Read Online I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh - Free Book Online

path leading to the caravan park. What reason can I give for visiting the shop? I don’t have any money with me, so I can’t pretend I’ve come for milk or bread. I might ask a question, I suppose, but I struggle to think of something plausible. Whatever I come up with, Bethan will know it is an excuse. She’ll think I’m pathetic.
    My resolve fades before I’ve walked a hundred yards, and when I reach the car park I stop. I look across to the shop and see a shape in the window – I can’t tell if it’s Bethan and I don’t wait to find out. I turn and run back to the cottage.
    I reach Blaen Cedi and pull the key from my pocket, but when I put my hand on the door it moves a little, and I realise it isn’t locked. The door is old and the mechanism unreliable: Iestyn showed me how to pull the door just so, and turn the key at such an angle it clicks home, but at times I’ve spent ten minutes or more trying. He left me his number, but he doesn’t know I threw away my mobile phone. There’s a phone line to the cottage, but no telephone installed, so I will have to walk to Penfach and find a telephone box to see if he’ll come and fix it.
    I have only been inside for a few minutes, when there is a knock at the door.
    ‘Jenna? It’s Bethan.’
    I contemplate staying where I am, but my curiosity gets the better of me, and I feel a leap of excitement as I open the door. For all that I sought an escape, I’m lonely here in Penfach.
    ‘I brought you a pie.’ Bethan holds up a tea-towel-covered dish and comes in without waiting for an invitation. She puts it down in the kitchen next to the range.
    ‘Thank you.’ I search for small talk, but Bethan just smiles. She takes off her heavy woollen coat and the action galvanises me. ‘Would you like tea?’
    ‘If you’re making,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d come by and see how you’re doing. I did wonder if you might have popped in to see me before now, but I know what it’s like when you’re settling into a new place.’ She looks around the cottage and stops talking, taking in the sparse sitting room, no different from when Iestyn first brought me here.
    ‘I don’t have much,’ I say, embarrassed.
    ‘None of us does, round here,’ Bethan says cheerfully. ‘As long as you’re warm and comfortable, that’s the main thing.’
    I move around the kitchen as she talks, making the tea, grateful for something to do with my hands, and we sit at the pine table with our mugs.
    ‘How are you finding Blaen Cedi?’
    ‘It’s perfect,’ I say. ‘Exactly what I needed.’
    ‘Tiny and cold, you mean?’ Bethan says, with a ripple of laughter that slops tea over the rim of her mug. She gives an ineffective rub at her trousers and the liquid sinks into a dark patch on her thigh.
    ‘I don’t need much room, and the fire keeps me warm enough.’ I smile. ‘Really, I like it.’
    ‘So what’s your story, Jenna? How did you come to be in Penfach?’
    ‘It’s beautiful here,’ I say simply, wrapping my hands around my mug and looking down into it, to avoid meeting Bethan’s sharp eyes. She doesn’t push me.
    ‘That’s true enough. There are worse places to live, although it’s bleak at this time of year.’
    ‘When do you start letting the caravans?’
    ‘We open at Easter,’ Bethan says, ‘then it’s all systems go for the summer months – you won’t recognise the place – and we finally wind down after the October half-term. Let me know if you’ve got family visiting and need a ’van – you’ll never squeeze guests in here.’
    ‘That’s kind of you, but I’m not expecting anyone to visit.’
    ‘You don’t have any family?’ Bethan looks directly at me, and I find myself unable to drop my gaze.
    ‘I have a sister,’ I admit, ‘but we don’t speak any more.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Oh, the usual sibling tensions,’ I say lightly. Even now, I can see Eve’s angry face as she implored me to listen to her. I was too proud, I can see