Authors: Laura Wilkinson
Redemption Song
Redemption
Song
Laura Wilkinson
If you lost everything in one night, what would you do?
Saffron is studying for a promising career in medicine until a horrific accident changes her life for ever. Needing to escape London, she moves to a small coastal town to live with her mother. Saffron feels trapped until she meets Joe, another outsider. Despite initial misgivings, they grow closer to each other as they realise they have a lot in common.
Like Saffron, Joe has a complicated past … one that’s creeping up on his present. Can Joe escape his demons for long enough to live a normal life – and can Saffron reveal the truth about what really happened on that fateful night?
Love is the one thing they need most, but will they – can they – risk it?
Acknowledgements
As seems to be the way with me, there’s a long list of people to thank. The contributions of these lovely folk have made
Redemption Song
a stronger book. You have my heartfelt gratitude. Any errors, and distortions of fact, are all my own.
In no particular order:
Phil and Julia Cook of Portslade Baptist Church for welcoming a non-believer into their church and home, and for answering questions that, at times, must have seemed very stupid indeed. Grace and generosity under fire.
Jo Canon, author and doctor, and Ian Williams, graphic novelist and GP, for answering all things medical.
Nick Ellis for information and help with bat questions. If you’d like to know more about these fascinating creatures:
www.bats.org.uk
.
Paul Bacon for advice on legal matters, court procedure and sentencing. I have taken some liberties with police procedure and court sentencing to serve the plot. I hope you’ll be forgiving!
Fred Davies, aka the BigFella, for carpentry expertise.
The unnamed undercover copper for police procedure and a snippet of information that solved a whopping great plot hole.
My patient, and sensitive, beta readers: Katy O’Dowd, Julie-Ann Griffiths, SR, Norma Murray and Elizabeth Donnelly. You are superstars.
The entire team at Accent Press who work so hard for their authors. Enormous gratitude. Special mention to MD Hazel Cushion for her vision and energy, and to my editor, Greg Rees, who has faith in me even when I don’t and who believed in this story from the outset.
Sarah Rayner, bestselling author of
One Moment, One Morning
, and Araminta Hall, author of Richard & Judy Book Club choice,
Everything and Nothing
, for taking the time to read the manuscript and offering such generous quotes.
Big thanks also to the very many more friends and colleagues from real life, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram (we’d be here all day) who encourage and support me along each journey that it is the madness and joy of creating a novel. I’d be bonkers without you, assuming I’m not already.
And finally, my three lovely lads: the BigFella, Ginger1 and Ginger2. You don’t much care about the bookish stuff, but there’s so much love in your hearts, and that’s what counts.
P.S. This is a work of imagination. Coed Mawr is a fictional seaside town. It is inspired by the beautiful landscape of North Wales and in particular the resort town of Llandudno for which I have held a lifelong love. As a little girl, my grandparents often took me and my sister there during the long summer holidays. In Llandudno you will find a pier, though no art nouveau ballroom; you will find a cable car linking the two Ormes (the Great and Little) but you will not find tall trees on the cliff top shielding the town from the mountains; you will not find Devil’s Rise, nor Mr Roberts, Joe, Rain or Saffron. Like all the characters, they live only in this novel.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Luke 6:37
Prologue
The couple stagger to the front door. Before he lifts the latch, he looks at her and says, ‘We’re good, aren’t we?’
‘We’re good,’ the girl replies, after a brief pause.
Outside, on the gravel driveway, a battered Peugeot purrs. It is out of place in front of this grand house, with its columns and porch. The girl leans towards the driver’s side window and notices, for the first time, how old her rescuer looks. Not old, like the people she meets every day, but middle-aged. Flecks of grey in his hair glitter in the dull, dead-of-night light; his jowls sag. He is tired – and no wonder – but he is still a handsome man. She notices the way women react around him, all fluttering smiles and sparkling eyes; she sees the way he responds, all compliments and charm. Lately he seems happier in the company of relative strangers rather than those closest to him, but she could be imagining this. After all, she’s not around so much now.
‘Hiya. Thanks a billion. You didn’t have to.’
‘Yes, I did. Get in the back. Boys in the front tonight.’ He smiles.
The car pulls away before she’s finished clicking her seatbelt on. He’s in a hurry to get home and it’s quite a long drive, certainly for this time of night.
‘So, the big match tomorrow?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Any of chance of winning? After a night like this? Not what you’d call the best preparation, eh?’ The older man laughs and the younger one joins in. There is mutual affection and respect between them. The girl feels sad and yet very, very lucky.
‘Who knows,’ the boy says.
‘You’re young and it’ll be good practice for the other big day this year.’
The boy reaches behind him and squeezes the girl’s hand.
They twist and turn through deserted country lanes and she studies the backs of the men’s heads, their outline and form. They are prime specimens, both of them. There is nothing to see out of the window, only the dense foliage of hedgerows, and the sky has clouded over; there are no stars in sight. They are travelling fast, in the middle of the road, and she is rocked from side to side. Her eyes feel heavy, and her head begins to loll, her neck no longer able to support its weight.
She is on the brink of sleep when a cry disturbs her.
‘Brake!’
