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
‘It’s all right,’ Anna said, covering his hand with hers. ‘Pat, Robert and I are friends. That’s all. You know that.’
Pat looked downcast. ‘But I’ve seen the way he looks at you, love.’ She glanced around the table. ‘We all have.’
Anna laughed, as much to cover the echoing pulse of her heart than anything else. ‘I’m carrying another man’s baby.’
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.
‘It’s not blood that matters,’ Pat said quietly into it. ‘That’s why I think of you as our family, Anna. Mine and Frank’s. And I don’t think I’m wrong when I say you’ve become part of Robert MacKenzie’s, too.’
When she stepped outside the Weaver’s Nook to go home, the rain lashed Anna’s face hard enough to drown her tears. The inside of the Fishergirl’s Luck was warm and snug, the stove still alight. The walls were so thick that the ferocity of the storm outside seemed so much less. It was there, though, throwing its rage at Anna’s home, making sure that she couldn’t forget what was lurking outside. Inside the Fishergirl’s Luck the rest of the world seemed far away, but Anna knew it was waiting there, pressing close, trying to get in.
She flopped down on the sofa and reached for the phone, wanting to call Cathy, but the line was dead. A few moments later her lamp flickered off. Anna looked out of the door into pitch-black darkness. The electricity to the whole of the village was out.
It must have been around 3 a.m. when she was woken by a sound so loud and so deep that Anna thought it felt like movement. She sat up in bed and reached for the light switch, but the power was still off. She wrapped herself in a blanket, so used to the howl of the wind now that she barely heard it as she made her way downstairs. Anna opened the front door of the bothy a crack, but the sound had ceased, or at least lessened enough that the rage of the storm had swallowed it completely. There was no light anywhere, no sign of activity in any of the houses. Thinking she must have dreamed it, Anna went back to bed.
The next morning, though, Frank rapped on her front door, his face pale beneath his drenched hair. The sun had failed to rise at all, the clouded sky squatting heavily over the village, dark as bruises. The rain was still pelting everything in its way.
‘Frank? What is it?’ Anna asked, alarmed by the grim look on his face as he stepped inside out of the storm. ‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s the cliff. It’s bad. The worst slip we’ve had so far.’
‘Oh no – the rental?’