The House Beneath the Cliffs
Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
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Title Page
Dedication
For Ella, who made me write it, for Angela and Polly, who read it first, and for Marie, whose home inspired it in the first place.
Prologue
So, my own selkie lass,
Did ye like the flowers? The boy chose them himself. I thought something a bit more special than daffs might be in order but he pointed out that yellow is your favourite colour, and we both know he’s right. So no moaning about me being a cheapskate, ye ken?
Love you.
PS: Bought more beetroot. It is Mother’s Day, after all. Don’t say I never treat you. It’s in the cupboard.
One
The spring sky above the ocean was a bright and brilliant blue, streaked with the occasional wisp of white cloud, as if someone careless had released candyfloss into the North Sea wind. Anna drove to the edge of the cliff, where the road vanished over what seemed to be a blunt edge, and then on past the sign declaring the point beyond which only the cars of residents should pass.
Around her grassy farmland tipped towards the water, until the slope became an angle that not even the cattle could abide. The road cut down and over the cliffs, sinking quickly between green-covered clefts splashed with the paint of wildflowers nodding in the breeze. Halfway down, a precipitous footpath divided itself from the tarmac, a wooden sign pointing the way on foot. The road continued on, curling back on itself in a bend so sharp that Anna wasn’t sure she’d make it, even in her tiny tin-can excuse for a car. Beyond it the village of Crovie unspooled below her to her right, a string of houses clinging like colourful limpets to the wild lip of the narrow shoreline beneath the cliffs.
The road opened out slightly as it reached level ground, backed by one or two wooden huts before it turned into a rocky beach that curved away from the village towards a towering promontory of grass-shrouded red rock. Before her the North Sea stretched into the horizon, the edge of the land crashing down to meet it in overlapping folds that reached far into the softening distance. The tide was out, the road squeezed between the cliffs and a sheer drop down onto a jagged field of wet black rocks and smaller tumbled stones. Anna pulled up and switched off her engine, staring out at the dip and swell of the blue-green expanse ahead and trying to gather her thoughts.