She’d kept riding eastward, long after she should have turned back for home. For this reason, darkness had fallen by the time she’d geared down to make the final climb up the Strand. Shops were closed; restaurants were open although meagerly peopled at this time of year. A dispirited line of bunting crisscrossed the street, dripping water, and the lone traffic light at the crest of the hill cast a streak of red in her direction. No one was out on the soaked pavement, but in another two months that would all change when summer visitors filled Casvelyn to take advantage of its two broad beaches, of its surf, of its sea pool, of its fun fair, and?one hoped?of the experiences offered by Adventures Unlimited.
This holiday business was her father’s dream: taking the abandoned hotel?a 1933 derelict structure sitting on a promontory above St. Mevan Beach?and turning it into an activities-oriented destination. It was an enormous risk for the Kernes, and if it didn’t work out, they’d be destitute. But her father was a man who’d taken risks in the past and had seen them bear fruit because the one thing he wasn’t afraid of in life was hard work. As to other things in her father’s life…Kerra had spent too many years asking why and receiving no answers.
At the top of the hill, she turned into St. Mevan Crescent. From there, along a line of old B and Bs, older hotels, a Chinese takeaway, and a newsagent’s shop, she reached the driveway to what had once been the Promontory King George Hotel and what was now Adventures Unlimited. The old hotel stood, barely illuminated, with scaffolding fronting it. Lights were on in the ground floor, but not at the top where the family quarters were.
In front of the entry, a police car was parked. Kerra drew her eyebrows together when she saw it. At once she thought of Alan. She didn’t consider her brother at all.
BEN KERNE’S OFFICE AT Adventures Unlimited was on the first floor of the old hotel. He’d fashioned it out of a single that had once undoubtedly been used by a lady’s maid, since directly next door to it?and formerly with an adjoining door?was a suite. That he’d had converted to a unit suitable for one of the holidaying families upon whom he’d bet his economic future.
The time had seemed right to Ben for this, his biggest venture ever. His children were older and at least one of them?Kerra?was self-sufficient and completely capable of obtaining gainful employment elsewhere should this venture go under. Santo was a different matter, for more than one reason that Ben preferred not to consider, but he had become more dependable of late, thank God, as if he finally understood the weighty nature of their undertaking. So Ben had felt the family was with him. It wouldn’t be just himself upon whose shoulders the responsibility rested. They were fully two years into it now: the conversion complete save for the exterior painting and a few final interior details. By the middle of June, they would be up and running. The bookings had been coming in for several months.
Ben was looking through these when the police arrived. Although the bookings represented the fruits of his family’s labours, he hadn’t been thinking of this or really even thinking of them at all: the bookings. Instead he’d been thinking of red. Not red as being in the red, which he certainly was and would be for any number of years until the business earned back what he’d spent upon it, but red as in the colour of nail varnish or lipstick, of a scarf or a blouse, of a dress that hugged the body.