Watergate Bay

  The Stuffed Rabbit  It had been a long day for Darrell Rivers.       She peered into the cot. A branch tapped irregularly against the windowpane in the nursery. They had decided, during the overhaul of the house, this was the best room for the nursery. Darrell inspected the chubby creature lying in the cot.       She had been on the planet now for twenty months.       Darrell had bought the toy rabbit, which she had named St. Leonard, when the girl was born. She watched the toddler chew the ear of the now tatty rabbit and wiggle about. She wondered when it would be moved out of its cot. ‘Surely, it’ll be too old soon. She must have a proper bed.’ But Darrell was not all together knowledgeable about young children, which was one of the reasons she was hesitant to spend any time alone with it. She took off her yellow party hat and let it dangle by her side, her grip loose and uncaring. ‘Does the child,’ Darrell asked herself, ‘have a genuine attachment to the toy or has it only been pl

Malory Towers Winter had set in early in Cornwall and sitting in the church froze Darrell to the bone. Darrell, Sally, Sally’s mother and father, and Sally’s little sister Daffy, were staying in Aunt Mary’s house. She found it rather creepy, and so did Sally.       ‘Well, Sally,’ Darrell had overhead Sally’s mother say the night before the funeral, ‘where would you have us stay?’ That was the end of it.       Daffy was eight now. She was a well-mannered but quiet girl, and Darrell never felt completely at ease with her. When Darrell had given her condolences to Daffy, who was a rather intelligent girl for her age, Daffy had been insolent and simply ignored what Darrell said. ‘Perhaps,’ Darrell had thought to herself later, when she was brushing her teeth and staring at herself in the glass, ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it to Daffy.’ Darrell wondered if Daffy knew how Aunt Mary had died. No one had mentioned it in Darrell’s presence, and she wondered if she was even meant to know. She im

Off the Cliff Edge  It was an unhappy week for Mildred Pierce. Her tennis racket was shot, and Sally hadn’t kissed her for days. Mildred slept in her own room the night of the play. She said to herself, ‘She needs space.’ She was sure that Sally would come around sooner or later. Mildred had a niggling suspicion though that Sally was slowly pushing away from her. She was also aware that by worrying that Sally was pushing away from her, she was inadvertently pushing Sally away too. Mildred had hoped the night of the play would be an opportunity for them to bond again, but once again Mildred and Sally had been disrupted by that hot-headed Darrell Rivers. Mildred looked at it like a double edged sword. Sally and Darrell seemed to come as a pair, and whatever happened between them, they seemed to be drawn back to one another. Mildred took her broken racket and left.       The snow had only lasted a few days. Rain had set in around St. Andrews. Mildred was meeting Simon, a boy from the Shak