this occasion, it might mean going against every instinct and doing the very thing that seemed harshest.
‘I hadn’t thought about all the media attention,’ Marina murmured. ‘I’ve been so bound up in taking in the fact he’s still alive … the media coverage was bad enough when he went missing … although then, I was grateful that people were looking for him. But this, this is horrendous.’
‘I’ll deal with the media, when it comes to it. I’ll write the story. I know that sounds callous and hard, but if I don’t do it, someone else will. Give me the exclusive and I’ll do my best to put forward your side of things. I can’t stop other people from writing what they want, but at least you know you can trust me.’
‘I want to go back to not knowing. I wish Lachlan had never looked for Nate. I’m relieved he’s not dead or hurt … but why did I have to know?’
Tiff rubbed Marina’s hand. ‘You’ll get through this, I promise you.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose you could look at it another way. If he’d kept it to himself, how would you have felt?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe you think that now, but you won’t always. Come here.’
Tiff leaned forward and hugged her. Marina had been a rock to her in her darkest hour and now she owed it to her cousin to be the same.
Her auntie and uncle arrived shortly afterwards and Tiff spent the rest of the day handing out tissues, making tea and finding out as much as she could, always aware of the clock ticking.
Marina needed time to let her initial shock and anger abate before they told the authorities and all hell broke loose.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Marina didn’t know how she would have coped if Tiff hadn’t gone with her to the police station to report that Nate had been found. As she wasn’t reporting him for committing a crime, the police could do nothing but take enough details to alert the South African police to conduct a welfare check on the person suspected of being Nate. They confirmed he was perfectly within his rights to go off and live his life elsewhere, so long as he wasn’t doing it to commit a crime.
On the journey home from the police station, familiar sights like St Michael’s Mount seemed alien. She felt as if she couldn’t even take a rock or a stone for granted, and every time she looked, she feared it might not be there. She knew she was still in shock and tried to tell herself that it was OK to feel this sense of total disorientation. No one could help because no one had ever been through a remotely similar experience.
Back at the cottage, Tiff put a mug of tea in front of her that she didn’t really want. ‘This is the hardest part,’ she said. ‘I’ll not say it’s going to get easier but you’ve taken the first step. How are you doing?’
‘Part of me wants to pretend he’s still dead. I spent so many days, months and years wishing he’d come back and now he could, I don’t want him to. I need to know why but I don’t want to know why.’
‘That’s understandable, my love.’
‘I also can’t stop thinking about Lachlan. I know it isn’t his fault. I can understand and forgive him for checking out the message, and I realise now that even if he hadn’t, one day there might have been a slip-up or Nate might have decided to come back anyway … But I can’t cope with a new relationship at the moment. I feel as if I’ve crawled to the top of a mountain and been knocked back down again. This time, not because Nate’s dead, but because he’s been found.’
Tiff patted her hand. ‘No wonder you’re at sixes and sevens after such a betrayal.’
‘Yes. And I know Lachlan’s a good man, but I’m not sure I can believe in anyone ever again.’
‘You will,’ she said firmly.
‘Do you think so?’
‘One day …’ Tiff murmured. ‘Give yourself time.’
A short time later, Tiff left her to her thoughts while she popped down to her office in town. Life had to go on, Marina realised, but alone in the cottage, with all its associations, many of them now tainted, she felt the walls were closing in on her. Even the waves crashing on the beach below and the gulls’ cries added to her melancholy, rather than soothing her as they usually did.
She had