him, clearly trying to work out who he was.

‘It’s Daniel Pearce, you bastard! Remember us?’

Daniel’s foot knocked something as he took an instinctive but futile step after the car, and he looked down to see a half-brick from the building works. Without a thought, he snatched it up and let it fly, not expecting to do anything more than show Dunn how he felt. But he’d thrown hard, and the car had slowed ready to ease down a side street; the brick smashed through the back window with a sound that drove away the last of Daniel’s alcohol haze. His breath caught as the car veered off its intended path, and into the front yard of the house on the corner of the street, coming to a crashing halt against the door. The wood splintered, and incredulous, frightened voices came from inside the house; more came from behind Daniel, where his first, anguished shout had brought people onto the street. He knew he should run, but he was frozen where he stood.

The back door of the car was flung open and Dunn emerged, ducking low as if he thought more missiles were heading towards him. When he saw Daniel standing there, still in shock, and obviously no further threat, he grasped his cane halfway down its length, and pointed it as he advanced. But his face had lost that twisted scowl, and instead had melted into a smile that looked cold and triumphant in the thin street lighting.

‘What did you say your name was?’ he asked, his voice calm now, even polite.

Daniel didn’t reply, but he heard his own incriminating words come back to him anyway, as the growing crowd repeated them with evident satisfaction.

‘Pearce, or so he said.’

‘Daniel, was it?’

‘He’s from the Guzz.’

‘Devonport boy,’ someone added helpfully, when Dunn gave them a questioning look.

‘Yes, I thought so.’ Dunn looked back at his car, where Robertson was gingerly pulling out the larger shards of glass from the rim of the rear window. He smiled at Daniel again. ‘Go back to the barracks and sober up, Pearce.’

Daniel felt the relief start to creep through him; maybe the man had a conscience after all. He turned to leave, but Dunn called out to him and, when he looked back, gave him that chilly smile again. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll know where to send the police in the morning.’

His Majesty’s Convict Prison, Dartmoor

11 December

The Black Maria passed slowly beneath the granite archway at the entrance to the Prison, and, looking numbly up at the meaningless engraving there – Parcere Subjectis – Daniel felt the world shrink until there was nothing else left. There was only this bleak and remote place, looming like a scar on an expanse of moor that had once seemed the epitome of freedom to him, when he had been an adventurous boy. Now it was its opposite. At the Guildhall in Plymouth, just a few hours ago, he had looked up to see his mother, her eyes wide and horrified as the judge made his pronouncement: seven years. She had stared at the judge, disbelieving, but no less so than Daniel himself, who still could not fully understand how it had come to this.

That Dunn was a business-owner, Daniel had, of course, known. That he held grudges and feared for his reputation had become clear, throughout the course of Daniel’s very short trial. That Dunn was also a councillor, and held so many people’s jobs to ransom, was something he hadn’t realised at all, until after the harsh sentence had been passed and he’d been advised to abandon any hopes of an appeal.

While he’d been awaiting trial he’d had plenty of time to think about the stupidity of his actions, and to prepare his defence: Dunn spread lies that my mother was a thief, and fired her from her job; he made sure she’d never get work in another shop or business …

But when he’d been closely questioned about why he thought a respectable man like Dunn would do such a thing, he’d had no answer. He was ashamed to admit it but, for an icy moment during the trial, he’d even been swayed into believing that Dunn might have been telling the truth after all. But the memory of his mother’s bewildered dismay, on the afternoon Dunn had come to the house to inform her of the sacking, had been too real to keep that notion alive for long.

‘Look sharp, Pearce.’ A finger poked him between the shoulder blades, bringing him out of his thoughts, and he rose, handcuffs clanking, to disembark the van and take in his new home. He stood in the yard, awaiting the order to march, and stared up at the rows and rows of barred windows stretching into the iron-grey sky. What awaited him beyond them? He swallowed, tried not to think about what he had left behind, and when the order was given he walked, as straight and tall as he could, into the place they called ‘Halfway to Hell’.

