Bay of Secrets

Bay of Secrets

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

Quercus

55 Baker Street

7th Floor, South Block

London W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2013 Rosanna Ley

The moral right of Rosanna Ley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocoping, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

PB ISBN 978 1 78087 506 4

EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78087 507 1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Rosanna Ley has worked as a creative tutor for over twelve years, leading workshops in the UK and abroad, and has completed an MA in creative writing. Her writing holidays and retreats take place in stunning locations in Italy and Spain. Rosanna has written numerous articles and stories for national magazines. When she is not travelling, Rosanna lives in west Dorset by the sea.

For Ana – with love.

The doorbell rang – loud, insistent.

Ruby sat up, still half-dreaming. She was in a nightclub, the lights were low and she was playing her saxophone.
Someone to Watch Over Me.
She rubbed her eyes.

The doorbell rang again. More insistent still.

Ruby groaned as the dream slipped away from her. ‘OK, OK. I’m coming.’ She blinked. Registered the early morning light. Glanced at the illuminated dial of the clock on James’s side, taking in the sight of him as she did so; fair, unshaven, arms flung out as if even in sleep he was saying,
What the hell do I have to do to make you happy?
(
I don’t know. I don’t know.
She’d always hoped it would just happen).

They’d had another row last night. She wasn’t even sure what the rows were about any more. Only that he seemed to be travelling in one direction and that she was careering off in another. They’d been living together for two years. The question was – when would their paths coincide?

And why would the doorbell be ringing at six in the morning? Not even the postman came this early.

She stumbled out of bed. ‘James,’ she said. ‘Wake up. There’s someone at the door.’

‘Who?’ he muttered, voice slurred with sleep.

Oh, hilarious. Ruby grabbed her bathrobe, pulled it on, shivered, padded down the hall, running her fingers through her mussed-up hair. She really shouldn’t have had that extra glass of wine last night. She’d met Jude for a drink after work and they’d ended up putting the world to rights over a whole bottle. And then when she’d got home …

There were two people outside. She could make out their shapes through the glass; one male, one shorter female. A blurred check pattern; a darkness. Who came round visiting at this time in the morning? A sliver of foreboding slunk into her. Throat to knees.

She pulled open the door.

The house looked just the same. Red brick, white front door, sash windows, worse for wear. Ruby exchanged a glance with Mel. ‘Thanks for picking me up,’ she said. Could she have done it alone? She thought of James back in London and those different directions they seemed to be taking. Well, yes, she could have. But it would have been so much harder.

‘I’m not just dumping you here,’ Mel said. ‘I’m coming in to help.’

‘Help?’ But Mel was already getting out of the car, so Ruby followed suit. ‘You don’t have to—’ she began.

‘Don’t be daft.’ Mel opened the front gate and took Ruby’s arm as they walked up the path. The grass was overgrown, the plants were wild and untended and the garden was full of weeds. It didn’t take long.

But Ruby felt the relief wash over her. Mel was her oldest friend and exactly what she needed right now. She was thirty-five years old and yet she felt like a child. She squeezed Mel’s arm. It had been two months. It was time. Time to tackle the past and take the first steps towards moving on.

At the front door, Ruby closed her eyes, smelling the jasmine her mother had planted here years ago. The heady scent
of the tiny white flowers seemed to wrap itself around her, shunt her forward.
You can do this.

She put her key in the door, almost heard her mother’s voice.
You have to pull it out a bit and wiggle.
The door eased open – reluctantly.

Mel held back, understanding that Ruby had to go first. Ruby straightened her shoulders, stepped over the letters and circulars lying beached on the doormat. And took her first breath of parents and home since it had happened.

