Coming Home: An uplifting feel good novel with family secrets at its heart. Fern Britton

put a cool hand on his arm and said, ‘We never knew who the father was. Sennen wouldn’t tell us.’

      ‘I see,’ said Vole, jotting this down in his notebook. ‘So it’s possible there could be two different fathers?’

      ‘Look,’ said Bill, ‘my daughter—’ Adela looked at him sharply and he corrected himself, ‘Our daughter …’ He took Adela’s hand. ‘Is missing. We want you to find her.’

      The policemen left, promising to keep them in touch with any developments but repeated that most runaways turned up pretty quickly.

      The next three days passed in a turmoil of worry, grief, anger and disbelief. Rosemary’s parents came round and the four of them tried to think if there had been any clues to their daughters’ disappearances.

      Henry and Ella were fractious and naughty. More than once either Adela or Bill would raise their voices at them which only brought more tears and tantrums.

      At the end of the week, the police began to take the idea that the girls may have come to harm, seriously.

      Photos of Sennen and Rosemary were given to the newspapers and the local television station.

      Witnesses came forward.

      A psychic said she had spoken to them in the spirit world and their bodies would be found in a disused tin mine.

      A taxi driver said he’d given them a lift to a party out in Newquay until the genuine passengers came forward.

      A midwife turned up at Plymouth police station to say she had given two girls answering the description, but not the names, a lift to the Plymouth Ferry Terminal. They were going to Roscoff, France to see their sick father.

      A man who had been working in the ticket office that night thought he might have seen them and that they had bought two tickets to Santander, Spain.

      Slowly the police put the runaways journey together and got in touch with the Spanish police.

      ‘They’ll be back before you know it,’ Tracey, the family liaison officer, told Bill and Adela. ‘With their tails between their legs.’

      Sennen woke up cold and stiff and with a hangover. Next to her Rosemary twitched in her sleep and murmured something unintelligible. ‘Hey,’ said Sennen shaking her. ‘What’s the time?’

      Rosemary turned away irritably. ‘Dunno.’

      Sennen gave up and crawled out of the makeshift bed in the basement apartment. She rubbed her face and gave herself a scratch. Last night the room had looked okay, but this morning she saw it for what it was. A shaft of sunshine from a narrow window illuminated the mattress on the floor and the worn blankets on top of it. She needed a pee. Stepping over her abandoned shoes she opened the bedroom door onto a corridor. She smelt coffee coming from a room at the end. ‘Ola!’ a cheery female voice with a Mancunian accent called from what Sennen assumed was the kitchen.

      ‘Hi. Which door is the loo?’ asked Sennen.

      ‘The one with Che Guevara on it,’ the voice replied.

      The mouldy smelling bathroom housed a shower, a loo with a wobbly seat, and a small basin with a dripping tap.

      She had her pee then swilled her mouth with cold water and splashed her face. A speckled mirror told her she had a spot on her chin. ‘Shit.’ She gave it a squeeze, rinsed her face again, retreated and followed the smell of coffee.

      ‘Surprised to see you up so early.’ The girl was in her early twenties. She wore short dungarees, with a bright cotton scarf tied round her head. She handed Sennen a cup. ‘Get this down you.’

      ‘Thank you,’ said Sennen.

      ‘I remember my first night here,’ the girl said. ‘I’d got the train from Manchester to Portsmouth, then hitched a ride with a long-distance lorry driver all the way through France and Spain. Decent bloke. Had a daughter my age. Want a bread roll?’ She picked up a brown paper bag and pulled out a small baguette. ‘Got no marmalade or owt, though.’

      Sennen took it gratefully, breaking it into small pieces, hoping she could keep them down. Her hangover was pretty fierce.

      There was the sound of the bedroom door opening. Rosemary wandered out wearing a Snoopy T-shirt and tiny knickers. She sat down on a vinyl-covered stool. ‘I feel shit,’ she said bleakly. ‘Morning.’

      ‘Morning. Bread roll?’ said her hostess brightly.

      Rosemary reached for one and started eating.

      ‘So,’ said the girl putting her tanned legs on the table and sipping her coffee, ‘what’s the real reason you’re here? Tell your Auntie Rachel.’

      Rosemary looked at Sennen who was thoughtfully chewing her bread.

      ‘Our parents chucked us out,’ Sennen said.

      Rachel’s eyes narrowed. ‘Really?’

      Sennen pulled her lips down at the corners and nodded. ‘Yeah. Apparently, I am a bad influence on Rosemary.’

      ‘Well, I know you two can drink.’ Rachel got up and opened a kitchen drawer. She rooted around then grabbed a brown pill bottle. ‘This should help your hangovers.’

      Rosemary, round-eyed, shot a frightened look at Sennen.

      Rachel laughed. ‘I’m not a dealer. It’s aspirin.’

      Twisting the lid off, Sennen downed two tablets. ‘Thanks, Rachel. For last night. I don’t know what we’d have done.’

      ‘Yeah well,’ Rachel shrugged, ‘I know those people who were buying you drinks and you looked as if you needed rescuing, so …’

      Sennen’s hazy memories of last night were of a group of three handsome young Spaniards who’d found them wandering from the docks into the town and offered them dinner.

      ‘They seemed nice,’ said Rosemary. ‘I liked them.’

      ‘Yeah, they’re okay, but you need your wits about you. Mateo is a player.’

      Sennen thought back. ‘Mateo in the white jeans?’

      ‘The one and only. Not the type to take home to your mother.’ Rachel sighed. ‘I know from personal experience.’ She retied the scarf in her hair. ‘Moving on, what’s next for you two? You need a job. Somewhere to live.’

      Rosemary, who was feeling rather homesick and would have done anything to catch the next ferry home, looked pleadingly at Sennnen – who ignored her.

      ‘We were thinking of bar work or chambermaiding, perhaps,’ Sennen shrugged. ‘Anything.’

      Rachel got to her feet and put her mug in the sink. ‘You can stay here for a week or two. After that you’re on your own. I’ve got to go to work in an hour, so get dressed and I’ll take you into town with me. We’ll ask around.’

      Rachel’s apartment was underneath an old and ugly residential building which had many windows broken. As the three girls climbed the dark and smelly concrete stairs to ground level, Rachel explained that the building was due to be demolished. ‘I’ve been here for three months now. One of the better squats I’ve known.’ She pushed a heavy door and they found themselves on the street.

      Sennen and Rosemary squinted at the sudden sharp light. Rachel found some sunglasses and perched them on her nose, sniffing. ‘Gonna be hot today.’

      As they walked, they passed small parks with ladies walking dogs and men sitting in the shade watching the ladies walking the dogs.

      Café tables and umbrellas spilt out on to the pavement, the smell of the lunchtime tapas reminding Sennen that she could do with some breakfast.

      They walked for about fifteen minutes, turned a corner, and saw the sea sparkling ahead of them with a long stretch of beach running to their left