Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage - Samantha Tonge Page 0,2

again and—

Her voice shook as she rose to her feet. ‘This is all your fault.’

My voice caught. ‘What do you mean?’

‘They were swept away by a freak current. Your mum… it was all over by the time the rescue services found her. Later that night they found your dad’s body washed up on the shore.’

No, Aunt Fiona must have got it wrong. My throat ached. I couldn’t move. For a second her face softened and she sat down once more. As she told me all the details, tears streamed down her cheeks.

I couldn’t cry – couldn’t feel.

I couldn’t speak.

The room span for a moment and my hand flew to my mouth. I charged into the bathroom and crouched on the floor before everything went black.

1

Now

The Latin word for tattoo is stigma

Arriving in Leafton, I drove past a straggling estate on the left and over a junction. Quaint grey stone cottages edged the small village high street. A poppy-red letter box provided a splash of colour. It stood outside a post office that was situated within a small supermarket. I read the twee names of the few businesses – Blossom’s Bakes, The Pen Pusher, Styles by Stacey. There was one pub called The Tipsy Duck and an estate agency on the corner.

I stopped at the traffic lights and glanced at my phone. Google Maps directed me to take the next left, an avenue that ran alongside a stream. Its row of cottages became increasingly spaced out until I came to one right at the end. It was set back and surrounded by overgrown lawns. My heart thumped at the thought of what I might find here.

I parked the car on the road outside Streamside Cottage. Despite its uncared-for appearance I could tell that, once tidied, it would look like the front of a touristy box of fudge with its thatched roof and honey and white coloured stone dash. Window boxes hung underneath the ground floor windows although the plants inside them had shrivelled. The glass panes were each divided into six by white bars and needed a wash. The front door was cornflower blue although the colour had faded, with ivy sprawling up either side as if reclaiming the stone for nature.

This looked like a family home that begged for children and a pet dog, for visiting grandparents, for football kick-abouts and vegetable patches. Ash would have liked it here. I swallowed and tried not to think of what happened with him and how that had pushed me to finally check out this place. I focused on the building that looked so isolated. Lonely even. I got out of my car. The stream carried on straight and then cut left and flowed along the property’s back garden which looked onto a forest. The gentle babble of water played in the background. I wasn’t used to such quiet. After Aunt Fiona’s visit last year, on that July Monday morning, the busy London soundtrack had provided a welcome distraction from the news she’d broken.

I stepped forwards and a shed came into view in the distance, behind the driveway on the right. Oak trees and weeping willows stood tall at the rear, by the water. It was such a picturesque garden I almost expected Mr Darcy to wade out of the stream. I went through a wooden gate and the gravel gave a satisfying scrunch beneath my feet as I walked along the drive. At the front door a black plaque with the cottage’s name dipped on one side. Carefully I corrected it, as if straightening a tie.

I ventured around the side of the building and strolled towards the stream and as the countryside enveloped me, I homed in on its finer sounds. The quack of ducks instead of the tattoo parlour’s recorded singers. Buzzing came from bees instead of ink machines and leaves rustled in the breeze like clients flipping through my portfolio’s pages.

My jeans felt too thick for the June sunshine, despite the holes torn in them for effect. At least I was wearing my sleeveless t-shirt. The weathermen were predicting another heatwave. I stood at the water’s edge, in front of a wired fence that went all around the nearside of the water. A cluster of ducklings formed a queue behind mum.

‘You can do it,’ I said to one struggling to keep up, at the back.

Leaf-dappled light added sparkle to ripples and crests of white water formed around the occasional boulder. Small fish flexed their bodies from side to side, in