Chapter 15
Abby
She’d ruined everything.
On balance maybe it was better not to care about your colleagues, because then when things went wrong it didn’t hurt so much.
Abby sat in her room staring at the wall. She had no idea how she’d made it through the day. She’d felt terrible physically,
and even worse emotionally.
The conversation with Evie had left her drained and exhausted. She’d been unable to defend herself because everything Evie
had said had been true up to a point. She’d been unable to make excuses because there weren’t any. They thought she was a
liar, and she was. She deserved every accusation they’d thrown at her. They despised her, which wasn’t a surprise.
She could justify her choices in any number of ways, but in the end there was no escaping the truth.
She was thirty-two years old and still trying to please her mother.
Pathetic. Also, a thankless task because there was no pleasing her mother.
The heat in the attic room was oppressive and she ran her hand over the back of her neck, freeing her damp hair, but there
was no relief to be found. For the first time since she’d arrived in Cornwall she wished she was back in Boston, in her own
apartment. She longed for the frigid air conditioning, and also the anonymity. There, the atmosphere was so sterile she frequently
forgot she had neighbours. She’d met the woman who lived next door on one occasion since she’d moved in the year before and
that was when a fire alarm had sounded in the middle of the night, causing them both to collide in the corridor. Other than
that, she might as well have been the sole person on a planet.
But here in the Smuggler’s Inn? The whole place was alive. Laughter floated up from the street and trickled through the windows.
She heard the sound of seagulls and the tinkle of masts. And she heard sounds coming from the pub below. The occasional thud,
the waft of laughter from the bar far beneath her and occasionally Tristan’s deep voice communicating with someone outside.
She longed to go for a walk, if not for fresh air (it was stifling!) then at least to clear her head, but she was too afraid
of bumping into someone who would berate her.
She should be used to it, shouldn’t she? She should be used to being unpopular. Not one of the cool girls. The outsider. The
one left alone in the playground. She’d made peace with that. She’d learned to distance herself. She’d reminded herself that
they were just being mean and she didn’t deserve it.
But this time she deserved it.
Why did it bother her? Why was the approval of this particular group of people so important to her?
The answer was simple, of course. Because she’d grown to like them. Respect them. And they’d made her part of their team.
She’d worked with close-knit groups before, but she’d always been on the outside. No one had ever let her in.
Until now.
She cared about their opinion of her, which was a shame because their opinion of her couldn’t sink any lower.
What they probably didn’t know was that she despised herself more than they did.
Her head was throbbing and she stood up and found some tablets tucked into the back of her suitcase which she washed down
with a glass of water.
Now what? What was she supposed to do next?
She’d already forwarded the emails to Evie, as promised. And now she should be updating her mother. She was waiting for Abby
to call back, but so far she hadn’t been able to face that conversation. No doubt she’d be less than impressed that Abby had
got herself into this position.
Abby didn’t care. Her main concern was how she was ever going to redeem herself with Evie and the team. Edward, Mandy, Donna,
Luca, Kristina—all of them. How could she make it up to them?
She finished the water but her head still throbbed. If only the weather would break. What they needed was rain.
And what she needed was to escape from here. She needed to get out of this room. She needed to lower her stress levels and
think calmly.
At home she’d go for a swim in the pool in her apartment block.
She stared at the window for a moment. There was a pool at the hotel, of course, but there was no way she could use that. The staff would probably drown her, and she wouldn’t blame them.
But she didn’t need a pool, did she?
She was a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean. The tide was out. She could walk around the headland to access the beach
closest to the harbour and she’d try not to think of the drunken striptease she’d done the night before.
Without giving herself time to plan what she was going to say if she met someone she knew, she stuffed a towel, a sweatshirt
and a drink into a bag, pulled a baseball cap over her eyes, and threw her phone onto the bed.
If it rang she’d feel obliged to answer it, and she didn’t want to answer it.
She headed out of the pub and into the crowded street.
She kept her head down and kept walking, past the harbour and then down onto the sand.
The beach was quiet, with just a couple of families at the far end and a couple of teenagers with bodyboards.
