‘Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m just going to check on your grandmother. The nurse won’t be in for a bit,’ he said, pushing himself out of the chair then giving her an encouraging hug to send her on her way.

5

Lottie

3 August 2018, 4.30 p.m.

Walking out the front door, Lottie noted a sea mist creeping across the lawn. Gribben Head had disappeared, the wind had dropped, and the air was still. In the past, she’d always felt that the world stopped when this happened, but looking ahead her mother hadn’t. She stole through the gates and down the lane. Lottie raced after her.

‘Mum?’

She glanced over her shoulder at Lottie, nodded, but didn’t speak. Even at a distance Lottie noted the shadows under her dark eyes. Where had her mother been recently? It always took her time to decompress after each assignment. Lottie knew enough not to speak. She was simply grateful her mother was here too. Her feet slowed, expecting her mother to turn towards the beach, but she continued up the lane towards St Levan’s Church.

She went straight to the small graveyard at the side of the building. There weren’t many graves. For years it had been a private chapel to the big estate. She stopped in front of a plain granite stone.

Allan Edward Charles Trewin

Born 4 August 1926

Died 5 August 1962

Loving husband and father.

Thirty-six, just. So young. Allan Trewin was her grandfather and she had been to the grave before, but this was the first time with her mother. That fact felt wrong, but she could count on one hand the number of times that her mother had been to Boskenna. She closed her eyes. Now was not the time to dwell on the past, but that was challenging in a graveyard filling with mist. It had covered Porthpean and was now depositing minuscule drops of water on everything around them. They softened each surface, including her mother who appeared out of focus.

She turned to Lottie. ‘Who put these flowers here?’

Lottie shrugged. Fresh flowers were always here, from what she remembered. Today they were bright blue hydrangeas with spiky red crocosmia. The one thing she was certain of was that it couldn’t have been Gran. It wouldn’t be Gramps. Why would he put flowers on the grave of his wife’s first husband? People were weird but not that weird.

‘Lottie?’

She blinked. ‘I don’t know.’

Her mother turned back to the grave.

‘Why are we here, Mum?’

Her mother sighed and said, ‘It’s almost the anniversary of his death.’ She traced her father’s name then the dates. It must have been awful to have lost her father when she was eight, but at least she’d had him. Lottie had never had a father. Well, there had to have been one in the picture in some form or another but not one that her mother had chosen to share with her. Foolish, but Lottie was jealous her mother had a gravestone to acknowledge that she’d had a father. In fact, although her mother didn’t like Gramps, she had a stepfather too. Lottie loved Gramps, but her mother didn’t care for him. Well, that was the polite way to describe her attitude. Lottie had never figured out why. From what she knew, Gran had been a widow for thirteen years before she remarried. Lottie’s mother was twenty-one then and no longer a child. But, maybe, for some things everyone was forever a child.