Childhood Sweetheart by Wendy Clarke

Author:Wendy Clarke [Clarke, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781803145334
Published: 2022-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

JONAH

Jonah’s seat is an upturned boat that’s been dragged up onto the pebbles by the shoreline. He’s been sitting here since Ailsa went to collect Kyle, thinking about the things he’s learnt in the short time he’s been at Loch Briona. That Callum is really Kyle’s biological father. Ailsa’s true feelings. His mother’s mortality.

Now he looks at the rows of lodges that will, some day in the not-too-distant future, be his to do with as he pleases. And what pleases him is to sell the place, even though it will hurt Ailsa to do so.

He narrows his eyes as he scans the weathered decking of the chalets. The windows that haven’t been cleaned for a good while. The loch where fewer and fewer people come to boat and fish, if Reyne’s information is correct. Toxic. That’s what it is… toxic. Not just the holiday complex, but the island of Bray itself. For even though it’s wild and beautiful, its moorland and peat bogs open and windswept, there’s a claustrophobia to the place that he can’t bear. A cloying melancholy. It’s a feeling that had descended on him the minute the ferry, that had dropped him off at the harbour, had turned and left again for the next island on its schedule.

Leaving him alone.

Leaving him vulnerable.

‘I thought I might find you here. I take it you’ve sobered up?’

Jonah raises his head at the sound of his mother’s voice, watching as she steps off the path onto the little beach and walks towards him.

‘I’m fine.’

When she reaches the hull of the upturned boat he’s sitting on, she touches it with her hand to check it’s dry, then leans her back against it.

‘Are you really? Remember, I spent the best part of my life with a man who said the same thing. Only he wasn’t, was he?’ She looks at him meaningfully. ‘All right, I mean. Far from it. You know sometimes it’s like he’s still with me. Watching me. Steering me on the right course. I’ve never said anything to Ailsa as she wouldn’t understand, but you’re different. You’re his son.’ She grips his arm. ‘I see him sometimes.’

Jonah closes his eyes for a beat. ‘Jesus, Ma. Not again. Don’t do this to yourself.’

‘Oh, don’t look at me that way. It’s comforting to think he’s still here.’

Jonah looks at her, aghast. ‘How can you say these things? The bastard hit you. Hit us. It’s not real what you see.’ He taps his temple with his first finger. ‘It’s the cancer talking, Ma, making you imagine things. He’s never coming back here.’ He bites the side of his cheek. ‘You’re right about one thing, though. You must never say anything like that to Ailsa… to anyone.’

He stares at his mother, taking in the gabardine raincoat that was his father’s. The face whose lines and shadows now have an explanation. He must remember she can’t help it – doesn’t know what she’s saying. Yet, still, he’s unsettled by what she’s just told him, and

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