‘Jesus, babe, you look knackered. Fancy a cuppa?’

  Rita found herself nodding at the instant friendliness of the woman, who returned swiftly with two pink mugs of builders’ tea. She pulled up another balance ball and perched next to her.

  ‘So, this is me. Jilly Cooper. Not as talented or as loaded as the great Dame, God rest her gloriously filthy soul, but probably just as raucous. So, I take it you’re interested in having a little go at one of my torture sessions?’

  Rita smiled. ‘Rita Jory, I live up at Seahaven Farm and I’m not sure yet. Was just being nosy, to be honest.’

  ‘Oh, Rita, that’s right, it was your al fella that went over the cliff in a sports car.’

  Rita recoiled in horror, then took a breath. ‘Mrs Munroe’s been in, I’m guessing.’

  Jilly took a sip of tea. ‘Her daughter.’

  Rita nodded knowingly.

  ‘Good and bad, this gossip lark, for me, anyway. Spreads the word of the new business at least, but I’m not one for airing my dirty laundry in public and there’s been plenty of that in the past.’ Jilly’s laugh was a humorous cackle. She stood up and put her mug on the reception desk. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss and totally with you on the grief bit. My old man, stupid, useless bastard, only went and offed himself, didn’t he?’

  Rita shifted more uncomfortably on the ball. ‘As in…’

  ‘They found him hanging in his cell.’

  Rita’s eyes widened. ‘Shit, Jilly. I’m…’

  ‘Don’t say sorry.’ She waved her manicured hand. ‘He made his bed. Or didn’t, as usual. Lazy sod. Got put inside and left me with a half-finished extension and some really scary-looking men knocking at my door asking if I knew where it was hidden. Anyway.’ Jilly sniffed. ‘I didn’t, or I’d be in the Costa del Caribbean rather than the Costa del Cornwall by now. So…’ she wiped her brow with her pink sweatband, ‘health is where it’s at now. Wellness, babe. Bodies. Only good energy allowed.’

  Rita smiled. ‘Well, you’re a fabulous advert for this place; you look amazing.’

  ‘Thanks, Reets! Those jabs, you know, the ones half the planet seem to be on. Well, turns out they’re a miracle. Three stone, I’ve done. I can see my knees again.’ Jilly jiggled her arms. ‘Still got the bingo wings, mind you. But I’m on a mission. Pilates saved me, I swear. Something about all that breathing and stretching… it sort of pulls your soul back into place.’

  ‘Seahaven Bay has a habit of doing that, anyway.’ Rita stood up and smiled.

  ‘Don’t you be telling everyone that, girl; I’ve got a business to run.’ Jilly grinned. ‘And sorry I didn’t even ask how you’re doing. Like ’em or not, we loved them once.’

  ‘I miss him, you know.’ Rita sniffed. ‘He was a pain in the arse sometimes, my Archie, but he was my pain in the arse.’

  ‘Tough, innit? But I’m not done. We may be widows but looks at us, girl. Still hot to trot. I’m after a man with huge wealth and no emotional baggage. Or, failing that, one with a huge cock and a Louis Vuitton luggage set.’

  Rita laughed aloud.

  ‘Laughing suits you, girl.’ Jilly winked.

  The music changed to Madonna. Jilly drained her tea.

  ‘Come on. Hop on one of the machines; I’ll show you how it works.’

  THREE

  Seahaven Farm was a traditional farmhouse, standing proud against the rolling landscape of the rugged north coast of Cornwall. Its huge arched wooden front door had been pushed open by generations of families and time. Weathered grey stone walls were softened by a vibrant passionflower, planted by Archie for their tenth anniversary, its inquisitive tendrils having since crept their way right across the façade. Beyond the circular courtyard, there were low stone outbuildings: the former tack room now an animal food store, and the stables – not used since their daughter Sennen became a teenager and got bored of mucking out – had become Archie’s work room. A vegetable patch, once Rita’s pride and joy, had also gone slightly to the worms and the greenhouse needed at least one glass panel replacing. Trees in the fertile-soiled orchard needed pruning and further on from the high-grassed pen where her beloved goats grazed like eccentric lawnmowers was the now-uninhabited High Meadow. It was, however, the huge, empty, former cow barn that remained the family’s elephant in the room.

