Vengeance in the Sun

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• Margaret Pemberton
  
• Dedication
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Chapter Twenty-Two
  

Margaret Pemberton is the bestselling author of over thirty novels in many different genres, some of which are contemporary in setting and some historical.

She has served as Chairman of the Romantic Novelists' Association and has three times served as a committee member of the Crime Writers' Association. Born in Bradford, she is married to a Londoner, has five children and two dogs and lives in Whitstable, Kent. Apart from writing, her passions are tango, travel, English history and the English countryside.

For my children, Amanda, Rebecca,
Polly, Michael and Natasha

Below me Majorca's tiny airstrip shelved into view, shimmering beneath a heat haze. I took a deep breath and fastened my seat belt. It was no use going back. There was nothing to go back to. I clenched my fists at the memory of Max. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him.

The wheels touched ground and the heavily built man sat next to me, mistaking my anguish for fear, said: “ It's all right. We're down now. Nothing to worry about.”

I smiled mechanically and reached for my hand luggage.

“Here, let me.” Good-naturedly he lifted my overnight bag from the rack. “ No fun travelling alone, is it?”

“No,” I said with a tight smile, squeezing after him into the aisle. And if it hadn't been for Max's faithlessness I wouldn't have been travelling alone. I followed an expensive smelling Frenchwoman down the steps and onto the tarmac. I should never have become engaged to him in the first place. I should have known it wouldn't work. Max liked his women as fast as his cars and I was well rid of him.

“Have a nice time,” my cheerful companion from the plane said, heaving his suitcase from the conveyor belt, then turning and disappearing amongst the crowd.

“Yes,” I said grimly, alarming the woman stood next to me. “ I will.”

I walked out into the dazzling sunlight, pausing hesitantly as uniformed couriers herded their holidaymakers into mini buses and the elegant Frenchwoman stepped into a waiting limousine. Mrs Van de Naude had said I would be met at the airport. The throng around me thinned and trickled away and still there was no-one looking for an English girl travelling alone. I sat down on my case and prepared to wait.

It was midday and the sun was bright, the air sharp with the tang of orange and lemon trees. Beyond the smudged green of the hillsides the sky was a deep, unbelievable blue, high curling clouds trailing wispily towards the bone-white outline of mountains. On the verge of the airfield the stark silhouette of a windmill creaked motionless in the heat. I closed my eyes. Perhaps my rash act in flying to Majorca wasn't going to be so disastrous after all. Here there would be no constant reminders of Max. No repetition of last week when I had walked into Lacey's, our favourite restaurant, and caught Max holding hands with a half dressed French girl. They had been so engrossed in each other that they hadn't even been aware of my entrance. And that had been only weeks before we were due to be married! I was well rid of him and it was time I stopped thinking about him.

The trouble was, I had known Max too long. We were cousins, and I had spent all my school holidays at Crailsham Place with Aunt Katherine, Uncle Alistair … and Max.

He was the older by six years, and the first holiday I had spent there, when he was eleven and I was five, he had nick-named me Brat, told me not to be a nuisance and not to get in his way. Mournfully I had trailed round after him, until he had said condescendingly that I could run after his cricket balls, fetch his kite back, and even watch him ride, on condition I didn't tell any tales. Gradually a bond grew between us and we became inseparable. For the next six years, all through the summer, Max took me everywhere with him, teaching me to ride and swim and fish and even, to Aunt Katherine's horror, shoot. After he had seen his first motor race and begun single-handedly building his own car, I stood for hours with oil and grease on my hands, handing him his tools, always having a rag at the ready. Wherever Max went. I went. Blissfully content.

Then, when he was seventeen, he no longer returned to Crailsham Place in the summer, and the holidays were long and tedious and nothing seemed as much fun as it used to.

Max had begun to race professionally … and have girl friends. My mother said he was wild and that Aunt Katherine was too indulgent with him, but I thought Max's flamboyant success as a driver and the flare he had for hitting the headlines the height of glamour and secretly kept any press cuttings I could find to show to my envious friends at school.

