‘She told me about the … mistake she made – about the two babies.’ Abigail didn’t have a clue what Joyce had meant, but she knew Albert did. He went as white as a sheet. ‘I don’t believe you. She wouldn’t tell a soul. We made a promise to Daphne that the truth would never pass our lips.’ He stopped and stared at her, wide-eyed. The look on his face suggested he knew he’d said too much.
Carys, who had been hovering behind the open door, trying not to interfere, couldn’t keep her mouth shut any longer. She stepped forward into Albert’s line of vision, surprising him.
‘I’m sorry, but what’s all this about?’ Carys asked.
Abigail rolled her eyes. ‘I told you already, I’m trying to find out why Daphne wanted my husband to have the cottage.’
‘Are you stupid, lass?’ Albert interrupted. His angry glare moving from Abigail and settling on Carys.
‘I say, steady on,’ Carys blurted, aware that it had sounded just like something her father would say.
‘You are Carys Somerville – aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you are stupid.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
He pointed at her. ‘A word of warning. You’d better leave well alone, and persuade your friend to do the same, because I’ll tell you now, no good will come out of finding out the truth – for any of you.’ Albert slammed the door shut.
Abigail and Carys turned to look at one another.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Carys asked.
‘Come with me.’ Abigail took off across the gravel drive toward the cottage. She opened the door to an excitable King Charles Spaniel, ecstatic that she was home. Abigail had already given her dog a fuss and put the kettle on by the time Carys reached the door. She slipped off her heels in the porch. ‘Oh, I didn’t know you have a dog.’ Carys knelt down and said in a baby voice. ‘Aren’t you the cutest thing?’
Ulysses wagged his tail and jumped up at her, licking her face.
Abigail caught the display of affection as she walked out of the kitchen with two mugs of tea. ‘Ulysses – no!’
‘It’s okay, Abigail, honestly. Who could resist that little face?’
‘But your clothes!’ Abigail exclaimed, looking at Carys’s black skirt and grey rollneck jumper, now covered in dog hairs.
Carys brushed her concern away with the flick of a hand. She sat down on the sofa and watched Abigail place the cup of tea on the coffee table in front of her. ‘He’s such a cutie. If I’d known you had a dog, you could have brought him to work at Somerville Hall.’
‘I didn’t have him then.’ Abigail didn’t want to get into how she came by the dog, not now, anyway, or be reminded of her time working at Somerville Hall. During her time there, she’d been falling in love with the place, with the people – with one person in particular. Now it was all gone. Maybe inviting Carys into the cottage to be reminded of yet more loss was not one of her better ideas.
‘So, Abigail, what was all that about?’ Carys glanced towards the little cottage window that looked towards the lighthouse.
Abigail sighed. She was a Somerville. Abigail was convinced after watching that home movie that Carys and her late husband were related. They looked so alike as children. Perhaps, being older, she could shed some light on it or what had happened at that party – why Toby and his mother had left so suddenly.
‘I’ve got something to show you.’ Abigail walked over to the projector standing by the arm of the sofa and set up the movie reel.
‘Hey – are they Daphne’s old movie reels?’
Abigail looked up.
‘You know about those?’
‘Once, when we came to visit her at the cottage, Oliver and I were exploring, and we found a box of movie reels. We wanted to watch them but Daphne said they were just old footage, and would not interest us, and besides, she no longer had the projector.’
There was a reason she wouldn’t show them,thought Abigail.They might have seen the young man, her lover.
‘Did you find her projector?’ Carys asked.
Abigail’s eyes drifted to the window and to the lighthouse beyond, where Albert stored his equipment.