The Boy is Back in Town Read Free

coat and braced herself against the freezing wind, which was whipping up the sand onto the path that led away from Swanhaven and out past the marina and jetty to the wild part of the Dorset shoreline.
    Leaving the village behind, she walked as fast as she could to get warm, her target already in sight. A slow winding path started on the shore then rose slowly up and onto the grassy banks onto the low chalk hills which became cliffs at the other end of the bay.
    Steps had been cut into the cliff face from the beach, but Mari paused and closed her eyes for a moment before she stepped forward, desperate to clear her head and try to relieve the throbbing headache which had been nagging at the back of her neck for the past twenty-four hours.
    This part of the beach was made up of pebbles which had been smoothed by the relentless action of the waves back and forth to form fine powder sand in places and large cobblestones in others. It had been snowing when she arrived in Swanhaven and the air was still cold enough to keep the snow in white clumps on top of the frozen ice trapped between the stones at the top end of the beach where she was walking. The heavy winter seas carried with them pieces of driftwood and seaweed that floated in the cold waters of a shipping lane like the English Channel.
    For once Mari was glad to feel the cold fresh wind buffeting her cheeks as she snuggledlow inside the warm coat, a windproof hat pulled well down over her ears.
    The relentless pressure of her job as a computer systems trouble-shooter was starting to get to her, but exhaustion came with the job and it was all worth it. In a few years she would be able to start her own business and work from home as an internet consultant. With modern technology, she could work from home and run an online internet advisory business from anywhere in the world, and that included Swanhaven. This small coastal town where she had spent the first eighteen years of her life was where she wanted to make a life and create a stable, long-standing home, safe and warm, for herself and Rosa. A home nobody could take away from her. From either of them.
    Mari inhaled slowly to calm her breathing and focused on the sound of the seagulls calling above her head, dogs barking on the shore and the relentless beat of the waves.
    She could still hear the flap of the pennants on the boats in the marina and the musical sound of the wind in the rigging of the sailing boats.
    This was the soundtrack of her early life, which had stayed with her no matter where she might be living and working. Here shecould escape the relentless cacophony of cars, aircraft engines, noisy air conditioning and frantic telephone calls in the middle of the night from IT departments whose servers had crashed. In her shoulder bag there were three smartphones and two mobile phones. But right now, for one whole precious hour, she had turned everything off.
    And it was bliss. Her breathing tuned into the rhythm of the ebb and flow of the waves on the shore and for a fraction of a second she felt as though she was a girl again and she had never left Swanhaven.
    Sailing and the sea had formed a fundamental part of her childhood. She loved the sea with a passion. She knew how cruel it could be, but there was no finer place in the world. And Kit would understand that.
    Turning her back to the wind, Mari slipped the glove from her left hand and reached into the laptop bag she carried everywhere. Her fingers touched a precious photograph and she carefully drew it out of the bag, holding tightly so that it would not be snatched away in the gusty wind. It was only right that she should look at this photograph here of all places, even though it had been around the world with her more than once. Not like Kit’s best friend Ethan Chandler, on the deck ofsome horrendously expensive racing yacht, battling the ocean for his very life, but inside a bag which went into the cabins of aircraft and hotel rooms and even restaurants