Secrets of the Tides Read Free Page B

the car. Miraculously, they made it all the way to Winchester before the first sounds of bickering broke out in the back seat.
    ‘It’s not fair,’ whined Dora, ‘I never get to choose the music.’ Helen could see her wielding a new boy band album in the rear-view mirror.
    ‘That’s because you’ve got rubbish taste,’ said Cassie.
    ‘I have not.’
    ‘Have too.’
    ‘Your turn to referee,’ Richard muttered under his breath as he indicated and overtook yet another caravan creeping its way west for Easter.
    Helen twisted round in the passenger seat and regarded each of her daughters in turn. Cassie was hunched in the far corner of the back seat, her head turned towards the window, her face obscured by a curtain of blond hair. She was stubborn and Helen already knew she wouldn’t look at her. She turned instead to regard Dora, who stared up at her with imploring green eyes from beneath her wonky home-cut fringe. Helen sighed. ‘Will you two settle down? Your father’s trying to concentrate on the road.’
    ‘But it’s my turn to choose . . .’ Dora’s cheeks blushed red.
    ‘If you girls don’t stop squabbling there’ll be no music at all.’
    ‘B-b-but . . .’ Dora fell silent under her mother’s glare and Helen turned back to the front.
    ‘You OK, love?’ Richard lifted a hand from the steering wheel and placed it on her arm.
    ‘Uh-huh,’ she nodded, watching an endless ribbon of cats’ eyes speed towards them. She was getting one of her headaches, and frankly she’d have preferred a bit of peace and quiet to the relentless thud of pop music; still, it was definitely preferable to one of Cassie’s tantrums. She sighed quietly to herself; in twelve years the trip had never got any easier.
    She could still remember the very first time she had travelled with Richard to Clifftops. It had been a bleak day in March, the sky so thick with cloud it made you wonder whether the sun would ever really shine again. She’d sat in the car nervously plaiting and replaiting the leather fringe on her handbag as Richard drummed percussion on the steering wheel with his fingers and they’d sped ever closer to the house he had grown up in and the parents she would soon, should everything go to plan, be calling her in-laws.
    ‘They’re going to love you,’ he reassured her. ‘Almost as much as I do.’
    ‘And the baby?’ she asked, stroking her barely-there bump protectively.
    Richard’s glance followed her hands before returning to the road. ‘Let me handle that. It’ll be fine. Trust me.’
    And she had, implicitly, which was strange because they’d only really known each other a matter of months. Helen had been in her final year of university, studying as a Classics undergraduate. Richard – a little older – was finishing up five years of his Architecture degree to start a placement at his father’s firm. They’d met, predictably, where most students did: in the pub. And they had hit it off right away.
    Richard was tall and fair-haired with cornflower-blue eyes, broad shoulders and the sort of grown-up confidence that comes from being a beloved only child. Helen had noticed him watching her from across the bar. She’d gambled and smiled back at him and he told her later that it was that first smile that had got him, hook, line and sinker. Love at first sight, that’s what he called it. He’d made his way over to their table and introduced himself. She’d liked the way he did it, straightforward and honest, no corny chat-up lines, no leering and winking at his friends. Right from the word go he had seemed good and honest and kind. And if what little experience she’d had with men up until then had taught her anything, it was that those qualities were very rare indeed.
    They’d dated for a few weeks and it had been fun. He’d taken her to rugby matches and offered her his coat as she’d shivered in the stands. He booked tables at romantic candlelit restaurants and gave her a crash course in