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 PRAISE FOR THE SHELL HOUSE DETECTIVES

“Emylia was born to write detective fiction.”

—Veronica Henry, author of The Impulse Purchase

“An expertly plotted and hugely compelling murder mystery.…Crime

fans are in for a treat.”
—Lucy Clarke, author of One of the Girls

“A big-hearted page-turner with twists you won’t see coming and the
best pair of amateur sleuths I’ve read in a long time. I loved it!”
—Lucy Diamond, author of Anything Could Happen

“My favourite new crime series.”

—Ginny Bell, author of The Dover Café series

“Irresistible, beautifully written, and hugely compelling.…Kept me

turning the pages for one more delicious chapter well into the night.”
—Rosie Walsh, author of The Man Who Didn’t Call

“Gorgeous writing and a plot crammed with suspense, this is your

perfect new crime series for 2023.”
—Kate Riordan, author of The Heatwave

“Beautifully written, gripping, and so atmospheric.…One for fans of

Richard Osman!”
—Emily Koch, author of What July Knew

“The mystery is perfectly paced and the characters vivid and true,
inviting us to join in as fellow sleuths as we unravel the secrets of
the past. I can’t wait to return to Cornwall with Emylia Hall for the
next adventure.”
—Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters

“A treat of a book: immersive, suspenseful, full of twists and turns.…

It’s as captivating as a Cornish summer. I loved it.”
—Susan Fletcher, author of Eve Green
ALSO BY EMYLIA HALL

Women’s Fiction

The Book of Summers

A Heart Bent Out of Shape
The Sea Between Us
The Thousand Lights Hotel
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places,
events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2023 by Emylia Hall

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express
written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of
Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781662505126
eISBN: 9781662505133

Cover design by The Brewster Project

Cover illustration by Handsome Frank Limited - Marianna Tomaselli
For my mum and dad
 Contents

Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
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46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Preview: The Harbour Lights Mystery
Prologue
Chapter 1
About the Author
Follow the Author on Amazon
 Prologue

Helena stands on the balcony, her hands gripping the cool metal
railing. There’s nothing but dunes between her and the sea, and on
a day like today the waves in the bay are white horses. She closes
her eyes and hears their thundering gallop; it’s as if they’re getting
closer and closer – and it’s only a matter of time before they run
straight on over her.
Sea Dream – that’s the name she’s given the house. When
Roland said she could pick it, she felt like a child being indulged. But
the truth is he doesn’t care about names – or not the poetry
attached to them, anyway.
Truth. A word that delivers a sharp and precise cut, every time
she thinks of it – so mostly she tries not to. But ever since they
moved to Cornwall her mind has been surging and pounding, just
like those relentless waves. And what’s brought in on this angry tide?
Lies.
The lie she told five years ago. And the lie they’ve both lived
ever since.
She turns away from the water and peers through the glass
back into their home. A vast painting on the wall brings the only
colour to the all-white, minimalist interior. Why do you want a
picture of the sea when you’ve got all this? he’d said, sweeping his
arm at the view. You’re never happy, that’s your problem. But there
was laughter in his voice, and she enjoyed her role of princess. She
commissioned the painting of just the same aspect – on a still day,
though, a millpond day – as if to share the joke.
As a little girl she dreamt of living by the sea. For nearly a year
she went to sleep with a seashell under her pillow, until one morning
she woke to find it snapped clean in two. She thought it terrible luck
– and a sign that her sea dream would never happen.
Yet here she is. Standing on the balcony of a house – their
house, and that was only possible because of Roland – that sticks
out among the dunes like a beacon, all gleaming glass and chrome
and brickwork. Sea Dream makes the few scattered wooden beach
houses around it look like broken-down shacks. It’s a luxurious
haven with a blue horizon, and at night the island lighthouse winks
in her direction. Storybook stuff, and she’s the heroine.
People would kill for your life, Helena, she tells herself. As if
that’s any kind of a comfort.
She turns, hearing Roland in the house behind her. He’s on the
phone, his feet pacing the newly laid boards as he speaks to his
brother. Oh God, not a visit. Her stomach clenches at the thought.
She quickly turns back to face the ocean and fills her lungs with
crystalline air. A pair of seagulls fly screaming overhead.
She’s got everything she’s ever wanted. She can’t ruin it now.
But the fear swirling inside Helena says something different –
and ever since they moved to Sea Dream, it’s been building and
building. At what point will she break? Maybe when that raging tide
finally gallops all the way in. She wonders if she’ll prove herself to be
a match for it. Or if, instead, it’ll sweep her away entirely. As if she
were nothing. As if she’d never been here at all.
 1

Ally has always loved the beach at night. The sea seems louder, its
pull stronger, and on a clear evening like this the sky is loaded with
stars. A giant moon has drawn the spring tide all the way out, and
the sand is a vast and silvered mirror. As Fox darts across it, quick as
a fish, his brush tail waves for joy.
She can’t help but feel alive in these moments.
Up ahead, Ally can see the light of home – a warm glow in the
dunes – and she heads towards it. The path she takes through the
marram grass is one she’s followed for nearly forty years.
Once inside The Shell House, she’ll do the things that have
become her habit: pour a glass of crisp white wine or make up some
tea with garden mint. Then she’ll sink on to the sofa with a book,
Fox stretched out across her feet. It’s then that the absence of Bill
will settle around her, and she’ll sit with it – because what else is
there to do?
They’ve become gentle things, these nights. A little empty,
perhaps, but not unhappy. She couldn’t be called unhappy.
Ally climbs the three wooden steps to the door. Once she’s
opened up, Fox skitters ahead, his paws leaving a delicate trail of
saltwater prints on the white-painted boards. She shrugs off her old
wax jacket and hangs it on the peg, then unlaces her hiking boots,
her back creaking as she bends. Next, she goes to the fridge. It’s
definitely a wine night tonight. She’d hoped the walk would clear her
head, but it hasn’t really worked.
You’re never alone by the sea, Ally tells herself as she pours a
glass. And it’s true, the ocean is energy and company in a way that
other landscapes can’t match. But her daughter, Evie, over on the
other side of the world, doesn’t see it that way. And earlier today, on
the phone, she made her point more forcefully than ever before.
‘It’s time to decide, Mum.’ Then she lowered her voice – a little
theatrically, Ally thought – and said, ‘Scott reckons we could be
letting it as an Airbnb, but I’d rather you were in there.’
Granny flat. It was Evie’s husband, Scott, never the most
tactful, who first called it that. While Ally can’t argue with the name
– and with grandsons like hers, why would she want to? – it
suggests a diminishment that she isn’t quite ready to accept: tacking
what’s left of her own life on to somebody else’s. Besides, she’s only
sixty-four.
‘It’s been a year now,’ her daughter went on. Then, ‘You think
it’s what Dad would have wanted? You all on your own?’
While the concern was real enough, Ally knows it’s also partly
about control: as she gets older, no matter what comes her way, Ally
has less chance of suddenly derailing her daughter’s carefully
ordered life if she’s under Evie’s watchful gaze in the Sydney
suburbs. And there have been enough hints about childcare too. The
proposal was born out of love, but it also has practical benefits for
Evie.
‘But I’m not on my own,’ Ally said.
At that, Fox lifted his pointed little nose – just as if he knew. Bill
had brought him home as a puppy nearly a decade ago, curled in
the pocket of his coat; a fire-red, wire-haired mongrel. He was a
thank-you from an elderly man who had a farm out on the cliff road.
Ally can’t even remember why now. Seeing off vandals? Not doling
out a speeding ticket?
‘Plus, I’m busy with my art,’ she added, though the truth is she’s
hardly done a thing with it in the last twelve months. But she knew
her daughter wouldn’t be able to help herself, and sure enough
there it came: a noise that fell between despair and derision. Why
don’t you do some pretty seascapes instead? Evie has said often
enough. Or painted pebbles? Tourists love that stuff. Ally’s giant
collages, made of plastics litter-picked from the shore, have never
made sense to her daughter.
 ‘I don’t want to put the pressure on,’ Evie went on, her voice
switching notes to one Ally imagined her using in the boardroom,
‘but I think we need to know your plans, Mum. Otherwise, you
know, we could be getting the rental bookings in. How about you
take a week to decide once and for all?’
Ally murmured assent.
Then, in a softer voice, one that – had they been together –
would probably have been accompanied by a well-intentioned
squeeze of the arm: ‘I just don’t think there’s anything left for you in
Porthpella, Mum.’
They ended the call soon after. And Ally stayed sitting, turning
her phone in her hand.
What if Evie was right?
It’s a pocket paradise, Porthpella, a place of golden sands and
turquoise sea and candy-coloured wooden houses popping up from
the dunes. Come summer it’s ablaze with parasols and beach mats,
the scents of coconut surf wax and sizzling sausages filling the salty
air, but now, in early springtime, it belongs mostly to the locals and a
handful of day trippers. It has always been Ally’s favourite time of
year, the calm before the Easter holidaymaker storm, with new-
washed skies and white-tipped waves and carpets of flowers on the
clifftops. But this year is different; instead of a sense of anticipation,
the days ahead feel emptier than the beach at low tide.
It was Bill who was stitched into the fabric of the community,
not Ally. When he retired from the force, the house was full of cards,
boxes of chocolates, and personalised beer mugs; even an
expensive-looking putter, though Bill was never one for golf. At least
he died knowing how important he was to people round here. It isn’t
like that for Ally; it never has been. She’s always kept herself to
herself. Perhaps when someone does that for long enough, people
stop asking anything of them. Which is probably what they want,
isn’t it?
On that thought, she makes for bed.
The sea is loudest in the bedroom, and it has always surprised Ally
how, after all these years, she’s never stopped noticing the sound of
it. Perhaps it’s because the sea is never the same: sometimes it’s a
faraway murmur, like holding a conch to her ear; other times it’s a
thrashing and crashing that shakes everything in its path – nature’s
version of stadium rock.
It’s probably, too, because the bedroom is the quietest room.
Here, there’s no burble of the radio, no sounds of cooking or
washing, just the Atlantic pounding the shore, a few metres beyond
the white-painted wooden walls.
Tonight, despite it being low tide, Ally can hear the ocean’s roar,
and she’s pretty sure it’s got something to do with the conversation
with her daughter: as if everything around her is reasserting itself to
remind her just where she is and – by definition – where she is not.
She goes over to draw the curtains. She and Bill used to sleep
with the window open whatever the weather – flung wide in
summer, just ajar in winter – but these days she always shuts it fast.
It’s one of those numerous small adjustments she’s made since his
death. What is it, a precaution? Or maybe it’s just because she
doesn’t feel very expansive: the outside world isn’t invited into The
Shell House.
Out to sea, the island lighthouse is shining as usual; the moon
is high and Ally stands taking it in for just a second – the perfect
button of it; the metallic light it casts over the water – before
snapping the curtains shut.
She undresses methodically then climbs into bed and reaches
for the lamp. It’s gone ten o’clock and she’s tired tonight. She’s just
clicked the light off when she hears a short, sharp bark from the
living room.
‘Shh, Fox,’ she murmurs.
He barks again. A volley this time.
‘Foxy, what is it?’
She switches the light back on and swings her legs from the
bed. It’ll be nothing. Just the sight of a mouse zipping across the
boards. Or something outside – a car looking for a place to turn on
the bumpy track, or late-arriving tourists hunting for their weekend
cottage. Fox seems more skittish these days, as if he feels the house
is out of balance.
She opens her bedroom door and stops dead. From here she
can see across the sitting room to the front door, where the frosted
pane perfectly frames a silhouetted figure. There’s a head and
shoulders – but no accompanying knock.
Now that Ally’s there too, Fox sits neatly; almost expectantly.
Who goes to a door and then just stands there? She casts
around for something, then feels ridiculous – just what exactly is she
looking for, a rolling pin or a baseball bat? For goodness’ sake.
Instead, she turns the overhead light on, and the sudden
illumination temporarily blinds her. She squints.
The figure in the doorway shifts. Fades. Then crowds the pane.
There’s a loud knocking.
Fox barks again, his tail whacking the floor in excitement.
‘Who is it?’ she says, stepping closer, her voice higher than
she’d like.
‘I need help.’
It’s a man’s voice, one that’s young, and rough at the edges.
And cut with a desperation that speaks to something deep inside of
Ally.
‘Do you need me to call the police?’ she says.
‘It’s Sergeant Bright I’m looking for. It’s him I need.’
She takes a breath. There isn’t anybody who doesn’t know what
happened to Bill, not in a place as small as this.
‘He’s not here,’ she says.
‘When’s he back?’
At her feet, Fox gives a small whine. Her hand goes to the neck
of her nightdress.
‘He can’t help,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry. Let me phone—’
‘But he said he would. He promised. He said to come if I ever
. . .’
And it’s the emotion in his voice that gets her: that word –
promised – is bursting with it. She feels a burning in her throat, as if
in reply. Her hand reaches for the door – then she stops. If Bill were
here, he’d have opened up straight away. Nothing to do with his job;
just because it was what you did.
Ally reaches again for the catch. She can hear her daughter’s
voice, taut with disapproval: You did what? She hesitates, then
unlocks the door.
The figure’s already turning away as she opens up. He spins
back around, and his arms flail as if he’s drowning.
She takes him in. Dirty white trainers, grey jogging bottoms
that are baggy at the knee, a too-big hoody, and a knitted hat pulled
low. A young man; hardly more than a boy, really.
Ally’s heart thunders in her chest. His eyes fix on hers and need
leaches from them. This man, this boy, a random piece of salvage,
brought in on the tide.
‘I’ll wait for Bill to come,’ he says.
 2

