‘Abigail – is that you?’
She whirled around at the sound of a woman’s voice. As she turned, a dog came running up to her. She patted the dog on the head and looked up. The dog walker had been some way away, by the rock pools, throwing a ball for the dog. Now she was closer, Abigail recognised the young woman walking towards her. It was Toby’s sister. ‘Clarissa?’
Abigail smiled at her as she approached. Tall and leggy, with long, straight, blonde hair and green eyes, Clarissa took after her father. Abigail imagined Clarissa could have signed up with a modelling agency in London where she grew up, although Abigail knew her friend had no interest in modelling or fashion; she was an aspiring journalist. She’d had plans to go to university to study journalism, but that had all fallen by the wayside when she met her ex at school, at sixteen. Abigail was sure he had influenced her not to pursue a career in journalism. They’d married young and had been parents by the time they were twenty-one. After they’d split up, Clarissa had taken their two children and moved in with her father, who had semi-retired to the Suffolk Coast. That wasn’t the only big change in her life; she had started a journalism course online, and worked part-time at a local newspaper in Lowestoft, a large town near to Shingle Cove.
As she approached, Abigail was thinking of her own teenage years. She’d avoided getting involved with anyone at school. A lot of her friends at school had had boyfriends at sixteen or seventeen. Abigail had wanted to move to London at eighteen, go to university, and lead a different life. What had happened to Clarissa was a trap that, even at the tender age of sixteen, Abigail hadn’t wanted to fall into.
She’d known that one of her brother’s friends who came round to their house had wanted to ask her out. She didn’t know which one; her brother hadn’t got as far as telling her when she’d forestalled him, telling him she wasn’t interested. She recalled him saying,But you might like him. But the fact that whichever one it was came from the local area struck him off her life plans list. It was a funny thing that she had ended up meeting a local boy, kind of – Toby had even started the same school and been in the same class as Abigail in the five years he had lived there.
‘Are you okay, Abigail?’
Abigail nodded, realising Clarissa must have caught the look on her face. Allowing herself to think of Toby, and the fact that fate seemed to have brought them together, wasn’t helping, especially while she was standing on the beach, where he’d proposed.
Abigail managed a smile. Although she had wanted to be alone on the beach, Clarissa was, in fact, a welcome distraction.
Toby had been close to his sister, and the mutual affection had rubbed off on Abigail. She had always got on very well with Toby’s sister – until his death. She had expected, under the circumstances, that Clarissa would step up and be supportive. Instead, she had seemed to back off. Abigail supposed it was difficult knowing what to say to someone who has lost their husband so young, and Clarissa had been grieving herself; she had been very close to her brother. The trouble was that Abigail felt there was something more to it than that. She thought of the funeral again and the way Clarissa had avoided her. Even under the circumstances, it hadn’t seemed like her.
Clarissa stepped forward and gave her a hug. The dog jumped up at them, wanting a fuss too.
‘Down, boy!’ Clarissa scolded her dog. ‘I shouldn’t say this, but he was an impulse buy. Luke and I had split up. The kids weren’t doing so well with the break-up, so of all the things, I went and bought them a puppy. Totally irresponsible, considering we’d just moved in with my dad, and he barely has the space for us, let alone him.’
Abigail gave him a stroke. ‘Couldn’t you have got something smaller?’ she said. They both looked at the St Bernard.‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’ She hadn’t meant to sound critical.
Clarissa burst out laughing. ‘You’ve got a point, though. You know me, I don’t do things by halves. The children wanted something big and cuddly, so that’s what I got. Of course, they’ve lost interest now he isn’t a puppy, but you know what? I don’t regret getting a dog, not one bit. He’s a brilliant excuse to get out of the house and have a bit of me-time.’
‘Are you visiting your parents?’
‘I saw my mum. I dropped a friend off at the guesthouse as there was a vacancy.’
‘A vacancy? That’s unusual. The place would normally be fully booked this time of year.’
‘They’d kept my old bedroom in the attic free, in case I returned,’ confided Abigail. ‘But I’ve been staying at the cottage.’ She looked Clarissa in the eye. ‘The real reason I’ve returned to Shingle Cove is that I wanted to see you and Peter.’
Clarissa looked at her watch. ‘You know what? Time is getting on and I need to get back to put the dinner on—’
Abigail caught her arm as she turned away. ‘You know something – don’t you.’
‘Look, I have to go …’
‘Clarissa, please. That’s the reason I’m here. I was sorting through Toby’s things and I found a DNA test. I don’t know his password, so I can’t access his AncestryDNA account. I think when he was given the cottage he must have looked into things.’ Abigail shrugged. ‘I mean, who wouldn’t, after suddenly acquiring a property from a stranger? He was bound to wonder if there was a connection …’
She stopped, not wanting to say too much. She wouldn’t come right out and say,I think Toby was a foundling and isn’t related to you or your parents.How could she drop that bombshell on Clarissa? It would be like someone saying to her that she wasn’t related to her brother, which meant her parents had lied to her. Clarissa was going through enough, both with the break-up of her marriage and her mum, Joyce, having early onset dementia, not to mention living with two kids and a big dog in a cramped terraced cottage with her dad.
Clarissa stood there, staring at Abigail, biting her fingernail. She took a deep breath. ‘Toby told me about the cottage.’
Abigail looked at her in surprise, thinking,why did he tell his sister and not me? Little wonder she was avoiding me at the funeral.
Clarissa caught her expression. ‘He didn’t get a chance to tell you about the cottage before he …’ The word caught in her throat.
Abigail shook her head. No. ‘I was quite shocked. I didn’t know what to make of it.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘At first, I thought the solicitor had made a mistake.’
‘That was Toby’s first reaction.’
Abigail stared at her.