The Turning Point: A gripping love story, keep the tissues close...

‘Frankie?’ Peta assumed her sister had phoned for a chat, yet she was doing all the talking.

‘Still here,’ Frankie said. Peta’s impassioned tirades against politics in the PTA, unfairness in the rugby club, Philip’s long hours, the boys’ adolescent mood swings and stinky bedrooms had wafted over Frankie quite soothingly, like a billowing sheet.

‘So – what’s been happening in the Back of Beyond?’

‘I don’t live in the back of beyond.’

Peta laughed. ‘Burnham Market it ain’t.’

It was just under twelve miles to Burnham Market but Frankie had to admit quietly to herself that her sister had a point. Renting a holiday cottage in the popular market town had inspired her move from London to Norfolk. But like most holiday romances, reality rendered the fantasy obsolete. Property prices in any of the Burnhams were beyond her means. The type of home she envisaged for her family, that which she could afford, took her further afield. Or, as Peta would have it, in the middle of a bloody field.

‘And the kids?’

‘They’re brilliant,’ said Frankie. ‘Loving school. Loving the outdoors, the sea. Dressed crab from a shack. Scampering.’

‘And you? New friends?’ Peta worried that Frankie’s choice to have a limited social group in a city was one thing, but to move miles away from anywhere was quite another.

‘There’s Ruth,’ said Frankie.

‘The reiki woman?’

‘Alexander Technique,’ Frankie said. ‘It’s about balance and posture, rest and realignment and it’s helped with my headaches already. She’s definitely becoming a good friend.’

‘She’s not a lentil-munching happyclappy hippy is she?’

‘Peta you’re terrible. She’s chic, sassy and my age. She’s much more Jäger-bombs and a secret ciggy than mung beans and wheatgrass shots.’

‘Thank God for that. But you can have more than one friend you know.’

‘You’re not going to tell me to join the PTA are you?’

‘No but too strong a belief in self-sufficiency can be isolating. Lecture over – how’s work?’

Frankie paused. ‘It’s back. The block. I can’t hear Alice. It’s really worrying me now.’ She misread Peta’s ensuing silence and leapt to the defensive. ‘Just because I write for kids doesn’t mean it’s child’s play.’

‘Whoa – whoa. But it’s happened before – when you’ve struggled with the story. Have you told your editor?’

‘No. He keeps leaving messages. And I daren’t tell the bank either.’

‘Are you strapped?’ Peta asked. ‘For cash?’

Frankie thought about it. She had only to ask her sister. She’d done so in the past and Peta had been generous, keen even; as if the money she’d married into had value only when she could give it to others.

‘It’s OK, Peta. Guess what turned up today? Not so much a bad penny – but four grand. From Miles.’

‘Oh dear God that man. Where is he?’

‘Ecuador.’

‘Doing what?’

‘God knows. Being Indiana Jones.’

‘Bank it – before it bounces. And go and drink wine with Ruth. Or join the school mums for a coffee morning.’

‘I don’t have time – I have to write my book.’

Frankie decided she’d try and fool Alice into appearing. She left her pencils and paper all spread out on the kitchen table like a fisherman’s nets but instead, she drove to Wells-next-the-Sea directly from dropping Annabel at school. It was all part of her plan. She went to the bank and was told it would be five working days before Miles’s cheque appeared in her account. She went to the newsagent, bought a plain notepad and a clutch of pencils that she wrapped inside a copy of the Guardian. Then she walked slowly, casually glancing in shop windows as if this was precisely the way she’d planned to spend her morning. She came to two cafés almost next door to each other, but she eschewed the crowded one that indulged mums and toddlers with cappuccinos and crayons for the one that didn’t. She wandered in as if the fancy had only just taken her. It was filled with the creak of pensioners but there was an empty table by the side window towards the back and it was perfect. Dumping all her stuff on the empty chair, she ordered poached eggs on toast – white please – and a pot of tea. And there she sat, watching the microcosm of Wells going about its business, as if the street in this small seaside town typified the world at large. Mothers with strollers, people with dogs, builders taking a break, pensioners taking their time, a couple of kids playing hooky, a traffic warden trying to be inconspicuous, a horse and rider, a lorry headed for the Londis – and just an off-duty author having a fulfilling breakfast of eggs and toast and tea.

Alice?

Alice?

