Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection: Moon Island, Sunrise, Follies. Rosie Thomas

of sounding a knell, the truth began to offer her some hope of escape.

      Elizabeth worked from the other end of the stall. She didn’t recognise many of her customers for cookies and muffins. There were few local people in the line, or anywhere on the church green. At the height of summer Pittsharbor belonged to the visitors and she saw no harm in that. Tourists brought prosperity to a coastline that had once been frozen with poverty; she was a summer migrant herself, just like the Beams and the others, although Marian considered herself above the rental tide that flooded the coast every year. It was a shame Aaron and Hannah were so resistant to Spencer’s proposition. The land was ripe for development.

      Characteristically, Marty was a blur of energy. He juggled his two pans, flipping an unending series of pancakes out on to the paper plates May held for him. He even found time for good-humoured conversation. ‘I got a great shot of you.’

      ‘What?’ Her sore hand wobbled and she almost dropped a loaded plate before thrusting it into the outstretched hands of a waiting customer. ‘Three dollars, please.’

      ‘Down at the beach. When you were playing volleyball with the other kids. I’ll show you tonight, if you want to come over before the party.’

      ‘Party?’

      ‘After the town fireworks. Just beer and barbecue, for the five houses and whatever kids are around. Maybe not the Fennymores. Are you and your dad and sister coming?’

      May moistened her lips. ‘I … I guess so. Although, I don’t know.’ A party for the bluff houses meant Leonie as well as Lucas. Darts of confusion shot through her. A hand clutching loose change opened under her nose. ‘Miss? You gave me a dollar short.’

      Marty had already turned back to his pancakes.

      The afternoon grew hotter. The sky was a thunderous metallic blue and the sea seemed exhausted into stillness. The crowds that had thronged the green over lunch-time thinned out as people drifted down to the harbour and the beach. Karyn and Elliot arrived to relieve Marian, who swept the babies away to buy balloons. Tom took over the pancake-making and when Marty left, May seized the opportunity to slip away too. A little later Richard and Shelly arrived with their children and suddenly there were more helpers than customers.

      Leonie stood by her husband’s shoulder. ‘Is there something I can do?’

      He flipped yet another pancake on to a paper plate and heaped it with sweet blueberries before folding and anointing it with sugar and cream. A woman who should have refused the temptation accepted the plate and dug a plastic spoon into the ooze. ‘Nope. Thanks.’

      Leonie knew well enough what Tom thought of her cooking, but the curtness of his dismissal made her head jerk up and her mouth fill with a retort. Before she uttered it she looked along the efficient line of Beams working the bake stall and turned away abruptly.

      The churchyard was enclosed by a tidy white picket fence and a gate that led on to the green. Leonie clicked open the gate and stepped inside. Immediately the air felt cooler from the prospect of shade under the trees edging the plot. She put her hands in the pockets of her shorts and wandered along the path between the gravestones. Most of the inscriptions were familiar to her, but she let her eyes travel once more over the memorials to Purrits and Hanscoms and Deeveys.

      What to do? she asked herself hotly and incoherently. What to do for the best?

      In the farthest corner stood an old yew tree. When she reached it Leonie stopped in its green-black shelter, stroking the ribbed, fibrous bark with her fingertips.

      To go or to stay. Those were her choices, without making John Duhane a factor in either of them. The other night after May had gone up to her bedroom they had sat together for a little while, mostly in silence. Then John had stood up and said he would see her back to the Beams’ house. They had flitted through the Japanese garden and descended the beach steps. Their footsteps mushed noisily on the shingle and the waves sucked at the tideline.

      At the Beams’ stairs John had stepped back, almost melting into the darkness. ‘Good-night,’ he’d said quietly.

      An hour before, they had been locked in one another, then May’s staring face had materialised at the window and the glass had shattered under her fist.

      ‘Good-night,’ Leonie had answered formally, as if they were strangers.

      Since then they had only glimpsed each other in the distance.

      ‘I always find it a good place for thinking.’ The voice made Leonie spin round, a startled gasp catching in her throat. Elizabeth was kneeling beside one of the graves. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’ She motioned towards the headstone. ‘I took the opportunity to come and do some tidying up. Have they finished with you at the bake stall too?’

      Leonie moved out into the harsh sunlight and stood at Elizabeth’s side. The plot was well tended and there were fresh garden flowers in a marble um. Screwing up her eyes against the brightness, she read the inscriptions and saw that it was the grave of Elizabeth’s parents. ‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ she murmured, but Elizabeth stood up and brushed at her skirt.

      She dropped a pair of secateurs and a trowel into her raffia basket. ‘I’m done here. Perhaps we could sit over there for five minutes.’ There was a bench against the fence, still in the tree’s shade. A patch of scuffed earth in front of it and the scattering of cigarette butts suggested that it was one of the evening hang-outs of the town youth.

      When they sat down Leonie groped in her pocket and brought out a pack of her own cigarettes. She had started smoking again in the last few days, ignoring Tom’s disapproval. She lit up and exhaled fiercely. She was calculating that she must have known Elizabeth Newton for all the years she had been coming to the beach, but she couldn’t remember ever exchanging more than polite commonplaces with her.

      ‘My mother and father are here. But my husband is at St John’s in Boston. Where should I be put when the time comes, I wonder?’ Elizabeth spoke meditatively, as if to herself. ‘In the end it will be Spencer who decides.’

      ‘Won’t he do what you tell him to?’

      ‘I suppose he might.’

      Leonie suddenly laughed. There was a sly humour in Elizabeth she had never noticed before.

      ‘What I would really like’, Elizabeth continued, ‘is to be planted out on Moon Island, like Sarah. Now, that is a beautiful spot.’

      ‘On the island? Sarah who?’

      Elizabeth slowly turned her head. She examined Leonie’s face in detail, searching for a sign. ‘It’s an old story. Haven’t you ever heard it?’

      The Pittsharbor Day noise from the green was a long way off as Leonie listened. But threading in and out of Elizabeth’s low murmur she thought she could hear the counterpoint of Tom’s voice and Marian calling, and the clamour of children. She frowned in concentration, following Elizabeth’s narrative. The old woman was a good story-teller.

      ‘Little May Duhane saw her ghost.’

      Leonie straightened her back. The gravestones marched away from her across the grass, their shadows beginning to lengthen now. An uncomfortable association that she couldn’t place scratched at her subconscious. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ she said. ‘Or in supernatural warnings, whatever they might be. But I’m sure of one thing. May will be all right in the end, however difficult her life may be now. Her father loves her and he puts his children first, above everything else.’ She paused, looking down at her hands resting in her lap. She twisted the wedding ring on her finger and stared away again over the gap-teeth of the gravestones. ‘It’s her age. The demons of adolescence. They’ll let her go in the end. Don’t you remember what it was like to be that age?’

      ‘Yes, I remember.’

      The tremor in the older woman’s voice made Leonie turn to look at her. ‘I didn’t mean to dismiss the Sarah story.’

      ‘You