The Feud
Amanda James
Contents
Also By Amanda James
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
A Note From Bloodhound Books
Acknowledgments
Copyright © Amanda James
The right of Amanda James to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First Published in 2019 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Also By Amanda James
Another Mother
RIP Current
The Cornish Retribution
Women’s Fiction
The Calico Cat
Praise for Amanda James
Amanda’s writing flows brilliantly, and the characters and story are highly believable.
MillyMollyMandyDB – Amazon Review
* * *
Not only does Amanda tell a thrilling story, she paints her settings in Cornwall so brilliantly you can picture yourself there, walking the streets of St Ives, looking out across the sparkling ocean, or walking the beach with the sand between your toes.
Sue Curran – Amazon Review
* * *
Well done for keeping the reader just wanting to read more and more.
Great plots. Great characters. Just Great!
Katiematie – Amazon Review
* * *
I loved the build up through the story as we crept along to the end at a steady pace that suited the book perfectly. This books has some fascinating characters and I loved the writing style - it is a very good psychological thriller.
Donna Maguire – Goodreads Review
* * *
High praise to Amanda James for her writing skills in character development and sense of place, and chilling edgy read.
Alexina Golding – Goodreads Review
For Christine who has always had such lovely things to say about my stories. Thank you for your support.
Chapter 1
Smoke snakes into his nostrils, an insidious herald of destruction. Kenver Penhallow paws at his face as he slowly drifts from the depths of sleep. Fire… he’s dreaming of fire. Ferocious tongues of yellow and red lick high along tinder-dry wood, leaping after stars sharp against a navy night sky. Smoke wraps itself around his lungs and squeezes until he wakes fully with a jolt. He’s up and out of bed retching, choking, gagging. The room’s glowing red.
This is no dream!
His wife wakes too, coughing and clutching at her chest. Her eyes are wide and fearful, her face amber-lit from the inferno outside.
‘Oh my Lord! Ken… what’s ado?’ She joins him at the window.
‘Fire, Wenna. Fire! Look, the barn is almost lost to it, and the outhouse too!’
Kenver runs to the bedroom door, pulling Wenna behind him. ‘Get the children. Run to the well, form a line! We need to vanquish this devilry before it consumes the house!’
In his nightshirt, Kenver runs to the paddock, a scarf around his mouth to protect against the thick acrid smoke. It proves no barrier and soon he’s on his knees by the well, coughing so hard he feels his lungs will collapse. Somehow, he pulls up a bucket of water and runs at the barn, hurls the water at the wall of fire and staggers back a few paces as the flames force a retreat. A bucket of water against this? It’s like a teardrop. There is no hope.
He raises his arm to shield his eyes and watches his family of six mustering by the well to form a human chain. They pass hand over hand – bucket to hand to bucket to fire and back. The fire mocks them. It’s too little too late. Kenver hurries to his wife and children. ‘It’s no good. We are beaten. Come, we must take the horses and flee. The farmhouse will burn, and us along with it if we stay much longer!’
Wenna shakes her head. ‘I can’t go until we’ve found Jago. He’s nowhere in the house!’ His wife kneels on the ground, sending a wail from her throat keening up to the sky. Kenver is reminded of a wounded animal he once heard caught in a trap. She must be deranged given the calamity, because no one is missing. His children are all here. He sweeps her up into his arms and yells at his children to follow him to the hill at the top of the field behind the house.
Once safe from danger, he set his wife down on the grass. Then he looks at his clinging huddle of children and counts only four… not five. Wenna’s right! He must have been mistaken when he watched them form a chain! But where is their youngest son? Where is Jago? He flings his arms to the side, demands of his brood, ‘When did you last see your brother?’
His next youngest, Tilda, rubs streaks of soot from her eyes with the back of her hand and sobs, ‘Father, I am sorry to tell ’ee that my brother went to the barn to be with the ailing pup. He said not to tell ’ee in case ’ee were mad at him for sleeping all night out.’
All eyes fix on the barn just as the last blackened wall collapses with an ear-splitting groan. Sparks chase each other to the heavens and then race along the ground to the farmhouse. Wenna sends up another wail more heart-rending than the first and the children join in, hugging each other in despair.
Bewildered, Kenver asks, ‘He went to be with that sickly scrap of a sheepdog pup that I said wouldn’t see daylight? The one I forbade him to fret over?’
Tilda’s mouth forms a square of anguish. She nods and collapses next to her mother, wailing at the sky like a banshee.