Bill. Not Sergeant Bright this time, but Bill. Ally thinks of the
kickboxing club her husband set up a couple of years ago, where a
stream of unlikely lads flowed into the community centre on a
Thursday night: kick, punch, kick, punch – an artful dance that had
some of the stiffer villagers tutting, Isn’t it just encouraging them?
Bill turned up to watch every week without fail, while Kaz, the burly
coach from Penzance, put them through their paces. Could he be
one of those boys?
Ally realises her arms are folded tightly around her body.
‘How do you know Bill?’
‘He said she died,’ he says, his voice shaking. ‘But that’s not
true, because they’d have told me. They’d have had to.’
She can’t follow. ‘What – Bill said that?’
‘No, that man. About Nan.’
Something about the way he says it: Nan. The tenderness. She
was right to open the door.
‘I lost my phone, didn’t I? But a thing like that, they find a way
to tell you. Even if you’ve got out. Don’t they? He’s lying, that man.
And he’s sitting there . . . where her house is. This massive posh
house where Nan’s is. Was.’ He smacks his hand to his head, in a
gesture of desperation. Two bright pink spots of colour have
appeared on his pallid cheeks. ‘I don’t . . . it’s not . . .’
None of it makes sense to Ally. But he doesn’t look drunk. Bill
would have been able to tell if he’d taken something, and probably
made a decent guess at what it was, but what does she know? The
young man looks so pained she can feel the weight of it in the
middle of her chest. He needs someone, that much is clear. But
doesn’t he know that she’s not that someone?
‘It was like I was dreaming. Turning up. Where’s the gate?
Where’s the fence? Nothing. Gone. Just this massive block. All glass.
Then he comes out, tells me to . . . clear off. Your nan sold up then
died, he said. Sold then died! As if.’
He’s treading the boards of the decking, trainers clumping; up
and down, up and down.
‘Let me phone the police for you . . .’ she begins.
‘Hunter. Roland Hunter. That’s the name for Bill. I didn’t touch
him. But he got right up in my face. I wasn’t going to take that, was
I? Sergeant Bright will know what to do. Won’t he? Please. He said
to come if I needed anything.’
Ally suddenly feels extraordinarily tired.
‘Bill died,’ she says. ‘A year ago. He’s not here anymore.’
He stops; stares at her, aghast. Then tucks his arms around
himself, squats like a mollusc. He looks like a little boy in that
moment.
‘But he promised.’
Ally gives a low laugh; she thinks she probably sounds as
disturbed as him. ‘Even so.’
He blinks back at her.
‘How did you know my husband?’
‘He put me away. Eighteen months in Dartmoor.’ He rubs at his
nose with the back of his hand. ‘I’ve just got out. And it’s . . . all
this. This . . . madness.’
The sea roars, upping its tenor. A cold breeze drives in, and
Ally’s nightdress flaps at her knees. She shivers.
Getting to his feet, he peers past her into the house, and she
sees it through his eyes. The wicker sofa with her sea-blue cushions.
Shelves lined with beach finds: the shark teeth, the jars full of sea
glass, the perfect starfish. One of her pictures, a blaze of colour, on
the far wall. Then he looks directly at her, his eyes full of appeal.
Have you got somewhere to go? That’s the question Bill would
have asked.
 But instead she says, ‘I’m sorry but I’d like you to leave now.
It’s the police you need to talk to. If you want me to ring them I will,
but I—’
He mutters something that she can’t catch. Then abruptly turns
and starts off down the path.
‘What’s your name?’ she calls after him.
But he doesn’t answer. The gate bangs on its hinges – then he’s
gone.
 3

Jayden sits in his car, staring straight ahead, watching the early
morning waves come rolling in. It’s impossible to tell at this distance
what size they are, but by the look of the few vehicles in the clifftop
car park – an old camper van, a couple of stickered-up Transporters
– other people have had the same idea: it’s on.
That’s what Cat’s cousin would say: on.
Pumping.
Surf’s up, dude.
Something like that anyway; Jayden hasn’t learnt to speak
Surfer yet.
He reaches for his thermos and twists the lid; a cup of tea
before he gets out there. Though that’s probably breaking all kinds
of rules: Waves before Brews – not a sticker he’s seen anywhere,
but still. Even a geriatric rambler would probably get a mile or two
under their belt before they cracked open the thermos. The sea,
though, is ice: springtime might have come to Cornwall, but the
water temperature is stuck in winter. Jayden knows he’s going to
need all the warming-up he can get.
He’s about to pour when his attention is caught by a movement
on the coast path. It’s a jogger – though more of a runner, the pace
they’re going at. As the figure flashes past he sees it’s a woman.
He’s too far away to see her face but there’s something about the
way she’s moving – elbows out, head dipped – that almost makes
her seem as if she’s running away from something, rather than just
running: that’s the thought that immediately flits into his head. He
scans behind her, but the cliffs, the dunes, are empty. When he
looks again, she’s gone.
 It’s muscle memory, that’s all; he’s been trained to anticipate
peril. Seeing it unnecessarily, though? Yeah, he’s pretty sure his
counsellor back in Leeds would have something to say about that.
Jayden pours his tea and settles back in his seat. The waves
keep on coming. He watches a handful of people out on the water.
He sees one catch something and perform a zigzagging dance that
ends in a disappearing act.
He takes a sip of tea.
Not even eight o’clock in the morning. What is he doing?
This was Cat’s back garden once. And if she wasn’t eight
months pregnant, no doubt she’d be the one dusting off this old
surfboard of hers that they salvaged from her dad’s barn. And she
wouldn’t be stalling with a plastic-tasting cup of Assam; she’d be out
there, bossing those waves. He’s never seen his wife surf, but he
imagines her doing it with effortless brilliance, just like she does
everything else.
The thought of falling short is what gets Jayden up and out,
hefting the board from the roof and pulling on the borrowed wetsuit
that’s too big in the shoulders. Cat likes the idea of him surfing –
and he likes that she likes it. It fits with her picture of the kind of
family they’ll be now that they’re in Cornwall; one where he works
regular hours, stays away from bad news and, above all, is there for
their child.
Not like Kieran.
Kieran, who’s always at the edge of his thoughts, ready to press
in. And who will never be there for anyone again. Two small girls
growing up without their dad, and a wife who Jayden still doesn’t
have the words for when she texts.
He kicks the door shut; tucks the board under his arm.
After what happened, after the gentle-voiced people in quiet
rooms, after the long stretch at home doing nothing, Cat had
wanted him to get out of the police altogether.
Leave it to other people to make the world a better place, Jay.
Because you know it could have been you. Then where would we
be? And her hand went to her bump – unconsciously, probably, but
he hated the thought of it. How fragile life was; how easily snapped
out.
Could have been him? Should have been him. Because why
not?
But as his mum said last week, he’s got different responsibilities
now – and anyway, if he changed his mind, didn’t Cornwall need
police officers too? He didn’t have the heart to tell her that when he
handed in his badge, it was for good – though good feels nothing
like the right word. Plus, his wife has other ideas for them. Cat’s
been working on her dad, persuading him to turn those far fields
into some kind of upmarket camping outfit. Yurts and firepits. It isn’t
exactly what he imagined himself doing after all those years of
training – not even thirty yet and already out to pasture – but she’s
excited about it. And he likes seeing Cat excited. He just doesn’t
have the backbone to tell her it’s more her dream than his.
With neither heart nor spine, what does that make him then?
He’s into ocean-creature territory, surely; the deep holds all kinds of
creepy things that defy the logic of existence. Two days ago, he
almost trod on a totally transparent jellyfish washed up on the sand;
it was dead, as far as he could see, though he tried sloshing sea
water over it to stir it back to life.
Jayden starts heading down to the beach, cutting over the
dunes. Further along, there are the colourful beach houses that
remind him a bit of where they used to go in Trinidad when he was
a kid. Those sun-soaked holiday memories: his silver-haired great-
grandfather rocking in his chair on the veranda, bursting into
spontaneous laughter just as some people burst into song; his
grandmother taking over the kitchen, serving up her legendary
macaroni pie; the garden hammock Jayden used to swing in,
gobbling up all his holiday reading way too soon. His dad, kicking
back with a bottle of Carib, saying, Couldn’t we all just move here?
Maracas has definitely got the edge on Whitby, despite the fact his
dad’s white skin turned red with sunburn and he gave the
mosquitoes a full-course dinner every night.
He and Cat will have to take the baby there when she comes
along. Get some sunshine in her – and show her what beaches can
really be.
Though he has to admit, when the light is right, Porthpella has
it going on. In some ways, anyway. With just one pub, one shop and
a chippie in the village centre, it isn’t exactly what he’s used to. But
compared to where they are out at Upper Hendra, Cat’s family farm,
Porthpella is a thriving metropolis. Don’t forget the gallery tea room
too, his mum-in-law said, they do a decent cheese scone in there,
Jayden. Not too salty.

