‘Josephine – are you OK?’ Pepper was by her side in an instant.
Ditching the box, she crouched down and wrapped an arm around the woman’s shoulders, feeling the sharp edge of a jutting collarbone through the coat.
‘Oops,’ proclaimed Josephine in amusement. ‘What a prize pillock I am.’
Although she had followed this up with a bark of laughter, Pepper noticed that she was trembling.
‘Don’t try to stand,’ she soothed. ‘Give yourself a moment.’
Josephine had dropped her bag as she fell, so Pepper scooped up the scattered belongings. As well as pastels, a stick of charcoal and an old rag that smelt deliciously of turps, there was also a miniature set of paints, complete with tiny brushes.
‘Oh, don’t worry about the picture,’ the woman said, as her sketch book was blown open by another gust of wind. ‘Utter tosh – only good for the fire.’
‘I think it’s beautiful,’ Pepper told her honestly, running a practised eye over the faint lines and daubs of grey and blue. ‘Very atmospheric.’
‘Poppycock!’ came the retort. ‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind helping me up.’
Pepper stood first, then slowly levered Josephine back to her feet, noting the lines of exhaustion on her friend’s face.
‘Do you think you should see a doctor?’ she asked.
‘Good Lord, no!’
‘Sorry.’ Pepper was contrite. ‘I just thought––’
‘No, I don’t want a fuss, darling. Doctors these days have enough whingers to deal with.’
‘Hmm.’ Pepper eyed her with disapproval. ‘Will you at least let me walk you home?’
‘I will do you one better than that,’ replied Josephine, her blue eyes full of mischief as Pepper folded the easel and lay it across the top of the box.
‘Ready? Righto – follow me.’
Chapter 3
Josephine Hurley had swept into Pepper’s life for the first time the previous summer, when the two of them had ended up on adjacent seats of a rail replacement bus. Unlike most of the other passengers, who were chuntering grumpily about ‘the state of the trains these days’, Josephine had clapped her hands together and proclaimed it ‘an adventure’.
After telling Pepper her name, adding mischievously ‘I longed to shorten it to Fifi when I was in my teens, but my father said people would assume I was a go-go dancer’, she explained that she had only recently moved to Suffolk from London, having sold her home following the death of her husband.
‘It was far too large for one old biddy,’ she had remarked dismissively. ‘I would finish cleaning one damn room, then discover cobwebs had gathered in the next.’
By the time they had reached their stop, Pepper had deduced that not only was this whirling dervish of a woman demonstrably sharp of wit, she was also one of those refreshing souls who say exactly what is on their mind as soon as it occurs to them.
‘If it was up to me, I would have carried on working until I dropped dead,’ she had told Pepper of her successful public relations company. ‘But I was overruled by the offspring. Do you have any children?’ Then, when Pepper shook her head. ‘Very wise – they spend the first half of their lives ignoring most of everything you tell them to do, then the latter half complaining that you never gave them the right guidance.’
As well as being in firm agreement about the merits of Pepper’s home county, they found that many of their likes and dislikes were similar, too, and Josephine had clasped her hands together in delight when she found out what her new friend did for a living. She was an ardent fan of both arts and crafts, she told Pepper. ‘But certainly not a practitioner – I have less creative prowess than frogspawn.’
Clearly, however, that was not the whole truth, and Pepper said as much as they settled in at a cosy corner table in the Turbot pub on the high street.
‘You told me when we met that a stickman would be a stretch,’ she said. ‘But from what I just saw down on the beach, you have some real talent.’
‘Hogwash,’ Josephine replied, reaching for her gin and tonic. ‘If you must know, the easel was just a decoy – an excuse to sit and stare out at the water for a while. It’s therapeutic, don’t you agree?’ Josephine stared at her thoughtfully. ‘The voice of the sea speaks to the soul, and all that.’
‘Does it?’ Pepper asked, seeing a flicker of amusement flash across the older woman’s face.
‘Lord only knows.’ Josephine’s stack of bracelets jangled as she put down her drink. ‘I cannot, for the life of me, recall where I read that quote – perhaps inside a fortune cookie or printed on a tea towel?’
‘Keep calm and speak to the sea?’ Pepper suggested, and was rewarded with a chortle.
‘Something like that. Although, I find that the beach is a good place to sit when you have some thinking to do – and,’ she added, with a satisfied sort of flourish, ‘it just so happens that I was thinking about you.’
‘Me?’ Pepper paused with her lemonade halfway towards her mouth. ‘Why me?’
‘Because,’ Josephine was tapping her fingers on the table top now, as if mulling over what exactly to say. ‘No, that won’t do,’ she went on, more to herself than to Pepper. ‘I suppose I need to start at the very beginning.’
Pepper waited, feeling utterly mystified.
‘Have you been abroad much, darling?’ Josephine asked, her gaze direct.
Pepper thought about the book in the box beside her, of folded-down pages and dreams of exploration and adventure.
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Never.’
‘You’ve never wanted to travel? See the world? Go and “find yourself” or what have you?’
This was a question that required a more complicated answer, and Pepper hesitated.
‘I did want to,’ she said at last. ‘But the opportunity never came up when I was younger, and since then, I can’t remember a time I wasn’t busy – especially since I started the business.’
‘I understand.’ Josephine smiled to reassure her. ‘Holidays are an indulgence.’
Pepper went to agree, but Josephine cut across her.
‘But they are also a necessity.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Pepper said lightly, watching the bubbles in her lemonade. ‘It’s really not that big a deal. I live by the beach, after all – it’s not like I’m missing out on the whole seaside thing.’
What she didn’t add was that she had never had the guts to go alone. Most people went away with their partners, but Pepper had never held onto one of those long enough either – her most serious relationship to date had lasted less than four months.
Josephine didn’t say anything for a while, she merely shook her head slowly from side to side, before stopping to stare hard at Pepper, as if trying to work her out.
‘There is something I want to tell you,’ she said finally.
Pepper felt a cold stone of dread drop down from her throat into her stomach.
‘There’s no need to look so aghast.’ Josephine reached across and patted Pepper’s wrist.