Faith - Lesley Pearse [41]
‘A life built on lies’ was one of the headlines, and Laura could remember thinking that would make an appropriate epitaph for her.
4
Belle got up from her chair as the telephone rang. ‘I’ll just answer that,’ she said, smiling at Stuart. ‘It might be someone wanting to come and stay.’
Stuart was glad of a moment or two alone to consider how he should proceed with Belle. She had been very surprised when he turned up unannounced at the door of Kirkmay House in Crail. In fact she had been almost giddy with excitement until he told her he’d only just heard about her sister’s death as he’d been out of the country, and that he’d come to offer his condolences. He found it rather disquieting that on opening the door to him she didn’t immediately realize that was why he’d come. Had she forgotten what good friends he and Jackie had been when he worked for her?
He gazed reflectively out of the window to Marketgate beyond, thinking what a coincidence it was that Belle’s house was the one he remembered from when he used to come here on holiday as a child. He and his family never stayed in this village; they rented a cottage by the harbour in Cellardyke, a smaller fishing village further back down the coast. But they would walk here sometimes, clambering over rocks along the beach, and his father always used to buy crab to take home for their tea.
Sometimes they came up the steep wynds from the harbour to the main road so his parents could have a drink in the East Neuk Hotel, and he and his brother and sister would go exploring. Once they had slipped into this very garden to pick some apples from a tree, and an old lady had chased them out brandishing a stick. They were sure she was a witch, and that the big old house was haunted; his sister used to have nightmares about it, prompted by stuff he and his brother made up about the place.
It was weird enough that Belle and Charles had uprooted themselves from London to open a guest house here, but even weirder that they’d bought the very house which was imprinted on his memory.
Crail was very quaint and pretty, perhaps the prettiest of all the villages along this stretch of the Fife coast, but it was hardly the kind of place he would expect Belle and Charles to be attracted to. Belle had always been the kind of woman who craved excitement, sophisticated entertainment, smart shops and hordes of people around her. As for Charles, he was the original city slicker, with handmade suits, fast sports cars, and an eye for the ladies. Neither of them had the kind of servile mentality to run a guest house successfully, and as far as he knew they had no great love of Scotland either, not like Jackie.
Jackie had fallen for its charms twenty years ago when she was visiting Laura in Edinburgh. It had been Stuart’s idea to take the girls and Barney over the bridge to Fife to show them around, but he hadn’t expected the elegant and poised Jackie to be so enthusiastic. She had raved about Fife all the way back to Edinburgh, and though he was pleased he had found something to impress Laura’s very worldly friend with, he didn’t realize that she really had lost her heart to the place.
She bought a tiny fisherman’s cottage in Cellardyke soon afterwards and her passion for the area grew with every visit. Then she bought tumbledown Brodie Farm, a few miles inland from Crail. A great many people laughed at her grandiose plans for it, and her claims that she was going to live there permanently once the renovations were complete. But she had done exactly as she said she would, in fact she’d told Stuart once that she felt Fife was her spiritual home and nowhere else made her feel quite so happy.
Stuart was still puzzled as to why Belle followed her sister here. He could understand her wanting to be nearer Jackie, and that Charles was lured by the golf in nearby St Andrews. But it would have made far more sense for them to buy a place in Edinburgh where they could still live as they had in London, with all this on their doorstep.
So far he and Belle had only made small talk. He’d admired her house