“Well, there’d better not be any damage to this house or I’ll know exactly whose workmanship to blame,” Ashley said darkly, appearing behind them all and almost making his builder jump out of his rigger boots. To Alice, Ashley added, “Mo’s just called. She’s panicking about the barn roof lifting, so Jake and I are going to go over and see what we can do to help.”
“Is she all right?” Alice asked. She hated to think of any of her grandchildren out in this storm, but right now Morwenna was doubly precious.
“Don’t worry about Mo. I’ll keep an eye on her,” Ashley promised, and Alice believed him. Even the bad weather wouldn’t dare mess with Ashley Carstairs.
Nick was pulling on his coat and wrapping a scarf around his neck.
“I’ll go down to the marina and check the boats for you,” he called across to Jake, who was already at the door. “Then I’m going to stick some extra lines on the trawler.”
“I’ll walk down with you, Nick.” Summer, Jake’s girlfriend, was already in her waterproofs. “No arguments, Jake,” she said quickly when her boyfriend looked as though he was about to object. “I want to make sure my parents are all right and that the water’s not coming in.”
Summer’s parents lived in a small cottage alongside the harbour, which right now would feel like it was under attack from a relentless enemy. The basement kitchen of Cobble Cottage was also given to flooding when the drains and gullies, designed to channel water away, blocked up. The Pollards were supposed to keep these clear, and it was a job that the town council paid them to do, but more often than not they “forgot” and then all hell broke loose when it rained hard.
Now Big Rog wasn’t looking quite so cheerful…
Jake nodded. “OK, sweetheart. Take care. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
“Can I come too, Nick? I want to take some photos of the storm!”
This excited cry was from Morgan, Alice’s great-grandson, who lived for photography. He’d been busy this afternoon as the official party photographer, but the thought of capturing the big seas was far more exciting than snapping groups of grown-ups eating and talking boring grown-up talk.
“Not down on the quay, mate; it’s far too dangerous. The waves are likely to break over the top,” Nick told him, and for once his twinkly blue eyes were serious. “You could get swept away if you’re not careful.”
“I’ll be careful. Fact.”
Nick looked his nephew straight in the eye. “You’re not coming. Fact.”
Morgan was hopping from foot to foot with agitation.
“Can I go on the beach then?”
“Absolutely not. It’s far too dangerous,” said Alice. “Maybe we should go back to Seaspray?” The storm was getting worse and she wasn’t relishing the idea of walking back in it. Alice glanced around for Issie but there was still no sign of her. Where on earth had the girl gone and in all this awful weather? Surely she wasn’t outside?
Morgan looked mutinous. “That’s not fair, Grand Gran. Issie’s on the beach.”
They all stared at him. Alice’s heart started playing leapfrog in her chest.
“Morgan, what did you just say?”
The little boy clapped his hand over his mouth. His eyes were wide and horrified.
“Did you just say that Issie had gone to the beach?” Summer asked, bending down and gently unpeeling his fingers from his lips. “Sweetie, if Issie’s on the beach you really need to tell us. It’s dangerous out there.”
“I wasn’t supposed to say anything,” Morgan whispered. “I promised her. Fact.”
“Sometimes you have to break a promise if it means helping someone,” Alice told him. “If Issie’s on the beach then that’s very dangerous in weather like this and very silly of her. She could be swept out to sea.”
“Silly?” Jake was furious. “Bloody stupid, is what it is!” He crouched down so that he was at eye level with his nephew. “Morgan, tell me right now! Has Issie gone to the beach?”
Morgan nodded miserably. “Her phone kept ringing and it made her sad so she said she was going for a walk on the beach. She said not to tell anyone where she’d gone because she wanted to be on her own.”
“Great, just great,” said Jake. He raked an exasperated hand through his thick blond hair. “Gran, can you call her mobile and tell her to come back at once? We haven’t got time for this.”
“She turned her phone off,” Morgan said. “She told me so. Fact.”
