Chapter Thirty-Five
Fifteen years later
Out on the cliffs, a safe distance away from the edge, Ally wraps her arms around little Harry, who has launched himself at her in a goodbye. She feels her eyes spark and her throat tighten. You’d think it would become easier after years of doing this, but some of the kids just get to her.
The parents are saying thank you, his mum looking a little less tired than when she dropped him off. Harry promises to come back next year, and Ally promises she’ll be right here.
She waves them off as they get into their car, the sea breeze tugging at her hair.
She loves it out here on the Cornish coastline, with the sound of the waves a constant backdrop, and the feeling like you’re on the edge of the world.
It’s why she decided to set up her camps here.
She spent years learning what worked and what didn’t, getting the right qualifications, continuing with her own therapy so that she felt she was a safe pair of hands for the parents to put their trust in.
And it’s hard sometimes. Really bloody hard.
To see the way grief and loss can tear families apart – to see some of these kids come through the doors, dull behind the eyes.
But it is the best possible job you could hope for, and at the end of every camp, she feels this brilliant sense of achievement, of rightness.
Her one and only full-time employee comes out from the house at Ally’s back, the rest of the camp workers already heading to the nearest pub. Mostly the kids stay outdoors, in tents, but the house is useful for evening activities and for any kids who are nervous.
‘You did great, as always,’ Elsie says, patting Ally’s shoulder.
Ally turns to her, smiles. Elsie’s curly silver hair ripples slightly in the wind.
She’s a good fifteen years or so older than Ally.
When Ally advertised for a second-incommand, she thought it would attract someone younger, someone who would only stick around temporarily, a step on the career ladder.
But Elsie saw the job advertised while she was living in Bath, and decided it was time for a late career change. And she’s stuck.
‘You heading for a swim?’ Ally asks. It’s late in the day, the sun already starting its descent, but Elsie is a keen cold-water swimmer, having taken it up since moving to Cornwall.
‘Not tonight. Better first thing. And I’m beat,’ Elsie says, stretching. ‘Worth it, though,’ she adds with a smile.
Ally smiles back. ‘They always are.’ And Elsie gets it, because she lost a sister herself. ‘Your kids still coming down tomorrow?’
Elsie snorts. ‘Hardly call them kids any more. But yes. You’ll come for dinner?’
‘I will,’ Ally promises. She’s never had kids of her own.
She’s had a handful of relationships over the years, one that lasted more than a decade.
But none of them ever quite felt like the real thing.
She supposes the timing was never right, and she feels okay about that. Some things just aren’t meant to be.
‘I know I say it every time,’ Elsie says, ‘but they’d be proud, you know.
’ They. Her sister. Her mother. It started because of her sister, but really, it’s been more for Ally herself.
In order to help the people she runs the camps for, she’s had to accept that it wasn’t her fault.
That some things you can’t ever change, no matter how much you wish you could.
That you might be able to learn and grow from the past, but you can never alter it.
That is part of what she tries to help the kids with – to let go of guilt and blame.
She doesn’t want it to define other people the way it defined her for so long.
Her mum, though, could never fully accept the past. She tried, but there was a part of her that always felt guilty, and that still blamed them both.
And Ally has learnt to accept that, too.
Because you can try to process your own feelings, control your own actions, but you can’t control other people’s.
In the end, though, before she died, Ally thinks that despite all that, her mother was proud.
‘See you tomorrow then?’ Elsie says, squeezing her shoulder.
‘You will. Bye, Else.’ Ally gives the older woman a hug, breathing in the scent that has always felt comforting to her – like coming home.
She locks up the house, even though there’s little need, given that their nearest neighbour is the cottage that is almost falling into the ocean, one that hasn’t been inhabited in years as far she knows.
With her swimming costume on under her clothes, just in case, she heads for a walk over the cliffs.
She’s got in the habit of doing this at the end of every camp, walking along the shoreline, getting to know the ocean’s moods while she takes some time for herself.
Today it’s warm and sunny, sweat pricking her neck beneath her hair.
She loved it here the first time she saw it.
It had been raining, sky grey, with a storm brewing above the sea on the horizon.
But she still loved it. Still knew it was where she needed to be.
