But then, Shelley’s mother had known all about rejection. It was a force that had shaped her whole life—a dark, shameful secret she’d kept hidden away. Only Drew knew the full story and Shelley still remembered the day she had told him.
She had been counting cars, sitting on a low wall which separated their little group of houses from the big main road which brought all the holiday-makers into Milmouth during the summer months.
A red car had whizzed by and Shelley had stuck her tongue out between her lips and wrote it down in her notebook.
Drew had been on his way home from the boatyard, where he worked after school, drinking from a can of cola. He’d peered over her shoulder as he passed, then paused.
‘What are you doing?’
Shelley shrugged. ‘Counting cars.’
He grinned. ‘Oh? Make a habit of that, do you?’
‘It’s for my maths,’ she explained. ‘Averages and probability.’
He pulled a face and came to perch beside her. ‘Who’s winning?’
‘Blue,’ she said. ‘I’ve counted eleven, so far.’
‘Oh.’ He offered her the can. ‘Fancy a slug?’
Shelley shook her head. Money was tight in the Turner household. Never take what you can’t repay—her mother had drummed that in to her time and time again. ‘No, thanks.’
He stared at her serious little profile. ‘Why do you never see your father?’ he asked suddenly.
Shelley shrugged. If it had been anyone other than Drew who had asked it, she might have told them to mind their own business. But Drew was Drew.
‘I saw him once,’ she explained. ‘When I was a baby.’
‘Just the once?’
‘That’s right. I was three weeks old.’
‘And didn’t he want to see you again?’
Shelley blinked furiously as she ticked off another black car in her column. ‘That’s seven black,’ she gulped.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said instantly. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s all right for you!’ she said, her voice wobbling. ‘You’ve got a mother and a father, and two sisters!’
He laughed cynically. ‘Oh, yeah—it’s all right for me! When there are five of us crammed into a house you can’t swing a cat in. And my parents are always arguing. So are my sisters! I’ll tell you something, Shelley—sometimes I just want to smash my way out of there and never come back!’ His blue gaze was piercing. ‘Do you really think that everyone’s life is so perfect except your own?’
Shelley shook her head in amazement. Drew felt like that inside? ‘Of course I don’t!’
‘I won’t ask you about your father again,’ he told her gently. ‘It isn’t important.’
But it was important. He had taken her into his confidence and she wanted to tell him. Secrets could become unbearable burdens if you didn’t share them.
‘My father was…is a dentist. My mother used to work for him—she was his nurse. They had, like, a big romance. Well, my mum thought it was a big romance,’ Shelley shrugged. ‘She’d come down from Scotland and she didn’t know very much about men.’
Drew nodded thoughtfully, but he didn’t say anything.
‘Then she found out she was pregnant with me, so she told him…she told him…and he got really mad with her. Said that it had all been a big mistake. And that there was no point in her trying to trap him into marriage—because he already had a wife and children, and they were his “real” children—’
Drew scowled. ‘And your mother didn’t know that?’
Shelley rounded on him. ‘Of course she didn’t know that! If she had done she would never have got involved with him in the first place! What sort of woman do you think she is?’
‘I didn’t mean to insult your mother, Shelley,’ he told her, with dignity. ‘It just makes me mad when men treat women that way.’ He brushed dark, untidy hair back from his face. ‘So what happened?’
‘Oh, he went back to America with his wife and “real” children and Mum brought me here to live. That was the last she ever saw of him.’
‘And why Milmouth?’ he asked, with interest.
She was grateful for the fact that her instinct had been correct—that Drew wasn’t judging her or her mother and finding them wanting.
‘She wanted somewhere cheap to live, and couldn’t face going back to Scotland with a baby and no father. And she loves the sea.’
He smiled. ‘So do I, as a matter of fact. I never want to be away from the sea.’