Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Carrie turned up at ten o’clock the following morning.
‘Jules,’ she said, putting her arms around her. ‘What an awful thing to happen. Are you okay?’
‘Yes, just tired and a bit shaken.’
‘Guy’s grandmother spoke to Alastair first thing and Rita’s okay. They’re operating on her knee later, but thankfully that seems to be the main damage. Everyone’s very grateful for what you did, Jules. Al said you were a beacon of calm.’
Jules sank onto a kitchen chair.
‘I didn’t feel it, but thank goodness she’s going to be all right. I’m partly responsible. She was obviously up there looking for Tasha who was safely ensconced here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Carrie replied. ‘Rita doesn’t just go up to the hayloft looking for Tasha, she takes herself off up there sometimes to get away from everyone and I don’t blame her.
It’s where she and George used to go for a bit of quality time together in their courting days as she herself so delicately put it!
Later, when the farm and family began to get a bit too much, she said they’d take a flask of coffee and some homemade cake or sometimes a bottle of wine and go and get everything in perspective.
To be honest, it’s surprising she’s not fallen off that ladder before. ’
Jules knew Carrie was trying to be kind, but it didn’t make her feel much better.
‘Come on, get dressed and I’ll take you to the beach. You look as if you could do with a gentle walk.’
Carrie took a left turn and steered the car down a narrow road bordered by a clear rippling stream and a neatly mown grassy area dotted with benches. She pressed hard on the brakes as a couple of ducks waddled across in front of them.
‘The Pearl Centre is just a couple of miles in the other direction,’ Carrie said as they reached a junction. ‘We’ll pay a trip before you go. They have some very pretty things.’
‘I can’t afford to treat myself. Gavin took most of my money, remember?’
‘Then I’ll treat you,’ Carrie said. ‘Call it an early birthday present.’
They were very close to the sea now. Jules wound the window down and sniffed at the air.
Carrie swung the car into a gravelly car park, opened the door and hopped out.
‘Your mum rang. Wondered how you are?’
Jules felt her hackles rise. She was obviously more tired than she’d realised.
‘Why did she call you?’
‘Because you haven’t given her the number for the landline and she couldn’t get through on your phone and she’s trying to be sensitive and not smothering.’
‘It won’t last.’
‘She’s very wary of upsetting you, saying or doing the wrong thing.’
‘Like coming to the Isle of Wight.’
‘She’s partly come to see Jo. It’s serendipitous that you are here, too.’
‘Yeah, right. You believe that?’
‘Yes, I do. Apparently one of Jo’s daughters has been in touch.
She wants to find her mum and wondered if Beulah knew where she was.
This is a big deal. For her own safety Jo left her daughters in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye kiss and she thought they would never forgive her.
Now there is the possibility they could be reunited. ’
Jules scuffed at a loose stone.
‘Or it could be a trap, a way for Jo’s ex to find out where she and Daniel are.’
‘Your mum’s well aware of that, which is why she wanted to come and tell Jo face to face. She’s trying really hard to do what’s best for everyone,’ Carrie continued. ‘The trouble is, in your case, what you think is best for you and what’s best for her are not necessarily the same things.’
‘That sounds like a criticism.’
‘It’s not meant to. I’m just trying to get you to see her side of it. She does know that you blame her for your dad’s death.’
Jules stared unseeingly at the ground beneath her feet.
‘Sounds as if you’ve had quite a conversation.’
‘I’m sure that she blames herself, too,’ Carrie said, touching the edge of Jules’s blue windcheater.
‘She wasn’t there enough. She didn’t make him go to the doctor.’
‘Which is why she tried to make up for it afterwards.’
‘It was too late.’
‘For your dad, yes, but not for you and Phoebe. At least, that’s what she hoped.’
‘She was wrong.’
Carrie sighed and took hold of Jules’s arm.
‘Look at that view. Doesn’t it make you feel more benevolent towards the world?’
Not particularly, Jules thought, aware that she was behaving like a recalcitrant teenager. And then she followed Carrie’s gaze along the path, which sloped steeply down towards the beach and drew the eye across the shimmer of sea to the horizon.
‘There’s a world of infinite possibilities out there,’ Carrie murmured, and Jules wasn’t sure whether she was talking to herself or not.
‘Breathe,’ she said, throwing her head back and taking a gulp of air. ‘It’s invigorating, like a magic potion.’
‘It’s the ozone,’ Jules said drily. She looked at Carrie with her translucent skin and glossy hair, ‘and being in love.’
