I open my eyes and stare up at the sky. A bird flies overhead. I think of my brother. Of how he arrived beside me at the top of the stairs, sleepy, yawning, his hair stuck up in all directions. His voice echoes in my head.

What’s happened?

Daddy died.

Then something catches my eye from The Cliff House.

It’s her.

She is walking across the terrace. I hold my breath and don’t move, hoping she won’t see me. But she stops. Looks up. She knew I’d be here. Our eyes lock. She raises a hand and waves and as she does a shiver cuts through me like a sharpened blade of ice. Her hair catches in a gust of wind. She tucks it behind her ear, then turns and walks back up the lawn, across the terrace, and disappears into the house.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Tamsyn

July 1986

‘Hello, young Tamsyn.’

The shop was dark. Ted didn’t believe in electric light during the daytime despite the windows being mostly obscured with the adverts, fliers and wanted signs which he let people stick up at no cost but a ten-minute chat. My eyes took a moment or two to adjust to the gloom after the glorious late afternoon sunshine that draped the day. As they did, Ted came into vision. He was wiping the door of the freezer cabinet with a blue rag which was so dirty it left smears in sweeping arcs on the glass.

‘Well, don’t you look like the hen that got the corn! Good day?’

‘It’s the school holidays. That’s worth a smile.’

‘Holidays again? I can’t believe it.’

I nodded and waited for what was to come: Time flies. But my, time flies.

‘Time flies, Tamsyn Tresize. But my, time flies.’

There was something reassuring about Ted’s predictable patter. He loved a saying and a proverb, and his chirpy, non-stop conversation was reliably punctuated with cats and dogs that fell from the sky and time waiting for no man.

‘So how many hours do you want then?’

‘Mum says as many as you’ve got.’

The corners of his mouth turned down. ‘Things are tight for all of us.’

I nodded and ran my fingers over the brightly coloured packs of sweets and chocolate. I’d been working at Ted’s shop on Saturday mornings for two years, apart from my last term, when I’d taken a break in order to give me more time to study, or, as it transpired, stare out of the window in my box or through a pair of binoculars trained on The Cliff House. On my fourteenth birthday, before I’d even swallowed my last mouthful of cake, Granfer had announced it was time to bring some pennies in.

Your dad would want you to pay your way in the world.

During the school holidays I did a couple more days a week. I don’t think Ted needed the extra help, but like so many of the men in St Just he had a soft spot for Mum. I’d seen how they acted around her, neatening themselves, standing tall, taking their caps off or standing aside to let her go in front of them in a queue.