‘Thanks.’ Joely smiled and held out her mug.
Taking it, Brenda clutched it in both hands and stood gazing at Joely as if she were some sort of prodigal returned. Then she said, ‘Mrs D can be a bit different sometimes, changeable like, and she gets lost somewhere inside her own head, you know, the way writers do, but take it from me she’s a wonderful woman. I’ve worked for her over twenty years and I wouldn’t ever want to work for anyone else. My Bill feels the same. That’s my other half. He takes care of the maintenance and garden around here and drives her if she wants to go anywhere.’
Mindful that Freda hadn’t mentioned where she’d been until this morning, Joely said, ‘Did he drive her yesterday?’
‘Oh yes, and waited overnight to bring her back.’
‘So where did they go?’
Brenda tapped the side of her nose, ‘Oh now, that’s not for me to say. Anything she wants you to know she’ll tell you herself. That’s the way it is, and I respect that.’ She raised the mug. ‘I’ll get that coffee.’
Not sure whether she’d been scolded or warned or simply brought up to speed, Joely reached for the file, but before starting to read she said, ‘Can I ask one thing? Mrs D mentioned her husband—’
‘Oh, he’s gone,’ Brenda sighed sadly. ‘We lost him about three years back. Terrible it was, and him still so young, relatively speaking. It’s when she stopped going out, not that she was a gadabout before that … Well, like I said, whatever she wants you to know she’ll tell you herself, and,’ she added with a twinkle, ‘I daresay you’ll end up knowing a lot more than me once this memoir’s done. That’s provided she tells you everything – and how would we know if she doesn’t?’
‘I guess,’ Andee said, when Joely called her from the thatch-roofed pub on the harbour front to tell her about the NDA, ‘the question is, do we want to know?’
Puzzled, Joely said, ‘Don’t we?’
‘Only teasing,’ Andee laughed. ‘Of course we do, and I’m more intrigued than ever now you can’t talk about it. I take it you signed.’
‘I didn’t see any harm in it, so yes.’ Thanking the barman as he put a small glass of local ale in front of her, she said, ‘I can’t help wondering where she went yesterday.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘No, but why not just say?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that, apart from to remind you that you’re dealing with an obsessively private person. Can you hang on a moment?’
As she waited Joely sipped the ale and smiled her appreciation at the barman who’d offered her a glass on the house as a welcome to Lynmouth. Whether he did this for every newcomer she had no idea, although she doubted it, considering what a popular tourist destination this was. So it probably meant that word had got out, presumably through Brenda, that Mrs Donahoe had a rare guest who should be treated well.
She’d walked into town, wrapped up in a padded coat, scarf and hat, enjoying the brittle, bright winter sunshine and how much less eerie the Valley of Rocks felt when under a blue sky. Still otherworldly, that was for sure, the kind of place where cults would come for midnight rituals and poets for divine inspiration. The towering rocks were like monarchs gazing Canute-like out to sea, and the valley itself, sheltered from the elements, was a dry, stony bowl in the landscape that had the feel of an amphitheatre, or, as she’d thought yesterday a place on the moon. The only sounds came from the low burble of hikers as they passed through, the cry of cormorants and clatter of goats’ hooves as they scrambled over scree and slate and dilapidated walls.
Going through the clifftop town she’d passed the new and old cemeteries, a school and the Convent of Poor Clares that appeared deserted, so where were they now? There was an abundance of teashops and coffee bars, Victorian town houses doubling as hotels and B & Bs, a candle-maker, an art gallery, a beautiful old church, and a filigree archway leading to the famous funicular. Riding down over the cliff face in the quaint green carriage had been utterly joyful, not unnerving at all in spite of the twenty-nine-degree angle and a teenage wit telling his friends they were going to crash.
‘Hi, sorry about that,’ Andee said, coming back on the line. ‘So where are you now?’
‘At the Rising Sun, next to the harbour,’ Joely replied, drinking more of the Exmoor ale and thinking she could get to like it as much as the pub with its low white ceilings, criss-crossed with black beams, undulating stone walls and notice for ferret racing at Brendon Town Hall. ‘Did you know you can see Wales from here? Well, yes, of course you did, and the Rhenish tower on the harbour wall used to be where they stored water for indoor baths. That was before it got itself a lightbulb and became a beacon.’
‘Are you reading from a guidebook?’ Andee asked drily.
‘How did you guess, but it’s fascinating stuff, or I think so anyway.’
‘Great, now tell me more about Freda Donahoe. Are you going to get along with her?’
Pulling a face, Joely said, ‘I hope so, but I don’t think she’s going to be easy. Still, show me a client who is, and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t care about the end result. She was married, by the way. Her husband died about three years ago, I think unexpectedly, but the housekeeper was sparing with details.’
‘So one of the tragedies?’
‘Quite possibly, because apparently that was when she became a recluse, but the parts of the memoir I’ve read date back to the late Sixties. Still, it’s only the beginning so the end could have happened three years ago.’
‘A long way to go. Listen, I’m afraid I’ll need to ring off in a minute, but are we still on for meeting up at the weekend? I don’t mind driving over there again, but I’ll wait to hear from you about your schedule.’
Talk of the weekend inevitably turned Joely’s thoughts to Callum and the couple of days away he was planning with Martha. It made her feel so lonely all of a sudden, so cut off from their life together, from the joy they used to gain from shared experiences, and now here she was, all on her own in a new place she knew he’d love.
Andee said gently, ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes, I’m here,’ Joely replied brightly.
‘Any news from London?’
Joely’s heart twisted and sank. ‘None so far today. I’ll text Holly and my mother before I go back to the house; the others will just have to find a way to live without me.’
Sounding sympathetic, Andee said, ‘I know this isn’t much comfort, but they seem to be having a hard time living with themselves after what they’ve done.’
‘And I’m supposed to feel sorry for them?’ Joely countered.
‘Not at all, but try not to make things worse for yourself by creating scenarios in your head that are probably a long way from the truth.’
Knowing how caught up she was in that very form of self-torment Joely felt her tension begin to unravel. ‘Thanks for that,’ she said, ‘and now I should probably let you go.’
After ringing off she sat quietly finishing up her ale, enjoying the peace and quiet of a near-empty bar, the only sounds coming from the clank and rattle of a delivery going on somewhere outside and the noisy birds around the shore. Then she picked up the sough of the waves and hum of voices outside; the salty scent in the air wafted in as someone opened the door and mingled with the yeasty smell of beer. Although she couldn’t seem to stop fixating on Callum and how sad she felt that he wasn’t here, she was also aware of how relieved she was to be so far away from him and Martha-the-manta-ray with lovely horn-shaped fins and twenty-foot width.