Up ahead there’s a man walking towards her, close to the edge. It’s rare, but not super unusual, to see someone out here – mostly the tourists stick to the more well-known spots.
She lifts her hand in friendly greeting as she gets closer.
He’s about the same age as her, she thinks, early forties maybe.
His arms and face are tanned, and when he smiles, it’s the type of smile that makes you want to return it.
He walks with the ease of someone used to hiking for miles – or maybe someone used to pounding the treadmill. From the tan, she’d guess the former.
He’s almost past her when he stops, turns. And frowns at her. ‘I know you,’ he states, completely apropos of nothing.
She comes to a stop too, raising her eyebrows. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says, offering a smile of apology.
His gaze flickers over her face. ‘I do,’ he insists. He has an Irish accent, she realises. ‘I just don’t know where from …’
She peers at him a little closer, taking in the strong jawline, the graze of stubble. The green eyes, giving way to amber at their centre. She realises she can feel it too – that jolt of recognition. She can’t think where she knows a random Irishman from, but her gut tells her she does.
It hits them both seemingly in the same moment, and she laughs. ‘Are you actually kidding me? Paddington?’
‘Yes!’ He stares at her. ‘Wow.’ He lets out a low whistle. ‘Can’t believe you remembered.’
She laughs again. ‘I can’t believe I remembered either.’ But she can see him now, almost exactly fifteen years ago, handing over her passport. His gaze locked on hers as she turned to glance back. ‘Small world, huh? Well, clearly we’ve both aged well, if we’re instantly recognisable.’
He grins. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘You should,’ she says, and he grins again.
‘So was it worth blowing me off?’ he asks.
She rolls her eyes, running with the joke like they are old friends, like they’ve known each other years rather than seconds. ‘I had a plane to catch, remember? And yes, it was worth it.’ Because if she’d stayed to talk to him, she might not be where she is now.
‘So you live here?’ He gestures around to the cliffs, the grass spreading in one direction, ocean the other.
‘Yep,’ she says easily. ‘I’ve got a cave just down the way.’
He nods seriously. ‘Can’t beat a good cave.’
She snorts a little. ‘I run these camps,’ she starts.
‘The bereavement camps?’ he says immediately. ‘Or, sorry, I know that’s not actually what you call them, but … those camps?’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘Yeah.’
He shrugs in answer to her silent question. ‘I’ve seen some of your activities since I’ve been here. Team-building and stuff? Drawing? And netball. Swear I saw a bunch of kids doing netball.’
‘That’s part of it,’ she agrees. The netball was Elsie’s addition.
She’d insisted that years of being on the netball team at school had to be worth something.
The drawing, of course, was all Ally. She’d felt over the years that art had helped her, and she wanted to incorporate it somehow.
Some of the kids just like painting a pretty picture, but with others, she can see the way it really helps them to get out their feelings.
‘They look cool,’ says the man – Theo, she even remembers his name.
She smiles. ‘They are cool. So you live here too?’
‘Nah, just visiting. Well, a prolonged visit. I lost my dad a while back,’ he admits.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, in that automatic way.
‘No, it’s okay. I mean, it’s never okay, is it?
But he had a good life. He went through a rough period, but he came through it and it was …
Sorry, you don’t need to know all this.’ She wants to know, though.
It doesn’t really make sense, but she wants to hear this stranger’s story.
‘Anyway, I saw this cottage right on the cliff, and I thought, well, why not.’
Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘As in, the only cottage around here? The one practically falling into the ocean?’
‘That’s the one. And it’s not fallen in yet.’
‘I love that place,’ she admits. ‘Well, to be fair, I’ve never been inside. But I love the idea of it. Although maybe not the idea of falling off the cliff while making coffee one day.’
He laughs. ‘Well, I always did like living on the edge.’
They’re walking together now – before, they were going in opposite directions, but somehow they’ve fallen into step beside one another.
‘So what do you do?’ she asks him.
‘I’m a music producer.’ But he follows it up with a frown.
‘You don’t like it?’
‘No, sorry – it’s just I was a music producer, until a few years ago. Apparently I can’t shake it.’
‘Ah. How come you stopped?’
He shrugs. ‘Lost the love of music, I guess. That’s why I went into it, but it ended up feeling, I don’t know, distant?’
