The Girl Who Came Back

by Susan Lewis

  “What does the right foot have to do with it?”

  “Apparently only the better-off were having shoes shaped for each foot around that time. I’ve been trying to decide where to put it, and I was sure I took it down to the bar this morning…” Shrugging, she put it on the top of a box and carried on along the landing.

  As she pushed open the sitting room door she felt her heart swell to see how elegant and welcoming it was, with its up-to-the-minute fawn suedette sofas, thick-pile champagne-colored rugs, whitewashed stone walls, and perfectly restored Georgian sash windows, all open and allowing the sun to cast the room in an almost dreamlike glow.

  “I’m still having to pinch myself,” she confessed as Em followed her in. “I mean, imagine me and Kian having a home like this. It’s straight out of a magazine.”

  “And it’s no less than you deserve,” Em told her fondly. “If that money had gone to someone else, I bet they’d never have given as much away, or done as much for the community as you two are doing.”

  “Who knows,” Jules said, and shrugged. “I’m just glad we’re bringing this place back to life, because right from the minute we stepped through the door, when it was still practically a ruin, it’s felt like we belong here. Mum’s been digging out stuff from the library so we can read about its history. I mean, we know from all the searches and everything that it’s always been an inn, but it would be fascinating to know something about the people who’ve lived here.”

  “Wouldn’t it just,” Em agreed, enrapt by the romance of it.

  Heading for the windows, Jules said, “We’ve already had a few locals dropping in to tell us stories, and even give us photographs of when their great-grandparents used to come here, back at the beginning of the last century. Apparently it was called the Smuggler for a while during the twenties, but it became the Mermaid again in 1930. We’re going to hang the photos in the main bar, and Mum’s been rummaging around local charity and antiques shops to see what else she can find that might be fitting.” She was watching Danny and his entourage of hard men with shaven heads and tattoos piling out of Danny’s battered old Land Rover, apparently torn between bristling for a fight and laughing at Kian’s crazy costume.

  “To think,” she murmured teasingly as Em joined her, “Danny Bright could have been all yours if you hadn’t met Don and skedaddled off to the States.”

  Sighing nostalgically, Em said, “I was so in love with him when I was twelve.”

  “Sixteen,” Jules corrected.

  Em twinkled. “You’ve got to admit he was a real looker back then, and he still would be if it weren’t for the broken nose and scary scars.”

  “He’s been in a few scrapes,” Jules admitted. “And when you consider the kind of club he owns…Shall we go and say hello?”

  As she made to turn away Em caught her hand and gently pulled her back. “In a minute,” she said, her gray eyes full of concern. “I want to make sure you’re OK first.”

  Jules made herself smile. “I’m fine,” she promised. “It’s just one of those things. If it’s not meant to be, then it’s not meant to be.”

  Hearing the emotional tear in her voice, Em drew her into an embrace. “You’ve got so much going on at the moment,” she soothed gently, “so maybe now isn’t the best time for a baby.”

  Pulling away, Jules said, “How would you have felt if someone had said that to you when you were trying for Matilda? Oh, that’s right, you didn’t try—it just happened, the way these things do for most people.”

  Em regarded her helplessly.

  “I’m sorry,” Jules sighed. “I’m not bitter, really. Or maybe I am. I mean, I don’t begrudge you Matilda, please don’t think that for a moment. I just can’t understand why it should be so difficult for me when no one can find anything wrong with me.”

  Clearly desperate to keep hope alive, Em said, “I’m a firm believer in everything happening when it’s supposed to. So there’ll be some divine reason why you’re not getting pregnant now, and in time you’ll look back and think, ‘Thank God it didn’t happen then, because it’s much better that it’s happened now.’ ”

  Though Jules smiled gratefully, in her heart she was wishing her best friend had been able to come up with something a little more original, or at least some form of comfort that both their mothers and Aileen didn’t regularly trot out. “Remind me,” she said, needing to change the subject, “why did we come up here?”

