A Shallow Light

By Anastasia Bishop

A new start. A past she can't forget.

 

Forty-something Emily is struggling to forget her traumatic past. By relocating to Southern Spain, she hopes to put it behind her. She finds a job and a place to call home, meets the charismatic Fabian and almost dares to consider a new start.

But her previous life catches up with her unexpectedly and her fear of confronting it drives her back to England again.

Without a sense of belonging and with her life plunged into darkness once more, as she is forced to face yet more trauma, she risks losing those she cares about the most. Will she learn to accept her past, trust again and find the happiness she craves?

A loose sequel to the author's previous novel Dear Emily, this book follows the fortunes of Emily as she tries to rebuild her life after tragedy. A perfect light read for the summer months about the power of human relationships, love, hope and second chances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anastasia Bishop
• Release date: Apr 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224880720

Anastasia Bishop

I write about women, for women, on themes including friendship, relationships and self-discovery. Thank you for showing an interest in my book/s.  I have loved writing for as long as I can remember. As a child, I would shut myself in my room and write stories, prose and poems. After studying at university, I have spent most of my career in the commercial sector, whilst also juggling a family, and writing in my spare time when I can. I have stories in me to tell, so now I'm a little older, wiser and have more time for myself, I'm finally making my writing official! Writing is like an itch that needs to be scratched, and mine's been itching for a long time! I hope you enjoy what you read!

Book preview

A Shallow Light

Anastasia Bishop

‘Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light’ – Madeline L’Engle

One

Emily sat alone, slightly back from the walkway and under a large sunshade. Behind her, the beat of a cheesy, summery pop track thumped from the bar. A volleyball ‘thwacked’ over the net on the sand opposite her. Passers-by chatted. Water droplets ran down the outside of her beer glass. With her sunglasses on against the glare of the sun, she felt utterly invisible. Just the way she liked it.

Everyone was just emerging from siesta. The bar was relatively full and the smell of barbequed sausages wafted between the tables and caught the young couple stood in front of the  ‘Bierkeller’ sign as they surveyed the drinks menu. She turned her head away. The waiter came to clear her plate, which she had already pushed to the side.

‘Danke, Lukas’

He smiled at her but didn’t linger, plates balanced precariously across his arms. She was happy to be left alone, although Lukas had never questioned why she’d started frequenting his bar or made any attempt to pry. His laid back manner meant he was happy to chat to her in German, knowing not much more than her name.

With its numerous bars, restaurants and tacky beach-front shops, the plethora of tourists and ex-pat communities from across the whole of Europe, it was an easy place to hide. Nobody asked questions here. People came and went and some stayed. A mildly attractive woman in her mid-forties could be anything but incongruous and easily blend into the background. She had been a spectacle for long enough and didn’t want to be found again. As she watched the goings on around her, the irony did not escape Emily - normally she would have avoided this kind of place at all costs. However, over the last month, she had to admit that she had started to see the attraction of the area. Yes, there was some tackiness along the promenade, but the people were friendly without being intrusive; she guessed there were plenty of individuals who had come and gone with a story to tell, and life was relaxed here. She loved the old town on the hill especially, with its quaint gift shops, pretty whitewashed fincas and attractive, narrow lanes lined with bougainvillea. With the azure sea on one side and the barren mountains on the other, she couldn’t deny it was a striking landscape. 

A jet ski zipped across the horizon. Emily looked at her watch. She ought to get going. ‘Tschus. Bis Morgan’  Bye. See you tomorrow. She waved her hand and called across to Lukas and Sylvia. They waved back.

She watched the volleyball soaring over the net as it passed between the caramel bodies of the locals. One song morphed into another as she sauntered past the line of restaurants. The confusion of food smells was heady. It was the hottest part of the day, and even though it was only late May, the sun was searing her pale skin. She wished she’d worn a T-shirt instead of a strappy top. She passed the bakery. Maria was wiping the tables and would be getting ready to close. She had her back to Emily, but regardless Emily pushed her sunglasses further up the bridge of her nose and turned to face the sea, weaving in between the crowds and not stopping to say hello. She was fond of Maria but wasn’t in the mood for chatting. At the far end of the promenade, the tourists thinned out and the traffic increased. She turned right and headed into the town.

The Estate Agents was set back slightly from the main strip but cleverly positioned to catch all the footfall heading towards the beach. The door jangled as Emily entered, but it seemed unnecessary since all three desks in the office were occupied. It was cool inside.

