Free A Rage to Live by Roberta Latow Page B

drunk with the joys of life, like someone who had conquered a mountain, someone inebriated with the success of having achieved their objective. How far away could the realisation of her dreams and ultimate happiness be?
    At the top of the stairs zigzagging up the cliff from the beach, while standing under the wooden portico, she stepped into her sandals and looked down. A quick glance to the beach and the bay, and then she walked briskly towards Hollihocks. It had all looked so different in the dark, by the light of the moon. Now, under the morning sun, the hedgerows, the moors, in the distance the house, were all more beautiful than she remembered them.
    As a child she had never thought of Hollihocks as a large compound, a much envied and admired estate, it had just been home to her. Now she glanced across the forty-five acres in some surprise. How grand a place it was. She passed the lane that led to the stables and paddock, the greenhouses. Another lane that led to the guest houses, and finally she was on the drive leading to the main house. She rounded a bend in the road and could see at a distance the moving vans lined up. Hers or Carol’s, it was difficult to distinguish.
    She heard a car. It stopped next to her. ‘Excuse me, ma’am. Can I ask who you are, what you’re doing here?’
    ‘I’m Cressida Vine. I live here.’
    ‘Not for ten minutes, you don’t, ma’am,’ he told her matter-of-factly. ‘Hop in. Might as well go home in style, Miss Vine. Hi. I’m Sheriff Cornwell.’ He shoved a huge hand out through the window and gave her a broad smile. ‘This here is my deputy, Harvey Brown. You jump in the back seat, Harvey.’
    Cressida was still settling herself in the front when the sheriff said, ‘Went to the inn, thought I’d pick you up.’
    He seemed to be waiting for an explanation as to why she hadn’t been there. Once a policeman, always a policeman, she thought. She didn’t mind, she was too happy to mind about anything. This was her world now, and the sheriff was a part of it. The last link in the chain of events to coming home.
    ‘I didn’t stay at the inn last night.’
    ‘Well, your moving vans did. Right in front. Arthur woke up, nearly had a heart attack. Arthur’s a very nervous proprietor, one of our best customers. Never been partial to real life obstructing his view. Now had it been a horse and wagon, well, that would have been a different story.’ He looked at Cressida and gave her a wry smile.
    She liked him. He was upfront, straight about people, and not taken in by them. She could believe that everyone else in New Cobham liked him too. He seemed to be a big man by the way he filled the driver’s seat nearly to the roof of the car. Not only in his physique: broad shouldered, several inches over six feet tall. The open and handsome smile was big, too. He had that all-American rugged look of a man that knew his way forward, like some frontiersman crossing the prairie, ora militia man from the back woods, who fought for his rights, as, she imagined, his forefathers had done. He looked more than just a sandy-haired, nice guy, with a lopsided smile and dimples in a big face and furrows in just the right places to make him impressively attractive. His nose was that of a Roman centurion. Was there more to this man than the plain old sheriff role he was playing? A question that came and went in a flash. What Cressida deduced, from this first encounter, was that he was not that big, but a man with strength of character. A powerful presence that ran the town and district very well indeed.
    ‘Is he very upset? I really don’t want to bother anyone.’
    He looked at Cressida once more. Again that lopsided smile. ‘I wouldn’t count on that, Miss Vine.’ He said, then added, ‘But don’t fret. I moved ’em out of his sight, and it gave Arthur something to fuss about for a few hours.’
    Oh, yes, very upfront, she thought, not having missed his sharp observation. If Cressida had not