The sea is bone-shakingly cold, despite the wetsuit. The surfers he

saw from the car park are scattered far out in deep water, which is
all good with Jayden. He wants his own space to get it wrong in – a
whole lot closer to shore. He settles himself on the board and
paddles, which is the one part he’s actually alright at. There’s
something satisfying about self-propulsion, feeling his muscles
working. He’s hardly been in any time – five minutes max – when a
tall-as-a-house wave comes out of nowhere and smacks him right on
the side of the head. How his face then hits the board he doesn’t
know: logic doesn’t seem to apply on a breaking wave. The burn
goes all the way to the back of his throat, his eyes sting, and there’s
blood in the water as if there’s been a shark attack. As he bursts
back through the surface, he makes a sound like a strangled seabird.
Eventually, he stumbles through the shallows, his hand pressed to
his gushing nose as he casts round for the board. He snatches at the
frayed end of the leash that’s still attached to his ankle.
Cat’s board has gone.
Jayden sinks down into the sand, feeling like a kid who’s just
had his lunch money taken by the school bully. Meanwhile the waves
keep rolling on in. He wipes his bloody hands in the sand.
It’s moments like this when he calls the whole thing into
question. Him, a Leeds boy, a city boy, adrift in the back of beyond –
a very white back of beyond, at that. What’s he even doing?
Catastrophising, Cat calls it. He can hear her now: You get knocked
off your surfboard one time and you want to call the whole thing
off?
He hears a shout from behind and, at first, he thinks it’s
someone taking a pop. He readies himself to laugh it off. No one
should try to learn to surf without a sense of humour, should they?
‘Hey, help!’
He springs to his feet. Sees a figure further down the beach, by
the cliffs. Arms waving.
Another yell: ‘Get help!’
At that, Jayden starts to run. He doesn’t even think about it.
And that’s something he’ll definitely come back to later: He doesn’t
even think about it.
 4

It’s one of those early mornings when the combination of sea and
sky, no matter how many times she’s seen it before, strikes Ally as
implausibly blue. She has to stop and breathe it in; observe a
moment’s gratitude. Sometimes it feels like it’s this place keeping her
going – the air her only sustenance, the tide the only movement she
can bear to be around.
You know, we’ve got a beach or two in Sydney, Mum, her
daughter said when she first suggested – and Ally protested – the
move. You’re acting like you’d be locked up inland or something.
Ally cuts over the dunes, Fox trotting beside her, his nose high
in the air. Sunlight catches the white tops of the waves and she
heads towards them. Just as she steps down into the sand, a faint
sound catches her ears: the far-off bleat of sirens. It isn’t exactly
common in Porthpella. She immediately thinks of her night-time
visitor, and the fact that, afterwards, she didn’t call the police.
Should she have?
The events of the night are still turning in her mind as she
moves on down the beach, walking as she always does, eyes on the
strandline. Miles can pass easily, every step measured out in
everyday treasures: drapes of oarweed, the denim blue of mussels,
the pearlescent shimmer of top shells. And, more often than not, a
litter-picker in the hand for the trash. This is your beat, Bill used to
say, gently teasing her. You patrol that strandline like nobody else.
It’s past eight o’clock, later than when she normally goes out,
but last night took something from her that she still hasn’t quite got
back. She lay in bed after the young man had gone, her body
thrumming with adrenalin, thoughts racing, his visit twining in her
mind with Evie’s entreaties: it was the small hours before she finally
fell into an uneasy sleep.
Bill had promised he’d help him. Whoever he was.
She thinks of Bill all the time, but now, a year on, her thoughts
are mostly – mostly – peaceful. It seems like every day the tide
brings in a new memory and she stoops to pluck it from the wet
sand; she keeps hold of these glinting treasures – feels lucky to have
them at all. A dozen times a day she thinks of things she wants to
say to him, but they’re mostly the minutiae of a life shared; rarely
does a question come along where Ally needs an answer from Bill.
But last night the fact that she couldn’t talk to him sucked the breath
from her, and made her miss his warm bulk beside her in a way that
she didn’t know what to do with.
The visitor has shaken everything up.
So, she does what she’s always done – come rain or shine, she
combs the shore. It has always calmed her: the concentration, the
sense of possibility, the world within a world. The riches she finds
would be trampled by others, most people seeing nothing special in
a pristine variegated scallop, or the bobble-like seeds she gathers.
But Ally knows better. Her garden blooms with tropical flowers,
carried over the sea from faraway places, the seed cases
miraculously surviving the lashing to sprout through on Cornish soil.
And every so often she comes across something a little
extraordinary: a Bristol blue glass bottle, nicked and chipped but
intact; the tiny stone kitten, one ear missing, that Evie kept on her
bedside table for years; blunted triangles of willow-pattern pottery.
They’ve always called it wrecking, not beachcombing, down
here. Maybe because when a storm brings the wreck of a ship in,
there are rich pickings to be had. Once, further along the coast, a
container ship went down and motorcycles and washing machines
were brought in on the tide; people stumbled through the shallows,
carrying them off – a rightful claiming, they said, because once
something is lost to the sea it’s anybody’s for the taking.
The art Ally’s made as long as she’s been in Cornwall is almost
entirely created from what she finds along the shore – specifically,
the things that shouldn’t be there. It started as litter-picking:
untangling ribbons of plastic from driftwood, gathering Smarties lids
and broken flip-flop straps and pop bottles. Man-made detritus
washing in from who knows where and who knows when. Of course,
she collects the obviously beautiful things too – the Venus shells and
smooth-as-toffee sea glass – but it’s the plastics that become her
pictures. What she can’t use, she bags and sends to be properly
disposed of, but the vivid finds, the unusual shapes and rainbow
colours, she sorts and keeps, slowly building vast and delicate
collages of landscapes. From a distance, her pictures show beauty
spots and coastal views, but if you look closer, you can see that
every piece is plastic. Maybe not the kind of thing most of the
galleries around here want, but that has never mattered to her;
she’s never looked for outside approval.
In their early days in Porthpella, the long beach walks she took
with Evie at her chest lifted her up, when so much was pulling her
down. Baby Blues was the only name for it back then, and even that
was spoken in a whisper – and with a look that said, Do you have to
make such a fuss though? The beachcombing, the sketches in her
journal, the litter-picking; these were the ways she coaxed herself
back by increments. Bill was her rock and her daughter the star in
her sky, but it was the sea that saved her.
All the way back then – and now.
Ally breathes deeply – in and out, in and out – steady as the
tide. She feels the sand beneath her feet, the pull of the ocean to
her right. She follows the trail. When it comes to treasures, the sea
shows what it wants to show: no more, no less. She can never force
a find, but by the act of looking, it’s possible to discover a kind of
peace.
She walks on, eyes down, and as soon as the object reveals
itself, it’s as if it was specifically waiting for her. As if to say, Life has
changed now, you’d better move with it.
It’s not quite on the strandline, rather a few feet up. It’s the
flash of pastel pink in the sand that catches her eye, then the glint
of metal. It’s caught in a tangle of seaweed that’s strayed higher up
the beach: bladder wrack, the rubbery children’s favourite, the one
they gather and hurl at one another. She hurries towards it, as if it
might disappear, snatched by a long-tongued wave or an eager gull.
She bends down and carefully extracts the object. It’s a watch, and
an expensive one at that. Its face is cracked but it ticks on. She
turns it over and squints at the engraving: Roland & Helena.
17/09/2018.

Ally only sees the blue lights as she’s further down the beach, with
the watch safe in the pocket of her jacket. It’s an ambulance, and
from the looks of it, it’s parked on the very tip of the cliff. She can
see a handful of people gathered beneath the overhang. As she
moves closer, she sees a police officer, although she can’t recognise
him at this distance. She probably wouldn’t even recognise him up
close, for she was never one of the ‘wives’ in that way, and there’s
no one pounding the streets of Porthpella anymore. She takes in the
green coats of paramedics, the hefting of a gurney.
She goes cold. God, no.
Twenty years ago – or about that – Bill came home one night
and took her in his arms and held her so long and hard she felt all of
his sorrow passing into her. She knew without asking, then, that
someone had died. At this same cliff.
A young dad, Bill said. Paul Pascoe. Couldn’t see how he could
go on, his note said.
Now, Ally’s chest fills with dread; her heart beats fast as a
bird’s. She walks towards the scene as if she’s pulled by something.
With every step, her mind sorts through the fragments of the night
before, the things the visitor said – the big glass house where his
nan’s had been.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
She sees a small gathering of wetsuited surfers, and Fox pelts
on without trepidation. The officer is nodding, writing in a notebook,
while the sound of his radio carries on the breeze. They start to
disperse just before she gets there, the gurney carried up the cliff
path. The officer looks up as she approaches. He waves at her – too
jauntily, Ally thinks. He’s young, pink-cheeked, round as an apple.
‘Morning. It’s Mrs Bright, isn’t it?’
Perhaps he saw her at Bill’s funeral; the church was packed,
standing room only, and at one point she felt like she couldn’t
breathe at all. In as level a voice as she can muster, Ally asks what’s
happened.
‘Young bloke. Attempted suicide, by the looks. Still breathing –
just. Bloody miracle. Don’t s’pose you saw anything, did you?’
‘No, I . . . I heard the ambulance just as we were setting out.
My dog and I.’ She gestures to Fox, who’s currently getting his head
petted by one of the surfers. She hesitates. She doesn’t want to ask
the next question, but she has to. ‘Who is it, do you know?’
‘He’s carrying a wallet but there’s not much in it.’
‘Is there a name?’
The officer doesn’t detect the urgency in her voice. Or, if he
does, maybe he squares it away as no more than that of a
concerned citizen.
‘Lewis Pascoe.’
And there’s no extra weight as he says the name. Probably
because this constable is too young to understand the connection;
twenty years ago, he’d have been in nappies.
He goes on. ‘Touch and go, the boys said there. They’ve taken
him to Truro.’ His phone rings then, and he nods to her; wanders up
the beach to take the call.
Ally watches him go. He trudges heavily in the sand, nudges at
a rock with the toe of his boot, before making his way up the rough-
cut stone steps.
Lewis Pascoe.
She feels someone watching her. She turns to see a young man
in a red and grey wetsuit, with brown skin and close-shaven black
hair. The concern in his face makes her eyes fill. She exhales in one
ragged breath.
 5

‘You okay?’ Jayden asks Ally.

