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The Sea Gate, Jane Johnson
About the book
One house, two women, a lifetime of secrets...
Following the death of her mother, Becky begins the sad task of sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope post-marked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother's elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home.
Becky arrives at Chynalls to find the beautiful old house crumbling into the ground, and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable.
Though daunted by the enormity of the task, Becky sets to work. But as she peels back the layers of paint, plaster and grime, she uncovers secrets buried for more than seventy years. Secrets from a time when Olivia was young, the Second World War was raging, and danger and romance lurked round every corner...
The Sea Gate is a sweeping, spellbinding novel about the lives of two very different women, and the secrets that bind them together.
EXTRACT
Becky
I take the phone away from my ear, end the call and stand looking at the impression of oil and powder left on its blank screen, traces of make-up I so rarely wear. I wipe the mark away with my thumb and transfer the phone to my jacket pocket. It is hard to take in the words that have just oozed into my ear.
There was something on the scan…
Across the street two women are still engaged in the noisy altercation that started just as my phone rang. The woman in the red car drove into a parking space that the woman in the muddy SUV was preparing to reverse into. The traffic is halted on either side of them: people have stopped on the pavement to watch the argument. Some are taking sides. Heated words are exchanged, photos taken. A moment ago I had been diverted by this intense little drama; now, it seems absurd and I experience the urge to run across the road and tell them that life is too short to get angry over something so trivial. But I don’t. I am feeling dislocated from the world. Words from the phone call buzz in my brain like angry bees, then spiral away again, trailing bitterness and regret, tinged with fear.
It may not be anything, but we should scan you again, just to be sure.
I find myself thinking, ‘I must tell Mum,’ and then remember why I am here. I cannot tell Mum anything ever again, not in this life.
A commuter sounds two angry blasts of their horn, summoning me back, and I watch the muddy-SUV woman concede defeat and drive off with a screech of tyres. The tide of humanity resumes, flowing around me as I stand on the corner, a still point, a pebble in a stream. Then the horn sounds again and someone calls my name.
‘Becky? Come on, we’re going to be late. Honestly, women drivers, shouldn’t be on the road. I’ve been sitting in this sodding traffic for ten minutes!’
It is my brother, James, in his shiny Lexus, and beside him in the passenger seat his wife, Evie. My heart sinks. At the best of times Evie makes me feel like a bag lady, with her exquisitely put-together look and superior manner. Feeling self-conscious in my ill-fitting black skirt, which I have not worn in years, I scramble into the back seat and give them a tight smile, keeping my terrors behind my teeth. My brother and his wife feel like members of a different species to me.
About the author
Jane Johnson is a British novelist and publisher. She is the UK editor for George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb and Dean Koontz and was for many years publisher of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Married to a Berber chef she met while researching The Tenth Gift, she lives in Cornwall and Morocco.
Follow Jane:
Twitter: @JaneeJohnsonBakr
Pre-order links:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2zvUFMv
Kobo: https://bit.ly/35T5F2y
Google Play: https://bit.ly/3ctmGD1
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