Page 31 of A Secret Cornish Wish
I blush furiously.
‘What about you, Frankie?’ Suzy asks, trying to rescue me from my embarrassment. ‘What do you want?’
‘Oh, I really don’t know yet. I just want to pass my exams and then see what happens next. I don’t have any plans or goals or anything like that.’
‘Frankie wants to be a professional artist one day,’ Claire announces from her rock. ‘She’d like her own gallery like the ones dotted around St Felix. Don’t you, Frankie?’
I frown at Claire.
‘What?’ she asks innocently. ‘You told me all that, and you said you wanted to go to art college, but you aren’t sure if you’re good enough.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Rob is looking down at me while I lie on the rug wishing the beach would open up and swallow me. ‘You’re an amazing artist. You’d have no problem getting into art college.’
‘See, I told you he was a good ’un!’ Mandy grins.
‘Maybe,’ I say, trying to play it down. ‘We’ll have to see what this next year brings, won’t we? As long as the Misfit Mermaids are still all together, then I’ll be happy.’
‘Hear, hear to that!’ Eddie lifts his empty glass.
‘Where are you going, Suzy?’ Claire asks as Suzy gets up and begins to walk across the sand.
‘Flotsam and jetsam!’ Suzy calls back over her shoulder. ‘Back in a mo.’
‘What does she mean?’ Rob asks.
‘Flotsam and jetsam are things washed up from the sea,’ I explain. ‘That’s what Suzy calls them, anyway. It means she’s going to collect some rubbish she’s seen floating in the water or lying on the sand. She often does it if she sees something on the beach that shouldn’t be there.’
‘We should probably all do that,’ Rob says. ‘Maybe there wouldn’t be so much if everybody picked up rubbish from the beach.’
‘I feel bad about what I said earlier,’ Eddie says, watching Suzy. ‘I’ll go and help her.’
Eddie gets up and jogs across the little bit of sand that the sea has left us.
‘We sometimes have our fallings out, but we never stay mad with each other for long,’ I explain for Rob’s benefit. ‘Do we?’ I look over at Mandy and Claire.
‘Nah!’ Mandy says. ‘Life’s too short.’
But Claire is intently watching Suzy and Eddie.
‘What’s up, Claire?’ I ask.
‘I’m not sure, but I think Suzy and Eddie have found something interesting.’
We all sit up and look over at the two of them standing together on the edge of the water. They seem to be examining something.
I call out to them. ‘What have you found?’
They both look back at us.
‘Not sure,’ Eddie replies. ‘We’ll bring it over.’
Suzy and Eddie walk back over to the picnic rugs carrying something made of wood. As they get nearer, it looks very much like a small beer barrel with rusted metal hoops holding the wood of the barrel together.
‘Is that a barrel of beer?’ Mandy asks as they put their find down on the sand next to us.
‘It feels a bit light to be full of beer,’ Eddie says. ‘But it’s still sealed, which is a bit odd.’
‘It looks more like a cask that would have held whisky,’ Rob says, examining it. ‘There were some at the pub when we moved in. The people that owned it before us had used them as decoration in the bar. This one is old, though, by the look of the wood – is there a date stamped on the outside anywhere?’