You should see this place – why don’t you come and sit with me awhile?

I don’t like towns, Frankie.

It’s hardly a big town.

I like fields.

But this is fun, it’s different. No one knows you here, Alice. See – a lovely blank piece of paper. Hop onto it – it’s what you know. I’ll look after you.

He won’t come you know – not here. He’s too shy. You know that.

You went trick-or-treating together though? That was in a town – remember?

That was in Cloddington. You created Cloddington for me to live in. This place is not there.

But it’s similar.

It’s completely different Frankie. I don’t want an adventure here. But if you eat your eggs and finish your cuppa, I’ll race you home.

So Frankie ate her eggs and finished her tea and walked briskly to her car and raced Alice home. But Alice won. By the time Frankie made it back to her kitchen table, Alice had found one heck of a hiding place and wasn’t going to give Frankie even the tiniest clue as to where she was.

* * *

‘Frankie Darling.’

The voice of Michael, her editor, came through on the answering machine and Frankie closed the door to the kitchen as if he might spy the pages devoid of any creativity strewn over the kitchen table.

‘My surname’s Shaw,’ Frankie muttered at the answering machine, ‘not Darling.’

Actually, she quite liked the way her publishers always referred to her as Frankie Darling. Her agent simply called her Author. She liked that too.

‘Frankie Darling – it’s time to lure you to London. We want to run through the pre-publication plans. And of course I want to hear all about what Alice is up to. We’ll put you up somewhere gorgeous for a couple of nights. Call me.’

Somewhere gorgeous. They were the very words Frankie had used to justify her relocation to everyone. I’m going to move to somewhere gorgeous. North Norfolk: the dictionary definition of precisely that – and everyone had agreed with her, everyone said they envied her. Soon she was lightly telling everyone it didn’t matter that she couldn’t afford the Burnhams, she’d found instead a detached cottage in gently undulating fields two miles from the sea, decorated inside with soft chalky shades reminiscent of a handful of blanched pebbles scooped from the shore.

She was aware that the interior of the house had seduced her as much as the vast sky and endless quiet lanes. But there was something else: the very concept of being detached: the house, herself, her little family, it brought with it a sense of comfort and freedom, independence and excitement. Solitude would be novel and welcome after years in flats squashed between other flats like the patty in a burger, having to look down on other people’s gardens and listening unintentionally to the thunks and arguments above, below, to either side. So last year Frankie spent all her money and borrowed heavily to purchase the traditional flint-and-brick cottage with a bedroom each for the children, a spare room rather than a sofa bed for guests, an en-suite for herself and a garden that wrapped itself protectively around the house in a fragrant and pastel-coloured embrace.

Frankie looked around her home today, nine months on. Weathering winter, it transpired that the tasteful paint scheme had just whitewashed a multitude of faults and problems. What began as annoying niggles soon became a major headache in the hands of a rogue builder no one thought to warn The New Lot about. And now, in late spring, the windows that leaked could open but not close and a peculiar patch of damp had appeared in the hallway that just didn’t make sense. The plug socket in her bedroom sparked, some of the light switches became too hot and the tap in the kitchen often vomited out the water, soaking everything.

Being detached.

She saw it as a quality though it was often a criticism levelled at her by her mother, her sister. Even Miles. In fact, Peta said she was becoming increasingly introvert, even used the word deluded, but Frankie found it easy to hang up on her. Actually, Frankie found assurance in privacy and a certain relief that she could keep the devils out of the details of her life. For the time being anyway. Because apart from Miles’s cheque, which would be swallowed by the bank in one gulp anyway, there was no more money until the next Alice book was in. Currently, Alice hadn’t found her way to Norfolk and Frankie’s sense of direction had never been her strong point.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, she caught sight of a lone sock halfway up which she’d nagged Sam about since the weekend. Suddenly it struck her how easily she could spend the day just as she was, feeling in a fug, scuffing her feet in absent-minded arcs over the clay-tiled floor. Easy to let her editor’s call go unanswered, the bills to stay unopened, the pages on which Alice and the Ditch Monster should be adventuring to remain tauntingly blank. She could go to the sea. There was something so energizing and validating about gazing at the constant swell while being buffeted by the wind, tasting the briny air while she said to herself see, this is why I moved here. For the fresh air and the good life; for the peace and quiet of feeling miles away.