Kenver forces his legs to carry him a few feet away. He can’t let the children see him weep. They would lose all sensibility. His legs do their duty then refuse to do more and he finds himself on his knees in the grass. The roar of the fire deafens him as it takes possession of the farmhouse and right now, Kenver can’t care less if he ever hears anything again – sees anything again. He would rather be deaf, dumb and blind than to be here and witness such carnage. His little five-year-old son is gone. Taken, burnt, consumed in hellfire.
‘Father, how can this be? It is too much to bear,’ George, his eldest, says, as he kneels next to him, puts a hand on his shoulder.
Kenver shakes his head and wipes moisture from his eyes. ‘I know not, lad. But I swear I’ll find out and avenge my youngest son. Fires don’t start by themselves.’
George gasps, takes his father’s arm, a horrified expression on his face. ‘But who would do us such evil?’
Kenver hawks smoke-filled phlegm from his throat and spits it out in disgust. ‘I have jus
t the evil devil in mind, lad. And he’ll be sorry for what he’s done. I swear by almighty God, he’ll be sorry – and so will his sons and his line ever after. Mark my words.’
Chapter 2
From behind the windscreen of his car, Matt Trevelyar looks at the grey austere Victorian school appearing and disappearing. The school isn’t performing a magic trick, it just seems that way, due to the back and forth of the windscreen wipers as they battle against the deluge. It’s been raining on and off for six hours since he left his flat in London for the last time, and journeyed south to Cornwall. For the last hour since he crossed the border into the county, the rain hasn’t been off at all. It’s been on. Full on. A lot like the feeling he’s got in his gut that he’s making a big mistake leaving his teaching job in the capital to take an assistant headship in a ‘God forsaken backwater at the arsehole of the world’, as his former girlfriend Kay had described St Agnes.
Matt links his fingers and stretches his arms above his head until the knuckles click and tilts his head from side to side to try and undo the crick in his neck. He reminds himself that Kay has no sway in his life any more and to stop listening to the memory of her vicious little tongue. What a mistake he made taking up with her. She’s his former girlfriend for a reason – more than one, actually. He goes through them in his head: controlling, self-centred, manipulative… Then he tells himself off. She’s the past. London’s the past. This is his new start, a new life.
It had been so hard to say goodbye to his previous school, friends and old haunts, but if he were honest, the only people he was breaking his heart over were his parents, grandparents and the memory of his darling wife, Beth. Matt’s heart twists as it always does when he thinks of Beth. Then he smiles. The good thing about memories is that you can take them with you wherever you go. An image of her beautiful smile surfaces, melancholy floods through him and he asks no one in particular why she’d been taken so young for what feels like the millionth time. What he needs is to get out, stretch his legs and have a brisk walk along the cliff path, but of course doing that in this weather would be a really bad idea.
The school continues its magic act and Matt remembers how different it looked in the sunshine last time he was here. It was still grey and Victorian, but it felt part of the village, a stalwart of comfort to many who’d passed through its doors over the years. Many older villagers would have attended it and their children and now grandchildren. It was as much a part of the landscape as the Cornish slate stone walls and the rock under which St Agnes stood. Penhallow Primary School – strong, steadfast, unchanging, no matter what the elements threw at it. A bit like his grandparents, who were born here, and attended this school.
Matt switches off the wipers and grabs some books and his brolly before rushing from the car to the front door of the school. He grabs the brass knocker handle, twists and pushes. Nothing. Shit – it’s locked. Hammering on the door, he yells, ‘Hello! Anyone here?’
The head, Deborah Ginty, said she’d meet him here at four, and it’s now ten past. As he’s trying the handle again, a gust of wind pulls the brolly from his grasp, turns it inside out and hurls it across the playground into a hedge. It’s stuck there like some alien species of spider, buffeted and broken. As if it senses he’s unprotected, the rain doubles its efforts and drenches every inch of him in seconds as he pounds on the door, yelling.
Suddenly it’s yanked open and Matt’s catapulted inside, and almost goes flat on his face in the corridor. He grabs at a wooden strut of intricate lattice work around the door and saves himself at the last minute.
‘Afternoon, Matthew,’ Deborah says through a tight mouth, her twinkly dark eyes telling Matt she’s trying her best not to burst out laughing at his unorthodox entrance and drowned-rat appearance. He’d warmed to her as soon as he met her. She was friendly, yet very professional, and her no-nonsense approach was refreshing and let everyone know where they stood.
‘Afternoon, Deborah.’ Matt pushes his dark shoulder-length hair back from his forehead and wonders if it’s time to get it cut. It is getting a bit unruly. Though it’d been tied back at interview, he remembered that Deborah had looked askance at it once or twice. Or perhaps he’d imagined it. But as he follows her matronly figure down the corridor, he decides he’s not getting it cut just to satisfy some outdated idea about what was acceptable.