*

Of course Ruby had been back to Dorset since the accident. She and James had driven from London for her parents’ funeral. She sighed now as she remembered the journey, the expression on James’s face – his mouth thin and unsmiling, his eyes fixed on the road ahead with hardly a glance at the woman by his side. Ruby had barely noticed as the car swallowed up the miles, as the familiar green Dorset hills came into sight. Because the pleasure of coming home had turned into a terrible sort of emptiness. And she hadn’t felt able to face the house, not even with James by her side. James. How long had it been since they’d just walked hand in hand down by the river or since they’d talked – really talked, as if they wanted to hear what the other had to say? And now this. Poor James. He hadn’t known how to deal with it, how to deal with her. He’d started looking at her as if he no longer knew her. Which in a way he didn’t. It sounded a bit crazy. But she’d become someone else since she’d lost them.

After the funeral they’d returned to London. Ruby had
dealt with the awful aftermath. The sympathy cards from friends and from acquaintances of her parents’ she hardly knew, and some she did know, like Frances, her mother’s oldest friend, who had been so kind at the funeral, giving Ruby a note of her address and phone number and offering her help should she need it. There was the will and the probate; the winding up of their affairs that she’d accomplished somehow, finding a temporary and cold objectivity from some desperate corner of her grief.

Somehow too, she finished the feature she was in the middle of writing – an exposé of a certain hotel chain and the recycling of house wine – and then she’d thrown herself into the next project and then the next. She’d hardly seen any of her friends. She hadn’t gone to the gym or had one of those occasional girlie evenings with Jude, Annie and the rest of them that always somehow made her feel better about everything. She simply worked. It was as if all the time she was writing, all the time she was interviewing people and investigating their stories, Ruby didn’t need to think about her own life, about what had happened to them, to her. She was functioning on autopilot. And in there somewhere was James and their foundering relationship.

But Ruby wasn’t sure she could let it go – not yet. She knew she had to go back to the house in Dorset, had to sort through her parents’ things, had to decide what to do with the place now that they were gone. But how could she? If she did that it would be like admitting … That it was true. That they had really left her.

Last night the situation had reached a head. Ruby had finished the story she was working on. She had a long bath. She felt as if her head was bursting. Afterwards, she sat on the sofa with her notebook, her sax and her guitar and waited for inspiration, but nothing came. She hardly played her saxophone, she hadn’t written a song for months. It wasn’t just her parents’ death. Something else was wrong in her life. Very wrong.

James came back late from drinks after work, tired and irritable and not even wanting the supper she’d cooked for him. He ran his fingers through his fair hair and let out a long sigh. ‘May as well get off to bed,’ he said. He didn’t touch her.

A final thread snapped. She couldn’t hold back. ‘What’s the point of us staying together, James?’ Ruby asked him. ‘We seem to want such different things. We hardly even spend any time together any more.’ She half wanted him to disagree, to fling her doubts aside, to take her in his arms. She didn’t want to keep having these arguments with him. But how could they go on living separate lives? Something had to change.

But he didn’t disagree. ‘I don’t know what you want, Ruby,’ he said instead. ‘I just don’t know any more.’ His hands were in his pockets now. Ruby wondered what he was trying to stop them from doing. Reaching out to her, maybe?

What did she want? What did he want, come to that? James loved living in London. He liked going out to crowded bars and restaurants and taking city breaks in Prague or
Amsterdam – preferably with a few mates in tow. Apart from her occasional nights out with the girls, Ruby wanted a bit more peace and solitude these days. She’d rather tramp along the cliffs at Chesil Beach than shop in Oxford Street. He liked Chinese food, she preferred Italian. He was into hip hop, she loved jazz. He watched telly, she read books. He played football, she liked to dance. The list in her head went on. She couldn’t even remember how or why she had fallen in love with James in the first place. They used to do things with one another. They used to have fun. What was the matter with her?

She realised that she was crying.

He had his back to her though and he didn’t even see.

And that’s when Ruby knew what she had to do. She had to take some time off – she had worked as a freelance journalist for over five years, her parents had left her a small inheritance as well as the house, so at least she had some breathing space – and she had to come back here to Dorset. She had to face up to what had happened. She was strong enough now to deal with it. She had to be.

*

The house, though, wasn’t easy.