‘Has your brother mentioned anything about coming home?’ she asked Jennie casually one evening.
Jennie grinned. She was used to women asking her questions about her handsome big brother.
‘Nope. Shall I write and say you were asking?’
‘Just you dare!’
He came back three years later, just before Christmas—when the fairy lights in the pubs twinkled like rainbow drops, reminding him of everything he had missed about England.
Shelley was on her way home from her job as receptionist in Milmouth’s upmarket car showroom when she saw him, and had to bite back her pleasure, because she didn’t want to gush all over him like a silly little girl.
‘Hello, Drew,’ she said softly. ‘Jennie said you were coming home.’
‘Is that really you, Shelley Turner?’ he enquired, almost groaning when he realised that this tousled-haired stunner from next door was even more gorgeous than when he’d left. He hadn’t thought that was possible. But some time in the last three years she had developed the kind of figure that drove men to sin, and her hair was a glossy sheet—the colour of caramel. And he’d forgotten how delicate her skin was and how pale the aquamarine of her eyes.
‘Of course it’s me!’ she giggled. ‘Who else did you think it was?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he answered slowly, his blue eyes looking dazzling in his tanned face. ‘Are you going out tonight?’
‘Just try and stop me! It’s my birthday tomorrow,’ she confided. ‘And a whole gang of us are meeting up in the Smugglers.’
‘Your birthday?’ He frowned as alarm bells rang loudly in his brain. ‘How old are you?’
She was slightly disappointed that he couldn’t remember, but clever enough not to show it. ‘I’ll be twenty.’
‘Wow! You’ll be twenty? Well, isn’t that just dandy!’ His grin showed his relief. ‘Mind if I join you?’
Mind? She would have spent all her birthday money on a red carpet if it hadn’t looked so obvious! ‘No, I don’t mind at all,’ she answered coolly.
He gave her a boab nut he’d picked up on his travels, with a piece of glittery tinsel tied round it, and sat beside her in the pub, and Shelley didn’t want to talk to anyone else but him.
‘So did you miss me, little girl?’ he quizzed.
She had not yet learnt guile. ‘Yes.’ But something told her not to let him know how much. ‘And I’m a big girl now.’
‘So I see.’ A pulse began to work in his temple. ‘So I see.’ To her surprise, he trailed a finger along her cheek and gently tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, then frowned. ‘Since when did you start wearing mascara?’
She blinked at him, perplexed. ‘But I’m not.’
‘You mean your lashes have always been that long?’ he teased. ‘And that dark?’
She laughed. ‘I think so! Have you only just noticed, Drew?’
‘Mmm. Right this very moment.’ He looked terribly thoughtful, and suddenly leaned across and kissed her softly on the lips, in front of the whole pub—and that was that. They became an overnight item. Drew and Shelley. Shelley and Drew. As inseparable as eggs and bacon or peaches and cream.
Drew worked hard for his money. He took a regular job at the boatyard and any other job which came his way—and plenty did. Craftsmen of his calibre were rare enough but coupled with youthful vigour and dedication—well, it seemed that everyone wanted a piece of him. Once a week he went on day release to college and night-times he studied for higher certificates in construction and building.
And the only person who seemed to be missing out was his girlfriend…
‘Oh, Drew!’ Shelley sighed, one day, when he’d snatched a moment to eat his lunchtime sandwiches with her, sitting side by side on the sea wall. ‘You’re always working!’
‘Listen, kitten, the money’s good and it’s money we need if we want any kind of future together.’
‘But I never see you any more!’
‘You’ll see as much of me as you like once we have a place of our own,’ he promised, and kissed the tips of her fingers, one by one. ‘And guess what?’
‘What?’
‘The coastguard’s cottage is still on the market!’ He could barely contain his excitement.
‘What, that old place?’ Shelley elongated her mouth into a grimace. ‘I’m not surprised! They probably can’t give it away. You’d need to virtually knock it down and start again to make it habitable!’
‘But I can do that,’ he shrugged modestly. ‘That’s what I’m training for. That and making you happy.’
‘You do,’ she pouted, so that he would kiss her.
And when he’d kissed her so that she could barely catch her breath he grinned and said, ‘Want to get married?’
‘Oh, yes, please!’
‘Soon?’
‘How soon?’
‘Very soon!’ he groaned.
He even asked her mother’s permission, and Shelley couldn’t ever remember seeing her mother look so happy and relieved. Glad that Shelley would have the emotional security she had always longed for.
He bought her a tiny diamond ring which twinkled discreetly on her finger when she held it up to the light.
‘It’s very small,’ someone remarked nastily.
‘No, it’s perfect,’ she disagreed fiercely. ‘And you’re just jealous!’
They decided that they would get married just as soon as they had saved up enough money to buy the coastguard’s cottage and everything was nearly perfect.
But they never made love. Not all the way.
Behind the wooden huts on the windswept beach, their kisses grew wilder, their caresses more frantic—but Drew always calmed things down, made them stop. Shelley felt churned up and bewildered.
She knew that there had been women on his travels. Nothing he’d said, but little things he’d let slip. Sometimes a letter would arrive from some far-off destination and he would scour the envelope and toss it into the bin unread. Once, she saw a postcard from a woman called Angie, the contents of which were graphic enough to make her feel sick.
‘And who the hell is Angie?’ she demanded.
‘She was just a girl I knew,’ he answered quietly, ripping the card into tiny little pieces and tossing them into the bin.
She felt sick with jealousy at the thought of what he might have done with Angie and others like her, and she couldn’t understand his reluctance to do the same with her.
‘You’re different,’ he told her softly.
She was still smarting over Angie’s postcard. ‘You’ll have to come up with something better than that!’
‘Okay. Let me put it this way, then. I don’t want you to get pregnant before we’re married. It would totally freak your mother out. Shelley, she made me promise to take care of you—and I gave her my word that I would.’
‘There are such things as precautions, Drew. We both know that.’
‘And they all have risks. We both know that, too. And I want