In Deborah’s office they talk about the six-week break and what they’d both done, his journey up and – obligatory for the British – the weather. Once the small talk dries up, there’s a comfortable silence as they wait for Jessica Blake, the deputy head, to join them. Deborah flicks on the kettle and makes coffee, setting it down on the desk just as there’s a tap on the door and Jessica walks in.
She’s a tall, striking woman with a voluptuous figure, and upon seeing her for the first time, Matt was reminded a little of the actress in Pulp Fiction. Jessica has the same raven hair, cut in a sharp bob with a severe fringe. Her bright green eyes miss nothing and on the three occasions they’ve met, her wide pouty lips have always been covered with a sheen of red lipstick. She’s very attractive, but Matt’s not remotely interested. There’s something about the way she looks at him. At interview she never took her eyes away from his, even though she only had a couple of questions. There she goes again now as he shakes her hand. It’s a predatory stare. He feels like a gazelle under the watchful eye of the pride’s finest hunter.
Deborah pats her short grey hair and asks if Jessica would like coffee. Matt has the impression that Deborah feels intimidated by her deputy’s beauty. She’s only forty-five, but Deborah’s hair colour makes her look older. But then if she was worried, she’d have dyed it wouldn’t she? Matt reminds himself not to judge on appearances and certainly not to imagine what others are feeling – especially women. He isn’t much good at understanding his own feelings at the moment, never mind anyone else’s.
For the next half-hour, they talk about the upcoming term and go through arrangements for the first week back. Jessica explains the background of one of the pupils in Matt’s class. The boy had a difficult upbringing and has a few special needs. Try as he might Matt can’t picture Jessica in front of a class of eight-year-olds. He’d have been terrified of her at that age. Perhaps that’s how she maintains authority around the place. Fear of being eaten by Ms Blake.
‘Something amusing, Matthew?’ Jessica asks, one thick dark eyebrow arching towards her hairline.
He realises he’s smiling at the image his brain’s presented of her red lips peeling back from sharp white fangs, her mouth opening to swallow a child, and forces his lips into a line. ‘No, sorry. Just thinking about how much I’m looking forward to working here.’
Jessica gives him a warm smile. ‘We’re so looking forward to having you here. We’ve not had a male teacher in this school for ages, have we, Deborah?’
He expects she ate the last one.
‘No,’ Deborah says. ‘There’s still far more women than men in the primary sector. A shame, as some of our young lads need a positive male role model.’ Deborah’s gaze settles on his hair and then she frowns and changes the subject.
Business over, a few hours later Matt’s dismayed to see the rain still sheeting down as he opens the door. Pulling his jacket up over his head he prepares to make a dash to his car. With one foot outside, he’s stopped by:
‘Wait up, Matt. Do you fancy a bite to eat and a drink at the local pub later?’
His heart sinks as he steps back inside and turns to face Jessica. There’s the look in her eye again, a pouty red smile on her lips, and Matt feels like he’ll be the bite to eat if he’s not very careful. He needs an excuse and fast. ‘Um, that’s really kind of you, Jessica–’
‘Call me Jess. All my friends do.’ She does the pouty smile again.
‘Right, Jess. But the thing is, I’ve not been to my cottage yet and I need to unpack, settle in and stuff. It’s been a knackering drive and–’
Jessica shrugs and removes the smi
le. ‘No probs. Another time, hm?’
Matt thinks that sounds more like a threat than a request. ‘Oh yes, definitely.’ He looks at his feet and then quickly up at her face. Her eyes have narrowed, and she seems to be weighing him up to search for signs of a lie. Matt clears his throat and puts a hand on the door handle.
‘I’ll hold you to that, Mr Trevelyar,’ she says, as if he’s an eight-year-old who’s disappointed her, and walks quickly away up the corridor.
‘I bet you will,’ he mutters under his breath, and then pulls his jacket back over his head and hurries to his car. Badger’s Holt, the rented cottage he’ll be living in until he decides if he’s going to stay long-term, is only a mile out of St Agnes. Matt’s already got ideas of setting off a bit early on sunny mornings so he can feel the sea breeze on his face and get a bit of exercise. Badger’s Holt is old, small, but perfectly formed. He smiles as he remembers the white stone walls, colourful cottage garden and cosy wood burner in the living room for those long winter nights.
Matt pulls his car onto the tiny scrap of a drive and switches off the engine. The rain is easing now, and he can see a patch of blue in the afternoon sky. Is it a sign that things are on the up now? He doesn’t know, but he expects that if he’s looking for signs in the sky he must be tired and the best thing to do is get inside, unpack, have some food and relax a bit.
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