Читать книгу Come Away With Me - Sara MacDonald, Sara MacDonald - Страница 8

February 2006

When Bea got in from shopping the house was empty and she found a note from James on the kitchen table.

Darling, Flo rang from the London house. She is worried about Jenny who seems to have gone missing. Apparently, Jenny met Ruth Freidman again after all this time. Bizarre. Ruth is now on holiday in Cornwall and I have gone down to that creek house at St Minyon to see if they are both there. Try not to worry. I’m sure Jenny must be making her way home. J. x

Bea’s mouth went dry. She picked up the phone immediately and rang Flo. An Asian girl answered. Both Florence and Danielle were with a VIP client at the moment. Could she take a message?

‘Would you just say that Jenny’s mother rang? If Flo could get in touch as soon as she can, I’d be grateful.’

‘Of course. I will tell her.’

Bea went out into the garden still holding the phone. There was a cold east wind and the sea below her glinted fierce and navy-blue. She paced up and down the terrace among the wilted pot plants, a knot growing in her stomach with a chill premonition of disaster.

She turned and looked back at the house and the drive curling round to the gate. Ruth. Bea remembered clearly a thin child with fair plaits rounding the corner of the house, her small pale face anxiously searching for Jenny.

Ruth walking up the hill from Downalong each Sunday, desperate for an escape from home and a welcome here.

Bea looked up at the attic window on the right of the house, which had been Jenny’s bedroom. She could almost hear the giggles emanating out into the garden with the sound of the seagulls. Jenny and Ruth. Ruth and Jenny. The two of them had raced about together for all those years of childhood like odd little twins and then whoosh, Ruth was gone, and how Jenny had grieved.

Bea went inside again and into James’s study. She saw that his medical bag was missing.