Buried in Cornwall by Janie Bolitho

bothered him and he believed he could arrange it with very little outlay. He was owed a favour from several years back. One he decided it was time to call in. This was unofficial business. If nothing came of it he would not, like Rose, have made a public fool of himself.
     
    Madeleine Duke’s past life was mostly unknown to her Cornish friends and this was part of the reason why she hadn’t been accepted with as much enthusiasm as she had expected. True, invitations came at regular intervals, such as the one to Stella’s exhibition, and there was never a shortage of visitors to her shop or the flat above it, but she still felt she was treated differently.Already she was beginning to realise that her past, good or bad, didn’t matter here. What did matter was that she refused to talk about it. What she had failed to understand was that she would have been welcomed more warmly if the details of her life were common knowledge. The Cornish possessed a need to know but for no reason other than to satisfy their innate curiosity. Nothing would have been held against her.
    Maddy had had a child, a daughter, and for this sin, because she had been unmarried, her parents had disowned her. She had realised too late that she was pregnant, and a termination was out of the question. The baby had been adopted. It was some years ago now but she still regretted it and the pain remained. How happy the child would have been in Cornwall if only she’d been allowed a chance to think things through. But it was too late now. An only child herself, she had been the centre of her parents’ world, only to be told how cruelly she had let them down in the end. Having Annie, as she secretly called the little girl, adopted had not healed the breach between them as she had believed it would. Her parents had refused to have anything more to do with her. Maddy had given away her child for nothing. She had moved down to Brighton and mixed witha crowd her parents would have loathed until it dawned on her that they were losers like herself. From there she had moved from town to town along the south coast, never finding the sense of belonging that she was searching for. Finally she had come to Cornwall where, after two years of constant grind, cleaning and serving in cafes and pubs, she had saved enough to add to the small sum her grandmother, who had secretly sympathised with her, had left her and rented the tiny shop and the premises above it. In the little spare time she had had Maddy had worked at her crafts and, although initially her stock was sparse, she had continued to add to it, buying in when necessary.
    Just over a year ago, after a particularly successful summer, she had spoken to her landlord and made him an offer to buy which had been accepted. Now she had a mortgage hanging over her head but instead of worrying her it gave her the sense of security which she had been lacking since the adoption of her baby when her life had been turned upside down. She lived frugally but was almost content. Only one thing really mattered: tracing her daughter. But that was not her prerogative, legally it must be the other way around. Maddy realised she wasnest-building in case of that happy eventuality.
    Her need to belong was so desperate that even she realised it was unnatural. Other women, women like Rose Trevelyan, seemed quite content to go it alone and regarded being accepted as neither here nor there. Perhaps that was the secret, not to care too much. Rose Trevelyan was an outsider, too, although she had married a Cornishman and had lived in the area for over twenty-five years.
    She had been rearranging the stock on the shelves during a quiet period when a policeman had arrived to question her about Jenny Manders. Maddy had been unusually withdrawn and barely spoke other than to confirm that she had seen Jenny when she went past in tears but had no idea where she might have gone. ‘If she was that upset she could’ve come here, she’d have seen the