Ally nods, because somehow this makes perfect sense to her. ‘What do you do now? Play in a band?’ She says it as a joke, but she has an image then of him standing on a stage, singing in a jazz band. She blinks it away, not sure where it came from.
‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I took a bit of time out after my dad, but I’m actually retraining to be a teacher. A music teacher,’ he adds, slightly unnecessarily.
‘That’s cool,’ she says.
‘Is it?’
‘Well I guess I would say that, given my job. But for what it’s worth, I think sharing your love of something with other people can help you rekindle the love for it yourself.’
His eyes are very intense on her face as he nods his agreement at that. ‘Right. That’s exactly it. I suppose I just needed to figure out how to be happy staying in one place before I could commit to teaching other people, though.’ He shakes his head. ‘Sorry. Too much information again.’
‘Not at all,’ she disagrees – and means it. ‘I know what that’s like. I mean, not the staying-in-one-place thing – I’ve always been good at that – but needing to figure stuff out.’
When they get to a point on the cliff where a ledge sticks out, Theo steps up to the edge, peering down.
‘Some people jump off that,’ Ally says conversationally.
It’s never seemed wise to her, but she’s seen the daredevil types leaping into the water, trusting it as a safe spot where they won’t hit their heads on the rocks.
Some of the kids have asked her if they can do it too – it’s stopped her coming anywhere near here with them.
‘Hmm,’ Theo says, still looking down. She can see it briefly, then. Him jumping. Her screaming for him. What is wrong with her? He glances back at her. ‘Maybe we better walk down instead.’
They wind their way down to the beach together, lapsing into a silence that doesn’t feel awkward at all. The sun is setting, its orange glow reflected in the water.
‘God, it’s so beautiful here,’ Theo murmurs.
‘I know,’ Ally says, matching his tone. ‘You never really get used to it.’
Theo looks at her. ‘Is it weird if I go for a swim now?’
She waves a hand in the air. ‘Nah. Go for it.’
He strips his T-shirt off, revealing an impressively muscled chest. She feels a fizz of something down her spine – something she hasn’t felt in a long time – and looks away out of politeness.
He moves towards the water, and she’s about to settle herself down to watch the world go by when he glances over his shoulder. ‘You coming?’
She hesitates for the briefest of moments. Then she shrugs. ‘Why not?’ She pulls off her dress, thankful that she put her costume on. She watches the way his gaze slides down to her legs before quickly snapping away – exactly the reaction she just had to him. That fizzing inside her intensifies.
She follows him into the sea, laughs as the cold comes up around them.
‘Shit,’ he hisses. ‘I forgot how bracing the sea in England can be.’
There is a moment of stillness between them.
A moment where they just look at each other, waist-deep in the ocean.
She feels a tug inside her – something more than attraction, deeper than that.
And she feels certain that they’ve been here before.
On this shoreline, by this ocean. She can see the way he looked at her in a cottage overlooking the pebbly beach.
Can remember the taste of him when she kissed him.
A corner of his mouth crooks up into a playful smile. ‘Race you?’
She laughs again. It’s one of her greatest achievements in life. That she can take these random moments and laugh along with them. ‘To where?’
He’s already off, striking out in a powerful front crawl. ‘Anywhere!’ he calls back over his shoulder.
She follows him, swimming in a way she only managed to learn well into adulthood.
It’s almost hard to imagine now that she used to be scared of water.
She never quite figured out where that fear came from – her therapist said some fears are innate.
A psychic she went to see told her it might be from a past life.
When they are out deeper than they can stand, Theo turns to face her, treading water. Her hands move in small circles, keeping her afloat, and she feels the brush of his fingertips against hers as he does the same. It’s amazing how her whole body tightens at that fleeting contact.
‘Want to head back to the beach?’ he asks, sunlight glistening off the droplets of water clinging to his hair.
With his eyes holding hers the way they do, the question feels like more than that.
‘Sure,’ she says as casually as she can, even as her nerves are spiking with something like excitement.
He sets the pace back to the shoreline, and she matches him stroke for stroke. As she does, she has a brief and total sense of certainty. That she has met him before – not just at the train station, but before that. That she has known him before, that he is important.
No, this is not the first time they have met. But maybe it will be the last.