The Promise Read Online Free PDF Page A

away. She looked, Ben thought, like a piece of sunshine fallen from the sky. He watched, riveted, as she picked her way along the shingled shoreline that skirted the lake, sometimes lifting her skirt a little to jump over rocks, pausing to watch a tufted duck make its way through the reeds, or to pick yellow loosestrife and pale-lilac water lobelia before walking on.
    Bowness-on-Windermere was one of those small Lakeland towns that clung to the rim of a lake that stretched for ten miles from Newby Bridge to Ambleside, its huddle of stone cottages seeming to lean against each other as if for support against the fickle winds that rattledup this valley. Here and there, amongst the lush woodlands, were scattered large Edwardian villas, often housing those who had made their fortunes in the industrial towns of the North and retired to Lakeland to enjoy the fruits of their labours.
    The lake itself was always a hive of activity, bristling with masts, a couple of public steamers filled with holidaymakers, and a ferry that chugged back and forth taking cars and walkers from one shore to the other, providing a short cut to Far Sawrey, Esthwaite Water and Hawkshead. It was the kind of town where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Ben could happily waste an hour watching young men struggling to row a hire boat as they showed off to their sweetheart, or listen unashamedly to family squabbles as sails were unfurled and small boats made ready to put out on to the water. There was always something interesting to watch. Now he’d found the most fascinating of all.
    The screwdriver hung slack in his hand, the door hinge he was supposedly fixing quite forgotten.
    ‘Pretty, isn’t she?’
    He glanced up, shamefaced, as his mother handed him a mug of tea. She was wearing her usual floral print smock, two sizes too big for her diminutive figure, her impish face beaming with mischief.
    ‘I was only looking.’ For a man who had enjoyed nothing but misfortune with the women in his life he was mad to even do that, but the girl was utterly irresistible. She was climbing the far steps up to the steamer pier now, looking so fresh and appealing he couldn’t prevent a smallsigh escaping. ‘I don’t suppose you know who she is?’
    ‘She’s the new tenant. Moved in yesterday afternoon, quite late. Taken the loft over the boathouse for a month.’
    ‘A month?’ Ben felt ridiculously pleased by this bit of news, then filled with guilt at the stir of anticipation he experienced deep in his gut. Don’t even think about it, he sternly warned himself. Wasn’t he already bruised and battered following his recent divorce?
    His mother set down a large slice of her finest fruit cake on the wall beside him. ‘Aye, a whole month. Longer than visitors normally stay.’ There was a short silence while she considered this, then returning her attention to her son casually enquired, ‘How long will Karen be away visiting that mother of hers?’
    ‘I’d prefer you not to speak of Sally in that tone. She may no longer be my wife, but she’s still the mother of my child.’
    Hetty Gorran was no fool and knew her son inside out, better than he knew himself at times. Far too easy-going for his own good, which was how he came to get himself married in the first place. Thank heaven he’d finally seen the light. That flighty little madam was never any good for her boy. Hadn’t she said as much to him at the time? Not that he ever listened to a mother’s wisdom. Stubborn to a fault he was, and would stick to his point of view if only to prove he had the right to it, not unlike her employer who owned these holiday cottages.
    ‘So you’ve had another falling out, eh?’ she slyly remarked as she sipped her tea.
    ‘Does everyone in this town know my private business?’
    ‘If you will conduct it at top volume on a telephone in a public place … Anyroad, we Lakelanders like to pride ourselves on caring about our family and friends.’
    ‘Lot of old