Or she could take herself to task and do something about it all. She could pick up Sam’s sock and kick-start her day. She could wash the floor and make the beds, she could phone her editor with her diary to hand. Then she could sit at the kitchen table and attempt to draw Alice back into existence.

With the children bickering over TV channels, moaning at her not pasta again Mum, the concept of a couple of nights in a swish hotel at her publishers’ invitation was just then very attractive even if she’d have to lie about progress on her current book. However, Peta said she wasn’t free to come and housesit because she was hosting her book club.

‘But if you’re organizing it, can’t you rearrange?’

‘Can’t you phone Mum?’

‘Can’t you just change the date? It’s important, it’s my career.’

‘Listen Frankie – I know you think I have all this spare time because I don’t work, but every day I have to ferry my teenage boys in a car which stinks of rugby boots or rattles with cricket bats. My husband is never home before nine and all I ask is that once a month I can get lost in a book with a bunch of people even more frazzled than I. It’s good for me – it restores me.’

The sisters paused in self-righteous stalemate.

‘Isn’t there anyone local you can ask?’

‘No.’

‘I keep telling you – you need to get out more. You’re becoming too introverted – and don’t call it self-sufficient.’

‘I’m not.’

‘How about a teaching assistant from Annabel’s school? What about your new friend Mrs Alexandra Technician?’

‘Ruth has two young children of her own.’

‘Ask Mum.’

‘Come on, Peta.’

‘What about Steph?’

Quietly, Frankie considered how Steph hadn’t crossed her mind for weeks. ‘I thought she was working in a ski resort?’

‘It’s May, Frankie. The snow has gone.’

Frankie thought about her half-sister as she looked at the caller-id photo in her phone’s contacts. Neither she nor Peta had taken much notice of Steph when she bounced into their lives; they’d been too busy pursuing their twenties, then raising their own families in their thirties. Frankie’s children adored Steph, especially Annabel who thought Frankie hopelessly uncool. Just this morning she’d said, what’s going on with your hair, Mummy?

‘Steph?’

‘Frankie?’

‘How are you?’

‘Oh my God! I’m good! And you? How’s Suffolk?’

‘Norfolk.’

‘That’s funny.’

Is it? Would Annabel laugh too?

‘And the ski season was –’

‘Oh just the best.’

‘Are you working now?’

‘No I’m in my flat.’

‘I don’t mean right now – I mean, at the moment.’

‘Yes – I’m a barista.’

‘What is that?’

‘I specialize in coffee.’

‘You work in Starbucks?’

‘God no – an independent coffee emporium. I know everything about coffee.’

‘Wow.’

Steph laughed. ‘Actually, I work in a local café.’

It was Frankie’s go. ‘You’re funny,’ she said warmly and she meant it. She thought, my half-sista the barista.

‘How are Sammy and Annabel?’

‘They’re fine – they’d love to see you, though Sam insists on being Sam these days. Actually, I was just wondering if I could tempt you to visit next week? They’d love it and it would help me. I have to come to London to see my editor. I was wondering if you might come and stay? I could pay, so that you don’t go short, being away from work?’

There was a pause. ‘I’m family. You wouldn’t need to pay me.’ Steph sounded appalled. ‘Normally I’d say yes – but I’m going away next week. With my new boyfriend.’

What Frankie really wanted to do was hang up and wonder what to do next.

‘He’s called Craig?’ Steph seemed to be waiting for a response.

‘Is he a keeper?’ Frankie said.

‘Are you on Facebook?’

‘No.’

‘Twitter? Instagram?’

‘God no.’

‘I’ve posted loads of pics of Châtel and Craig and my life. Everything.’

‘I can barely use the Internet, Steph.’

‘Frankie!’ Steph all but chided her. ‘You, with your work, your fans – you should be! Do you have WhatsApp or Snapchat, at the very least?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Frankie. ‘Do I?’ And Steph laughed and laughed and said oh Frankie, you’re so funny.

Frankie looked at her phone and thought what’s the point of calling Peta – she’ll just say phone Mum.

‘Hello Mum – it’s me.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Frankie.’

‘I know.’

‘How are you?’

‘Oh – you know.’

‘It’s lovely here at the moment – we had rain but it’s just made everything lush.’

‘You said it never rains in Norfolk.’

