‘Jude, listen—’
‘Oh, just fuck off, Dad.’
Lastly, Ruth. ‘What do you expect, Ben? You let her down. You let us all down. And what about my plane? The insurers are going wild.’
These days, Ben’s younger sister was the CEO of the huge corporation she’d inherited from her adoptive father, Swiss billionaire Maximilian Steiner. The plane she was talking about was a Steiner Industries prototype turboprop that Ben had borrowed. Ostensibly, he’d only wanted it for the short trip from Oxfordshire to northern France and back. Ruth was having trouble understanding how her two-million-euro baby had ended up at the bottom of Lake Toba in Indonesia.
‘I’ve told you, I’m really sorry about the plane,’ he’d said. ‘Things got complicated.’
‘Like they always do with you, Ben.’
And once more, he’d found himself on the end of a dead line.
In the end, Ben had realised that if he pushed on with his search for Brooke and caught up with her, as he surely would, he’d only alienate her even more. Giving up the search was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
So here he was, sitting in the barely recognisable surroundings of what had once been his home, feeling lost. He’d no clear idea what had made him drift back here to the Galway coast. Maybe he hadn’t let go of that part of his past as completely as he’d thought he had. Or maybe he just wanted to punish himself by rubbing salt into his own wounds. All he knew was that after two months of drifting aimlessly from place to place, squandering his cash on hotel rooms, drinking far too much and spending most days in a trance-like state of numbness and regret, he’d found himself heading back to Ireland and renting a cottage on the beach less than half a mile from the large house that had once been his home.
Mrs Henry returned, interrupting his thoughts. Noticing that Ben’s glass was almost empty she said, ‘Ready for a top-up?’
‘I’m always ready for a top-up.’
‘See that nice-looking young lady over there?’ Mrs Henry said, lowering her voice and nodding towards the window as she refilled Ben’s glass. ‘She’s a famous writer.’
‘Uh-huh?’ Ben glanced back over his shoulder, feigning interest for the sake of politeness. The sandy-haired woman was still bent intently over her small laptop, tapping keys, very deeply absorbed by whatever she was working on. Finished with whatever was in her notebook, she paused to slip it into a slim leather pouch, then zipped the pouch shut and dropped it into the cloth bag at her feet before going back to her typing.
‘I wonder what she’s writing,’ Mrs Henry whispered, with a glimmer of excitement. ‘Perhaps she’s writing about this place. That’d really put us on the map.’
‘Murder at Pebble Beach?’ Ben said.
‘Oh, you are a one,’ Mrs Henry laughed, nudging him playfully. Then she bustled off again, leaving him alone at the bar.
Some time later, Ben left the guesthouse and wandered back down the private beach towards the water to sit on the big, flat barnacled rock he’d often sat on in the past. At high tide it overhung the surf and he’d spent many hours gazing at the water, smoking, thinking, alone. With three pints of Mrs Henry’s Guinness inside him, he was feeling a little more mellow than he had earlier. The booze helped to take the edge off his raw emotions, but he was acutely conscious of having been overdoing it lately, as well as of being somewhat out of condition after these weeks of neglecting his fitness. It didn’t take long at all for self-discipline to slip and bad habits to begin to shoot up like weeds.
He hated himself for letting it happen. In all the years since qualifying for 22 SAS, he’d kept up virtually the same disciplined, even punishing, regime and now here he was, by his own strict standards, intolerably slack, lazy and listless.
As he watched the waves, he made himself a promise that tomorrow morning, rain or shine, he’d be up with the sunrise and out running on the beach. He didn’t expect to be able to jump right back into his routine with the usual five miles followed by a hundred or so press-ups and sit-ups. But you had to start somewhere.
Meanwhile, there wasn’t much to do but let the time slip idly by. Reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket he took out his rumpled blue pack of Gauloises and Zippo lighter. He lit up the thirteenth – or was it the fourteenth? – cigarette of the day and gazed at the steel-coloured horizon. Those dark clouds over there in the west, somewhere over the Aran Islands, were gathering and sweeping in fast towards the mainland. A rainstorm was coming.
The crunch of approaching footsteps on the pebbles made him turn to see someone crossing the beach towards his rock. He recognised her at once: the sandy-haired woman who’d been sitting in the guesthouse earlier. She’d put a lightweight fleece on over her T-shirt and had her cloth bag slung over her shoulder.
As she came closer, she smiled at him. ‘Hello,’ she said. She had blue-grey eyes, which she shielded from the sun. The sea breeze gently ruffled her short hair.
Ben smiled back, but his smile was a little forced. He’d have preferred to have been left alone. When this had been his own private stretch of beach he’d been used to having it to himself. It seemed odd to have uninvited company here.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Be my guest,’ he replied.
She smoothed her hand along the rock and found a place to sit. ‘Nice here, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘Certainly is.’
‘I’m Kristen. Kristen Hall.’ Her accent was English, Home Counties maybe.
‘Ben.’ He held out his hand. Her grip felt soft but firm in his.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Ben Hope.’
He stared at her for a moment.
‘Mrs Henry told me who you were,’ she said, laughing at his surprised look. ‘She said the place used to belong to you.’
‘It’s true.’
‘It’s so lovely. You must miss it.’
This wasn’t a topic he wanted to dwell on. ‘So I hear you’re a writer,’ he said instead.
Kristen grinned. ‘Mrs Henry does like to blabber, doesn’t she?’
‘Certainly does. She’s all excited that you might include the guesthouse in your novel.’
‘She’s going to be disappointed. I’m not a novelist.’
‘Oh,’ Ben said, nodded, and looked back out to sea again.
‘More of a glorified journalist, really,’ she added.
Ben fell silent. He didn’t have much to say, about books or journalism or anything else.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can tell I’m disturbing you. I’d better go.’
He felt a stab of remorse. ‘Not at all.’
‘It’s okay.’ She smiled. ‘I know what it’s like to want to be left alone.’
‘It’s me who should be sorry. I’m being rude.’ He paused. ‘Look, I was going to take a walk along the beach before the weather closes in. Maybe you’d like to join me?’
She hesitated, looked at her watch. ‘There’s something I have to do later, but I have some time. All right, then. I’d love to. Being as you’re a former resident, you