‘Good Afternoon, can I help you?’ A cheerful lady with a strong Liverpool accent got up from her desk and greeted her at the door. She paused, but came to the conclusion that Emily wasn’t going to remove her sunglasses.

‘Yes, I have an appointment at 3pm. Emily. Emily....Stanton.’ She’d almost forgotten to use her maiden name.

The lady returned to the desk and checked in a thick, rather crumpled diary, running her finger down the page to find the relevant entry. She tapped it with a neon pink false nail.  ‘Ah, yes. You’ve got a viewing of the finca that’s just come onto our books. I’ll be taking you, if that’s OK?’

Emily nodded. The lady held out her hand. ‘I’m Patricia, by the way. Nice to meet you.’

Emily shook her hand.

‘Let me just grab the keys and we can make a move. I’ll meet you outside.’

They squeezed into a tiny two-door hatchback and Emily wondered if it would even have the power to get up to the old town. She wished she could have met Patricia at the property, but knew she’d never have found it in the maze of streets. She was trapped in a tiny car with someone whose job was to ask questions and be nosy. She swallowed and turned to face the door. Please, no questions, she willed. She knew how to respond if pushed, but would rather not have to.

‘So, what brings you to Andalusia then?’

Emily paused, gathering her thoughts. ‘I’ve split from my husband.....’

Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at Patricia. She was heavily made-up and her deeply tanned skin was wrinkled and leathery from too much sun. Emily wondered if she was that dark all over, or whether it stopped where her pencil skirt and blouse ended. She felt conscious of how pale she still was after a month. She had been lathering herself in sun cream like a tourist and avoiding the sun when it was really hot. Probably a mistake. It made her stand out for sure.

She saw Patricia look at her left hand, spotting her bare ring finger. ‘Ah....I see.’ She obviously did see. ‘Bit messy was it? You need the space to get back on track. No questions asked. I get it.’

Emily didn’t reply.

‘Well, there’s plenty of others like that here. You won’t be alone. No-one will judge.’

Except you.

They drove in silence for a while, and Emily listened to the engine whining as it struggled to climb the hill, watched the sea periodically disappearing between tatty trees and rocky outcrops.

‘You do realise the tenancy on this place is twelve months, don’t you?’

‘Yes’

Patricia continued as if Emily hadn’t understood. ‘With you not having residency status here, it’ll mean you are paying for a year but can only stay for three months at a time in any ninety day period.’ She reeled it off as if she had said it countless times.

‘Yes, I understand. That’s fine.’

Patricia looked at Emily and raised her eyebrows. ‘Where are you staying at the moment?’

‘The Iberostar Hotel’

More raised eyebrows. Emily could imagine what was going through her head. Rich husband, big divorce settlement......It was almost laughable. The assumptions people made.....If only she knew what she’d been through to get to this point. The fact was that staying at the hotel had made her feel more alone and somehow even more conspicuous. She’d wanted to be surrounded by people but in the end had stopped eating breakfast and dinner in the dining room after the first week. She felt too self-conscious on her own. And then there was the percussion of doors slamming and groups of voices down the corridor. Besides, she couldn’t stay there indefinitely. The rent for the finca wasn’t expensive. Not compared to England, anyway. It wouldn’t make much of a dent in the money she’d got for the house back home. She knew she still needed to formulate a more permanent plan but had no idea what this might look like yet. People needed time to forget first and so did she. She couldn’t be looking over her shoulder all the time.

‘Well, I think you’ll like it. It’s a charming little place’

How would you know what I like?

Patricia swung into a parking space in the square, whipped out a parking permit from the glove box and shoved it on the dashboard. ‘Let’s hope my knees hold up. They couldn’t cope with all the steps last time. How the old lady managed in there all that time I’ve no idea. It’s not the kind of place to live if you’ve got dodgy pins.’

Patricia led her from the square surrounded by eateries and up one of the narrow lanes that branched off it. Emily walked silently beside her, surveying the open shop fronts on either side of the cobbled streets. Leather goods, jewellery, clothing, tacky souvenirs and a plethora of other items spewed from their mouths onto the pavements. People milled around, browsed, loitered. As they climbed further up the street, the shops made way for houses and a maze of even smaller, narrower lanes, many of which were lined with window boxes, tubs of brightly coloured flowers that spilled onto the cobbles, and climbing bougainvillea. The steps became steeper. Patricia started puffing next to her.