At the water’s edge a mother was holding a baby, occasionally lowering her and dipping her little feet in the water. Her other
child, a little girl about five years old wearing a vibrant pink dress, was building a sandcastle a short distance away, cramming
sand into a bucket and plopping it out. Her mother kept glancing in her direction to check on her, shouting encouraging words
while the baby in her arms kicked its legs and giggled.
Abby stripped down to her swimsuit, watching the young family. It was no picnic trying to watch two young children by yourself.
The woman looked familiar, but she couldn’t place her.
Admiring the mother for handling it on her own, she walked across the damp sand to the edge of the sea. The tide had started
to turn and the waves were picking up, but didn’t look too scary apart from the area near the rocks. She’d avoid that.
It was past 6 p.m. and there were no lifeguards on the beach, but that didn’t worry her. She was a strong swimmer, and she had no intention of going far.
She waded into the sea, the water icy cold against her heated skin. She could hear the little girl laughing with happiness
and she smiled at the sound as she plunged into the water and started to swim, the water muting sound.
It was bliss to be in the water and to wash off some of the stress. She swam with strong, rhythmic strokes, always alert to
where she was so that she didn’t go out too far, and staying well clear of the rocks. She turned, swam across the bay again,
and did that several times before her limbs started to feel tired and the cold water had numbed her skin.
She waded back to the shore and dried her face with her towel. Then she grabbed a drink from her bag, shading her eyes from
the setting sun as she squinted towards the horizon. She needed to go back and call her mother. That was the adult thing to
do. She couldn’t put it off any longer.
There was no point in beating herself up. No point in wasting time on regrets. What’s done was done. What she had to do now
was deal with the fallout.
With a sigh she put her drink back into her bag and picked up her towel again.
She glanced at the young family and saw the mother bent over the baby, presumably changing a nappy. The little girl had wandered
to the water’s edge and Abby frowned.
The waves were bigger than they’d been half an hour before.
She glanced at the mother again, wondering if she was aware that her other child was by the water. Should she say something?
No. She shouldn’t interfere. It would make her look judgy. After all, what did she know? She didn’t even have children.
She glanced back at the water again, sure she was overreacting. The little girl was gone.
Abby’s pulse doubled. Gone where? Was she by the rocks playing hide-and-seek? She’d been there just a moment ago. She couldn’t have gone far.
The two teenagers nearby were chatting and lazing on the sand and didn’t appear to have seen anything out of the ordinary.
And then Abby saw the briefest flash of pink bobbing in the water close to the rocks.
Her heart almost stopped.
And then she ran, scooping up one of the bodyboards from the two boys as she raced across the sand. “Call 911!”
It was only as her feet hit the water that she realised it wasn’t 911 here. It was 999. She hoped the boys had the sense to
figure that out.
A panicked scream came from behind her as the mother realised what had happened.
“Holly!! Oh my God, Holly! Help, someone help.”
Abby fixed her gaze on the spot by the rocks where she’d seen the child, gripped the board and plunged into the water.
The current grabbed her instantly and it was immediately clear to her how the child could have got into trouble that quickly.
It tugged at Abby, pulling, and she swam with the board to the rocks, scanning the surface for more signs of pink.
Nothing. There was nothing, and the waves pummelled her relentlessly, pushing her onto the rocks.
Her heart was pounding and she forced aside panic and tried to think clearly. Was the child under the water? Had she been
dragged down? She hauled the board onto the rocks so that it didn’t float away, wincing as a jagged edge ripped at her skin.
Then she dived under the water. She surfaced, gasping for breath, and then dived again and each time she came up for air she
scanned the surface.
There was no sign of the child. Nothing. And the foaming white waves were making it hard to spot anything.
She was about to paddle further out to sea when she saw the briefest flash of pink a short distance away from her. Had she imagined it? Was it wishful thinking?
No, she’d definitely seen something.
Keeping her focus on the exact spot she grabbed the board and swam towards it. A wave crashed over her head and she spluttered
and gasped, barely catching her breath before it happened again. Where had she seen the pink? It was here. She was sure she