Fill the pause. Just fill it.

‘My publishers want me down in London next week. For a couple of days and I was wondering –’

There was silence.

‘Might you be free? I’ll have everything organized. If you’d rather take the train I could collect you from King’s Lynn.’

‘The train?’

‘If you’d rather not drive.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I didn’t mean – I just.’

I just always say the wrong thing or I intend to say the right thing and it always comes out wrong.

‘I will come,’ her mother said. ‘Otherwise no doubt I won’t see my grandchildren this side of Christmas.’

So that was that.

Sometimes, Frankie told herself, you have to be grateful for your third choice. Her mother could come to Norfolk and pick holes in Frankie’s life while she’d be in London, in a triple-glazed hotel room. Glancing in the mirror, she conceded that Annabel was quite right – what was going on with her hair? It no longer bounced off her shoulders but seeped over them, like seaweed lanking over a boulder. She’d washed it yesterday and it was already lifeless. She couldn’t turn up at her publishers looking like this. She looked at her hands, they were dry. Jeans, shapeless T-shirt and trainers. This is what my kids see every day. I have to have my hair cut before my mother sees me.

* * *

As Frankie parked her car at Creake Abbey, she could almost hear Peta saying ah! now this is more like it. It ticked all her sister’s boxes. A short drive from Burnham Market, quietly set in rolling fields, old farm buildings in the grounds of a twelfth-century abbey had been tastefully renovated to house select lifestyle shops, a mouthwatering café and food hall, a monthly farmer’s market and even a smokehouse. Hitherto, Frankie had only visited to walk to the Abbey itself, loving the brooding melancholy of the skeletal structure, the way what was left of the church seemed to grow from the land as much as being buried by it. She saw Alice having an adventure here, places to hide, secrets to discover, trees to climb and hedgerows to explore.

The ruins of the Augustinian priory, but so much more – that’s what Peta would say and she’d head straight for the shops. She’d approve of Frankie’s choice of hairdresser; hip salon, skilled stylists, Aveda products and bare stone walls. Well here was Frankie today sitting with her hair hanging like twisted wet yarn around her face, no time to stroll around the ruins hoping Alice might pop up. The stylist combed and cut and chatted. Was Frankie just visiting, on holiday? Where was she from, what she was she planning on doing here in North Norfolk? It crushed her a little, she thought she might be recognizably native by now.

‘I’m a friend of Ruth?’ she said. ‘Ruth Ingram? She recommended you.’

‘Oh – so you live here?’

‘Nine months now – I live out Binham way,’ Frankie said as if being half an hour away was reason enough for the stylist not to know she was local.

‘Do you want your hair like Ruth’s?’

Frankie thought of Ruth’s immaculate ebony-glossed bob and she started to laugh. ‘My hair would never do that.’

‘Well, you don’t have to have a Ruth,’ the stylist said, her hands lightly on her shoulders. ‘But you needn’t look quite so mumsy.’

Sometimes, Frankie found it difficult to tell the difference between a compliment and an unintended insult.

Flipping through magazines, she found the lowbrow celebrity gossip and articles on improving her figure, her sex life, her family’s diet soothing in their inanity. One magazine proposed the power of saying Yes. Another, the thrill of saying No. She marvelled that this stuff was even published. If Alice had no story for her, perhaps Frankie could just scribble off 10 Steps to Sizzling Sex. Or, rather, Regaining Your Virginity if You Haven’t Had Sex in Three Years.

‘So you moved here with your family?’

‘Yes – last September.’

‘Does your husband work locally or go to London?’

‘I don’t have a husband,’ said Frankie. ‘I’m on my own.’

‘Oh I’m sorry.’

People often told Frankie they were sorry.

‘I hope you haven’t come to Norfolk looking for love!’

‘No. Not at all. Just for the lifestyle. And the sea. And the solitude.’

‘You know that expression seek and ye shall find? Well, in my experience, it’s the times when you aren’t looking that love finds you.’

Frankie thought about that, how people often hoped that love was on its way for her. ‘I’m happy as I am,’ she said. ‘I’m used to it. I’m too busy anyway for extra headaches in my life.’

‘But love isn’t a headache. Not when it’s what’s been missing.’