  Back from her harbour visit, Rita stood at the edge of the overgrown orchard, cradling a cup of tea, and surveying the place. A light breeze whispered through the blossoming fruit trees. Birds chattered their delight at the warm early spring evening. To the west, the sky showed off its glory in hues of oranges, reds and pinks.

  Gazing way beyond the perimeter of the crumbling grey stone wall, she tuned in to the slow, rhythmic sigh of waves against the cliffs below. A direct contrast to her thoughts of late, which often swirled around her head like a whirling dervish.

  It was funny, Rita thought, how nothing else had changed. That the world still spun. The cockerel still crowed, and the chickens still clucked. The goats, amusing, stubborn creatures that they were, still knocked their feed buckets over at precisely 7 a.m.

  Unexpected things got to her. The absence of the radio humming in Archie’s workshop or the familiar groan as he tugged on his boots. Even his maddening habit of leaving mugs in the greenhouse. No more. All gone. Gone forever.

  The farm had always been his dream. She had married into it.

  And now, standing here with forty-five years on the life clock, what was she left with? Twenty-five acres of half-wild land, four goats, four chickens, a dilapidated farmhouse, twins (who’d already fled the nest), an eccentric mother-in-law (who would never flee the nest), more sympathy cards in a drawer than money in the bank, a dog called Henry and Nigel the cockerel.

  She took a sip of tea. Cold. Of course it was.

  Rita’s dad had always believed that their lives had already been written. The night she met Archie Jory seemed to prove that. She, an impressionable young Londoner on a girls’ surfing holiday. He, the handsome, tall, broad-shouldered Cornish farmer, ten years her senior, out on the town with his mates.

  Rita and her pals had originally planned to go to a live comedy night at the local cinema-cum-theatre that night, but when they arrived, there weren’t enough seats for all of them. The only appealing alternative was a fiddler playing sea shanties in the Winking Pilchard.

  It had been lust at first sight and the rest, as they say, was history.

  The honeymoon period had been dreamy. Due to Archie’s farm commitments, every other weekend, Rita had religiously commuted down to Seahaven Farm from her family home in Bethnal Green. But the travelling became too much to sustain, so on Archie’s insistence and without any regret, it hadn’t taken her long to throw her manic city marketing manager job to the wind and move down to the peace and beauty of Seahaven Bay. There, with love as her guide, she had easily adjusted to the smell of manure, the early mornings, and the endless small talk about milk and crop prices, because looking after the farm was his passion and he was hers.

  Oh, how she had adored big Archie Jory and his even larger infectious personality.

  With a huge sigh, wishing she could get the big man out of her head, Rita tipped her cold tea onto the grass and looked out over the ever-changing vista which never once bored her.

  Seahaven Bay truly was an idyllic setting, where countless visitors flocked for the wild beauty of the landscape, the crashing surf, and the kind of stillness that made you breathe a little deeper.

  With its breathtaking view overlooking the bay, one of her daughter’s mates had described the farm’s High Meadow as ‘heaven on earth’. Rita had quietly agreed with Morag. This place always had been that. And now, more than ever, the meadow was her sanctuary for peaceful contemplation.

  Many a night when Rita and Archie first got together, they had taken a picnic up there, occasionally even making love under the stars. Yes, this farm was an idyll, a safe haven that she had been lucky enough to live in for the past twenty-five years. The thought of imagining her life anywhere else was just too hard to bear. She’d never expected to have to imagine it – until Archie’s death she’d had no idea that the farm’s finances were in such a mess, and despite the hours she’d spent trawling through paperwork, she still couldn’t work out how Archie had managed to get them into quite so much debt.

  Henry the labrador gently nudged at her knee. At eight years old, his once jet-black coat had softened to a gentle charcoal, with a distinguished smattering of grey around his muzzle. He followed Rita everywhere, his heavy paws padding softly behind her, dependable as the tide.

  Leaning down, she gently scratched behind his soft ears. ‘What are we going to do, old boy? Just what are we going to do?’

  The ageing canine let out a low and familiar reassuring sigh.

