Read Online Follow a Star by Christine Stovell - Free Book Online

difficult for you to drop everything to do this?’
    ‘I cleared my diary when Cecil was taken ill. I’m self-employed so all I’m losing is money.’
    May congratulated herself on her supreme lack of tact. An unpalatable thought crossed her mind. ‘But what about your wife and six children?’
    ‘My wife divorced me because she didn’t like the hours I was putting in setting the business up. We never got round to having children,’ he said lightly.
    Tipping the peak of her cap a little lower, May closed her eyes, lifted her face up to the sun, giving all the outward signs that she was relaxing so that Bill would let her off the hook and not ask about
her
private life or the sudden interest in his. She had, after all, just been making conversation. What was it to her if Bill was married with ten children or single and fancy-free? Even so.
    Their stay in Sovereign Harbour, if May didn’t include the scary lock at the entrance to the marina, passed uneventfully. After fifteen hours at sea both she and Bill had been glad to eat a hasty meal then retire to their respective bunks. Now, after another long day at sea and another night in a harbour, May came to with a start and it took her a few seconds to remember where she was.
    The first part of the passage from Eastbourne had passed smoothly enough, but the next twenty miles had felt like an eternity of punching against the tide. Progress had been punishingly slow and the elements unkind with sudden squalls that had them hastily donning wet weather gear. The forecasts had warned of a ‘bit of a blow’, but an unseasonal gale had arrived from nowhere, along with a couple of tsunami-like waves. May had been relieved when, after negotiating some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, they managed to slip into Ramsgate just before the wind rose.
    From somewhere nearby, a fishing vessel was playing Dutch radio full blast, featuring many hits that really should have been buried in history. With her luck, she was only seconds away from hearing
‘
Chillin’ in the Park’
,
the single that would haunt her for the rest of her days. But for now, she realised, sitting up in her berth, she was free of all those associations. Who, round here, would ever link the woman she was now to the girl she was then? A glance in the mirror showed that, if anything, she had travelled forwards, not backwards, in time. A pillow-crumpled shiny red face framed by wild hair peered back at her. Feeling like her own granny after a bad sunbed treatment, May went up on deck just in time to bump into Bill, who was fresh-faced and sweet smelling from a trip to the showers.
    ‘Feeling better this morning?’ he asked perkily. ‘You were a bit subdued last night, but – see? – we made it before the storm. Although how soon we can leave remains to be seen.’
    It wasn’t fear that had crushed her, not of the elements anyway. What had really made her stomach churn was the menacing tone of Aiden’s latest text. They were so hard to ignore once she knew they were there, but so far she’d managed to resist the compulsion to respond.
    Conscious of exuding a mephitic cloud that would shame the most unsavoury drunk, May brushed aside Bill’s all’s-right-with-the-world offer of tea and grabbed her shower bag and change of clothes. Lowering herself on to the pontoon, her suspicion that she couldn’t look anything less like a pop princess was confirmed when, even though they had been at sea for goodness knows how long, none of the men working on the fishing boat looked up until she skidded on a bit of fishy debris and narrowly saved herself from a cold plunge.
    Looking behind to see if anyone else had noticed, she saw Bill standing with a small band of gale-bound sailors on the pontoon, all hoping, presumably, that their yachts wouldn’t disintegrate before their eyes whilst they dodged ten foot walls of spray and tried to rustle up some Dunkirk spirit. Behind them, May suddenly saw, her eyes