Chapter 24
When they got back to the house, Marielle’s hand paused when opening the door, and she turned to Sabrina and said, “Do you
fancy a little drive? I just thought you might like to see where you were found. Perhaps it might dredge up some memories
for you.”
“It’s worth a go,” Sabrina answered her. She got into the passenger seat of Marielle’s car and clicked herself into her seat
belt.
“You’re really seeing the best of my son, aren’t you? Throwing dog muck at women and then nearly being arrested,” Marielle
said to her with an uneasy shot of laughter.
“Bad things happen to nice people,” Sabrina said. “I’m not judging.”
Five minutes later, the car turned up the hill signposted “beauty spot.”
“It’s a misnomer in my opinion,” said Marielle. “It can get dangerously windy up here, which is why it was madness that the
council should make this into a designated picnic spot. They’ve got far more money than sense. It’s always given me the shivers,
this place.”
They pulled in at the top in the exact spot where Polly Potter had parked her car three weeks ago, and when she saw the nearby burger van, she felt a tremble in her muscle memory.
“I came here in a black car,” she said, letting the image come to her so she didn’t scare it away.
She could see herself sitting on one of the benches, waiting, but she didn’t know what for.
Sabrina and Marielle walked over the bumpy grass toward the railing.
There was a sign in the burger van window, “Back in half an hour.” She’d been waiting for it to open; that’s why she had sat down.
“Benny Prince, who owns the van, was the man who found you,” said Marielle.
“I should seek him out and thank him.” Sabrina looked around her as if he should magically appear.
“Benny Prince is someone people get out of the way of, not go and find. You wouldn’t believe how many of these vans there
used to be on this stretch of the coast until Benny moved in, and then, bang, all the competition was gone. That said, he
does sell really good burgers and ice creams. It isn’t always the way when the big boys move the little boys out and quality
becomes a thing of the past.” Her countenance grew grim, and Sabrina knew she was thinking about her son.
“I could at least write him a note,” said Sabrina. “I don’t suppose you have any paper on you, do you?”
Marielle had a pocket pad and a pen in her bag. Sabrina sat at one of the picnic tables and wrote.
Dear Mr. Prince,
My name is Sabrina Anderson and I was told you very kindly rang an ambulance for me after finding me up here three weeks ago.
I have no recollection how I came to be here and am just out of hospital, so please forgive this much overdue thank-you. Hopefully
my memory will return one day and the mystery will be solved. I did hope to see you in person to deliver my thank-you and
I hope that one day I may catch you to be able to do that. But in the meantime—again, thank you for your kindness.
My very best wishes,
Sabrina Anderson x
There was the slightest gap in the van window that she could push the note through, though it took a few attempts; then it sat on his counter where he wouldn’t be able to miss it when he got back.
It was kind of Sabrina to do that, thought Marielle, even if Benny Prince was a likely culprit to have taken her missing handbag
and rings. Or maybe she was being unfair to him. Life was making her bitter and more cynical. She’d end up giving Cilla a
run for her money if she wasn’t careful.
A lone seagull wheeled above them, checking them out for snacks and squawking with annoyance when he saw their hands were
empty. Sabrina looked up and felt dizzy and lightheaded, as if she were whirling around. The sound of the seagulls was tied
up in her head with the smell of doughnuts sugaring the air, fish and chips, sunshine, laughter, a big man and that small
woman with gold-blonde hair.
“What is it?” asked Marielle. “You’re smiling.”
“I think I must have come here with my parents,” said Sabrina, feeling it rather than knowing it. She closed her eyes, hoping
to find more, and a soft June breeze caressed her face. She could sense her own happiness here, as if she’d left some of it
behind years before to reclaim, and she wondered again why here, why this place? Why was it so special to her?
That evening, Sabrina joined Marielle in Big Moon for a glass of wine, some cheese, and company.
“We have a lovely farm shop nearby,” Marielle explained, loading a water biscuit with some buttery, crumbly Wensleydale. “I
always spend far too much in it. Teddy buys his cheese there, too, for the restaurant. He won’t use any cheap ingredients.
He couldn’t cut a corner, that boy, if his life depended on it, and I hope it’s not the undoing of him.”
“It has a very happy air, the restaurant,” said Sabrina.
