Lighthouse Bay Read Online Free PDF

go away when you open your eyes.”
    Katie remained silent, pressed up against Juliet’s body. Juliet could feel the little girl’s heartbeat. Tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick .
    Finally Katie said, “Who are all those pictures of?”
    Juliet glanced at the screen. “Men.”
    “Are they all your friends?”
    “No. I don’t know any of them.” Juliet fought with embarrassment. She hoped Katie wouldn’t mention Datemate to her mother, who still had hopes that Juliet would finally give in to the pleadings of Scott Lacey. “It’s just a website you can go to if you want to meet new friends.”
    Already Katie had lost interest. She was yawning widely.
    “Here,” Juliet said. “Let’s put you back to bed.”
    She lifted Katie and took her back to the roll-out bed, tucked her in and sang her another lullaby, then she closed the door quietly and returned to the living room. The array of male faces was still there. She had never contacted any of these men. Not once. But she spent a lot of time scrolling through them, reading about their interests, their political and religious beliefs. Some of them sounded lovely and genuine, some of them were raging egomaniacs. Some were handsome, some plain but sweet. But none of them, not one, had yet persuaded her to sign up, make contact, meet for coffee and a chat. She glanced at the framed picture of Andy she still kept on the bookshelf: forever preserved at nineteen.
    “Juliet?”
    Juliet turned. Katie was at the door again.
    “Will you lie down with me? I’m frightened.”
    Juliet shut down the computer and stood. “Come on, then.” Lying in the dark singing to a seven-year-old wasn’t her idea of the ideal Friday night, but things were as they were. Cheryl was seven years older than Juliet, had been Juliet’s age when she’d decided that single motherhood would be better than no motherhood at all. “The problem is,” she’d said at the time, “men in their forties want women in their twenties.”
    Juliet didn’t know how many of Cheryl’s common wisdoms about men and what they wanted were true, so Juliet tried to remain positive. When it’s meant to happen , she always said.
    But sometimes, in the darker hours of the night, she suspected it was never meant to happen, at least not for her. She’d had her one chance. She’d had her true, mad, deep love. Perhaps it was greedy to expect it to happen again.
    Katie wrapped a strand of Juliet’s long brown hair around her index finger. In the distance, thunder rumbled. “Don’t leave,” she said.
    “I won’t,” Juliet said softly. “Close your eyes.”
    She watched as the child fell asleep, then stayed a little longer as the storm rolled in, happy to have some company in the dark.
    T he jet lag took days to lift. Libby was still having trouble sleeping. Her mind was a whirl of questions: some practical, like when her belongings would arrive from Paris; some less straightforward, like how she could get used to this new life and make it up to her sister. She closed her eyes. She tried her left side, then her right, then gave in and got up. She could hear the distant grumble of an approaching storm. She switched on her torch and went to the back room—the art room, as she already thought of it—and slid open the window. Cool sea air and the rushing sound of waves flowed in. Lightning reflected in the clouds in the distance. She stood her torch up in an empty cup so that it shone on the ceiling, giving her enough light to start unpacking the supplies. Maybe this way she could tire herself enough to sleep. Mark had thought of everything, of course. Not just the view and all the light she would get from those windows. The easels, the canvases on cedar stretchers, a rolling chest of drawers full of paints, brushes, palettes, palette knives, bottles of linseed oil and gum and turpentine and varnish, a roll of rags tied with a blue ribbon, even jars of shellac, beeswax and pumice sand. The smells—oils, solvents,