She hears the screech of tyres, feels the tilt of the car. And she is turning, rolling, bouncing off the interior of the saloon, the roof is coming towards her. She hears a cry – it is hers. There is a crunch. Then, nothing.
Silence.
No. Not quite. The hiss of the engine. She is crawling out of the smashed window, on her hands and knees. Her palms are covered in blood but she cannot feel any pain. Her engagement ring is no longer on her finger. She can’t feel anything. The car is upside down, bonnet crumpled against a stone wall. A sheep lies dead at the side of the road, its small head at an impossible angle.
She hears moaning and crawls to inspect the front of the car. Both men remain strapped in their seats. The airbags haven’t opened. The car is old, hasn’t had a full service in years.
She begins to shake. It seems impossible, but she is alive.
Alive.
Nearly two years later…
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Saffron pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor, head resting on the wheel, and turned the key for the umpteenth time. Zilch. Nada. Absolutely nothing. Not even the horrible screech of an engine trying and failing to catch. After slapping the wheel five times, she wrenched the key from the ignition and leapt out of the Standard, slamming the door behind her and kicking the wing on the driver’s side – hard – before banging her fists on the bonnet. Her foot throbbed; even Doc Martens couldn’t protect her toes from the force of her assault. Thank God these old bangers were built like tanks. The last car she’d driven, a modern one, was so flimsy she’d feared it might fly away in a high wind. It had reminded her of her father’s model cars; the motorised ones he took racing with the other geeks, a hobby lovingly mocked by Saffron and her mother.
A seagull shrieked overhead and Saffron jumped.
Damn those birds. Another disadvantage of living here. Shit! Mum. She’ll be worried.
She pulled her phone from her duffel coat pocket, hoping to find a local garage online as well as making the all-important call to let her mum know what had happened. No connection, of course. Nothing worked in this poxy place.
I only came here to be around for Mum.
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger,’ she yelled, hitting the bonnet over and over, voice thick with rage and frustration. Tears threatened. Fear of denting the car – it was a classic after all – and exhaustion, stopped her pummelling. She folded over the bonnet, rested her brow on the metal. The air was sharp; the engine had cooled already, the metal soothing against her dewy skin. Her throat contracted and her chest heaved with sobs. Lame. But she couldn’t stop. Once upon a time, she wouldn’t have described herself as a quitter or a fraud. But so much overwhelmed her these days and the truth, often mercurial, seemed more elusive than ever.
How was she to get home now? The day was closing in and the roads were icy, despite the so-called thaw promised on the news, and this road – if you could call it that, it was little more than a dirt track – was well shaded, particularly in the dip where the stone bridge crossed the river before the steep incline of the hill. Only a fool would attempt Devil’s Rise in slippery conditions; only Saffron. There’d be no passing traffic. Locals steered clear in this weather, and there were no tourists at this time of year. The coast road was their route of choice, regardless. She thumped the bonnet a final time.
‘You’re not going to get it started that way.’
She jerked upright. Had she imagined a voice? A male voice? No. The silhouette of a tall figure loomed in front of a beaten-up Land Rover. How come she’d not heard its approach? They weren’t smooth machines, not a like a Mercedes or a Porsche. She wiped away the remains of her tears, determined not to appear a useless cry baby. He walked towards her, raking fingers through brown hair. The sides were closely cropped – a number two, Saffron guessed – with a strip of weightier hair across the top. She noticed his torn jeans and donkey jacket. He looked a bit rough.
‘It’s not going to start any other way.’ She scowled, kicking herself for sounding so belligerent. This man was her only hope of getting out of there. Her salvation – or damnation. He might as easily be Satan himself.
You just can’t keep your big mouth shut, can you? Be nice.
Composing herself, she forced a smile. ‘I’ve tried everything.’
‘You want me to take a look?’ She noticed a pack of cigarettes poking out of his jacket pocket; heavy tar, judging by the gravelly voice. In hospital, she’d seen enough throats and lungs wrecked by smoking to know. A bad boy. Man; he looked at least thirty. He didn’t sound like a local.
She shrugged.
‘Open her up, then.’ He stroked the Standard’s bonnet, as you might a cat or dog; like something loved.
Saffron bent in and groped around for a lever. She couldn’t find one; she hadn’t got a clue how to open the damn thing. She understood the complexities of the human body: the skeleton, muscles, lymphatic and nervous systems. But an old car? No way. Head wedged beneath the steering wheel, hand groping about, she considered how she must look: backside in the air, pretending to know what she was doing.
‘You won’t open it from there.’
For the second time in minutes she jerked up, banging her head against the wheel in the process. Ouch. This bloke was turning out to be an almighty pain in the arse.
‘That must’ve hurt.’
She stepped aside, longing to rub her throbbing skull, but refusing to acknowledge her pain. He was smiling, enjoying her discomfort. A base impulse to thump him flashed, but repairing people was more her style than damaging them. So instead, she looked him in the eye, straight-faced, and admitted that she didn’t know how to access the engine.
‘So you’ve not tried everything,’ he said, stressing the ‘everything’, looking at her directly, grinning, daring her to return his smile. ‘There’s no internal lever.’