Beneath the Shadows by Sara Foster
For the Curlew Cottage family
The past is still too close to us.
The things we have tried to forget and put behind us
would stir again …
Rebecca
DAPHNE DU MAURIER
They should be home.
The thought scratched at Grace’s mind as she peered out of a narrow upstairs window. The sun had long-since been banished behind a blanket of thick grey cloud. In front of her, the wild moorland rolled away to be absorbed by the gloom of twilight.
She turned and trailed through the cottage, flicking at wall switches, shaking the shadows from their slumbers and driving them out. She moved as though in a trance, the surroundings still surreal to her, although it had been over a week since they had moved in. The upstairs corridor was poky, and the ceiling so low that she had spent the last few days watching Adam stooping under the beams. The staircase was steep, the wood beneath the carpet uneven, so it was better to tread on the outer edges of each step rather than stumbling into the indentations of myriad footsteps gone before.
She made her careful way downstairs, through the small living room that was littered with packing boxes, and headed into the kitchen, moving again to a window, unable to stop herself from looking out across the sloping moors towards the distant road that wound in and out of sight. A few trees were silhouetted on the horizon, their brittle skeletons bent from regular lashings by the coastal winds. The view before her was utterly still.
She took a deep breath, trying to quell the worry that was winding her nerves into knots. Adam’s note had unsettled her. ‘Won’t be long. I have to talk to you when I get back, don’t go anywhere. A x’
Back in the lounge, Grace threw herself into an armchair, one hand brushing over the raked leather where a long-dead cat had once regularly sharpened its claws. She looked around the cottage – their cottage, though it was nigh on impossible to think of it that way.
‘It’s an incredible gift,’ she could still hear Adam enthusing, over and over, when they had first found out his grandparents had bequeathed Hawthorn Cottage to him. ‘It’s like fate is giving us a bloody great shove in the back. Our own place, no mortgage, away from the rat race, a chance for Millie to start life among nature rather than believing that trees grow through cracks in the paving. Come on, Gracie, let’s give it a go.’
At that point Grace had been overwhelmed by pads and pumps and nappies, and had somehow found herself agreeing with every point he made. Adam was right. Who wanted red-top buses flying past their flat at all hours; noise, lights, people everywhere? This way they could escape their financial pressures for a while. She didn’t want to leave Millie while she was tiny, and go back to her marketing job, with its meagre wage and demanding retail clients. It wasn’t her vocation, and to satisfy her demanding boss she often had to stay long after office hours were over.
They couldn’t avoid the fact that their priorities were changing. Adam and Grace had begun their relationship to a backdrop of fine restaurants and raucous weekends away with friends. Now, in their thirties, most people they knew had children, their social life had dwindled, and they wouldn’t be the first ones to make the move out of the city. Grace began to imagine the possibilities that the cottage in North Yorkshire would present: the chance to cook proper meals for a change, taking Millie for long country walks in the fresh air, and snuggling up to Adam in the evenings. She wouldn’t have to give up anything either – she could take the maximum maternity leave she was allowed while they gave it a try. To top it off, they’d be free of the extortionate rent on their tiny two-bedroom flat, so instead of struggling, they might even save. And, as Adam said, if it didn’t work out, then they would simply come back.
‘Six months,’ she’d agreed. ‘We’ll try it for six months, see how we go.’
But as they had packed their belongings, and the moving date drew nearer, something had begun to niggle at her. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was that woke her in the early hours, well before the baby stirred. Eventually she had dismissed it as understandable nerves at such a big change. And yet, the nagging voice refused to quieten.