Forbidden Shores

Book summary

Sophie Lawson’s holiday in Tenerife takes an unexpected turn when she meets Jake, a man bound by a loveless marriage and a hidden past. Their connection deepens, but as they return home, secrets from both their lives surface, testing their bond and altering their futures.

Excerpt from Forbidden Shores

Everything that happened was Sophie Lawson’s fault. The entire thing. All of it. The people who got caught up in it. Those who suffered.

All because of her stupidity. Her selfish decisions.

If she hadn’t allowed her sister to talk her into going on that godforsaken holiday in the first place, just so that she ‘wouldn’t be alone’. If she’d simply said NO; if she hadn’t gone down to the beach that night, then none of it would have happened.

The fault was with her – and her alone.

At least that’s what the demons would tell her on those long and lonely nights that came after…

Sophie was often a patient woman, but when the dreaded bright red letters spelling out DELAYED appeared next to her flight, originally scheduled to leave Gatwick for Tenerife South within the hour, that patience was stretched.

She continued to observe her sister for a while as she occupied a seat in the bustling departure lounge. Molly, on her third glass of Prosecco in thirty minutes, appeared utterly oblivious to the fact that her one-year-old daughter was engaged in an experiment to test out the endurance of her mum’s noise-cancelling headphones.

In a way, Sophie didn’t blame her sister’s now-ex-husband for leaving so suddenly.

Sophie watched on for a while longer as her niece’s cries for attention resonated loudly throughout what was intended to be the ‘quiet zone’ of the terminal. She remained uncertain whether the headphones were holding up remarkably well, or if Molly was choosing to deliberately tune out. Either way, the gentleman’s face contorting into an irritated expression whilst he was trying to enjoy an expresso a few seats down hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Sophie knew her sister, probably better than anyone. And she knew that it would take more than a couple of agitated passengers grumbling into their coffee cups for Molly Lewis to put down her glass of fizz and parent her child.

‘Come on, Kady,’ she said playfully, a layer of sweat forming on her forehead. ‘Calm down. It won’t be long until we get on the big aeroplane, oooh!’

Eventually, Kady did calm down, leaving the rest of the terminal sitting in an agitated silence for a short time until Harry, Sophie’s three-year-old son, reignited the echoing cries for attention.

She picked him up and placed him on her lap before pretending that he was sitting on a racehorse. His cries began transitioning into laughs, but that only triggered another attention-seeking cry from Kady.

Sophie vented her frustration through her nostrils and reached over to pick up her niece, now with both of them sitting on each of her knees.

Then it dawned on her: the reason her sister had asked her to join her on this holiday (in place of her ex-husband and his snob of a mother) wasn’t for the company, or because she actually wanted her to be there. She was the childminder, whilst Molly poured as much alcohol down her throat as possible.

Still, she appeared to be having a good time, at least. She always did when booze was involved, and Sophie wouldn’t demand that she stop, of course. That would mean saying No. Just like politely rejecting to accompany her on that holiday would’ve meant saying No.

But had Sophie Lawson known then how the upcoming holiday would profoundly change her life, she might have summoned the strength to speak that troublesome two-letter word.

It had already gone 2 a.m. when the coach finally arrived at Casa Atlantica, and the tiredness had well and truly set in.

The delayed flight hadn’t gone down well with the kids, who cried for the entire flight.

Sophie grabbed her bag and made her way down the coach’s aisle, catching a quick glimpse of herself in one of the windows. It was so dark outside that she could barely see anything other than her reflection. She was instantly drawn to the black rings below her eyes and thought that she hadn’t looked this rundown since—

She quickly shook the thought away, got off the bus, and headed to the revolving door.

Juggling two suitcases and balancing a sleeping Harry over her shoulder, she stumbled through the door and into the hotel lobby. The freezing air conditioning immediately hit her face, causing her skin to feel prickly.

Molly and Kady just about made it into the lobby too, with Molly using the pram as a support to keep her upright. She looked around and stumbled over to Sophie, who was now standing in the queue to check in.

‘You got the booking confirmation?’ Sophie asked.

It took a few seconds for Molly to twig that she’d said anything to her. When she did, she peered over her large sunglasses and cocked her head towards the basket under the pram.

It was perfectly obvious to Sophie that Molly wasn’t going to get them for her. She crouched down carefully, her arm clamped around Harry’s waist, and searched through the basket to find the documents she needed.

