THE STORY SO FAR
In post-war Hampshire, Bunny falls for Karel, a Czech refugee working on her father Leo’s farm near the town of Tollington. Karel gives Bunny a scarlet pebble he’s painted with the outline of a rabbit. They decide to run away and sail to South Africa.
However, in Southampton Karel vanishes, having apparently boarded a ship to New York, abandoning Bunny. Years later, artist Clare arrives in Tollington to paint a mural. She owns a once-scarlet pebble given to her mum as a child by a woman in Southampton. Clare suspects the woman came from Tollington. She finds a local photo of ‘the pebble painter,’ dated 1947 and displays it, noticing an elderly woman called Nancy react to it. Meanwhile, newspaper editor Peter learns that a Czech ‘pebble painter’ from the 1940s abandoned his local sweetheart. Could that be Nancy? In fact, Nancy harbours the secret of what befell Karel. Will Clare learn the shocking truth too?
HAMPSHIRE, 2002
After Peter had phoned Clare to tell her about the young man known as Karel who had painted pebbles for local children in the 1940s, she could think of little else.
Next morning, she hurried from her rented cottage into central Tollington, wondering where to start tracing an address for Nancy Woodhall.
Deep down, she couldn’t help but acknowledge that Peter was right about the need to tread carefully, yet she was so tantalisingly close to solving the mysterious origins of her pebble.
Passing a newsagent’s, she glanced idly at handwritten cards placed in the window, then did a double take. Among the Beneath was a phone number.