He heard the way she asked the question about the man’s
identity, and he saw the stricken look on her face as it was answered
too. There was something there. Not that the PC twigged.
The arrival of this woman has given Jayden something to focus
on – and he’s glad of it. Because he looked so dead, the young man,
with his body heaped, and blood clotted in the sand. Blood that
Jayden could hardly look at. The surfer who found him at the foot of
the cliffs was shocked initially but Jayden got the feeling it’d be an
anecdote for his mates later; he saw him sauntering back towards
the water, once he’d answered the few questions from the police.
As Jayden faced his own questions – It’s just from a nosebleed
. . . No, I didn’t get in a fight . . . No, I’ve never seen him in my life
– it felt like a good job that the other guy, the sort-of-nonchalant
body-finder, had vouched for him. And he felt a small flare go off
inside of him.
Now Jayden’s head spins; he feels dizzy suddenly. The woman’s
little red dog is still twining round his legs, and he reaches down to
pat him. The action roots him.
He asks again: ‘Are you okay?’
She starts. Blinks. Her short grey hair is blown across her face.
She wears a kind of fisherman’s blue tunic, jeans and old hiking
boots. She’s older than his mum, younger than his nan. She looks at
him first distractedly, then questioningly.
He puts his hand to his face. ‘Surfboard,’ he says. ‘We had a
disagreement; the board made its point with a bit more, er, force.’
‘Did you . . . see anything?’ she asks.
 Jayden jerks his head. The cliff rises up behind them, twenty-
five feet or more of sheer rock. You’d think it’d be the end, if you
stepped off there. It still might be, for the kid. How bad did it have
to be, to do a thing like that?
They moved fast, the medics. And Jayden made himself stay in
the moment – the sand beneath his feet, the gulls drifting overhead,
the feel of his wetsuit against his skin – but he was pulled back to
that night in Leeds anyway: to the flashing lights, the radio
crackling, him saying his friend’s name over and over and over; to
everything he’d tried to do and failed at anyway.
He feels the dizziness threaten again and makes himself focus
back on the woman.
‘I didn’t see anything,’ he says. ‘The guy who found him
thought . . . well, he thought he was dead. No idea how long he’s
been unconscious. Did you . . . you know him, do you?’
She widens her eyes. They’re sea green, and Jayden sees
something in them that he can’t quite read.
‘Because, if you wanted to go to the hospital, I could drive
you?’ he offers.
‘What? No. No, I don’t know him.’
She clicks for her dog. The dog responds by licking Jayden’s
hand. The raspy little tongue is centring, and he breathes slowly.
‘Sorry, I just thought you did. When they said his name.’
And as he says it, the persistence takes him aback. What
business is it of his? Any of it?
‘I briefly met him yesterday,’ she says carefully, and this time
her voice has an obvious tremor in it.
‘But you didn’t mention that to the police just now?’
What is this, Jayden, an interview?
She gives a brief shake of her head, and he feels a spark of
intrigue.
‘Someone wants to do a thing like that, you can’t stop them,’ he
says, carefully.
He knows it’s just one of the things that people say when
finding words is too difficult. And he’s not even sure he means it,
because there are plenty of stories where people are stopped. The
commuter on the Tube platform, the passer-by on the bridge;
sometimes all it takes is for someone to interrupt the runaway train
of thought.
She shakes her head again. ‘No. But . . .’
The woman looks completely stranded, he thinks, standing
there. And Jayden knows there’s more to this than she’s saying –
and he realises that he wants to know what. Maybe because he’s still
reeling from the shock of it and he doesn’t want to be alone. Maybe
because he doesn’t want to walk straight back in and say to Cat, So
yeah, your board . . . Maybe because he wants one thing down here
in Porthpella that feels like it’s his. Whatever it is, it suddenly feels
like his job to find out what’s going on with this woman.
He can see that she’s trying to collect herself, to seem okay for
the sake of other people – and he knows that move so well; the
effort it takes.
‘I need a drink,’ he says. ‘The hard stuff. I’ve only got tea in the
car. Coffee? There’s that place just down from the car park.’
Her eyes still look faraway, so he goes on.
‘It’s a shock. And it’s good not to be alone. I’m Jayden by the
way. Jayden Weston. You’re Mrs Bright, right?’
He overheard her telling the PC, but she doesn’t look surprised
that he might know her name. He figures her for a local, on this run
of coast where everyone knows everyone.
‘Ally, yes. And okay, yes. Coffee.’ She gives the smallest smile.
‘Thank you.’
‘And this guy?’ He nods to the dog, who’s now busying himself
with Jayden’s bare toes.
‘That’s Fox.’ She looks down, says, ‘He seems to have taken to
you. That’s not his usual style.’
As they walk away together, Jayden forgets to glance at the
shoreline, in case Cat’s board has washed in. All he can think of is
the question he’s now determined to find the answer to: what has
Ally Bright got to do with the man who jumped?
 6

Saffron traces a cresting wave in the microfoam of the flat white

she’s just made herself. She’s still working on it: from the wrong
angle it can look like somebody’s ear, and that isn’t very appetising.
Not that most people notice. Hang Ten is a takeaway place a lot of
the time, her creations hidden under lids. It’s only on rainy days,
when people push inside to the dinky interior and mist up the
windows, that the cups and saucers come out.
She takes her coffee and looks out on to the beach. The flurry
of activity on the clifftop has passed – what was the ambulance for,
an early hiker with a twisted ankle? – and it’s back to watching
breaking waves and the dots of surfers out on the water; the
purposeful strides of dog walkers. At Hang Ten it’s too early yet for
the post-school drop-off crew – Fridays are always popular with
them – but a windblown mum came in just now, and something
inside of Saffron twanged as she saw the babe’s rounded cheeks,
their whorl of hair.
Is this broodiness? She’s twenty-three, way too young for all
that.
She’s snapped out of it by the appearance of the police officer
shouldering his way in. PC Tim Mullins, who she knows from school;
she can picture him now in Mrs Oswald’s pottery class, sitting at the
back, laughing like a drain and flicking clay balls. She never would
have had Mullins down as a future upholder of the peace.
‘We’ve had a jumper, Saff,’ he says, with way too much relish.
‘Kid called Lewis Pascoe. You see anything?’
Saffron’s hand goes to her mouth. ‘Oh no, really? Someone
jumped?’
 Lewis Pascoe. The name rings a bell, and how she wishes it
didn’t.
‘He botched it, mind. He’s on his way to Truro, to the ICU – if
he’s lucky.’
Pascoe. The penny drops. It’s his nan she knows, not Lewis
himself. And not really his nan either, because to say that old
Mrs Pascoe – Maggie – kept herself to herself would be an
understatement. Saffron couldn’t blame her, because the story goes
that her son – Paul, was it? Paul Pascoe? – was in and out of trouble
for as long as anyone round here could remember (which was way
back, because people in this community are elephants, apparently).
Then one day he went and stepped off the cliff and ended his life.
Poor Maggie never recovered from it, and people said that she never
stopped looking to blame someone for it, either. Mostly it was the
police who got it from her. She said it’d been harassment, plain and
simple: that Paul was driven to it, because no one round here
believed in second chances, and the police were always on his back
about this, that and the other. And Saffron sees where Maggie was
coming from. People seemed to forget that someone like Paul
Pascoe had once been a little darling, just like the one strapped to
that mum’s chest just now, and old Mrs Pascoe had been a doting
young mother, holding nothing but possibility and love and hope in
her arms.
Hippy-Dippy, that’s what Mullins called her at school. Because
she laced her hair with tiny plaits and had a beaded anklet. Because,
from time to time, she liked a smoke – and who didn’t, on a
summer’s night with a sky full of stars and the crackle of a fire and
the sea pounding like a bass note. And she used words like love and
hope in everyday conversation. Hippy-Dippy, obviously.
‘Nice big white coffee, cheers, Saff.’
Ah, that’s why he’s really come. And of course, he’ll expect it for
free: on account of the uniform, apparently.
She sets the machine going.
Poor Lewis Pascoe. So he’s out of prison, then. It was Maggie
who told her about that, in a rare moment where she opened up, as
if for a minute she’d forgotten herself, the words spilling out: He’s a
good boy, Lewis. He was only with me a couple of weeks when the
police were on his case, see. Saffron can just picture her as she said
it, in her scuffed leather shoes and shapeless skirt and the kind of
saggy knitted hat that even Broady would struggle to pull off.
(Broady being the finest beanie-wearer and wave-catcher – and, if
she were putting all her cards on the table, owner of the finest six-
pack – she knows.)
I’ve told him I’ll have nothing to do with him until he’s back out,
Maggie said. It’s the only way I can go through this again. She used
to come in for a cup of tea from time to time, and when she did
Saffron always gave her a little something extra – a fresh-baked
almond biscuit, or a wedge of flapjack. Nothing really, a small
gesture like that, but when someone like old Mrs Pascoe, practically
a recluse, chose Hang Ten, it felt like an honour. And for Maggie it
was probably an unlikely spot in every way, with the reggae
soundtrack and the Hawaii posters and skate decks on the walls –
except for Saffron’s smile, which she hopes welcomes everybody.
When she heard a few months ago that old Mrs Pascoe had sold up
and moved away, Saffron felt a little hurt that she hadn’t popped in
to say goodbye.
‘What happened?’ she says now. But it doesn’t feel right,
Lewis’s last moments being narrated by Mullins, and she immediately
regrets the question.
‘Bugger knows.’
‘I did see a young guy this morning,’ she says, ‘just as I was
heading down here.’
‘Was it Pascoe?’
‘I don’t know. He was . . . early twenties? Maybe. If that. Grey
tracksuit.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘I think it was grey.’
‘Bingo. That’s got to be Pascoe. Buzz cut?’
‘Yeah. He was by that new place, down in the dunes.’
He’d looked kind of lost; standing at the side of the path as she
cycled past, his shoulders hunched like he was a craggy sort of
seabird.
‘It was early,’ she says, passing Mullins his coffee. ‘Before
seven.’
 ‘Good job it wasn’t attempted murder,’ he says, raising it in a
cheers! gesture, grinning, ‘because you’d be the prime suspect. Last
to see him!’
Saffron ignores him, and instead says, ‘What was he even doing
out here, now that his nan’s moved?’
‘Moved? Moved to the big house in the sky, more like. He’s got
no next of kin, has Lewis.’
Then he taps his walkie-talkie at his shoulder – the walkie-talkie
that’s displayed in a way that Saffron can’t help thinking is way too
showy.
‘Before I came in here, I got intel that he’s fresh out of
Dartmoor prison,’ he says grandly. ‘Probably couldn’t adjust, could
he?’
He takes a slurp. Smacks his lips.
It isn’t that Saffron doesn’t believe that people can change. But
Mullins was a lunk at school and he’s pretty much a lunk now. He
was the kid who put chewing gum in girls’ hair. Who bellowed in the
corridors just to hear the sound of his own voice, and kicked his
sports bag along instead of picking it up and carrying it. And now,
when he’s out of his police uniform, he tosses back pints and throws
his weight around in The Wreckers on a Friday night. Not someone
she’d ever give a badge to, personally. And she can’t help feeling
that the last sergeant, Bill Bright, would have agreed with her.
‘I’d best be off – no rest for the wicked,’ says Mullins, winking at
her. He pauses at the door and laughs. ‘Someone should have told
Pascoe that one before he jumped.’
He’s gone before Saffron can tell him that you can’t go around
talking like that. Especially not in a uniform.
Saffron looks to the sea again, picks up her coffee, tries to re-
find her vibe. But all she can see is old Mrs Pascoe. He’s a good boy,
my Lewis. What if Saffron had stopped her bike when she passed
him this morning? Asked him if he was alright?
And had Maggie really gone and died?
The door opens, a gust of wind coming in with it, and she
thinks it’s Mullins back for more – to blag a brownie and offer some
more tone-deaf jokes – and she’s ready to tell him that it’s not cool,
Mullins, not cool at all. But instead it’s a pair of new customers.
She recognises the older grey-haired woman as Bill Bright’s
wife, Ally, Porthpella’s resident beachcomber. Saffron’s not sure she’s
ever been in Hang Ten before, though she’s seen her often enough,
walking the shoreline, bending to pick up who knows what. And she
recognises the tall, mixed-race guy with her too, because he came in
last week and they joked about something. The weather? The
waves? He’s not smiling now though, and nor is Ally Bright, and
Saffron wonders if they saw what happened down on the beach. She
blinks rapidly, pushes the heel of her hand into her eye, smearing
her mascara with it.
‘Morning!’ she says brightly. ‘What can I get you?’
‘Is it alright to bring the dog in?’ asks Ally, tentatively. Her face
is small, pale, worried.
‘I prefer dogs to some people.’ Saffron grins, brightening at the
sight of the little red-furred mongrel. ‘Does he want a biscuit?’
 7

