Read an extract of Shellybanks by Louise Milligan

Check out the latest novel from the bestselling author of Pheasants Nest, Louise Milligan.

Kate Delaney is floating.

The Ionian Sea looks like a rippled sheet of teal glass. It’s so salty she hardly has to move to stay afloat. It’s the clearest sea she’s ever seen, and the water on her skin feels somehow more unctuous and milky than the ocean in Australia.

Her white limbs are spread out like the slender arms of burnt-orange sea stars resting on smoothed rocks on the ocean floor. The sun warms her Celtic body, so liberally slathered with sunscreen, she looks a little blue. Huge dark glasses shield her eyes from the blazing sun. She can hear the screams of teenagers jumping off the rocks into the water not too far away. Beyond that is the wonky sound of church bells ringing, slightly off key.

Kate Delaney is trying to just be. It seems the only place where her mind is truly still is when she’s allowing herself to be gently carried by this glassy sea.

But her reverie is broken when someone grasps her abruptly around her waist.

The old terror immediately floods her body. Fight or flight? Kate chooses flight, breaking away from the hold and diving towards the sea floor. She holds her breath, sunglasses still on and eyes closed, the sound of church bells replaced by her pulse pounding in her ears. She opens her eyes for a small peek and sees a luminescent fish. She’s a siren under here. Maybe if she stays under for long enough, he’ll leave her alone.

When she is forced to rise to the surface to breathe, she can hear a faint, distorted voice calling her.

‘Kate! Kate, it’s okay—it’s just me.’

Gasping and blinking, she splutters. Kate can make out a hand with two distinctive freckles in the crevice next to his thumb. Nails bitten down. Soft skin untroubled by manual labour. Liam Carroll’s hand. She knows she’s not some sort of Raquel Welch, emerging from the ocean as a vision of glistening swept-back hair and lithe limbs. The seawater makes her cough and stings her eyes. She senses she resembles a drowning marmalade kitten in oversized Prada sunglasses and a dotted retro maillot.

‘Fuck you, Liam Carroll! Don’t ever fucking do that to me again.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Liam says. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He cups her face in his hands and gives her a salty kiss. ‘You really shouldn’t swim in those sunglasses, though. You’ll wreck them.’

Her limbs soften. She starts to cry. She wonders when the rush of fear at the tiniest things will end.

‘I’m sorry, too,’ she manages.

‘Come on,’ Liam says, putting his arms around her. ‘Let’s get you dry.’

They towel off and walk back to the little villa Kate chose because the magenta bougainvillea in its whitewashed courtyard reminded her of her flat at home. She dries her hair and puts on a fifties sundress patterned with cherries and a pair of espadrille wedges, then dabs a slick of crimson onto her lips.

Kate has always thought you should dress well when you feel like shit. It can’t help but drag you out of glum.

Liam is sitting at the little wooden table as she walks in. He looks at her and smiles. ‘I love you,’ he says, his brown eyes warm. Liam is now in the habit of saying all the things he couldn’t manage to say before, all the things he regretted not saying during those dark times when he’d thought he’d lost her. He used to be more circumspect. Cooler. He’s not anymore. She doesn’t care.

She understands.

He pulls her towards him and peels the cherry dress off her again. She’s standing tall in her wedges, and he puts his mouth on her thighs.

It had been a huge relief to Kate to realise that the sex with Liam was still a going concern.

It had taken time. She was terrified at first. Not so much of the act itself, but that the trauma would somehow make her love him less. But it didn’t. Nothing about the way Liam held her resembled the violence of what had happened to her that night in the alley with that awful human.

She kicks off her espadrilles and they stumble across the cool tiles towards their roughly made bed.

Extracted from Shellybanks by Louise Milligan.

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Shellybanks

by Louise Milligan

A novel of buried secrets, unimaginable trauma and how the love of family can pull you through to a brighter future from Louise Milligan, bestselling author of Pheasants Nest.

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