  Em shrugged. “I just followed you.”

  Jules gave a laugh as she looked around. “I guess I love it so much up here that I can’t stay away. Actually, I feel like that about the whole place, and it’s fantastic that you’re going to stay with us for your last couple of days. Did you bring your stuff?”

  “Mum and Dad are driving it over later so they can see for themselves how things are going here. I just love the way the whole town is talking about it. There’s such a buzz going on. I can’t believe I’m going to miss out on the grand opening.”

  “But you’ll come for Christmas,” Jules reminded her. “All of you.”

  “You bet. Don’s folks are even talking about coming too, but don’t worry, no one will have to put them up,” Em hastily added. “They can afford one of the smart hotels on the front, and would probably prefer it anyway.”

  Relieved to hear that, since she, Kian, and her mother had found Don’s wealthy parents a little daunting when they’d been in the States for the wedding, Jules said, “Obviously they’ll be very welcome, but I hope they’re prepared for the Brights en masse.”

  Em laughed. “Rosemary and Gray are much more easygoing than you think, and I’m sure they’ll love all you Brights every bit as much as I do.”

  Feeling suddenly downcast at the thought of Em being part of a family that was so far away and so very different from her own, Jules turned to the door. “I’ll just pop to the bathroom,” she said awkwardly. “Meet you downstairs?”

  As Em started along the landing Jules watched her go, wondering what she was thinking now, if her thoughts had already flitted off across the Atlantic to Matilda and Don. Jules couldn’t imagine thinking of anything but her child if she had one, no matter where she was. There she went again, thinking about something that didn’t even exist.

  Turning into the bedroom, she gave a sigh of exasperation to discover that she’d left most of the dresser drawers and the wardrobe doors wide open. As if she needed any evidence of the state of mind she’d been in when she’d dressed earlier.

  Annoyed with herself, she closed everything up and went into the bathroom to sort out the mess she knew she’d left there. However, to her surprise everything was as it should be. The tampons were back in their box and inside the cabinet, and the towels were hanging neatly on a heated rail when she was sure she’d left them heaped on the floor.

  Realizing Kian must have found a moment to tidy it all up, she sank down on the edge of the bath and dropped her head in her hands. Though she loved him for doing it, it was making her sadder than ever to think of how he must have felt when he’d walked into the evidence of her frustration and grief. Everybody made this all about her, including him, but she knew that he was suffering too, yet instead of sitting around feeling sorry for himself or throwing things about the place, he’d gone out and bought her a car. Not only that, he’d got himself all kitted out as a dancing Spaniard simply to make her smile. Only she knew that it had provided a crazy persona for him to hide behind, which, as it turned out, had served him well when the Romanians came calling.

  She wondered if they’d come back, and in that moment she wasn’t sure that she cared. All that mattered was the baby that she and Kian couldn’t produce. Her heart was already swollen with love for it; her arms were so ready to hold it she found it hard to keep them at her sides. There were times when she was sure she could feel it, even hear it, and whenever she went shopping she had to force herself not to buy things to have ready to welcome it into the world.

  “It doesn’t do any good t
o remind you of how young you are,” her lovely doctor had said the last time she was there. “When the instinct is upon you the way it is now, it’s one of the fiercest things in the world, which is why I’m going to do everything I can to help you.”

  Jules wondered if Dr. Moore would still feel the same when she let her know that the IVF hadn’t worked. It was extremely expensive, and not everyone was lucky enough to get it, so maybe they’d decide that Jules was too young to be given a second chance; she would either have to wait for conception to happen naturally or go to a private clinic. She and Kian had already discussed that and were perfectly prepared to pay. In fact, they should probably have done so anyway, given how well-off they were. Now she came to think of it, it could very well be the unfairness of that that was at the root of the problem. It wasn’t her turn. Whoever handed out babies up there had decided she’d elbowed her way into the wrong queue, and until she got into the right one nothing was coming her way.

