The village was full of summer people down in the holiday cottages by the harbour. Within weeks of moving in we were suddenly part of a little gang. There was a doctor’s family with identical twin boys, Benjamin and Tristan. They were Dominique’s age but wild and undisciplined. Their parents seemed to have given up trying to control them, but Dominique, somehow, managed to harness their energy and imagination. If they broke gang rules they were out.
The twins were in awe of Dominique and the three of them instigated most of our adventures. They made maps of our kingdom from Nearly Cave to Poo Tunnel. From Forbidden Beach out to the rugged cliffs and down to Priest’s Cove where the Pirate Boats came in with plunder.
After a while Maman and Papa let us roam a little further, as long as Dominique and the older children were with us. Papa would drop us off in his truck at Priest’s Cove to play soldiers and pirates on Smuggler’s Bridge. Later, Maman would walk along the coastal path to meet us with Mr Rowe’s old collie, Mabel.
None of us ever fell off the edge of a cliff or drowned. Nothing dire happened apart from us occasionally getting tired and quarrelsome. I was the youngest and wilted first at the miles the older children covered. Often Maman made me go home with her and I was secretly grateful. I am sure keeping up helped with my running when I was older. I learned stamina. I learned that if you whined or dragged your feet you got left behind.
Of course, it wasn’t a Mary Poppins life. Papa liked the pub a bit too much. Maman was possessive and jealous of other women. They had spectacular rows. Sometimes, Dominique and I would cover our ears and run out into the wild garden.
I would get upset but Dominique just laughed and shrugged.
‘Pff! It’s only Papa flirting or Maman thinking he is. They will make up.’ And they always did. We would return home to find Maman flushed and happy in a mysteriously embarrassing way. Papa would wink at us as he self-consciously helped Maman prepare our tea.
‘Guilty!’ Dominique would whisper.
‘Of what?’ I would whisper back.
Dominique would lean behind her hand. ‘Flirting with Miss Hicks. He’s mending her roof. Maman accused him of fancying her.’
‘Is fancying the same as flirting?’
Dominique considered. ‘I think it is one step worse. It’s okay though, it’s what grown-ups do. They get married, then they like other people and have rows.’
‘But … Papa still loves Maman?’
‘Of course he does, Rabbit. Look at them, all lovey-dovey …’
Dominique would roll her eyes and put a finger down her throat and pretend to be sick.
My sister was the font of all knowledge and my lodestar. When she went to secondary school I would wait for her at the bus stop every afternoon.
One day, she did not get off the school bus as usual. A girl in Dominique’s class told me that my sister had got off a stop early so she could walk home with her friends.
I was stricken by the sudden realization that Dominique was too kind to tell me that she wanted to spend more time with her friends, less with me.
I took off for the beach, mortified, and sat for the rest of the afternoon finding flat pebbles to skim, determined not to cry. Papa spotted me driving home in his truck. He came and sat beside me as I skimmed the stones into the waves. I did not say anything but somehow Papa knew.
‘Dominique needs a bit of space sometimes, sweetheart …’
From then on Papa tried to come home early on the days Maman was giving French lessons or privately tutoring. He took me body-boarding. He bought a double canoe and we towed it off to the estuary. I would do my homework or read a book while he fished.
Dominique had discovered the Jubilee Pool in Penzance. Everyone went there in the summer. Papa would drop me off after school to join her and her friends. That was where I met Morwenna, my first best friend.
She lived in a cottage the other side of the point by the harbour. Her father was a fisherman and her house always smelt of fish. Like Maman, her mother was always working too. In the Co-op, in the chippie and she cleaned holiday cottages.
Morwenna also had an elder sister, called Ada. Ada was not kind or pretty like Dominique. She had the disturbing, hard little face of an adult. A girl who grimly believed she had been cheated of something everyone else had. She had cause, I think, because her tired mother expected a lot of her.
Ada loathed Dominique with a passion that was unnerving. She had a vicious tongue and she lied about people. She liked to make trouble for Dominique both with Maman and at school. I always believed that Ada had something to do with Maman sending Dominique away, but I could never prove it.
The winters of my childhood could seem endless. There were days and days of damp sea mist that descended like a dark cloak to the very doors and windows. It made the trees into eerie, shapeless monsters. It suffocated sound, gave us headaches and made us irritable. Then there were the biting easterly winds that hit the house head on with a vicious intensity that made the windows and doors rattle.
Maman was always cold. Papa was constantly fixing windows and plugging gaps under doors. Winters meant being claustrophobically closed in together. If the weather stopped Papa working outside he would get frustrated and march about the house at weekends snapping at everyone.
Maman would happily bake if she was kept inside, but Papa would pace up and down driving her mad. Dominique, bored, would thump up and down the stairs unable to keep still. I could curl up and read but Dominique never could.
Maman and I would wait for the explosion as Papa and Dominique got on each other’s nerves. Papa would tell Dominique to do something constructive like tidy her room or get on with some homework. Dominique would snap straight back with a rude, ‘Why don’t you do something constructive like helping Maman with the housework for a change …?’
Woomph! Like lighting touchpaper, Maman, Papa and Dominique would all jump up and down shouting and waving their arms. I would pick up my book and fly to my room for peace.
Then, slowly, spring would start to emerge. Translucent leaves on the trees would begin to unfurl. The daffodil fields in the valleys would turn from tight green buds to a blaze of yellow. The hedgerows came alive with hundreds of wild flowers.
I would look out of my window and see Maman feeding the chickens in the orchard. I would see Papa and Dominique bent together painting the bottom of his upturned boat. Behind them lay a sea, no longer rough and sullen, but turning from winter navy to a translucent greeny-blue.
Those days seem halcyon now. I was too young to know how transient happiness is. I knew nothing of fear or jealousy or the reach of the past. I could never have dreamt that the four of us – Maman, Papa, Dominique and me – could ever be ripped apart.
London, November 2009
Emily comes up the stairs to my office with a coffee and some contracts to sign. She has been restless and preoccupied lately and I suspect that someone has approached her with a job offer. She’s my right hand and I don’t want to lose her.
I take my coffee and wait until she is sitting down. ‘Rumour has it that someone is trying to entice you away from us, Em. You would let me know if you are thinking of leaving us?’
‘Honestly!’ Emily says quickly, looking embarrassed. ‘Of course I’d tell you, Gabby. Adrian Lang put out feelers, that’s all. They are looking for someone to head their foreign rights department …’
‘He’s a