In spite of Mariners’ state-of-the-art under-floor heating, Alice was cold all over. What on earth was wrong with Issie? She knew better than to take risks with the tides and the elements.
Without any warning, the electricity went off, plunging Mariners into an eerie gloom. The lights of the village, which had glowed through the stormy afternoon, vanished instantly and Ashley’s Bose music system was silenced. The only soundtrack now was the roaring of the wind outside and the excited chatter indoors.
Alice shivered; the storm felt as though it was a living entity, a predator of some kind. “Where are you, Issie?” she whispered, gazing out at the boiling sea. “What on earth is going on with you? Whatever happened to make you this unhappy?”
“I’ll find her, Granny,” Jake promised. His mouth was set in a grim line. “And when I do, my little sister is going to wish she had been swept out to sea. Fact.”
Chapter 6
Far below Mariners, Issie Tremaine was bent double as she attempted to walk along the beach, her body braced against the onslaught and her face wet with rain and spray. Her blonde braids had long since slipped from their hairpins, and now the wind was whipping them around her head and slapping her cheeks. The strength of the gusts had increased even more, and the sea was violent with whitecaps; the sound of the waves slamming onto the sand thundered in her ears, but still she pressed on. It was better to be out here, fighting the elements, than trapped inside and fighting her emotions. Out here she felt alive, and the storm had chased away the last of her hangover. It was as if the storm had been calling her, daring her to be at one with it.
She cupped her hands around her eyes to block out the sand the wind was flinging up the beach. Walking required her total concentration, and Issie was grateful for the challenge of planting one foot in front of the other. She didn’t want to think. All the same, her chest tightened as a sudden image came to her, of a young dark-haired woman answering a door with a toddler in her arms and a hugely pregnant belly. This was the wife Mark had claimed was a wife in name only! The same wife he’d repeatedly told Issie didn’t love him anymore. The one he was going to leave.
He was a liar. Issie had been in love with a liar.
Don’t think about any of it, she told herself furiously. The weight of her guilt was unbearable even all these months on. It had been unbearable, too, to see Mark’s name flash up earlier when her mobile had buzzed. Although the phone was switched off now, Issie was sorely tempted to hurl it into the sea, as though its passage beneath the icy water would take her painful memories with it. If only she could leave the whole sorry episode on the seabed, never to be seen again.
If only she had never allowed herself to be persuaded that Mark loved her…
Her face felt raw, although whether from the flying sand or her tears it was hard to tell. As she picked her way across the rocks at the furthest part of the beach, her trainers slithering on the seaweed, Issie sucked in her breath and listened to the hammering of her own heart, almost as loud as the howling wind and beating waves. The more furious the storm the better, Issie decided. That way she couldn’t hear the roaring and screaming of her own thoughts.
Polwenna’s beach was a sandy half-moon stretching from the foot of the harbour wall to a jumble of snaggle-toothed rocks half a mile away. In the summer the beach was crammed with holidaymakers lazing on stripy beach towels, and the locals wouldn’t be seen dead here. They knew that if they scaled the rocks of the first headland and risked slipping on the treacherous slimy green patches, a longer and even b
etter beach lay beyond. There were more rocks there, and as a child Issie had spent many happy hours exploring, with a net and bucket carried across the worm-cast sand. Who knew what mysteries lurked in the cool depths of the rock pools, or what treasures small fingers could scoop out? The Tremaine children had discovered which pools the starfishes lived in and which seaweedy crevasses were home to sharp-pincered crabs and darting shannies. They also knew precisely where the dangerous currents swirled, as well as the exact spots where razor-fingered rocks lurked, lying in wait for the unwary. This beach was beautiful but it was also bleak and deadly.
Issie scrambled up the rocks, feeling exhilarated by the wild elements. This was what it meant to be alive! The wind, the waves and the rain weren’t afraid to rage and storm, and they matched her mood exactly. There was no way she could have stayed cooped up in Mariners, sipping drinks and making polite chit-chat while inside her own tempest was raging. Had King Lear sat inside drinking tea, or had he gone out into the howling storm? Then again, hadn’t he ended up going mad anyway? At any rate, Issie certainly felt like she was going insane.