  Hearing a noise in the bedroom, she lifted her head, expecting someone to call out her name. When no one did she concluded that the wind must have blown something over. Getting to her feet, she went to check her face in the mirror.

  As she gazed at her reflection she found herself blinking several times, trying to work out why there seemed to be two of her, one in front of the other.

  “Jules! Where are you?” Kian shouted along the landing. “You’ve got to come and see these computers. Bob’s brought the lot, monitors, towers, keyboards—there’s even a printer. We are so bang up to the minute, or we will be when we know how to use them.”

  Something was tapping the window, and had been for some time. A gentle, lackluster rhythm that took a while to make Jules lift her head. For several moments she watched the guilty branch drifting back and forth like a useless limb in the wind.

  She couldn’t think where she was, though she knew it wasn’t the pub, as real as it had seemed a moment ago with crazy matadors, Mafia thugs, and dear Em…

  Her heart emptied as the present pushed aside the past to bring her into the spare room of her new home at number fourteen, the Risings. Andee Lawrence had left a while ago, though Jules couldn’t be sure how long it had been, since she wasn’t wearing a watch and there was no clock in the room.

  It didn’t matter. She had no pressing engagements today.

  The branch continued to tap, making her think of Ruby, the ghost at the Mermaid. She willed the girl’s face to materialize in the sky beyond the tree, but the clouds simply carried on sailing by like purposeful boats on a steady sea.

  Taking one last lingering look at the picture of Kian, she put aside the box of photo albums and other precious mementos and went downstairs.

  Andee Lawrence’s card was still on the table where she’d left it. “Call anytime,” she’d said as she’d handed it over, and Jules had felt sure she’d meant it.

  Slipping the card into a drawer, she checked the time on her mobile phone and wondered how long it might be before Em rang back. She was so busy with all her teaching and committees and after-school coaching that she often said she’d call and ended up being unable to.

  As the mobile started to ring, Jules jumped and almost dropped it.

  She looked at the caller ID, half expecting it to be someone from Greensleeves needing to talk about her mother, but it wasn’t a number she recognized.

  Perhaps it was Andee, checking to make sure she was OK.

  She clicked on, wondering how she’d answer the question if she turned out to be right.

  It was a reporter from the Kesterly Gazette.

  Jules ended the call and turned off the phone.

  A moment later she turned it on again. If the press had been tipped off about Amelia Quentin’s release, there were people she needed to warn before reporters started harassing them too.

  Her first call was to Aileen, in Ireland. Aileen’s sister answered, explaining that Aileen had just popped out but would be sure to want to speak to Jules when she got back. Jules left a message, knowing there was no doubt about it being passed on.

  Realizing she didn’t want to speak to anyone else yet, she composed a text to a dozen or more family members that read, She is being allowed out. No date yet. Will let you know as soon as I hear.

  Knowing she’d be inundated with calls as soon as the message was received, she turned her phone off again and opened her laptop.

  Dear Joe,

  I know I’ve already told you how happy I am that you and your friend have decided to start your European trip here in Kesterly. It will be lovely to see you again and catch up with all your news. That hasn’t changed, but I’m afraid I have some news of my own that I think I should tell you before you come in case it changes things for you. Amelia Quentin is being released from prison, and will very probably be back at Crofton Park by the time you get here.

  The mere thought of that caused her breathing to stop and her heart to beat viciously.

  She envisaged the girl in the big house on the moor, moving about it like an evil force, spinning her lies and treachery, maybe even reliving what she’d done and enjoying it…

  She looked at the email.

  There was more she wanted to say, much more, but for the moment she couldn’t think how to phrase it. Her thoughts were tangled in the traps they were laying for revenge and memories, mixing them up, coloring them with prejudice and grief, drawing her into a terrible confusion.

  Getting to her feet, she put her hands to her head and closed her eyes as she focused on sweeter memories, forcing herself to let go of all thoughts of revenge, at least for now.