Cornwall

18 December

The sound of the collision was louder than she’d expected, and more prolonged. One minute Gwenna had been navigating the grocery van through misty drizzle, down familiar, twisting lanes, glad to be nearly home, and the next, a man she vaguely recognised was standing in the middle of the road. She’d uttered a short cry, jerked instinctively on the steering wheel, and ploughed the nearside wing of the van into the Cornish stone hedge. Her head connected with the steering wheel hard enough to fling it back again, and in the moment of numbness that followed, she had time to glance in the mirror to see the man still staring, horrified. But something about the sight of her broke the spell, and he turned to scramble up the hedge on the other side. At the same moment as the first trickle of blood ran into Gwenna’s right eye, the skinny figure threw himself over into the field and was gone.

Gwenna fumbled for the woolly winter hat she’d discarded early on in the drive back from the warehouse. It was on the passenger seat next to her, but with one eye closed and the other one blinking to clear her rapidly blurring vision, it took longer than it should have to find it. When her hand closed on it she brought it up to her forehead and pressed it against what she fervently hoped would just prove to be a small cut.

She fumbled for the door handle with shaking fingers and got out to inspect the van, swallowing the nausea that rose in her throat, but relieved to see the damage wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The winter had stripped the hedgerow back to little more than twigs covering the stone here, otherwise there would have been hardly any marks at all. As it was, she was reasonably sure she hadn’t damaged anything expensive. Hissing at the stinging cut on her head, and the soreness that was already creeping across her shoulders, she got back behind the wheel and reversed out of the hedge.

‘Nigel bloody Stibson,’ she muttered, throwing a black look at the place where the man had made his escape. What had he done now? People often likened Stibson to Caernoweth’s resident rogue Bobby Gale, but he was far worse than Bobby had ever been, and, as far as she knew, Bobby had never actually stolen anything from her family’s shop. By contrast, she had to watch Stibson from the moment he entered, to the moment the door closed behind him, and even then she couldn’t be sure he hadn’t pocketed something.

She put the van into gear, and quickly transferred her left hand back to her forehead, keeping the woolly hat pressed in place as she drove, and trying not to think about the fluff that would need to be pulled away as a result; it was still better than being blinded by blood. Her progress was painfully slow as she wound carefully through Pencarrack village, and she felt her neck stiffening. Her head throbbed harder than ever, and she was still feeling queasy, too, so, with a sigh, she pulled over to the side of the road outside Doctor Stuart’s surgery. She got out without checking herself in the mirror; she’d look a sight anyway, whether the cut was serious or not, and it wasn’t worth frightening herself over.

This was borne out by the reaction of a small boy as he skipped along the pavement beside his mother; he stopped dead still and stared, eyes like saucers, and wouldn’t move until his mother seized his wrist and pulled him away, giving Gwenna a look of mingled apology and sympathy. Gwenna gave her a reassuring smile, which seemed to make matters worse, and she could only assume there was more blood on her face than she’d realised.

From the pavement she opened the front door and stepped into the hallway, the dimness of the surgery making her blink furiously after being in the bright daylight outside. Ahead of her, the stairs rose to the Stuart family’s living quarters, and the clinically white-painted wooden door to her right stood half open, letting light spill from the waiting room to illuminate a slim triangle of the worn linoleum hall flooring. Her first feeling, as she pushed open that door all the way, was relief that it wasn’t too busy for an early Friday afternoon, but the medicinal smell that hung over the small room brought back the faint dizziness and a fresh swell of nausea, and she took her steadying breaths through her mouth rather than make it worse.

The middle-aged woman at the reception desk glanced up briefly from her paperwork as she asked her to take a seat, then looked again, and jumped to her feet.

‘Oh, my giddy aunt, what’s … Doctor!’ She bellowed this last, and Gwenna held up a hand.

‘It’s not as bad as—’

‘Doctor!’

The doctor’s door opened, and a strikingly attractive woman in a white coat came out, looking around in alarm. ‘What is it?’

