The Undercliff Novels - Rocken Edge

The third of The Undercliff Novels is finished and in the hands of my agent. The setting moves further along the coast towards the west of the Isle of Wight, past St Catherine’s lighthouse to a fictitious farm at Rocken Edge.

My new characters are Clare - a traumatised teenager with an unwanted baby, searching for someone, and Fran - an older woman who lives at Rocken Edge Farm with her animals and her penchant for the ballet. There is also a major reappearance of Rachel, from Blue Slipper Bay who owns a café on the esplanade at Ventnor and is being tempted by all things Italian. And of course, all my old friends from The Sorrow Of Sisters and Blue Slipper Bay are still living in The Undercliff. After all, it is their home and they refuse to be budged!

Quotes:

Clare turned away from the locked door of Rachel’s Café and looked up and down the empty esplanade. Her legs and feet felt chilled in the cheap tracksuit trousers and trainers that Father Ryan had got for her and her bare fingers were growing numb. She couldn’t even put her hands in her pockets because her arms were supporting the baby zipped inside her big black puffa jacket. She gazed wearily out at the grey sea which merged into a steely sky. An eerie wind whined up the road and snaked round her. She shivered. She’d managed to find her way right across the island to Ventnor, but where was the lighthouse?

Rachel ignored the person rattling the handle of the café door. She desperately needed her friends to talk to. Sophie was on her way from Blue Slipper Bay and Jill promised she’d walk down from Cormorants. Rachel felt a fresh gush of tears welling. She felt out of control, her emotions veering between grief, anger and sheer bewilderment. How was it possible to be feeling like a jilted, conned woman when yesterday she’d been leaping about like a spring lamb? She blotted her wet cheeks with her black and white striped apron and sat listening to the wind moaning bleakly along the esplanade as if it were commiserating.

Fran went out of the stable and shut the door, glad to be in the open air which smelled of salt and wet grass. She stretched her stiff back, listening to the waves booming against the cliffs below. Heavy grey clouds were lumbering in from the south-west. The lighthouse beam swept round above her, silvery bright in the dull afternoon. She lifted up the lamb she was holding, as if showing him. ‘This isn’t a bad place to be born,’ she said. She walked across the cobbles towards the kitchen door of the stone farmhouse, pausing to watch her flock of white doves pecking at seed amongst the cracks. ‘My lovely-dovelies,’ she cooed. A sudden squall of wind gusted through the yard. The doves rose up, scattering, and then reforming on the ground like a little corps of ballerinas. Fran chuckled. ‘Did you see that?’

Father Ryan peered down at the heaving sea and wondered what would happen if he were to climb over the railing and simply tip forward. Would The Almighty reach down from above and steady him? Or would he just plummet like a discarded black bag of refuse? He closed his eyes and listened within for an answer. But the voice of God was not to be heard, no loving presence felt.