When I did meet him again I felt strangely shy. My precious hoard of cuttings hadn't prepared me for the drastic change in him. He was tall, over six foot, and powerfully built with strong shoulders and the easy grace of an athlete. His colouring betrayed his Italian grandmother who, my mother said, was no better than she should have been. He was even darker than I remembered, his hair a black, curling pelt, his complexion swarthy, only his brown eyes, gleaming and full of laughter, were familiar.

“Hello Brat,” he had said, as though it were the school holidays and we were children again. And, old habits dying hard, I slipped back into my role of worshipful admirer. Around when he wanted me, uncomplaining when he didn't. Then, suddenly, everything changed.

Max was spending a week with some friends in Cornwall surfing. Uncle Alistair said he was going down to join them for a weekend and asked if I would go with him. It was tea-time when we arrived, and there was the smell of rain in the air. I had the uncomfortable feeling that Max had rather we hadn't gone, his attention being taken up with Claudette Claustre, a beautiful film actress he had recently been spending his time with. Uncle Alistair seemed not to notice his son's coolness and was his usual bland and genial self, and there was no reason why I should have minded. After all, I was only cousin Lucy. But when Max excused himself from the proposed boat trip after dinner and said he was taking Claudette into Polperro, there seemed no pleasure left in the expedition. There were seven of us altogether. Giles Fulbright, an old friend of Uncle Alistair's. Gwen Fulbright, his wife. Jim Shernham, a racing driver friend of Max's, and his girl friend, a pretty brunette called Kay, and Danny Collins whose boat we were to go out in.

Uncle Alistair had expressed doubts even before we had reached the boat-house. The sky was darkening and the waves were high. Danny had been emphatic that it was nothing but a squall, but as a spray of foam showered us, Kay had taken Jim's hand and said she preferred not to go. Staring out over the heaving sea Gwen Fulbright had been the next to cry off. Uncle Alistair had said:

“Come on, Lucy. Let's go back and warm ourselves with a drink. No joy in going out in weather like this.”

But I had no desire to spend the evening sitting in the cottage brooding about Max and Claudette. So Jim Shernham, Giles Fulbright, Danny Collins and myself put to sea. Within minutes there came the ominous roll of distant thunder and I gritted my teeth as the small boat pitched and rolled, struggling for the headland. The turbulence of the waves and the smack of the foam against our faces as we reached the open sea was exhilerating at first, but soon became touched with fear as the sea gripped the boat, plunging her deeper and deeper amongst the white horses. Acknowledging defeat, Danny strained to turn the boat and battled towards the shore. We didn't make it. Twenty yards from the jetty a giant wave lifted the boat, smashing it leewards into the icy sea. Ten minutes later, frozen and exhausted, I staggered out of the water behind Giles Fulbright and collapsed on the beach.

“
Lucy!”

I don't remember seeing him running over the sand. One moment I was sick and shivering, the next Max was down beside me, his face white in the darkness.

“
Lucy! Look at me! For God's sake! Lucy!”
His arms were round me and he was kissing me in a way that had nothing cousinly about it. I clung to him, oblivious of Uncle Alistair and the dripping figures of Jim Shernham and Danny Collins. His hands gripped my hair savagely as he lifted his face from mine, saying in a voice that was almost unrecognisable:

“
Don't ever frighten me like that again, understand?
”

I nodded, unable to answer as his mouth came down hard on mine and then, eternities later, he said hoarsely:

“
God, what a fool I've been. I thought I'd lost you, Brat.”
And he picked me up in his arms and carried me gently across the wet shingle to the house. After that, for a full year, Max wasn't seen in the company of models, actresses and society girls. Only me.

Aunt Katherine said it was too good to be true and it was. A few weeks ago I had begun to hear rumours that Max was seeing Claudette Claustre again. I had ignored it as malicious gossip until the day of my birthday. We had arranged to go to Paris, but Max phoned me, full of apologies, saying they were having trouble with the car he was driving next season and he wouldn't be able to get back from testing it till after the weekend. I had gone to Crailsham Place, had dinner with Aunt Katherine and Uncle Alistair, and waited for him to return.

The next day the papers had a photograph of Max and Claudette Claustre. It had been taken the night before at a party held for Fedor Katchorsky, a visiting Russian composer. He had written the score for a film Claudette had recently appeared in, hence her presence there. The reason for Max's was, presumably, Claudette.

He was all sweet reason when he had returned and I had showed him the photograph.