Her unusually light-blue eyes and delicate features might have seemed more suited to a Hollywood magazine cover than a busy village surgery, but Gwenna knew her to be a great deal tougher than she looked, and that her reputation was fast outpacing any doubts her new patients might have formed on first sight.

‘Young lady here needs attention,’ the receptionist said briskly, coming around to take Gwenna’s elbow.

Doctor Stuart looked more closely, and gave Gwenna a reassuring smile. ‘Come and sit down here a minute.’

‘Gwenna?’ A younger woman, with curly blonde hair half-wrapped in a sensible scarf, was coming through another door, one that led into the house behind the surgery. Her eyes opened wider. ‘What happened?’

‘Hello, Tory.’ Gwenna was momentarily distracted from her various discomforts; she’d barely spoken to her old friend and fellow flying trainee in eighteen months, and this was hardly the image she’d have preferred to present. ‘It’s really not as bad as it looks. I hope,’ she added, with a weak smile.

She groped, one-handed, for the back of a chair and the receptionist helped her sit down. Doctor Stuart sat beside her and gently peeled away the blood-soaked hat, while Gwenna kept a sharp eye on her expression. But to her relief the doctor’s face registered no real worry.

‘What did you do?’

‘Pranged the van,’ Gwenna mumbled. She felt a wash of clammy heat, and a watery sensation in the back of her mouth, which she swallowed hurriedly. ‘Hit my head on the steering wheel. I’ll be all right in a moment.’

‘Give me two minutes, love,’ Doctor Stuart said. ‘I’ll just finish up with my patient, and then I’m sure neither of these ladies would object to me seeing you next?’ She directed this to the only other two patients, who shook their heads vehemently, and smiled at Gwenna.

‘I’ll sit with her, Mum,’ Tory said, and took the empty seat on Gwenna’s other side.

Doctor Stuart took the wad of soft cotton proffered by the receptionist, and guided Gwenna’s hand to hold it against the cut. Then she gave Gwenna an encouraging smile, Tory a more familiar one, and went back into her room.

‘How did it happen?’ Tory asked, into the faintly awkward silence.

‘I nearly knocked Nigel Stibson down in the lane,’ Gwenna said. ‘Hit the hedge instead.’

‘Pity,’ Tory said dryly. ‘Look, Gwen, this is silly. We used to be the best of friends. And we went through so much together, didn’t we?’

Gwenna immediately wanted to quash those memories, the way she had done so far by staying away from her old friends, but with Tory sitting beside her it wasn’t so easy. She still felt the deep shame of having been so easily drawn into the gun smuggling ring her former flying instructor had been running from the air base. Her ambition, and desperation to follow in her father’s footsteps, had been so transparent that she had been an easy target from the start. It was all right for Tory, who had her own shady past with the gangs of Bristol; she had made those choices herself, and had even revelled in her colourful life for a while. Gwenna had allowed her pride to rule her decisions, and it had taken as much of a bruising as her conscience. She shifted away from Tory slightly, as if widening the gap between them could reinforce the barrier she had so carefully set in place. Tory saw it, and the light in her eyes faded.

‘When Mum’s set you right will you come back to the stables with me, so we can talk? I miss you.’

Gwenna felt a wave of unexpected emotion, but then Tory had always had a way of getting straight to the point, no sitting on her feelings, unlike Gwenna herself. ‘I have to take the groceries back to the shop,’ she said, ‘but I can come up afterwards.’

‘I’d like that. But only if you really want to.’

Doctor Stuart’s patient limped from the surgery, and Gwenna accepted Tory’s help to stand up, waited for the room to stop spinning, and then crossed the room. At the door, she turned back.

‘Tory?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Gwen-na.’

Tory grinned, as if she’d been waiting for this old, familiar reminder. ‘So it is.’

Gwenna was surprised by how glad she was to see that Tory had waited, when she emerged with a fresh new dressing and some stern instructions from Doctor Stuart.