  That evening, Rita set down a bowl of steaming vegetable soup onto the heavy wooden coffee table, its surface crowded with a stack of well-loved books, the one she had purchased earlier placed on top of the pile, waiting for when she was ready to pick it up and start reading again. She loved this little room. It had always been her sanctuary. The Den. Mum’s Den. A single round window looked out over the sea, framing the shifting colours and moods of the Cornish countryside and coast below. From the cushioned seat beneath it, she would sometimes sit for hours, reading or watching the weather roll in, wild and beautiful.

  The house felt different, though, since Archie’s passing. The air stiller somehow, the quiet deafening. The marital bed still felt like a safe place to snuggle down in, but since the accident, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to sit in the big lounge, with its low-slung beams and vast inglenook fireplace. There were too many memories, not just in the many photographs of the family but also in her mind, of her and Archie spending cosy evenings in there, cuddled into the sofa side by side.

  Shifting the lopsided pottery vase that her daughter had made in primary school out of the way of the television, Rita sank herself into the familiar, worn two-seater sofa and was just beginning to tuck into her soup when her mobile rang.

  She groaned softly, set the bowl on the coffee table, and fumbled for the phone.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ Her voice was scratchy with tiredness.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Sennen, darling?’ Rita gave a weary laugh. ‘Not sure who else you thought might be picking up my phone at this hour.’

  ‘You sounded different.’ Her daughter’s voice lifted. ‘Are you OK? Just checking in as usual.’

  ‘Knackered, that’s all. But I’m fine, everything’s fine. Animals fed. Henry is asleep next to me.’ Rita gently played with the labrador’s soft ears. ‘He’s been noticeably quiet this evening.’

  Sennen’s voice lowered. ‘Maybe he’s missing Dad, too.’

  ‘I’m sure he is, but we can’t change that, can we, Sen?’ Rita replied tightly.

  ‘Mum. Listen to me. The lady from the grief charity says that it will do us all good as a family to talk about it. We need to.’

  Rita sighed. ‘Need, want, should, could. Not tonight, eh, love.’

  On hearing her second-born take a deep intake of breath at the end of the phone, Rita twitched uncomfortably.

  ‘I miss him so much, Mum.’

  ‘I know, darling.’ Rita ineffectively rubbed dog hairs off the sofa arm. ‘Have you heard from that brother of yours lately?’

  ‘No. You know what Thom’s like now. Only calls when he wants something.’ Sennen paused. ‘I miss him too, Mum.’

  Rita’s heart squeezed. Of the twins, Thom had always been the strong, silent one. Tall, handsome and forthright, the absolute image of his father. When he was younger, he and Archie had been inseparable on the farm. From feeding lambs at dawn to fixing fences at dusk, he had trailed after his dad like a small apprentice. Archie’s accident had carved a hole straight through him. Rita still believed it was grief, not ambition, that had driven him to London straight afterwards to work as a salesman for a large IT company. Despite her selfish attempts at soft persuasion, he’d had no interest in staying and getting his hands dirty on the land without his father beside him. And since then, he’d rarely looked back; calls had become practical, sporadic, and always on his terms.

  Sennen, beautiful and flighty, had always dreamed of being in event management. She had flown the nest at eighteen to study it at university and was now living in Reading with her partner, running her own wedding-planning business.

  ‘I miss him too, darling,’ Rita murmured. ‘Maybe when things are less raw for us all, we’ll get our Thom back.’ Rita reached for the remote control. ‘Are you and Alex OK, darling?’

  Sennen sighed. ‘It’s leading up to silly season, so I’m manic, but I think we’re fine.’

  ‘Look at us Jory girls and our flagrant use of the word “fine”.’ Rita dipped her finger into her soup and put it to her lips. ‘Come down for Easter, Alex included, of course. It’s a couple of weekends away, I think, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’d love that. I’m actually working on a wedding in Dorset on the Good Friday, so I’ll be halfway down to you anyway.’

  ‘I’d love that too.’ Rita smiled. ‘OK, I’m going. I don’t want my soup to get cold. Talk to you soon, darling.’

  ‘Mum, before you go, have you watched the new White Lotus series? This one’s set in a health retreat somewhere exotic. Maybe I should find out if it’s a real place and we could go together.’

