Buried in Cornwall Read Online Free PDF

to the boiler and removed its cover. The two women followed. Rose shut the door and put the washing basket on the draining-board before getting out milk and sugar. She reached for the tin of biscuits she kept for guests, knowing that Trevor would eat some. Laura, too, had no mean appetite but she never gained an ounce of weight. Rose was also naturally slender but tended not to eat at all at stressful times.
    There was a whoosh from the laundry room. Rose and Laura exchanged a complicit glance. Trevor had fixed it. Water gurgled in the radiators and just the sound of it made Rose feel warmer. ‘A well-earned coffee,’ she said, handing him a heavily sweetened mugful. ‘Do you want more milk?’Trevor shook his head. The job had only taken minutes but over the years Rose had learnt that Trevor was offended if she offered remuneration. Instead she repaid him with a packet of tobacco or a few cans of his favourite beer.
    He sat at the table and got out the makings of a roll-up, scattering tobacco as he did so. Not a man for conversation unless it was necessary, he left the talking to the women. Years at sea had taught him to keep his own counsel. Cooped up in a confined space with a crew from whom there was no escape until you landed had made many a man taciturn. He listened, all the same, and took in all he heard.
    ‘Rose,’ he said, licking the adhesive strip of his cigarette paper and dextrously twisting it around the tobacco, ‘what happened yesterday?’ He looked into her face with his shrewd brown eyes.
    She sighed. ‘You might as well hear it from me as from anyone.’ The explanation already sounded tired to her own ears.
    ‘That’s just about how I heard it.’ Trevor inhaled and blew out smoke with his eyes half closed.
    ‘You didn’t say anything to me, Trevor.’ Laura was indignant. She flung back her hair as if she had suffered the worst possible affront. Not knowing things, for Laura, was unbearable andfor her husband to withhold information was an unthinkable insult.
    ‘No. Not till I heard it from the source. Strange goings-on, that. Where was this?’
    Rose told him. Trevor shook his head. ‘It was no echo then.’
    ‘No.’ Rose wished everyone would stop discussing it, but only because she was still convinced that what she had heard was real. However, the area had been searched thoroughly, and she could only question her sanity.
    Trevor crossed his legs and folded his arms, one hand with the cigarette hovering over the ashtray Rose had placed before him. ‘You might be artistic, but I wouldn’t call you sensitive or fanciful. If it wasn’t an echo or a trick of the wind and no one was found, then there still has to be an explanation.’
    Rose was later to recall those words and to see that she ought to have made more of them. ‘That’s just it, Trevor, but I can’t come up with an answer. At least you know me well enough to realise I believed what I heard at the time.’
    He shook his head and the wavy hair moved with it. ‘The way I see it is like this, if you’re not breaking things you’re landing yourself in trouble. Were you accident-prone as a cheel?’
    Rose slapped his arm affectionately, knowinghe was sending her up. ‘No. I’ve never even broken a bone.’
    ‘Well, mind you don’t now. Take my advice and keep away from they places. If you’re right, and I’m not saying I disbelieve you, then there’ll be trouble in it for you somewhere along the line. You know what you’re like, Rose Trevelyan.’
    What he said made sense but she had no intention of letting her friends know that she planned to return to the mine tomorrow. That painting was good, too good to relinquish now, she had to finish it. Pouring more coffee, she listened to Laura’s plans for Christmas.
    ‘Are you sure you won’t come to us? You know we’d love to have you. Besides, it’ll be such a houseful one more won’t matter, and the boys worship you.’
    That was, Rose thought, putting it a bit