‘Nothing’s missing,’ she muttered. She glanced at her reflection and thought her fringe was way too short. She caught sight of the time. She’d have to forgo the blow-dry and rush away to school. No time to linger over the cheeses and meats, salads and delicacies in the food hall. It would have to be fish-finger sandwiches for supper. It didn’t matter about her fringe, she’d be late to pick up Annabel and everyone else would have gone.

‘What do you think, Buddy?’ Scott stood at the window which spanned side to side, ceiling to floor, one entire end of the room. In the soft silence of his home, he looked across to Mount Currie where the spike and march of the myriad firs made easy work of the steep climbs. Under his hand, the feel of his dog’s warm round head. It was his ritual before leaving – to fill his senses with the sights and sounds of home to tide himself over during his time away. ‘A good day to fly?’ Scott looked down and his brown dog looked up and they conversed silently for a moment or two. ‘I thought so too,’ Scott laughed.

‘Is Aaron on his way? You sure you’re not cutting it fine?’ Jenna said.

‘Stop worrying,’ Scott told her. ‘And anyway, I like to stand here awhile – I always do.’ He returned his gaze out over the vast valley.

‘I know – I’ve watched you over the years. Same spot, same view, different dog.’ She linked her arm through his and he kissed her forehead. They could see Shelley’s car snake up the steep serpentine drive to the house and noticed Aaron not far behind her.

‘Our own personal cab service,’ Scott said.

‘I’d do anything to drive my own car and be the lift-giver.’

Jenna’s light tone belied the deep emotion. There was not a lot Scott could say. He checked his watch. ‘Listen, Saturday the kids are coming up to use the studio.’

Jenna nodded. Scott mentored young musicians, forming and coaching bands that combined young talent from the white and Ĺíĺwat communities. ‘How’s it going with them?’

‘They’re good – but they think they’re better than they are. They just want to jam instead of work at it, practise. They get a little dumb – but hey, they’re kids.’

‘As long as they’re not smuggling in beer like the last lot.’

Scott had to laugh. ‘And there was I thinking that mentoring high-school kids would be all about the music.’

‘You love it really,’ Jenna said, nudging him. Shelley was walking towards the house. ‘See you next week – have a safe flight.’

With his hand back on his dog’s head, Scott watched Jenna leave, chat awhile with Aaron and say something that made his friend tip his head back and laugh at the sky. Then she waved and blew a kiss before climbing into Shelley’s car to head to work in Whistler.

Aaron loped up the steps and Buddy turned circles at the door, yowling with joy.

‘Yep,’ said Scott, ‘you get to hang out with Aaron while I’m gone.’

‘Beautiful day to fly,’ Aaron said, letting himself into the house and heading straight for the kettle and ground coffee.

‘Jenna says we’re running late.’

Aaron laughed, not so much at Jenna’s expense, just that he was always laughing. When Scott was a kid, a serious, reflective kid, Aaron’s laughter would physically rub off on him and he’d feel lighter about life and better about himself. Forty years on and Aaron still had that effect on Scott. That boy’s laughter could lift the tarnish off silver, Scott’s mother used to say.

‘We’re all fuelled up and ready to go. Took her out yesterday and treated her real good.’ Aaron licked his way seductively around the words as if his little Cessna was a woman.

‘It’s enough that you have my dog for me. I’m happy enough to drive to Vancouver. It’s no big deal. I always tell you.’

‘And deny Buddy here – the flying dog – his time up in the skies?’ Aaron shook his head and whistled long and slow. ‘You’re a cruel man, Scott Emerson. I always say it.’

‘You tool,’ said Scott.

‘Splaont,’ said Aaron, in his native tongue.

‘Don’t you go using your tribal insults on me, hoser,’ Scott laughed. ‘Anyways, did you just call me a skunk? Are you going to try and tell me the skunk is a heroic symbol for the Ĺíĺwat nation?’

Aaron just laughed. ‘You remember when we were kids and I’d teach you Úcwalmícwts words and have you believe they were compliments?’

‘Aaron, you made me tell your dad he was slícil – fish slime – and I thought I was telling him he was a mighty eagle.’ Scott took the cup of coffee Aaron had made him, thick enough to stand a teaspoon upright, and drank it down quickly. ‘Well, it’s a beautiful day to fly, so thank you.’

‘I’m not doing it for you, man – I’m doing it because I get to drive your truck and hang out with Buddy. Your truck cost more than my plane.’