‘And being here,’ Carrie said. ‘I love this tiny island more than I could ever have imagined loving anywhere.’
‘You’ve found your place in the world. It’s all come together,’ Jules said, trying not to sound wistful. ‘And I’m really happy for you.’
Carrie squeezed her arm.
‘And you will, too, find your place.’
‘My sister said something similar last night on the phone.’
‘We can’t both be wrong,’ Carrie said. ‘Now, come on, let’s get down there and feel the sand between our toes.’
She slid her hand down and grabbed Jules’s fingers, pulling her down the slippery path towards the beach.
Carrie had stopped for lunch and then hurried off to the gardens to meet up with Guy and check in on The Major.
Jules was in the garden reading when she heard muffled voices followed by a familiar tinkling laugh floating over the thatched roof.
She put down her magazine and, full of trepidation, wandered around to the front of the house.
Beulah was standing with her best side towards Lance, one hand on her hip, the other attached to the long handle of a wheelie suitcase.
She was still laughing, and he was smiling down at her.
Jules felt a ridiculous pang of jealousy.
How did she do that? Win everyone around so quickly when they had no idea what she was really like?
‘Julianna, darling!’
Beulah moved as if to embrace her and then thought better of it, returning to her original position.
The air was suddenly swarming with awkwardness which irritated her even more than all those little gnats which flew about in the early evening and got caught in your throat and up your nose if you weren’t careful. Lance didn’t move, apart from to shift the parcel that he held under one arm.
‘I was just getting to know your mother,’ he said, in an obvious effort to lighten the atmosphere.
Beulah lifted her heels almost imperceptibly and swivelled on the balls of her feet so that she was standing alongside Lance and able to link a now-free arm through his.
‘And we’re already the best of friends,’ she said, that laugh tinkling like birdsong through the summer afternoon air.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jules said.
‘I’ve come to…’ both Lance and Beulah replied in unison and burst out laughing.
Jules’s nerves were becoming increasingly frayed, and Beulah had only been here for two minutes.
‘Mum!’
Even Jules couldn’t fail to spot that her mother gripped both Lance’s arm and the suitcase handle a little more tightly.
‘Julianna, darling, something awful has happened at Jo’s.’
Jules felt her heart increase its tempo, her muscles tense as she imagined the worst. She didn’t think she could cope with any more shocks. It was as if all the energy was leaving her body.
‘What?’ she whispered.
Beulah’s eyes widened.
‘Would you believe it, the water tank in the roof has sprung a leak and it has all poured through the ceiling into the spare bedroom.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Mum. Is that all? Why do you have to make such a drama out of everything? I thought it was much worse than that. I thought…’
‘It’s a miracle I wasn’t drowned in my bed,’ Beulah said with a theatrical flourish. ‘You have no idea how much damage water can do, and poor Claudia’s spare bedroom is ruined.’
‘Jo, Mum. Her name is Jo.’
‘Oh yes, whatever. Silly me. Always getting people’s names muddled up. Very inconvenient for an actress.’
And very inconvenient that you’re not sounding more convincing now, Jules thought, glancing at Lance, but he didn’t seem particularly curious. Maybe only she thought her mother’s protestations were completely lame.
‘She’s offered me her sofa, but Daniel gets up early, and the living room is just off the kitchen, and you know how I need my beauty sleep. I wondered…’
She was looking up at the cottage.
‘You have a second bedroom here, don’t you?
It would just be for a couple of nights,’ Beulah said, ‘and I’ll try not to be any trouble.
You’ll barely know I’m here, but if it’s really not convenient I can try to find a bed and breakfast. I’m sure Lance could recommend one.
’ She frowned and pressed herself more tightly to him as if for reassurance.
‘Although at peak holiday time it might be…’
‘Of course you can stay, Mum.’
‘Oh, Julianna, that is so generous of you,’ Beulah gushed. ‘I can see this place is doing you so much good. Your aura is looking much calmer and such a beautiful colour. Can you see that, Lance, the sea breeze colour of Julianna’s aura?’
Jules cringed as they both gazed at her, Beulah wreathed in smiles and Lance – what was that expression on his face? Amusement? Pity?
‘On one condition,’ Jules added. ‘That you stop calling me Julianna.’
‘I thought she might be an actress, you see, like me,’ Beulah explained to Lance. ‘Such a dramatic baby from the moment she was born.’
Lance smiled politely.