  Though the shallow depths of the past were torturous, the deeper in she went the softer her heart became and the wetter her eyes. She could smile, even laugh at those early days at the Mermaid: the exhilarating success of the grand opening, their first glowing reviews in local papers and even the local news. It might have been before the days of the Internet, but word had still spread like wildfire, so party bookings had come flooding in and the takings had surpassed all expectations.

  They’d received no more visits from chancing thugs trying their hands at extortion. The “Rafia,” as Kian liked to call them, had been seen off by a hard-core group of local businessmen and traders working with the Dean Valley police and a handful of undercover officers from the Met. What a thrilling time that had been for the blokes of Kesterly, getting involved in such a dangerous operation, and of course the Bright family men were among the first to volunteer.

  After a crash course in computer studies Jules and Kian had soon begun to wonder how on earth they’d ever managed without their new machines (at least when they weren’t threatening to chuck the bloody things out of the window). Jules then followed up with a six-week course in bookkeeping, while the new bar manager, Misty Walsh, whom they’d enticed from a very la-di-da hostelry in Berkshire, had set about teaching Kian everything she knew about running pubs, which was a lot.

  Em and her entire family had come for the first Christmas at the Mermaid, and though Em’s upright and slightly stuffy parents-in-law had seemed awkward for the first few days, even perplexed by the unruly Brights, by the time they’d left they were inviting everyone to Chicago anytime they wanted, telling them they’d always be welcome to stay.

  Jules and Kian had crossed the Atlantic the following Easter, leaving the eminently capable Misty in charge of the Mermaid and its loyal workforce: two cooks, four full-time bar staff, and four part-timers. While they were in Chicago Em had gently broken the news to Jules that she was expecting her second child. Jules had felt terrible on every level, not least for the way Em had seemed so apologetic when she should have been rejoicing. Of course, Jules couldn’t deny she was jealous—she was insanely so—but it didn’t mean she wished Em anything but happiness and as many beautiful, healthy children as she desired.

  She just wished she was capable of producing the same, but by then she and Kian had experienced two more failures with IVF and were being told, mainly because of
the emotional stress, that they should maybe start considering adoption.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about couples who’ve adopted and then suddenly found themselves pregnant,” Dr. Moore had pointed out. “That’s not to say I can guarantee it happening for you, but it’s amazing what can happen when you take off some of the pressure.”

  Jules hadn’t doubted it; it was just that she hadn’t felt right about using an innocent child that way.

  Em and her family didn’t come for the second Christmas at the Mermaid, but it wasn’t because their adorable new baby son, Oscar, was too young to travel. It was because a week before they were due to leave Em’s mother-in-law died quite suddenly from a heart attack.

  Em’s parents flew straight to Chicago; Jules and Kian would have followed were it not for the fact that they had an appointment they simply had to keep, and Em had refused to let them change it.

  —

  “Jules! Jules!” Kian shouted. “Will you hurry up or we’re going to be late.”

  Jules ran out of the pub, tugging a white bobble hat onto her head and trying to wrest the toggles of her duffle coat from a tearing wind so she could fasten them. The estuary was kicking up a right royal storm this morning; what a mood the heavens must be in to be bearing down on the world with such a thuggish display.

  Kian was already behind the wheel of their Range Rover—it was no weather for the plucky little Sprite—and as Jules jumped in he began pulling away.

  “Will you wait for me to close the door?” she cried, struggling to grab it from the wind.

  He hit the brakes. “Sorry, I’m getting myself in a bit of a state. Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. Just don’t go too fast—we need to get there in one piece.”

  Fifteen minutes later they turned onto Kesterly seafront to find awnings being ripped from their frames and an upturned carriage from the white tourist train blocking the road. Police were redirecting traffic into North Road, but Kian took a quicker route through the old town, not officially open to nonresidents, and brought them out onto the ring road just as it was being closed due to an accident.