The Tides of Time - Book 2, The Porth Kerensa Series

Chapter Sixteen

   And when they headed back up to the cliff steps Jessie had taken hold of her sisters’ hand and she had told her that it was up to her to change their destiny. Only she could decide as she had the most to lose but she also had the most to gain and all she had to do was ask and Jessie would get her whatever she needed to feel safe again. We have money she had reminded Vanessa gently and Vanessa had nodded even as she wondered wildly if money could buy peace.

   Peace was all she craved. Was it too much to ask for? A peaceful life with her children with no fear and no crying in the night when the one who loves you makes you feel pain like you never felt before. That was all Vanessa wanted she had told her sister and Jessie had hugged her for a long long time.

I stand at the back door smoking a cigarette and looking out to sea. I listen to Kia, Jace and Annie laugh and chat while they play Old Maid, over the roar of the surf. The sun is setting, the wind whistles around the cottage, gulls screech as they fly overhead, and the waves crash on the beach. Familiar sounds I have missed without knowing I missed them. People, places and memories I have shut out of my heart for so long, do I have the strength to let them back in? Do I have the courage to tell them the truths they deserve from me?

   Back in the old days, after my mother had left Porth Kerensa to start her new life in Manchester, Jace and I would sit and discuss Selina Harper. We would talk for hours and no matter how calm and reasoned the argument from Jace; I was never able to reconcile my feelings towards Selina. I had been unable to understand how my mother could leave us all, especially after the death of our brother. Jace would play devils advocate but it had never mattered to me, my own feelings were too intense to even consider how my mother felt.

   In the long years since I fled Porth Kerensa I have made something of my life and I have been content with that, I might not have been happy without Jace but someimes I was content. It was the best I had thought I could hope for after Rory raped me. I believed that would be the worst thing I would ever have to go through in my life. I moved into the glare of the Hollywood lights and I forgot that it wasn’t a fairytale world where only good things would happen to me.

   Colette was the one to remind me that the real world still exists. Now it is time to pay my dues, the fun has stopped and the public want their pound of flesh. They want the truth, my family deserves the truth, and for the first time in my life I finally understand why Selina never let us into her new life. For the first time I am saddened that I did not forgive my mother, and that she died alone and unloved.

   How hard is it to admit that things have gone wrong? That my life has not been what I pretended it was when I ran away? It is the hardest thing I have yet faced so it is really no surprise anymore why my mother had been unable to. Selina had been crippled, blinded and scarred, how can you come back and ask forgiveness when you are so very different to the person who left?

   It has been over a week since the whole thing blew up in the media and as I had hoped, it has blown over. I have hidden away and tried desperately to ignore it, only leaving the cottage to go and see Dad in hospital, Mom at the house and for a walk every day with Vanessa along the beach. People know I am here but they don’t intrude and the press has got bored now both Lee and I have released statements pretty much saying the same thing. At some point I will have to go and see a solicitor but Jace has not mentioned it and I have not either.

   He goes to work every day and Kia and I go to the big house on the cliff. I have not been to Vanessa’s home and I have not seen Rory but I know that soon I will. For now I am content to not rock the boat but there is an air of change in the atmosphere. A feeling of something bad about to happen that I cannot shake even though I am with Jace and I should be happy. My father is awake and sitting up in bed, my daughter has accepted the changes in her life with surprising ease and Jace makes my heart soar with pleasure.