‘I have just started a job in the new town. Do the buses run early down the mountain?’

‘Yes, once an hour in peak season. Twice a day off-peak.’ She puffed more heavily, unable to say much more. Emily relished the silence.

Eventually they branched off to the left, walking right to the end and stopping. This lane went no further, ending with a pretty, whitewashed three-storey house; a wide door with a window either side and corresponding windows above it. Emily noticed that the pots either side of the front door were empty and the bottle green paint was peeling from the shutters. The terracotta roof tiles were typically uneven. It was charming. A beautiful hand-painted sign by the front door read ‘Casa al Fin’. Home at Last.

Clever, thought Emily. And appropriate.

Despite its slightly rundown appearance, it was clear to her that this house had once been a much-loved home. It wouldn’t take much more than a lick of paint and some flowers to give it a facelift.

Patricia pulled a chunky, old-fashioned key from her handbag and wiggled it in the lock. The wooden door swung open. It was gloomy inside and deceptively spacious. It was narrow from the front but the room reached back a long way. They had come straight into a traditional Spanish kitchen, rustic and simple. At the far end, Emily could make out the shape of a large table and chairs, although everything was covered in white sheets. The house was cool inside – the trade-off for small windows was less heat from the sun. The floor was tiled in the traditional way. Acting as a natural divider and splitting the room in two, was a staircase. Open at the bottom to allow light through from both ends of the room, it turned the corner and then ran parallel with the wall. The treads were decorated with beautiful Moorish tiles.

‘It’s quite dark in here’ she said.

‘Normal for Spanish houses of this type’ replied Patricia, matter-of-factly. ‘It helps keep the property cool. As you probably saw, most people leave their front doors open. And the beauty of living in this location is that you will have no-one walking past. I think when you see the rest of the property you’ll agree it’s a compromise worth making.’

She led the way up the stairs, Emily pausing to look around before following her. The second floor was divided into two rooms, one bigger than the other. It was significantly lighter up here, largely due to the French windows leading out to a full width balcony at the rear. Peering through the door, Emily could see the other room was empty. Patricia turned the brass handle on the French windows and pushed them open. More light flooded in, but what really caught Emily’s attention was the view. Beneath the balcony, the hillside dropped away, giving the impression that you were standing on a cliff edge. Tumbling down the hillside, Emily could see the whitewashed houses of the old town, and in the distance, the new town and the sea.

‘Stunning, isn’t it?’

Emily leant against the railings and stared. It was the epitome of what made this area of Spain so unique – not exactly beautiful but it made you slightly breathless to look at it. It was the kind of view that smacked you in the face. She didn’t think she’d ever tire of it.

After a couple of minutes, Patricia went back inside; Emily’s cue to reluctantly follow. She wanted to linger, soak in all the little details that the vista offered her but it would seem that her companion was on a time limit.

‘This is the main living space. That room over there is the second bedroom. Downstairs is obviously the kitchen and dining room and at the top of the house is the main bedroom and bathroom. The bedroom is directly above this room and has the same view and the same French doors out onto the balcony.......’

Emily wasn’t really listening. Her attention had been drawn to a large portrait on the wall of an old woman. It was beautifully painted and captured a tough spirit in her eyes and in the roadmap of her wrinkled skin.

When she didn’t respond, Patricia followed her gaze. ‘Beautiful, huh? That’s the landlord’s grandmother. He’s an artist. This was her house. She was well into her nineties when she died, but refused to leave when her legs couldn’t manage the stairs anymore. Ended up living on the ground floor. She had a bed and a commode in the dining area and that was how she lived. Tough as old boots. Her grandson inherited the house. He travels a fair bit and already has his own property, so he’s renting it out whilst he decides what to do with it. There is Wi-Fi already installed and a connection for satellite TV, if you want it.’

‘I’ll take it’

‘Mmm?’

‘I’ll take it’, Emily repeated.

Two

‘If you want to forget the past, my advice would be to get away somewhere else for a bit. Start afresh. Maybe abroad,’ Jodie had suggested when Emily had voiced her concerns about what she should do. Travelling as frequently as she did, Jodie had been to most places and before she had met Matt she had a knack of moving on quickly, if not altogether successfully. Emily should have found it amusing, the way that Jodie talked it through in such a calculated and pre-planned manner, but instead she found it rather unsettling.