They go inside, because in true Porthpella form a light drizzle – a

mizzle – has blown in from the sea. The clear blue skies Ally woke
up to are now scudded with cloud.
She shivers, wraps her jacket around her instead of taking it off.
At some point in the last couple of years, this place – Hang Ten
– sprang up, but she’s never been inside before. The coffee shop is
small, and she’s self-conscious, but Jayden gestures to the one and
only corner table. Ally takes a seat in a yellow-painted wicker chair,
leaning back against a colourful tie-dye cushion. A voracious Swiss
cheese plant clambers up towards the ceiling, fairy lights looping
round its stem. The ceiling is a mosaic of stickers: peace signs and
Aloha! and Sex Wax surf wax. The floorboards are painted sky blue
and the counter is loaded with cakes. She must have seen the bright
painted shack hundreds of times, but never thought it was a place
for her.
Ally folds her hands in her lap and closes her eyes for a second.
Fox settles at her feet, crunching a bone-shaped biscuit. He yaps
excitedly and she reaches down, lays a hand on his bristled back to
quieten him.
The young woman with the pink hair – Saffron, a Porthpella girl
that Ally remembers Bill saying was making a go of the place – is
temporarily obscured by a puff of steam from the coffee machine.
What’s she – Ally – doing here?
‘So,’ says Jayden, sliding into the seat across from her,
stretching out his long legs, ‘I probably don’t have many of these
morning surfs left. My wife’s eight months pregnant.’
 Ally can feel herself smiling on autopilot. She says
congratulations.
She and Bill were both so young when Evie was born; Ally had
just graduated from art school, Bill was a newly minted PC. The flat
in Falmouth was tiny, and Ally, far away from any family, felt like the
walls were pressing in. Like her perfect little daughter – so
unexpected, so treasured – was taking the actual breath from her.
Some days she’d stand over her daughter’s cradle, feel her chest
splitting, gasp for air like a fish on land. Bill found her like that more
than once, and even his strong hands on her shoulders didn’t feel as
if they were reaching her. Then he took the job down here, in the
far, far west, where the skies were wide and the sea wild.
There’s a place, he said. It’s called The Shell House. I think the
three of us could be happy there.
The young woman sets down their coffees, her bangles
jangling, and Jayden thanks her. She hovers, as if she’s about to say
something more, then she appears to think better of it.
‘I suck at it, by the way,’ Jayden says to Ally. ‘The surfing.’
Ally takes a sip of coffee. It’s velvety and strong and tastes
even better than the stuff she makes at home. She resets the cup
carefully, but it still clatters in the saucer. She sees Jayden pretend
not to notice.
‘Why are we here?’ she asks suddenly.
‘Because when something like that happens, I don’t think we
should all just go on like it’s nothing.’
‘But people do,’ says Ally. ‘It’s all they ever do.’
She can hear the tang in her voice, and she stops.
‘And I thought you might want to talk.’
Jayden says it as if talking is easy. Doesn’t he realise she’s tight
as a clam?
She imagines trying to tell Evie what’s happened. Where could
she possibly start? Not with opening the door to a desperate young
man after dark, that’s for sure. The problem with saying anything to
her daughter is that Ally always has to create space for her reaction
– and it is so hard not to be knocked off course in the face of it.
Pragmatic Evie wouldn’t understand a guilt like this.
 Of course, Ally will have to tell the police about Lewis coming to
her house – she just didn’t quite feel ready for it down on the beach.
She’ll phone and tell them straight away, after this.
How did she not realise who he was at the time? She can’t stop
replaying what Lewis said – that Bill promised he’d help him – and
the look on his face, like he was no more than a little boy lost. Is she
so wrapped up in her own world that she couldn’t step outside of it
to help someone else?
Jayden’s right: she does want to talk. But she knows she won’t
like the sound of her own words when she does.
She watches him as he drops a sugar cube into his coffee. Stirs.
He smiles at her – a smile that’s somehow apologetic and
reassuring, like a nurse’s before they give you a jab.
‘He came looking for my husband,’ she begins.
Because all her stories seem to start with Bill.
‘Lewis Pascoe?’
‘Lewis Pascoe. Only I had no idea who he was.’
And on she goes. By the time she’s finished – almost finished –
her coffee is cold. As she tells Jayden what Lewis said, about Bill
apparently promising to look out for him, she hears her voice creak.
‘It’s alright,’ says Jayden. ‘I get it.’
And without knowing this young man who sits across from her
at all, she can see that he does. He understands. Encouraged, she
goes on, telling him as much as she can remember.
‘You see,’ she says, ‘Bill took it hard, what happened with
Lewis’s dad. He was first to the scene. This exact same cliff. And
then there was Maggie’s reaction afterwards, the way she turned
against people around here, and especially the local police. She
wouldn’t so much as look at Bill if she passed him. That was twenty
years ago. She wouldn’t look at any of us for twenty years.’
‘And you said her grandson, Lewis, came to live with her a while
back?’
Ally nods. ‘Lewis would have been just a baby when his dad
killed himself, living with his mum on the other side of the country, I
think. But then at some point Lewis actually came down here and
moved in with his nan, must have been two or three years ago. And
I remember Bill saying he’d had to arrest him, that he’d hardly been
here five minutes and he’d got into trouble. I know Bill didn’t feel
very good about that, not on top of the history with Maggie.’
Ally presses her hands to her eyes. It’s coming back now –
fragmented, but none the less. Bill had retired not long after.
‘I remember Bill saying he felt sorry for Lewis. Said he didn’t
have anyone anymore, apart from his nan. I think Lewis’s mother
must have passed away too. But I was in Australia with Evie at the
time, she’d just had her new baby . . . I suppose I didn’t pay much
attention to what was going on back here.’
‘What had Lewis done?’
‘I think it was burglary,’ says Ally. ‘The thing is, last night, I only
spoke to Lewis for all of five minutes – and I didn’t even realise who
he was. I can’t pretend to know anything about his life now. But . . .’
How could she put it?
‘Last night, he didn’t look like someone who was ready to give
up,’ she continues. ‘Not to me, he didn’t. He looked like he was only
just getting started.’
Jayden’s listening intently. So too, she’s sure, is the girl behind
the counter. And she knows how she must sound: like someone
desperately trying to convince themselves that there were no signs;
that there was nothing they could have done. But it isn’t that. Or at
least not entirely.
‘But if it’s the same cliff his dad jumped off?’ asks Jayden,
gently.
‘I know,’ says Ally. ‘I know.’
She picks up her cup and puts it down again. Jayden leans back
in his chair, his brow creased.
‘He was there again this morning.’ The girl is beside them, her
hands thrust into the pocket of her denim apron. ‘I saw him. Lewis.
Right outside Sea Dream, that new place with all the gin-palace
vibes. I thought he was just passing it. Are you seriously saying he
didn’t know anything about his nan until he turned up there last
night? Not about her selling the place, her dying, nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ says Ally. ‘He says he knew nothing at all.’
 ‘All that glass,’ she says, ‘I’m amazed he didn’t at least break a
window. I think I would’ve, given the circumstances . . . Well,
wouldn’t you?’
The girl heads back to the counter and Ally and Jayden sit
quietly for a moment. The café’s music – something with an
incongruously happy beat – fills the space between.
All at once, Jayden leans forward.
‘I just thought of something,’ he says, with animation; his soft
northern accent suddenly more pronounced. ‘Something I saw this
morning. And you know what, I reckon it could be connected.’
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
"Callie! O Callie! Mr. Butler has been asking Ben Shirley all about you, and he
wants to be introduced to you, and they are coming now."

"All right, little one," said the young man cheerily; "only don't tell them we
know it," and he received the promised introduction with a broad smile on his
face.

Nobody knew better than Mr. Butler how to be genial when he chose, or, more
properly speaking, when he thought of it; so young Carey Martyn, who had felt
somewhat sore over the thought that even the minister had overlooked him,
thawed under the bright and cordial greeting, and was presently willing to
cross the room to Louise and receive another introduction.

"Mrs. Morgan wants to meet you," said the minister as they went toward her.
"She specially desired an introduction."

And the young fellow's heart warmed at the idea: he was not to be quite left
out in the cold, then, if he did drive Mr. Capron's horses and work for his
board. That is the way in which he had interpreted the thoughtlessness of the
young people. He was proud, this young man—a good many young men are,
intensely and sensitively proud, about a hundred little things of which no one
save themselves is thinking; and thus they make hard places in their lives
which might just as well be smooth.

Mr. Butler, having performed his duty, immediately left the two to make each
other's acquaintance, and went himself to hunt out a new face that he had
seen in the crowd. He was beginning to feel that there were ways of making
church socials helpful.

A little touch of pride, mingled with a frank desire not to sail into society under
false colours, made young Martyn say, in answer to Louise's kindly cross-
questioning—

"Oh no, I don't live here; my home is a hundred miles away; I am, really, only a
servant."

"To be a servant, under some masters, is a very high position," Louise

answered quickly. "May I hope that you are a servant of the great King?"

Then you should have seen Carey Martyn's gray eyes flash.

"I believe I am," he said proudly. "I wear his uniform, and I try to serve him."
"Then we are brother and sister," said Louise. "Let us shake hands in honour
of the relationship," and she held out her fair hand and grasped the roughened
one, and the young man's heart warmed, and his face brightened as it hardly
had since he left his mother.

CHAPTER XVII.
FIRST FRUITS.

"LEWIS," said his wife, as she came to him in the hall, robed for walking, "I
have a little plan: I want you to walk home with Dorothy to-night, and let me go
with John; I would like to have a talk with him. But more than that, I want you
to have a talk with Dorothy, and you never get opportunity to see her alone."

"O Louise!" said her husband, undisguised dismay in voice and manner; yet
he tried to disguise it—he did not want her to know how entirely he shrank
from such a plan.

"I don't think, dear, that it will be wise. Dorothy is at all times afraid of me, and
a long walk alone with me would be a terrible undertaking in her eyes; and,
besides, Louise dear, I am not like you—I cannot talk familiarly with people on
these topics as you can."

"Don't talk any more than you think wise; get acquainted with Dorrie, and drop
one little seed that may spring up and bear fruit. I want you to try it, Lewis."

There was something in her face and voice when she said such things that
had often moved Lewis before to go contrary to his own wishes. It worked the
same spell over him now; without another word of objection he turned away—
though the walk home in the starlight had been a delightful prospect—and
went to do what was a real cross to him.

What had he and Dorothy in common? What could they say to each other?
"What is all this?" John questioned sharply as Lewis strode out of the gate
with the frightened Dorothy tucked under his arm. He suspected a trap, and
he had all a young man's horror of being caught with cunningly-devised plans.
He was quick-witted; if this were one of Louise's schemes to lecture him under
pretence of enjoying a walk, she would find him very hard to reach.

Fortunately for her, Louise was also quick-witted. He was not one to be caught
with guile, at least not guile of this sort. She answered his question promptly
and frankly.

"It is a plan of mine, John: I wanted to talk with you, and it seemed to me this
would be a good opportunity. You do not mind walking with me, do you?"

Thus squarely met, what was John to say? He said nothing, but he reasoned
in his heart that this was a straightforward way of doing things, anyhow—no
"sneaking" about it.

"Well," he said, as, after offering his arm, they walked over the frozen earth for
a little in silence, "what have you got to say to me? Why don't you begin your
lecture?"