  Rita, still not daring to confess to her daughter that she was in such dire straits she couldn’t even afford her favourite shower gel, replied brightly, ‘Brilliant. Yes, we watched the ones with Jennifer Coolidge in. Hilarious! Had me and your dad in hysterics.’ Rita coughed to rid the lump that had formed in the back of her throat. ‘Haven’t seen the new series, though.’

  Sennen’s voice wobbled. ‘That’s you sorted for tonight, then.’

  ‘Sennen… Please don’t worry about me. The locals have been nothing short of wonderful. I’ve got enough fish pies in the freezer to keep me going for at least a year. And your granny and Henry are company of sorts. Although we know how much my dear mother-in-law likes to hide herself away in that annexe of hers.’

  Sennen laughed. ‘Dear Granny Hilda, she does make me laugh. Love you, Mum.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  FOUR

  The next morning Rita headed out to a grey March sky which suddenly gave out rain in thick, unyielding sheets. Even Henry wasn’t moving from his bed by the Aga. With a heavy sigh, she headed back inside, pulled on her trusty old raincoat, the one with the frayed hood, swapped trainers for wellies, grabbed her wicker egg basket and set off into the downpour to tackle her early morning chores. Noticing the light on in Hilda’s annexe reminded her that she still needed to drop off the laundry she’d recently done for her.

  With a sack of dried food over her shoulder, she scurried across the courtyard towards the goat field, where she could hear them kicking their cans for food. Whinnies of protest drifted on the wind from the horses at neighbouring Hawthorn Acre, displeased by the sudden precipitation.

  On seeing Rita approaching, the goats’ comforting, soft maas soon changed to high-pitched, demanding bleats that filled the rain-fresh air with energy. In a hopeless attempt to shield her face from the rain, Rita tugged her hood down until it nearly met her nose. ‘Morning, your majesties,’ she trilled, squinting through the torrent. ‘Breakfast is served.’

  The goats stared at her, unblinking, their rectangular pupils giving an unsettling, almost alien expression. No matter how many times she’d fed, herded, or wrestled them out of the vegetable patch, and as much as she’d grown a fondness for them, she still couldn’t get used to that eerie, side-glancing stare.

  The four, Elizabeth, Camilla, Mary and Anne – were all does of a similar age.

  Now climbing over each other in hungry anticipation, the drenched quartet snuffled eagerly at the goat pellets in their tins, their beady eyes already fixed on the apple pieces Rita had begun scattering around their enormous grassy pen. She had never known animals so greedy, but their ridiculous antics and constant humour more than made up for their mischievous traits. Not having the head space, time, or money at the moment to breed them, they had become expensive pets – pets that Rita could barely afford but just couldn’t bear to part with.

  Rita held up the pellet bag and shook its final contents into the pen. As she was folding it up ready to dispose of, her eyes were suddenly drawn to a sharp streak of red, a fresh-looking cut, just above one of her girls’ ankles. ‘Aw. Camilla, what have you done now, sweetheart?’

  Realising she’d have to go in and investigate, Rita hoisted herself onto the top of the splintered wooden fence and with a whispered, ‘You can do it,’ she swung one leg awkwardly over. As she tried to balance, she felt herself wobble. Arms flailing for dignity, she let out a sharp cry and half fell into the pen. Ignoring both her antics and the worsening weather, the goats continued chewing lazily.

  She managed to steady herself, just as her boots touched the earth, when a sudden flash of lightning split the sky, followed instantly by a deafening crack of thunder. The goats scattered in all directions, bleating in alarm as they tore around the pen.

  In the chaos, Mary clipped the back of Rita’s ankle, sending her sprawling backwards with a spectacular squelch. She landed hard on her bum, instantly drenched in a cocktail of mud, manure and rain. Her fingers went instinctively to her neck, searching, panicked, as though her necklace might simply have slipped to the side. But Archie’s sapphire and diamond gift – the thirtieth birthday talisman she had clung to like a tether – was gone. Maybe she’d misplaced it before. She frantically tried to find it. But deep down she knew. Another loss. Another piece of him slipping from her grasp.

  She sat there stunned, before the tears came: hot, snotty, unrelenting – born not of pain, but of bone-deep frustration and the long, raw ache of grief.