‘I always find a different place helps put things in perspective. You don’t want to go too far away, otherwise it looks like you’re running from something. Even if you are, you don’t want it to look that way. It’s the right time of year for sun in Europe. You want somewhere where the population is transient, people come and go regularly, where there are lots of British people. That way you can blend in easily and hide if you wish.’

Emily had been really unsure. Her life before the trial and the events leading up to it, had been mundane, dull even. She was the ‘plodder’ of the group. She’d have to force herself to be brave again, and hope it would enable her to put her past behind her a bit more easily than Jodie had, at first at least.

And now here she was about to sign the paperwork and collect the keys as the tenant of a property and about to start her second week of work. Who’d have thought it!? She must update all her friends on the latest and made a mental note to message them later. They’d be surprised at how far she had come.

She hadn’t intended to get a job at all. It presented far too much of a risk that she would have to give parts of herself away. However, there was only so much time she could spend reading, walking, sitting in bars or by the pool. After two weeks, she was bored and she hadn’t accounted for that. She didn’t really need the money, she supposed, but what she had would only last so long and so far she had no firm plans for the future.

She’d seen the advert in the window as she’d walked back from the Bierkeller one afternoon. She was taken aback to have found it in the first place; she’d deliberately not given herself the opportunity to think it through properly, because if she had, she’d have talked herself back out of it almost instantly. Besides, the smell wafting from the open back door as she stood outside was divine; she imagined the bread and cakes must be delicious.

‘Assistant Required. Must speak good English’

It had been busy when Emily went to enquire. She stood and waited for the queue in front of her, admiring the beautiful display of cakes topped with soft swirls of coloured icing, pastries and baguettes stuffed with Spanish meats, bright red, chunky tomatoes and vibrant green lettuce. She had introduced herself and been shown out to the back of the shop.

‘I speak little English. My son teach me.’ Maria had smiled amiably and continued in rapid Spanish, initially in the local dialect, until she realised Emily was struggling to understand, and then slowed down. She needed someone to help her serve customers, just to cover the summer season to begin with and to help communicate with the British tourists. Most of them spoke no Spanish. She was warm and friendly, continuing to talk as she worked when more customers appeared, but nevertheless Emily could tell she wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense. Maria asked her if she lived in the town but this was the only interest she showed in her situation, much to Emily’s relief. ‘Ah, so you haven’t been here very long then?’ she said in Spanish. ‘Welcome. What brings you here?’

She reeled off the usual story. It didn’t seem to faze Maria. She looked at Emily kindly, almost as if she felt sorry for her, and didn’t attempt to dig any further. Instead, she had suggested Emily visit Patricia. She has a lovely property for rent that might suit you, she’d said. It’s quiet and has enough room. Emily hardly knew Maria and yet something made her suggestion feel genuine. She came across almost like a mother-figure, bustling around in her flowery skirt, her broad frame filling the space. Although she was under no illusion that Maria knew this idea would benefit herself too, she could tell she cared.  If she was going to be working, it definitely made sense to find somewhere of her own to live for as long as she stayed.

Emily hadn’t expected to get the job, she was sufficiently surprised when she did and daren’t turn it down now. There were a million pertinent reasons why she might have refused to take it, but she hadn’t. She would just have to keep herself to herself.

She passed a man with light skin and a sun hat walking a dog. She nodded and greeted him with a ‘Buenos’, suppressing a yawn. She’d never been a morning person! Antonio was stacking up the fresh bread as she entered the bakery. The smell of warm dough invaded her nostrils. ‘Hola’, he called with his head in the display. She remembered that he had told her on her first day that he was up at 4.30am every morning to bake the bread. She didn’t envy him one bit. The sheer thought of it made her tired, but the rows of pastries and cakes and racks of bread made her mouth water.

Even after such a short time in the job, it was becoming obvious to Emily that the bakery had its regulars and that more often than not she could start to predict when people would come in and what they would buy. Some came in every day for their fresh bread, some came on specific days only, some came for coffee and lunch with their spouses or friends and sat under the awning watching the world go by. She understood the importance of routine. God knows at one point a regimented regime was what had got her through each day, each week. Those days were behind her now, even if she hadn’t forgotten them yet, but if she was honest the need for some kind of rhythm was still very much a priority and what had brought her to the bakery in the first place. She needed a sense of purpose, a reason to have come all this way to try and break