"O John! It isn't in the least like a lecture; it is a simple thing, very easily said: I
wish you were a Christian man; that comprises the whole story."

What a simple story it was! What was there in it that made John's heart beat
quicker?

"What do you care?" he asked her.

"Why, isn't that a singular question? If I love my King, don't I want all the world
to be loyal to him? Besides, if I love my friends, don't I desire for them that
which will alone give them happiness?"

"What do you mean by 'being a Christian'?"

"I mean following Christ."

"What does that mean? I don't understand those cant phrases, and I don't
believe anybody else does."

"Never mind 'anybody else;' what is there in that phrase which you don't
understand?"
"I don't understand anything about it, and never saw anything in any one's
religion to make me want to; I believe less in religion than I do in anything else
in life. It is a great humbug. Half your Christians are making believe to their
neighbours, and the other half are making believe not only to their neighbours
but to themselves. Now you have my opinion in plain English."

And John drew himself up proudly, after the manner of a young man who
thinks he has advanced some unanswerable arguments.

"Never mind 'other people's religion' just now, John; I don't want you to be like
a single person whom you ever saw. I am not anxious just now to know
whether you believe in religion or not. Do you believe there is such a person
as Jesus Christ?"

Then there was utter silence. John, who had a hundred ways of twisting this
subject, and was ready with his lancet to probe the outer covering of all
professions, and who believed that he could meet all arguments with sneers;
was silenced by a name. He did not believe in religion, nor in churches, nor in
ministers, nor in the Bible; at least he had sharply told himself that he did not.
But was he prepared to say plainly, here in the stillness of the winter night,
under the gaze of the solemn stars, that he did not believe there was such a
person as Jesus Christ?

Foolish disciple of a foolish infidel though he thought he was, something, he

did not know what, some unseen, unrealized power, kept him from speaking
those blasphemous and false words; yes, for he knew in his heart that to deny
his belief in the existence of such a person would be as false as it was foolish.

He would have been glad to have had Louise advance her arguments, press
the subject, be as personal as she pleased—anything rather than this solemn
silence; it made him strangely uneasy.

But Louise only waited; then presently she repeated her question.

"Why, of course, I suppose so," was at last John's unwilling admission.

"Are you very familiar with his history?"

Another trying question. Why could not she argue, if she wanted to, like a
sensible person? He was willing to meet her half-way; but these short, simple,
straightforward questions were very trying.

"Not remarkably, I guess," he answered at last with a half-laugh.

What an admission for a man to have to make who was expected to prove
why he did not believe in anything!

But Louise had apparently no intention of making him prove anything.

"Well," she said simply, "then we have reached our starting-point. I wished that
you were a follower of Christ; in order to follow him, of course, you will have to
know him intimately."

"Who follows him?"

The question was asked almost fiercely. Oh, if Louise could only have
reminded him of his mother, could have brought her forth as an unanswerable
argument against this foolish attempt at scepticism! She knew mothers who
could have been so brought forward, but, alas for him! John Morgan's mother
was not one of them. The minister? She thought of him quickly, and as quickly
laid his name aside. He was a "good fellow," a genial man; John already half
fancied him; but it would not do to bring him forward as a model of one who
was following Christ. Alas, again, for John that his pastor could not have been
a satisfactory pattern! She thought of her husband, and with a throb of wifely
pain realized that she must not produce his name. Not, indeed, because he
was not a follower, but because this unreasonable boy could so readily detect
flaws, and was fiercely claiming a perfect pattern. She must answer
something.

"O John!" she said, and her voice was full of feeling, "very many are, in
weakness and with stumblings; but what has that to do with the subject?
Suppose there is not a single honest follower on earth, does that destroy you
and Christ? To point out my follies to Jesus Christ will not excuse you, for he
does not ask you to follow me. John, don't let us argue these questions that
are as plain as sunlight. You believe in Jesus Christ; will you study him, and
take him for your model?"

"Not until I see somebody accomplish something in the world who pretends to
have done so."

He said it with his accustomed sneer; he knew it was weak and foolish—was
in a sense unanswerable because of its utter puerility; yet, all the same, he
repeated it in varied forms during that walk, harping continually on the old key
—the inconsistencies of others. In part he believed his own statements; in fact
he was at work at what he had accused Christians of doing—"making believe"
to himself that the fault lay all outside of himself.
Louise said very little more; she had not the least desire to argue. She
believed that John, like many other young men in his position, knew altogether
too little about the matter to be capable of honest argument. She believed he
was, like many another, very far from being sincerely anxious to reach the
truth, else he would not have had to make that humiliating admission that he
was unacquainted with the character of Jesus Christ.

He talked a good deal during the rest of the way; waxed fierce over the real or
fancied sins of his neighbours; instanced numerous examples, and seemed
surprised and provoked that she made not the slightest attempt to controvert
his statements.

"Upon my word!" he said at last, "you are easily vanquished. You have never
lived in such an interesting community of Christians as this, I fancy. So you
haven't a word to say for them?"

"I didn't know we were talking about them," she answered quietly; "I thought
we were talking about Jesus Christ. I am not acquainted with them, and in one
sense they are really of no consequence; but I do know Jesus, and can say a
word for him, if you will present anything against him. Still, as you seem very
anxious to talk of these others, I want to ask one question—Do you believe
these traits of character which you have mentioned were developed by
religion?"

"Of course not, at least I should hope not; it is the absurdity of their
professions, in view of such lives, to which I was trying to call your attention."

"Well, suppose we grant that their professions are absurd, what have you and
I gained what has that to do with the personal question which rests between
us and Christ?"

"Oh well," he said, sneering, "that is begging the question. Of course if the life
is such an important one, the fruit ought to be worth noticing. Anyhow, I don't
intend to swell the army of pretenders until they can make a better showing
than they do now."

It was precisely in this way that he swung around the subject, always glancing
away from a personal issue. You have doubtless heard them, these arguers,
going over the same ground, again and again, exactly as though it had never
been touched before. Louise was sore-hearted; she began to question,
miserably, as to whether she had made a mistake. Was not this talk worse
than profitless? Was he not even being strengthened in his own follies? She
had so wanted to help him, and he really seemed farther away from her reach
than when they had started on this walk. She was glad when they neared their
own gate. John had relapsed into silence, whether sullen or otherwise she
had no means of knowing. They had walked rapidly at last, and gained upon
Dorothy and Lewis, who were now coming up the walk.

"Good-night," said Louise gently.

"Good-night," he answered. Then, hesitating, "I'm rather sorry, on your

account, that I am such a good-for-nothing. Perhaps, if I had had a specimen
of your sort about me earlier, it might have made a difference; but I'm soured
now beyond even your reach. I'd advise you to let me go to decay as fast as
possible;" and he pushed past her into the hall, up the stairs, leaving her
standing in the doorway waiting for her husband.

Meantime, in silence and embarrassment, Lewis and Dorothy had trudged

along. At least he was embarrassed; he had no means of knowing what she
was feeling, save that the hand which rested on his arm trembled. This very
fact disturbed him; why had she need to be afraid of him? Was he a monster,
that she should shrink and tremble whenever he spoke to her? Still,
conscience told him plainly that he had never exerted himself greatly to make
her feel at ease with him. Then he fell to thinking over her emotionless
weariness of a life. What was there for her anywhere in the future more than in
the present? She would, probably, stagnate early, if the process were not
already completed, and settle down into hopeless listlessness. Much he knew
about life, especially the life of a girl not yet nearly out of her teens!

Still his view of it gave him a feeling of unutterable pity for the sister of whom
he had hitherto thought but little connectedly, except to admit a general
disappointment in her. Now he began to say to himself, "What if she should
awaken to a new life in Christ? What a restful, hopeful life it might give her!
She will never be able to do much for him, but what wonderful things he could
do for her!" This was a new standpoint from which to look at it. Heretofore he
had thought of her as one who would be nothing but a passive traveller to
heaven, even if she were converted, and therefore not of much consequence!
Was that it? Oh no; he shrank from that way of putting it. He had really not
been so indifferent as he had been hopeless. If he had put the thought into
words, he would have had to admit that there had not seemed to him enough
of Dorothy for Christ to save! Something very like that, at least. Still he had
honestly meant to try to say a word to her. Not so much for her sake, nor even
for the Master's sake, but because of his wife's eager face and earnest voice.
He had determined to talk pleasantly to her, to tell her some bright and
interesting thing connected with his long absences from home, and then,
when he got her self-forgetful and interested, drop just a word for Christ in a
very faint and faithless sort of hope that it might, possibly some time, bear
fruit.

He did nothing of the sort. Some feeling, new and masterful, took possession
of him, made him have a desire for fruit; made him anxious, for the sake of
this desolate outlook in her life, to brighten it with Christ. So the first words he
spoke, and they were spoken very soon after the walk commenced, were,—

"Do you know, Dorothy, I can't help wishing with all my heart that you
belonged to Christ!"

Then the hand on his arm trembled violently; and while he was thinking how
he should quiet her tremor, and chiding himself for having been so abrupt,
Dorothy made answer with a burst of tears,—

"O Lewis, I never wished anything so much in my life! Will you show me how?"

"Did you know how Dorothy felt?" Lewis said, beginning the moment the door
of their room closed on himself and wife. There was a new look on his face, an
eager, almost an exalted look, and a ring in his voice that made Louise turn
and regard him half curiously as she said,—

"Nothing beyond the fact that she has seemed to me very impressible for a
day or two, and that I have had strong faith in praying for her. Why?"

"Why, Louise, she melted right down at the first word. She is very deeply
impressed, and wonderfully in earnest; and I half believe she is a Christian' at
this moment. I found her in bewilderment as to just what conversion meant,
but she grasped at my explanation like one who saw with the eyes of her soul.
I was so surprised and humiliated and grateful!"

All these phases of emotion showed in his prayer. Louise, who had believed
him much in earnest for years, had never heard him pray as he did that
evening for his sister Dorothy. As she listened and joined in the petitions, her
faith, too, grew strong to grasp the thought that there was a new name written
in heaven that night and rejoiced over among the angels. And yet her heart
was sad. In vain she chid it for ungratefulness, and dimly suspected selfish
motives at the bottom. But it did seem so strange to her that John, for whom
she had felt such a constantly increasing anxiety, for whom she had prayed as
she could not pray even for Dorothy, held aloof, and was even farther away to-
night than she had felt him to be before; and Dorothy, at a word from the
brother who had hardly given her two connected thoughts for years, had come
joyfully into the kingdom!
Was Louise jealous? She would have been shocked at the thought; and yet, in
what strange and subtle ways the tempter can lend us unawares, even when
we believe ourselves to be almost in a line with Christ.

CHAPTER XVIII.
BIRDS OF PROMISE.

"ONE moment, Mr. Butler," said Louise, detaining the minister, as, having
given her cordial greeting in the church-aisle, and bowed to Dorothy, and
shaken hands with Father Morgan, he was turning away; "we have something
to tell you, something that will make you glad; our sister Dorrie has decided for
Christ."

Simple words enough; I suppose even Dorothy, though her cheeks glowed,
and her eyes were bright with joy, did not recognize the tremendous import of
their meaning; and Louise was surprised at their effect on Mr. Butler. He was a
young minister, you will remember; and while he had not been doing all that
he could, he had scarcely realized that he could do more—at least not until
very lately. This was really his first experience in greeting a new-born soul
among his flock. It came to him with all the joy of a glad, an almost
overwhelming, surprise. True, he had prayed that he might have "souls for his
hire." Yet he had prayed, as many another does, without realizing that possibly
his prayer would be answered, and actually souls would come into the
kingdom, whom he could welcome to his Father's table!

