But you must have some idea where your own sister might have taken herself off to if she didn't go to work. You know her. And him. You know him as well, if it comes down to it."
-Hey. Don't put that on me. She knew his reputation. Everyone knows it. But she wasn't having any words of wisdom from anyone. And anyway, what you really care about is not where she is at this exact moment but that she got derailed. Just like you."
-She isn't derailed."
-She bloody well is. And where does that leave you, Dad? You pinned your dreams on her instead of living your own."
-She'll get back to it."
-Don't put money on that."
-And don't you - " Abruptly, Lew bit off whatever it was he'd intended to say.
They faced each other then across the width of kitchen. It was an expanse of less than ten feet, but it was also a chasm that grew wider every year. Each of them stood at his respective edge, and it seemed to Cadan that the time would come when one of them was going to topple over the side.
SELEVAN PENRULE TOOK HIS time about getting over to Clean Barrel Surf Shop, having quickly decided it would be unseemly to bolt out of the Salthouse Inn the moment the whisper went round about Santo Kerne. He certainly had reason to bolt, but he knew it wouldn't look good.
Beyond that, at his age he was beyond bolting anywhere. Too many years of milking cows, not to mention herding the bloody bovines in and out of pastures, and his back was permanently bent and his hips were done for. Sixty-eight years old, he felt like eighty. He should have sold out and opened up the caravan park thirty-five years earlier, and he would have done so had he only had the cash, the bollocks, the vision, no wife, and no kids. They were all gone now, the house was torn down, and the farm was converted. Sea Dreams, he'd called it. Four neat rows of holiday caravans like shoe boxes, perched on the cliffs above the sea.
In his car, he was careful. There were dogs occasionally on the country lanes. Cats too. Rabbits.
Birds. Selevan hated the thought of hitting something, not so much because of the guilt or responsibility he might feel having brought about a death but because of the inconvenience it would cause him. He'd have to stop and he hated to stop once he set out on a course of action. In this case, the course of action was getting himself over to Casvelyn and into the surf shop where his granddaughter worked. He wanted Tammy to hear the news from him.
When he reached the town, he parked on the wharf, the nose of his antique Land Rover pointing towards the Casvelyn Canal, a narrow cut that had once connected Holsworthy and Launceston with the sea but that now meandered inland for seven miles before ending abruptly, like an interrupted thought. This put him across the River Cas from the centre of town where the surf shop was, but finding a spot for the car was always too much trouble over there - no matter the weather or the time of year - and, anyway, he wanted the walk. Tracing a path back along the crescent of road that defined the southwest edge of the town, he would have time to think. He had to have an approach that would play the information out and allow him to gauge her reaction to it. For what Tammy said she was and who Tammy really was were, as far as Selevan Penrule was concerned, in outright contradiction to each other. She just didn't know that yet.
Out of the car, he gave a nod to several fishermen who stood smoking in the rain, their craft at rest against the side of the wharf. They'd have come up from the sea by way of the canal lock at the wharf 's far end, and they presented a stark contrast to the boats and boatmen who would be in Casveyln with the start of summer. Selevan vastly preferred this group to those who would arrive with the better weather. True, he made his money from the tourist trade, but he didn't have to like that fact.
He set off into the heart of town, going towards it along a string of shops. He stopped for a takeaway coffee at Jill's Juices and then again for a packet