‘I’ll drive,’ Tory said at once.

Gwenna shook her head, immediately wishing she hadn’t, as the pain bloomed behind her eyes again. ‘I think it’s best if I just get back to it.’

There was a moment’s silent battle between them, then Tory acquiesced. ‘All right, but let me know if you want to swap.’

‘I will.’

Getting back behind the wheel did give Gwenna a moment’s pause, as she recalled the awful crunching sound and the moment of numb shock, but as soon as she pulled away from the kerb she settled back down. The stiffness in her neck was getting progressively worse, as Doctor Stuart had warned it might, but to her relief she was able to guide the van easily enough across the short stretch of moorland, and down to the family shop in the small town of Caernoweth.

Tory helped her unload the stock, then drove them back up to Pencarrack Stables, the business she and Irene Lewis had started after their own dramatic entanglement in the air base smuggling business. Gwenna hadn’t visited recently, and she was surprised and impressed by the way it had grown. As well as the generously sized paddock and training pen, the yard had been levelled and now featured a small collection of buildings, dominated by the enormous barn that housed the stables and the dwelling. Gwenna could also see a more recently built coal shed, a smaller barn with a steeply arched roof, and a long, low building that might have been anything at all.

‘I heard Irene’s not coming back,’ she said, as they pulled to a stop in the yard.

‘No, she became engaged to her barrister in the end.’ Tory smiled and shook her head. ‘I can just see it, actually. They’ll have very clever children.’

Gwenna had mixed feelings; Irene was the only other person who truly understood what they’d been through, no matter how friendly and understanding the others had been, and had tried to be. She and Gwenna had both been at the sharp end of it all, and both had been convinced there was no way out. They hadn’t exactly bonded over their shared ordeal, but they had come to understand one another better. At the same time, however, Irene would have been a constant, unwelcome, reminder of it, so it might be a little easier to spend time with Tory now, than it would otherwise have been.

‘So, she ended up selling her share to your friend Lynette?’

Tory nodded. ‘You know about Lynette coming here to find out the truth about her brother’s death?’

It would have been impossible not to have been aware of the result of Lynette’s investigation; so much local shame, and one young man convicted of murder. ‘Horrible business,’ Gwenna said. ‘I remember the lad they arrested, from our time at the flying school. Alec something, wasn’t it?’

‘Alec Damerel. Lynette would have gone back to Brighton then, I suppose, but she’d already fallen in love with this place.’

‘And with a certain good-looking blacksmith,’ Gwenna added, a smile finding its way back onto her face.

Tory laughed. ‘And him.’

She led the way across the yard, towards the flat that sat atop the large stable building. A cat darted ahead of them and disappeared beneath a door, over which nodded a gleaming bay horse. A small, shaggy-looking pony shouted at them from the field, and Tory rolled her eyes as she fitted the key into the lock.

‘Don’t mind him, that’s Hercules. He’s cross about being separated from Mack there, but he’s been disturbing the new horses with his constant grumbling, so he’s staying out for a bit.’

‘You’ve bought new horses? You must be doing well already.’

‘We took them cheap from the pit, when they were replaced with lorries.’ Tory led the way indoors. ‘They’re young though, so once they’ve recovered physically we’ll sell them on. I think Priddy Farm’s looking for a horse to pull the market cart, which’ll be a summer breeze compared to those clay wagons.’

It was clear to Gwenna that Tory had made the right choice when she’d given up flying to open the stables. Her friend was completely absorbed in what she was building here, and it showed. Gwenna followed her into the flat, which seemed much smaller than it had the last time she’d been here. Now, that seemingly vast empty space was taken up by a large open-plan kitchen and dining area, and a short hallway with three small bedrooms and a bathroom. She remembered the sound and smells of horses coming from below, and that hadn’t changed, but none of that mattered next to the sight of plump, tatty-looking cushions strewn over sofa and floor, and a kitchen table covered with notepads, photographs, pens, and empty teacups. It felt like stepping into a world of easy-going comfort. Tory’s heavy oilskin coat was draped over the back of the sofa, and she kicked her boots to one side as she closed the door behind Gwenna. It looked like a habit.