There was an instant flush over his handsome face, an eager flash in his
eyes, and he turned to Dorothy again, and held out his hand.

"Welcome!" he said.

Not a word more, but the quiver in his voice told that words were beyond him
just then; and Dorothy turned from him with the belief that it certainly meant a
great deal to the minister to have a person "decide for Christ." She was very
much surprised, and not a little confused. It had not occurred to her that
others, outside of Lewis and Louise, would ever know about her new hopes
and intentions. I am not sure that it had before occurred to her that any one
would care! She had seen very little demonstration of this sort in her life. So it
was another surprise to her when Deacon Belknap shook her hand heartily, as
he said,—

"So you have experienced religion, have you? Well, now, that's good, that's
good!"

And his face shone, and he shook the hand until it ached.

Poor Dorothy did not really know whether to laugh or cry. She had always
been a good deal afraid of Deacon Belknap; he was a solemn-faced, slow-
toned man, and she had not known that his face could shine, or that he
believed anything anywhere was good. Moreover, she was not sure that she
had "experienced religion;" indeed, she was by no means sure what those
words meant. It was true that she had decided for Christ, or—no, was that it?
It almost seemed to Dorothy that, instead, it should be said that Christ had
decided for her! How wonderfully he had called her. How almost she had
heard his voice. How tenderly he had waited. How he loved her. And how sure
was she that she loved him. But to "experience religion" was some wise and
solemn thing that it did not seem to her she understood. But Deacon Belknap
had something further to say,—

"You are very happy now, I suppose? Yes. Well, young converts always are.
But I want to warn you: you mustn't expect to have that feeling last. It is like
'the morning cloud and the early dew.' You must expect trials and crosses and
disappointments and unhappiness. It is a hard world. Some people expect to
be 'carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.' But I tell you it is a 'straight
and thorny road, and mortal spirits tire and faint."

And Deacon Belknap either forgot, or had never learned, the very next line in
that grand old hymn; but with an assurance that the sooner she realized that
this world was full of troubles and conflicts the easier it would be for her, went
away to his waiting class.

Then Dorothy's brow clouded; she was troubled. She felt so innocently glad
and happy, so sure of a Friend, so certain that he loved her and that she loved
him. Was it possible that she must lose this feeling, and be lonely and dreary
and unsatisfied, as she had been ever since she could remember? Was that
what was the trouble with Christians, that the feeling didn't last? Almost
Dorothy felt as though, somehow, she had been deceived! Her face was not
nearly so bright as before when Carey Martyn came toward her.

He had been introduced at the church social, and had not seen her since, but
he grasped her hand as eagerly as Deacon Belknap had.

"I hear good news of you," he said simply, with a glad look on his face.
Something in his tones made Dorothy understand what he meant.

"Is it good news?" she asked him doubtfully.

"Is it? The very best in the world. You don't doubt it, I hope? Are you going to
stay to Sunday school? Come over and join our class. We are getting-up a
new class, and we are going to ask Mr. Butler to take it. I never thought I
should care to have him; but it seems to me now just as though he would be a
good teacher. Do you believe he will take a class?"

Then Dorothy, remembering his hand-clasp and the light in his eyes, said,—

"Yes; I should think he would. But I can't stay, I suppose. Oh, how I should like
to!"

"Like to what?" Louise questioned, just at her side. "Oh, you are talking about
Sunday school. I think we can manage it. Lewis has been asked to take a
class, and I am wanted to supply a vacancy; and father said stay if we wanted
to—he was in no hurry."

Then Dorothy went over to the new class that was forming; and the minister
came presently and shook hands with them all, and said he felt honoured by
being chosen as their teacher, and wondered that none of them had ever
thought of it before. And to Dorothy it seemed as though the millennium were
coming, or it would have so seemed had she known anything about that word
or its meaning. It was a matter of surprise to many where that new class
suddenly came from, or who started it; but the simple truth was, that what had
been lingering in a sort of homesick way in Carey Martyn's heart for weeks
took shape and form along with the hand-clasp of his pastor at that church
social. He was used to Sabbath school, and his old class had been taught by
his old pastor.

Taken all in all, it was a white day to Dorothy Morgan. Her first Sunday in a
new world; a Sunday in which she had received greetings from the brethren
and sisters of the kingdom, and been counted in; a Sunday in which she had
actually joined in the hymns and the prayers and the readings, and attempted
to follow the sermon, though, truth to tell, Dorothy had gotten very little from
the sermon. Try as she would to become interested, her thoughts would
wander; but they wandered constantly to the hymn that had just been sung,
the words of which she felt, and to the prayer of the pastor, the spirit of which
she understood.

"Why can't ministers preach just as they pray?" wondered Dorothy.

The ride home in the brightness of the winter day was not unpleasant. Father
Morgan, whether subdued by his long waiting, or by the white world glistening
in the sunlight, certainly had nothing to say that was jarring, and seemed not
dissatisfied with the condition of things. Dorothy stole little glances at him from
under her wrappings, and wondered whether he would ever know that
everything was different to her from what it had been last Sunday, and what
he would say if he ever did know. And then suddenly, like the leap of a new
emotion into her heart, came the desire that he knew for himself what it all
meant. Oh, how she wished that father was a Christian!

Where did the sudden, intense desire come from? She had never felt anything
like it before. Sometimes, indeed, she had drearily wished that they were more
like other people—went to church regularly, even went occasionally of an
evening as the Stuarts did, who lived no farther away, and had the social
appointed at their house. But it had been a dreamy, far-away sort of wish, little
desire about it, nothing in the least like this sudden longing.

Then there rolled over Dorothy the sweetness of the thought that she could
actually pray for her father, and that may be—oh, may be!—because of her
prayer, the father would, some day, when she had prayed for him a great
many years, come to know of this experience by personal knowledge. Will
there ever be more happiness put into Dorothy's life than surged over her with
the possibilities involved in that thought? Still, Deacon Belknap troubled her.
When was she to expect all this brightness to go away? And, also, why must it
go? Why had not Lewis said something to her about it—warned her, when she
frankly admitted to him this morning that she had never been happy before in
her life? And oh, how long had the feeling stayed with him? He knew about it,
for he had told her that he understood just how she felt; he remembered well
his own experience. Then a sudden, bewildering doubt of Deacon Belknap's
theories came over Dorothy, for she was confronted with the thought that she
did not believe the feeling ever left Louise; it was this which made her different
from others. Still, Deacon Belknap ought to know. And, besides, what might
not Louise have had to go through before the joy came to stay? Dorothy's
brain was in a whirl. Well for her that Louise, standing at one side, had heard
every word of Deacon Belknap's well-meant and honest caution. She saw the
instant clouding of Dorothy's face, and watched for her chance to remove the
thorn. It came to her just after dinner, when Dorothy was upstairs hunting for
her apron. Louise, meeting her in the hall, said,—

"So Deacon Belknap thought he ought to caution you against being happy in
Christ?"

"What did he mean?" Dorothy asked, her cheeks glowing. "Does the happy
feeling all go away? Must it?"

"What does it spring from, Dorrie dear?"

"Why, I think," said Dorothy, hesitating and blushing violently, "it seems to me
that it comes because I love Jesus and because he loves me."

"Yes. Well, if Deacon Belknap had told me that I must not expect to be as
happy with my husband in the future as I am now, because there would be
trials and difficulties of one sort and another to encounter, and that therefore
his love and mine would not burn as brightly, I think I should have considered
myself insulted."

"I should think so! Do you mean—O Louise, I mean do you think they are a
little alike?"

"He calls the Church his bride, dear; it is his own figure; but of course it falls
far below the real, vital union that there may be between us and Christ."

"Then what did Deacon Belknap mean?"

"Why, if I should treat Lewis very coldly and indifferently, forget to notice him
sometimes, go for days without talking with him, neglect his suggestions,
disregard his advice, and all that sort of thing, I imagine that we should not be
very happy together."

"Well?" said Dorothy, in bewilderment.

"Well, don't you know, dear, that that is just the way in which many Christians
actually treat Christ? And then Satan blinds their hearts into thinking that it is
not their own fault that their joy in him is gone, but a necessity, because of this
troublesome world. If I were you I would not tolerate any such insinuations; it
is an insult to Jesus Christ, who deliberately says he will keep you in 'perfect
peace,' if your mind is stayed on him."

"Then all that isn't necessary?"

"No more necessary than that I should have days of gloom and
disappointment over my husband. Oh, it is lowering the power and love of
Christ to make that comparison, because, Dorrie, his love is infinite, and he
says everlasting."

Dorothy went through the hall below singing,—

"Mine is an unchanging love;

Higher than the heights above,
Deeper than the depths beneath;
Free and faithful—strong as death."

She had found that hymn in the morning, while Mr. Butler was preaching, and
had rejoiced in it for a little until Deacon Belknap had banished it from her
heart. Now it came back in strength, and it will take more than Deacon
Belknap to shake it, for it has taken root.

That Sabbath day had one more experience to be remembered. If Louise's

little plan for the walk home from the social had been made with a view to
rousing Lewis, she could not more successfully have accomplished it.

He had walked ever since in a new atmosphere; he had risen to the glory of
the possibilities of his life; he had heard Dorothy say—she had said it that very
morning, when he met her early, out in the back kitchen woodshed, where the
kindlings were kept—that he had shown her the way to Jesus, and now she
had found rest in him. Was a man ever to forget the sweetness of words like
that?—a Christian, honoured of God in showing another soul the entrance-
way! Shall he sink to the level of common things after that, and forget that he
has a right to work with God, on work that will last to all eternity? Lewis
Morgan, Christian man though he had been for years, had never heard those
words before; but do you think that something of the honour which he had
lost, and something of the shame of having tamely lost such honours, did not
sweep over him? Surely it should not be the last time that he should hear such
words—at least it should be through no fault of his if it were.

Low motive, do you say? I am not sure of that. There is a higher one, it is true;
and every Christian who can feel the lower will, sooner or later, grasp the
higher. But since God has called us to honourable positions, even to be "co-
labourers," shall we not rejoice in the honour?
Well, Lewis Morgan had worked all day in the light of this new experience. He
thirsted for more of it; he felt roused to his very finger-tips; he longed to be
doing; he had taught that class of girls put into his care as he had not
supposed that he could teach. Now he walked up and down their room, while
the Sabbath twilight gathered, thinking.

Louise, who had been reading to him, kept silence, and wondered what was
the question which he was evidently deciding. She knew his face so well, that
she felt sure there was being made a decision. At last he came to her side.

"Louise, I believe in my soul that we ought to go downstairs and try to have

prayers with the family. Father might object to it; he thinks all these things are
a species of cant, and I have been especially anxious to avoid anything that
looked in the least like it. I have been too much afraid of what he would think. I
believe I ought to try. What do you say?"

Of course he knew just what she would say, and she said it. Soon after that
they went downstairs. Lewis possessed one trait worthy of imitation; when he
had fairly determined on a course, he went straight toward it with as little delay
as possible. So, directly they were seated in the clean and orderly kitchen,
Nellie cuddled in Louise's lap—a spot which was growing to be her refuge—
Lewis commenced,—

"Father, we have been thinking that perhaps you would have no objection to
our having family worship together downstairs. We would like it very much, if it
would not be unpleasant."