She had done ever since her tutor’s pregnant wife had answered his front door…
“Come on then! Do your worst!” Issie hollered at the wind, but the storm tore the words from her lips and flung them into the sea spray. Issie only wished she could fling her guilt in too. She was torn between disgust at her own behaviour and despair because, even now, her heart still missed a beat when she thought about him.
Would it ever get better? Or was her punishment to feel like this for the rest of her life? She’d been so stupid, so naïve. Why on earth had she believed him? A bored married man looking for fun with a foolish younger girl. It was the oldest story in the book – and when that man was your university tutor, the story could only have a very bad ending.
Pushing these thoughts away, Issie focused on scrambling up the rocks. The village lay behind her now, and as she perched at the top she looked at the churning sea and marvelled at nature’s ferocity. This was Cornwall at its most elemental: granite and salt water and driving rain. A hard and unforgiving place but breathtaking in its wild beauty. Issie loved this location regardless of the weather, but on days like this the county’s savage history felt particularly close, as though the mists between the centuries had grown so thin it was possible to pass through. She touched the chain at her neck and felt the warmth of her grandmother’s coin hanging hidden and heavy against her skin. Was it fanciful to think that her necklace could detect the echoes of history too?
Issie didn’t think so. To her the idea seemed quite plausible, for it was at this very spot that Black Jack Jago had lured his victims to their deaths. Somewhere beneath the boiling water were the secrets he and his men had taken to their graves. This thought made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.
She turned and began to slither down the rocks onto the second beach. The waves were even rougher here, and for a moment she paused, her instinctive need to escape halted by respect for the power of the tide as it raced up the beach, flinging spray and stones against the shore before falling back and dragging away huge scoops of sand.
Issie’s blue eyes widened. She’d lived here all her life but had never known the bay like this. It was both familiar and unfamiliar – unsettlingly so, like a friendly dog she’d played with for years suddenly baring its teeth and snarling at her. The violent surge of water had swept away parts of the beach, uncovered rocks she’d never seen before and revealed what looked like an old tree trunk. How odd. Where on earth had that come from? Had it been washed up from further along? And how come it wasn’t moving in the swirling water? Surely it should be floating? Unless she wasn’t seeing clearly with all this driving rain, and it was just another rock being exposed?
There was another mighty gust of wind, followed by a wave that threw spray so fast and so hard that for a moment Issie couldn’t see. Wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket, she scrambled higher to escape a drenching – but when she next looked across the beach what she saw shocked Issie so much that she almost fell.
It wasn’t possible! Surely not?
Issie’s pulse began to race. The tree trunk wasn’t alone; rather, it was one of several rising out of the shore like the age-blackened ribcage of some prehistoric beast. As the deep sand was sucked away by the greedy sea, more and more ribs were revealed. The unrelenting storm was uncovering something long-buried and half forgotten. It wasn’t a rock and it certainly wasn’t a tree trunk, and the harder Issie stared the more convinced she became that she knew exactly what she was looking at. How could she not? She’d dreamed about this moment for years, had even chosen her degree course because of her fascination with it…
Incredible as it seemed, Issie Tremaine knew with all her heart that she was looking at the wreck of the Isabella – or, more accurately, what remained of the Isabella. This was the Spanish treasure ship that Jack Jago had lured to her doom, Issie just knew it! What else could it possibly be?
With shaking fingers she pulled her iPhone from her pocket, cursing the rain that instantly rendered the screen slippery, and switched it on. She cursed even more loudly when she saw that she’d had four missed calls from Jake. Great, just what she needed: her big brother on the case. Morgan must have grassed her up.