‘I’m going to have to tidy this place up a bit,’ she said, going to the kitchen. ‘Tea?’

‘Please. Why will you have to tidy? Is Lynette a stickler for that sort of thing?’ Gwenna scolded herself for hoping that might be the case. It was jealousy, plain and simple. She’d felt real resentment last year, at how easily the woman who’d initially been Bertie’s best friend had now also become Tory’s. But it was her own fault, she knew; she was the one who had retreated even further into her own little world, and had remained there.

‘A stickler? God, no,’ Tory laughed. ‘But we’re planning to have a few guests over on Christmas Day, and at the moment there’s hardly room to eat a biscuit, never mind serve dinner. Anyway, tell me about what you’ve been doing.’ She poured hot water from the kettle into the teapot. ‘Have you seen anyone since … ’ She stopped, and a flush touched her skin, but she pushed on anyway. ‘Since Peter?’

Gwenna stiffened at the mention of Peter Bolitho, her erstwhile fiancé. The crooked policeman who’d helped ensnare her father in the smuggling ring, who had not tried nearly hard enough to keep her out of it, and who was now serving time alongside her father in Dartmoor Prison.

‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘And I don’t want to talk about that, thanks.’

‘Of course, I’m sorry.’ Tory brought over the tray. ‘It’s just been such a long time since we’ve talked, and seeing you again brings up the memories.’

‘For me too,’ Gwenna said. ‘But I don’t think you understand that the memories are different for me.’

‘Different?’

‘My dad, Peter, all of that. It wasn’t exciting, or dramatic, or … or, romantic in any way.’

‘Of course, I under—’

‘No, you don’t! You can’t. It was lonely, and it was frightening.’ Gwenna’s voice rose; all this had been churning inside her for over a year, and she hadn’t realised, until now, how desperately she’d needed to get it out. ‘I was ready to leave everything behind to escape it. Absolutely everything.’

‘Gwenna, I—’

‘It was all right for you! You had your new business to think about, and Irene had that too. Bertie had Tommy, and her plane, and her new combat flying lessons … But what did I have?’ Gwenna shook her head, rising to her feet without realising she was going to do it. ‘My father, and the man I’d once been ready to marry, both thrown into prison, and a mother who couldn’t face her customers, but still had to try and win them back after what Dad and I had done. Was it any wonder I’d duck back into the storeroom whenever one of you came to the shop?’

‘We should have tried harder to reach you,’ Tory said softly, also on her feet now. ‘Gwenna, I’m so, so sorry!’

Gwenna turned towards the door, unable to bear the look of dismayed guilt on Tory’s face, and to know she’d put it there. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she mumbled, dragging her coat on as she crossed the room, almost at a run. ‘We will talk, but … not about that, and not today, all right? I ought to go back and help Mum with the stock we’ve just unloaded.’

Tory had evidently accepted the excuse, knowing it was useless to question it. ‘Will you be all right to drive? You look worse now than you did before.’

Gwenna turned back to her, and emotion thickened her throat. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m sorry.’

She made her way down the steps and into the car before the tears came, and she let them run their course, aware of the worried face at the window above her but not daring to look up and catch Tory’s eye. She supposed much of it was delayed shock, but knowing that didn’t help. After a while she rubbed her sleeve across her eyes, and started the engine. She gripped the wheel, and took a deep breath, pushing it out in a short, hard sigh; it was no use weeping for what she couldn’t change. Next year would see her father’s release from prison, and once his life had been restored she would finally be able to begin the process of finding her own.

Lynette put her bag and case down on the platform, and pulled on her gloves against the biting Cornish wind. She vividly recalled the last time she’d done this, at the beginning of the year and still in turmoil over her suspicion that her brother’s death had not been accidental after all. So much had happened since then, and now here