She’d picked up on that as soon as she’d walked through the door. But something in her brain clicked in and began looking
at it through an analytical eye and decided, though she could appreciate why it was a popular place, there was definite room
for improvement.
“Sal had Teddy working in the kitchen with him before he could talk, and he loved it. Apart from a spell when he wanted to
be the goalkeeper for SSC Napoli and a brain surgeon, he never wanted to do anything other than have his own restaurant.”
Marielle laughed at the memory of young Teddy with his toy doctor’s case and his makeshift hospital in his bedroom. “Teddy’s
was always booked out; people travel for miles to eat there. Probably why those horrible people think there are rich pickings
to be had. They make me sick.” Marielle drained her glass, and while she was thinking she’d better slow down, she was reaching
for a top-up at the same time. She’d had nearly a full glass before she’d asked Sabrina to come through.
“Flick seems to have her head screwed on.”
“Doesn’t she just,” replied Marielle. “We all love Flick. She’s wonderful, and so bright. She’s had a gap year to earn some
money, and in September she’ll be off to university doing business studies. We’ll miss her, but it’s only right and proper
that she go.”
“You said she was your cousin’s daughter?”
“Yes. My cousin Cilla.” Marielle took a long drink. The wine and the chat were taking the edge off a not-too-great day. How
dare that despicable Stirling woman get the police involved.
“Her mum was my mum’s sister. When my auntie died, Cilla would have had to go into care if my parents hadn’t taken her in.
It would have happened sooner or later because if Janet hadn’t died of a drug overdose, she would have ended up in prison.
” Out of all her friends, only Sylvie knew that detail, and Marielle had no idea why she had just told it to a relative stranger rather than to those who were closest to her.
“I was eleven, Cilla was four when she came to live with us. I was so excited about having a little sister in the beginning.” She sighed then, in such a way that Sabrina could tell her idealistic expectations hadn’t quite turned out the way she thought they would.
“She was like a blonde, blue-eyed Shirley Temple, a china doll; butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth. My parents tried
to make up for everything she’d lost, and it felt to me as if their whole world revolved around her.”
“That must have been hard on you, being an only child and then suddenly having to share,” said Sabrina.
“It was,” said Marielle, then she realized she must be coming across as resentful and unkind. “Ignore me, Sabrina.” The wine
was loosening her tongue in a way she didn’t like.
“No, please go on,” urged Sabrina, because it sounded like whatever was inside Marielle needed to come out.
“I shouldn’t be saying these things,” said Marielle, gulping back more wine. “Yes, it hurt. I wasn’t supposed to say anything
because I was ‘the grown-up one who hadn’t known anything other than a nice bedroom and lots of toys.’”
“Well, you weren’t exactly grown up at eleven,” said Sabrina. “I would have thought you needed more love at that time, not
less.”
“She used to lie. Oh God, did she lie. They’d believe her before me and I’d be the one who got the slap. And I remember one
Easter they bought her an egg bigger than mine. Isn’t that petty of me to have stored that in my head for fifty years?”
“The fact you have stored it up for fifty years says it was important to you, Marielle. It’s the paper cuts that hurt the
most.”
Marielle hadn’t even told Sylvie all this silly stuff that she’d kept hidden because she didn’t want to be judged as an awful
person. The fact that Sabrina seemed to get it made her feel vindicated in a way she didn’t think possible, and she was beyond grateful that her deeply buried pain was
seen to have some validity.
A tear slid down Marielle’s cheek and she dashed it away too late for it not to be seen.
There was so much more that could come out: how one year when her school prize-giving had clashed with Cilla’s play, her mother had gone to the latter.
No one had been there to see her pick up her award for excellence, and though her cup had pride of place in the sitting room, the shine had been taken away.
“Did you keep in touch with your family when you went to live in Italy?” asked Sabrina, ready to cut the questions because
she could see Marielle was upset.
“Yes, we kept in touch. And they came over occasionally to visit. They doted on Teddy, of course, and it was lovely to see,
but I wanted some of that for myself.”
Tears, thick as syrup, were trickling down Marielle’s cheeks now, and she couldn’t wipe them away fast enough.
They felt hot and sour, as if they’d been inside her too long and fermented.
“When I came back to live here because my mother wasn’t well, she told me one day that she was sorry if I’d ever felt pushed
out, that she’d done a lot of thinking over the years about why I’d taken off at just seventeen. We’re all a lot wiser in