The queue wasn’t moving all that fast due to a family at the front who appeared to be having difficulty communicating with the receptionist, Demi (according to her name badge).

It didn’t take Sophie long to realise that the man complaining was French. She narrowed her eyes and saw two flags on Demi’s badge, indicating that she spoke Spanish and English, but not French.

The woman ahead of them continued to tut and tap her foot with each passing minute. She too was undoubtedly tired. Sophie quickly identified her as the same tall and narrow woman from the coach. She’d been vocal about the length of time it had taken to set off from the airport. But her being aggravated hadn’t meant that Demi had suddenly gained the ability to understand fluent French.

‘Here,’ a man drowning in an oversized Hawaiian shirt said as he got to his feet from the nearby sofas, ‘try this…’ He was holding his phone out to Demi, and Sophie caught a glimpse, noticing that he’d opened the translation app.

‘Oh, sit down,’ the woman in front barked. ‘You’ll just make everything worse!’

Sophie noticed the man’s cheeks glowing pink as he quietly made his way back to the sofas and took a seat next to his son, a boy of a similar age to Harry whose attention remained fixated on his iPad.

Using a translation app wasn’t a bad idea, she thought. If it hadn’t been for the man’s wife’s instant dismissal of his attempts to use modern technology in an effort to help the French family, the queue could well have moved along by now.

She gave a half-smile towards him, to which he replied with a subtle twitch in the corner of his lips, enough to reveal a soft dimple in his cheek, before raking his fingers through his dark slicked-back hair and shifting his gaze back to his son’s iPad.

Heat flushed into her cheeks when his eyes flicked back at her for a second time. She quickly looked away and pretended to adjust Harry on her shoulder. When she moved him, she felt his relaxed weight starting to feel as heavy as a small hippo.

Once he was sturdy again, she pulled out her phone from her pocket and loaded the translation app, setting the languages to translate French to Spanish.

‘Here, perhaps this can help?’ she said, struggling to make her way to Demi at the front desk.

‘Oh, Sí,’ Demi replied as Sophie held her phone below the French man’s mouth. He took a glance down at the screen, recognised what she was suggesting for him to do and began to speak.

‘Oh!’ Demi chirped. Whatever it was, she sounded relieved as she searched around the desk.

It wasn’t long before Sophie also realised that the Frenchman’s issue was a missing bag. Demi handed him a card with the relevant phone number printed on it, to which he gently offered a satisfied grin and, with a subtle nod of appreciation directed at Sophie, swiftly continued on his way.

‘Finally!’ the woman in front exclaimed, her frustration evident as she hurled her luggage towards the check-in desk. She slammed her folder filled with their travel documents down and allowed Demi to start going through them for her. ‘Honestly,’ she hissed, darting her thin gaze towards Sophie, ‘these people wouldn’t last two minutes in the UK!’

Sophie returned a nervous smile, cracked a single knuckle (a nervous habit her mother had failed to shake out of her), and lowered her gaze.

In a way, she admired the tall and narrow woman. She wasn’t a dictionary of snarky comments like so many people are these days. Seemingly, if this woman had a problem, she spoke up. Confidence that Sophie could only long for.

She quickly made her way back to her spot in the queue.

‘Always the genius, my sis!’ Molly yelled to the rest of the queue. A few began to laugh, but Sophie’s eyes wandered back towards Mr Hawaiian Shirt, still sitting with his son on the sofa, pearls of sweat bubbling on his head. This time it was seemingly his turn to instantly flick his gaze away, and it wasn’t long before his wife summoned him, extending her long arm containing the key card for their room with a stern reminder not to misplace it, as he had done on their previous holiday.

He nodded, scooped up all their bags, and followed her through a pair of glass doors that led to the poolside and entertainment area. Their son tagged along whilst remaining engrossed in the game on his iPad.

‘Jeez, what a miserable cow!’ Molly exclaimed as they moved towards the desk. ‘I’d have told her to sod off back to the airport, love!’ she added, now directing her attention to Demi.

‘I’m surprised that you didn’t!’ Sophie joked, to which Molly let out a drunken belch of laughter that released an invisible alcohol-smelling gas from her mouth.

After checking a couple of documents, Demi handed over their key cards and marked their room’s location on a map.

Molly thanked her and pushed her sunglasses back up her nose as she swiftly made her way through the glass doors. As Sophie caught up, she found Molly chuckling at the lingering echoes of the bickering couple’s argument in the distance.