A Cornish Stranger Read Online Free PDF

father had died; and four years ago, when her career was just about to make a giant step forward . . . well, she had walked away.
    The timer rang. She scooped the egg from the water and placed it in an eggcup, quickly covering it with a hat. She and Jaunty had made the hat together twenty years ago and she grinned, looking at the wonky shape. She had never been very good at crafty-type things but that hadn’t stopped her trying. Gabe placed the single egg, the china teapot, and toast on a tray, everything just as Jaunty liked it. Gabe couldn’t change her grandmother, but maybe if she built up Jaunty’s strength she would enjoy what time she had left.
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    â€˜Good morning.’ Jaunty walked from her bedroom into the sitting room, rubbing her hip joints, hoping they would loosen and ease her movements. Breakfast was on the table and Jaunty smiled, but Gabriella was wrinkling her nose, a clear sign that something was troubling her. She had done that repeatedly when her father had died and she was trying to be brave. When tears would threaten she would screw up her nose to hold them back and though Jaunty would say they were better out than in, the child had always tried to control her emotions. That self-control had not been a major problem at thirteen, but now it was.
    Just looking into Gabriella’s eyes sent Jaunty back in time but she needed to focus her mind on the present, she told herself. Yet everything about Gabriella tugged Jaunty backwards. She took so much from her great grandparents – her vibrant red hair was the same shade Jaunty’s father’s had been, and the purity of her singing came from Maria. All that was missing from Gabriella’s voice was the depth that Maria’s had had, the depth acquired from time and practice.
    Lowering herself into a ladder-back chair at the table, Jaunty could see up close how much Gabriella had let herself go. She took no time with herself. The glorious flame-coloured locks were scraped back in a careless chignon and the porcelain skin was dry for the lack of a bit of moisturiser. It was as if Gabriella were hiding. But how could a woman so ­naturally beautiful, so striking, hide? She had hair the colour of a sunset, yellow-orange eyes and a voice that could bring down God from heaven. Why was she concealing it all? There had always been an air of fragility about her – of course, losing her mother just after she had been born had not helped, but this – this carelessness of self had a deliberation about it that made Jaunty uneasy.
    â€˜You slept in.’ Gabriella joined her at the table with a mug clasped in her hands. Chewed fingernails topped the long elegant fingers and Jaunty ran her own over the scars in the oak table top. In a previous life the table had been a door that someone had discarded but Jaunty had salvaged it, stripped it of its chipped paint, then waxed it until it glowed. It had served as the dining table, but more frequently as a work surface, and in the early years, before the studio was built, she had painted and sketched here.
    â€˜I stayed in bed watching the morning light bounce off the north shore,’ Jaunty lied, but her room, in the mornings, with the sound of the gulls and the waves, was like being on a boat, something that soothed and stimulated at the same time. The water beckoned her, called to her in the way it could to one who had experienced its power. It had let her go all those years ago, but her time was coming to an end and it was demanding payment for the years of reprieve. Would her death pay her other debts? No.
    â€˜Jaunty?’ Gabriella touched her arm.
    â€˜Yes.’ Jaunty frowned.
    â€˜I asked if you wanted any fruit this morning?’
    â€˜Prunes, dear.’ Gabriella was lovely and always had been, ever eager to please. But something had happened to her, something that wasn’t good. Jaunty sensed it, but Gabriella never spoke of it – whatever it was.