Ignoring her brother’s calls and texts, Issie wiped the screen as best she could and snapped several pictures before an even bigger wave surged up the beach and covered the wreck. The tide must be coming in, she realised with a start, and it was coming in fast. There was a spring tide anyway, and with the added force of the storm it was likely that the water’s reach would be far higher than normal. It might even stretch as far as her perch up here. As if the cold spray had brought her to her senses, Issie retraced her steps hurriedly, clambering back up and over the rocks to head back to the safety of the village, now acutely aware of just how treacherous it was on the beach. She slipped several times, grazing her palms and ripping the knees out of her jeans, but even the sting of the cuts and the sad state of her trousers couldn’t dim her excitement. If the Isabella was here then that meant only one thing: Black Jack Jago and his treasure couldn’t be very far away either! Hadn’t she always known that the legend was true? And hadn’t she sworn that she’d prove it one day?
Her misery totally forgotten, Issie was skidding down the village side of the rocks when the sound of voices raised above even the howling wind announced the arrival of her brothers, Nick and Jake. Issie groaned. Jake was striding ahead, and even from a distance she could tell he was absolutely furious. The set of his shoulders and the way he shoved his wind-blown hair out of his eyes spoke volumes.
“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” her eldest brother thundered once Issie had slithered down the last few rocks and back onto the sand. “Have you lost your mind? We’ve been worried sick about you. Granny Alice is in a dreadful state.”
Issie struggled to think of an answer, but there was little point because her eldest brother was in no mood to listen to anything she could say. Besides, he was right. For eighteen months or so, Issie supposed that she had lost her mind. Not that she could tell him about any of this. She couldn’t tell anyone, not even Nick, and she’d always told her twin everything. Her relationship with Mark was her first ever secret and it hadn’t been a happy one.
“I just needed some space,” she said. This sounded pathetic even to her own ears, and Jake looked as though he was going to combust with anger.
“On the beach and in a bloody gale? I think—”
The wind snatched the rest of the words from his lips, which was probably just as well because Issie couldn’t imagine they were complimentary. Looking murderous, he grabbed her arm and frogmarched Issie across the beach at such a speed that her trainers hardly touched the sand. When the tide tore towards them and swirled around their feet she almost fell, and she found herself screaming as the hungry sea tried to snatch her out of Jake’s grasp. She realised now that her reckl
ess mood was no match for the wild weather; the storm was threatening and terrifying, and when Jake scooped her up and carried her above the icy waves, Issie buried her face in his neck and clung on for dear life. How had she ever found this exhilarating? Now she wanted nothing more than to be safely at home, warm and snug in Seaspray’s kitchen, curled up on the sofa with her family. Wrecks and treasure and Mark were all forgotten as Jake staggered to his knees and cold seawater kisses chilled them both to the core. In the distance she heard Nick call out anxiously about rip tides, and the sheer terror in her twin’s cry brought home the danger of what she’d done.
Issie felt sick. She knew better than to take chances with the sea. She had risked both her life and Jake’s.
After what felt like an age they reached the steps at the bottom of the harbour wall and Jake set Issie down. Jelly-legged and shaking, she managed to climb up. Once at the top, out of the wind and in a cottage doorway, she managed to find her voice.
“I’m so sorry, Jake,” Issie said. “I needed some space so I went for a walk. I didn’t realise quite how bad it was out here.”
Her brother stared at her incredulously. “You thought it was a good idea to walk on the beach in a force-ten storm? Are you really that stupid? You could have been swept out to sea, and so could anyone looking for you. Did that occur to you, Issie? Did it?”
“I’m really sorry, Jake. I didn’t think.”
“You never bloody do!” he shouted, and Issie stepped back, shocked because Jake hardly ever got angry. Danny and Mo were the ones with tempers but her big brother was usually calm. That he was yelling now was a real indication of just how upset he was.
“I’m sorry,” Issie said. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
Her brother shook his head. “Well, you have caused trouble and worse than that, you risked my life and Nick’s – so just grow up, Issie, will you? Otherwise you’re in danger of turning out like Dad.”
Treasure of the Heart Page 6