Mrs. Morgan seemed suddenly seized with the spirit of uncontrollable

restlessness. She hopped from her chair, drew down the paper shade with a
jerk, then, finding that she had made it disagreeably dark, drew it up again, set
back two chairs, opened and shut the outer kitchen door, and took down a
towel and hung it on another nail; then she came back to her seat. As for
Father Morgan, he sat, tongs in hand, just as he had been when Lewis
addressed him, and gazed unwinkingly into the glowing fire for the space of
what seemed to Lewis five minutes, but, in reality, was not more than one;
then he said, slowly and impressively,—

"I'm sure I have no manner of objections, if it will do you any good."

It was Dorothy who rushed into the other room, before her father's sentence
was concluded, and brought therefrom Grandmother Hunt's old family Bible;
and in the Morgan household, after forty years of life together, father and
mother met for the first time at the family altar. Howbeit, neither father nor
mother bowed the knee, but sat bolt upright in their chairs. But Dorothy knelt
and prayed, and dropped some happy tears on her wooden-seated chair the
while.

As for John, he would not go to church; would not come to dinner with the
family, but took what he called a "bite" by himself when he chose to come for
it; would not stay in the room during the reading and the prayer, but strode off
toward the barn the moment the subject was suggested by Lewis.

Yet, despite these drawbacks, the voice of prayer went up from the Morgan
kitchen from full and grateful hearts.

CHAPTER XIX.
"WHATSOEVER."

I AM not sure that I can explain to you the state of mind in which Dorothy
opened her eyes to the world on Monday morning. Unless you have had a like
experience you will not understand it. She had always been a repressed
rather than an indifferent girl. Under the apparently apathetic exterior there
had boiled a perfect volcano of unsettled longing. She had not known what
she wanted; she had not felt the least hope of ever discovering how her
thoughts had taken new shape; she was in another world; she was another
person; old things had passed away; all things had become new. She stood
before her bit of mirror, and tried to arrange her heavy braids of hair as Louise
wore hers; and, meantime, she was in a very eager, very unsettled state of
mind. What was she to do? Where commence? The bare walls of her
uninviting little room had always seemed to shut her in, and she had always
hated them. Now it seemed to her that she had a right to get away from them
—get outside, somewhere, and do something. How was it all to be
accomplished? She looked with disdain upon her life; she felt her years, thus
far, to have been wasted ones. Now she was ready to make a fresh start, only
she could not imagine which stop to take first. You see her danger. Many a
young life has shipwrecked its usefulness on just such rocks.
She threw down the covering of her bed, opened the window to let in the crisp
winter morning, smelled of the frosty, sunlighted air, and looked abroad over
her little world, shut in by hills and far-stretching meadows and home-like
farms, and wondered just what she should do; and the sense of longing to get
away from all this, whore there seemed nothing to do, was the strongest
feeling that possessed her, unless the determination to accomplish it was a
shade stronger.

She stepped out into the narrow little hall, and came face to face with Louise,
who was fresh and smiling in a fresh calico and ruffles.

"Louise," said Dorothy, a whole world of repressed eagerness in her voice,

"what am I going to do?"

"Ever so many things, I hope, dear," was Louise's prompt and cheery reply,
and she emphasized it with a kiss.

"Yes," said Dorothy, with shining eyes, "I mean to, oh, I mean to; but—I don't
know where to commence. What is there to do?—I mean for a beginning—
and how shall I get to the first thing?"

"I think," said Louise, with smiling mouth and eyes, and sweet, decided voice,
"I think, my dear, if I were you, I would begin with that black kettle."

Then you should have seen the sudden changing of Dorothy's face. Surprise,
disappointment, intense mortification, all struggling with a sense of being
misunderstood, being wronged, spoke in her eyes and the quiver of her lips.

"You think I am teasing you, Dorrie," and her new sister's voice was very
tender. "Nothing is further from my intention. I honestly mean what I say. That
very kettle which gives you Monday morning trouble can help you to a first
victory; and it is a symbol of all the other things, small in themselves but
amounting to much counted together, that can be made to serve you to-day."

"I did mean to try to do right; but I wanted to do something for Christ."

Dorothy's voice was subdued.

"And you think that Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the black kettle, or the
boiler, or the sink, or a dozen other things with which you will come in contact
to-day? That is such a mistake. Don't you begin your Christian life by
supposing that all these duties which fall upon us in such numbers consume
just so much time that must be counted out, and with the piece that is left we
are to serve him. Remember it is he who said, 'Whether therefore ye eat, or
drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' Doesn't that
'whatsoever' cover the pudding-kettle too, Dorrie?"

New light was struggling on Dorrie's face—just a glimmer, though, shadowed

by bewilderment.

"It sounds as though it ought to," she said slowly. "And yet I cannot see how.
What can my dish-washing have to do with serving Jesus? It seems almost
irreverent."

"It can't be irreverent, dear, because he said it himself. 'Diligent in business,

serving the Lord.' There is no period dividing these. I long ago discovered that
I could make a bed and sweep a room for his sake as surely as I could speak
a word for him. It is my joy, Dorrie, that he has not separated any moment of
my life from him, saying, 'Here, so much drudgery each day, from which I must
be entirely separated; then, when that is done, you may serve me.' Work so
divided would be drudgery indeed. I bless him that I may constantly serve,
whether I am wiping the dust from my table or whether I am on my knees."

"Well, how?" said Dorothy. She had a habit of occasionally flashing a question
at one, a direct, firm way that meant business. The tone of this one said, "This
is all new to me, but I mean to get at it, I intend to understand it and do it."
"Louise, how could I be doing one thing for Jesus while I was washing the
pudding-kettle?"

"Did you ever hear of the young servant-girl who was converted, and
presented herself to the pastor desiring to be received into the Church? He
asked her what proof she had that she was a Christian, and she answered, 'I
sweeps the corners clean now.' I always thought that the poor girl gave good
evidence of a changed purpose. I don't know whether she knew that verse,
'By their fruits ye shall know them;' but it is true, Dorrie, with pudding-kettles
as well as with everything else."

I suppose that that simple little talk in that upper hall, on that Monday morning,
actually changed the whole current of Dorothy Morgan's future life. Hitherto
religion had had nothing whatever to do with pudding-kettles, or Monday
mornings in the kitchen, or with the thousand little cares of everyday life. She
had regarded them as so many nuisances, to be pushed aside as much as
possible for actual work. I may as well frankly own to you that this young girl
hated the neatly-painted kitchen in which most of her life was spent. She
hated the dish-pan and the sink and the dishtowels with a perfect hatred. She
hated brooms and dusters and scrub-brushes, and all the paraphernalia of
household drudgery. It was literally drudgery to her.

Her new sister's wise eyes had singled out the thing which she perhaps hated
most with which to illustrate this germ of truth that she had dropped into the
soil of Dorothy's heart. An old-fashioned, heavy, black kettle, which had been
handed down as an heirloom in the Morgan family for generations, and in
which the favourite Sunday evening dish, hasty-pudding, was invariably
cooked. Simmering slowly over the fire all Sunday afternoon, the pudding
eaten at supper-time, the kettle filled with water and left to soak over night,
and appearing on the scene with relentless regularity every Monday morning
to be scraped and scrubbed by Dorothy's disgusted fingers. Dorothy hated
hasty-pudding. Dorothy almost never washed that kettle with the degree of
nicety that Mother Morgan demanded. She almost invariably left little creases
of scorched pudding clinging to the sides, and a general greasiness of
appearance about it that was fruitful of many sharp words on the mother's part
and sullen defiance on Dorothy's. The idea that her religion actually had to do
with this pudding-kettle came to Dorothy like a revelation. She went
downstairs thinking it over. She realized that the thought gave new interest to
life. If the fruits of Christian living were actually to be looked for in pudding-
dishes, then what place was there where they could not show? There was a
dignity in living, after all. It was not simple drudgery, and nothing else. She
thought of it when the foaming milk was brought in, John setting down the pail
with a thud, and saying,—

"Tend to that, and give us the pail; and don't be all day about it either."

I shall have to admit that Dorothy was more or less accustomed to this form of
address, and yet that it always irritated her, and she was apt to reply, "I shall
be just as long as I please; if you want it done quicker, do it yourself." Then
would follow other cross or sullen words, neither person meaning to the full
the words used, yet both feeling crosser when they parted. A sad state of
living, truly, yet it had actually become a habit with these two, so much so that
John looked at his sister in surprise when she lifted the pail silently, and
presently returned it to him, with no other remark than the statement that
Brownie was giving more milk than before. He made no answer to this, and
went away actually surprised at the quietness of the kitchen. It is not my
purpose to let you follow Dorothy closely through that day in the kitchen.

Monday morning is a time, you will remember, that tries the souls of many
women. Mrs. Morgan was no exception. For some reason, best known to
herself, she was particularly tried this morning. Nothing went right, and nothing
could be made to go right. The fire at first would not burn enough; and then it
burned too much, and sent the suds from the boiler sputtering over on the
bright tins that Dorothy had arranged on the hearth to dry; and Mrs. Morgan
was betrayed into saying that a child ten years old would have known better
than to have put tins in such a place. And, despite Dorothy's earnest care, the
starch presently lumped; and, worse than that, certain cloudy-looking streaks,
coming from no one knew where, mixed with its clearness, and the mother
affirmed that Dorothy ought to have her ears boxed for being so careless. Try
as the daughter would, the mother was not to be pleased that morning. And
Dorothy did struggle bravely. She made the smooth, black sides of the hated
pudding-kettle shine as they had not before on any Monday morning on
record. She scoured every knife, not forgetting the miserable little one with a
notch in the end and a rough place in the handle, a knife that she had longed
to throw away, and to which the mother pertinaciously clung; she rubbed at
the hated sink until it shone like burnished steel; she rubbed at the dish-cloth,
for which she had a separate and special feeling of disgust, until it hung white
and dry on its line; she neglected no cup, or spoon, or shelf-corner, and she
moved with brisk step and swift fingers, only to hear the metallic voice say, as
it made its entrance from the outer kitchen where the rubbing and rinsing were
going on,—

"I wonder if you are going to be all day washing that handful of dishes! I could
have had them all put away and the kitchen swept an hour ago. I can't see
how I came to have such a dawdler as you!"

Dear me! Have you been so fortunate as never to have heard mothers speak
in this way? Good, honest mothers too. Mothers who would have sat with
unwinking eyes and patient hands, night after night, caring for the wants, real
and imaginary, of their sick daughters, who yet will stab them with unthinking
words all day long. Words not true; for Mrs. Morgan knew perfectly well that
she could not have finished all this work an hour before. Yet be just to her; she
actually believed, energetic woman as she was, that she could have
accomplished it all in much less time. For the matter of that, I suppose she
could. Certainly Dorothy had not her mother's skill. The wonder was that the
mother should have expected young hands to be as deft as her own.

So the day wore on. A trying one at every turn to poor young Dorothy, who
had just enlisted, and was trying to buckle her armour on, and who kept up a
brave struggle, and went steadily from one duty to another, doing not one of
them as well as her mother could have done, but doing each one of them as
well as she could. Could an angel do more? A hard day, both over the dishes
and the dust and at the wash-tub; yet not by any means so hard as it might
have been but for that bit of talk in the upper hall in the morning—a new idea