Page 3 of The Cornish Cream Tea Holiday
Chapter Two
The bed was incredibly comfortable. With the window open, the sounds of the sea had lullabied Thea off to sleep, her head sunk deep into the pillows, the hotel-style duvet feather-light, providing just enough warmth. Her belly was full of fish pie, and even though it had been a supermarket ready meal rather than something crafted by a chef at a local pub, it had still given her Cornish seaside vibes.
By the time she’d got back from the supermarket, the banging that had briefly disturbed her had stopped, and as she’d parked her Renault Clio in front of the two houses there had been no other vehicles. She was completely alone, and it was a strange feeling. She never felt alone in Bristol.
She and Esme had exchanged a few messages, and then she’d ended up watching the Saturday night entertainment shows on BBC One, having to angle herself oddly on the sofa to see the screen properly. Even though Mel hadn’t said so explicitly, the cottage’s aesthetic said, ‘This is not a place for boxsets or the BBC: you’re in Cornwall for God’s sake,so get out and enjoy it!’ But, Thea had told herself, it was her first night. She had been driving for a lot of the day, and she had three weeks to explore.
First thing on Sunday morning, she made herself a milky coffee and heated up one of her supermarket croissants, then took them, along with her book, and went outside. She had, with immense self-restraint, saved the latest Elly Griffiths novel for this holiday even though it had been released in February, and she was looking forward to starting it.
There was a set of wooden garden furniture on the gravel in front of the living-room window, which seemed an unusual place for it until you considered the view, and Thea took one of the cushions from the under-stairs cupboard and put it on the chair facing the sea.
There was a blue Ford Transit van parked in front of Oystercatcher Cottage now, but no other signs of life: no lights or twitching curtains, no more banging or the squealing of drills. Would builders want to work on a sunny Sunday in June when there were umpteen more pleasurable things they could be doing? She was pretty sure the answer was no.
And it was already shaping up to be a glorious day, the early sun pale milk rather than vibrant orange juice, its rays shifting the blue sea to the high-sparkle setting, a few wispy clouds drifting gently overhead. It was achingly beautiful, and for a second Thea wondered how anyone got any reading done in the face of such a view. But if there was anyone who could ignore distractions and fall completely into a book, it was her – especially when that book was the latest Ruth Galloway mystery.
Half an hour later her croissant was cold, her coffee had been neglected, and the sea was still shimmering away,though she hadn’t spent a minute watching it. She putThe Locked Roomdown and tore her croissant in half, her phone buzzing as the pastry flakes stuck to her fingers. She glanced at the screen just as the sound of a door opening resonated in the quiet.
She glanced at the message from Esme:
What are you up to? Any pics to send me yet? xxx
God, her friend could be demanding. But her request wasn’t as demanding as the need for Thea’s eyes to focus on the man who had just stepped out of Oystercatcher Cottage and was stretching his arms towards the sky, as if he’d been hibernating for the last six months and all his limbs were crackling and stiff.Lying torpid, Thea thought, happy at the choice of phrase, except now, she realised with a hard swallow, he looked the opposite of torpid.
He was tall, with wide shoulders, his arm muscles well-defined beneath the sleeves of a faded blue T-shirt. His pale jeans were slung low on his hips, and he was wearing a pair of scuffed brown boots. With his back to her, Thea could only see that his walnut-brown hair was short and neat, revealing a long, tanned neck. He was proportioned like a builder; his frame was strong, his limbs long, his arms golden brown, as if he worked outside a lot. He pressed his palm between his shoulder blades, pulling his elbow in tight with his free hand, then repeated the stretch on the other side, letting out a low groan.Crepitus, Thea thought absently, though she didn’t know if he’d appreciate her giving a name to the way his joints cracked like that.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him, her coffee mug hovering close to her lips, as if it was no longer liquid she needed to sustain her, and she could instead just drinkhimin all day. The cheesiness of this thought was not, sadly, enough to stop her gazing at him. He wasn’t like the grizzled foreman who had been in charge of her neighbour, Helen’s, extension, with his stomach hanging over his waistband like a cushion, his greying chin fuzz almost indistinguishable from the hair on his head. No, this was a Diet Coke Breakbuilder, and Thea thought that if she snapped a photo of him and sent it to Esme, then her friend would declare their bucket list null and void, because Thea would have already won at her holiday without moving from the cottage.
She pictured Esme working closely with Alex to get the festival risk assessments completed: Alex, who could make something that dry and relentless a fun task, with his twinkling eyes and easy smile. The thought made her uncomfortable, though she didn’t quite know why. To banish it, she held her phone up in front of her.
The builder was still facing away from her, his hands on his hips, the breeze tugging his T-shirt against him so that she could see the shape of his back, the peaks of his shoulder blades. His brown hair tufted up on top, where it was slightly longer. She opened the camera, angled herself so that if he happened to turn around she could claim she was taking a selfie – vanity was a lesser vice than spying, surely – and snapped a photo. The artificial camera click sounded embarrassingly loud, and he turned, but as her heart lodged in her throat she realised she wasn’t the object of his interest.
No, that was the large dog that had just trotted out of Oystercatcher Cottage. It was long-haired and shaggy, its fur mostly white, but with a few black and pale brown smudges. It looked like a drawing one of her Young Readersclass at the library might do after readingThe Hundred and One Dalmatians.The dog approached the man and he crouched, running his hand over the animal’s head.
‘Decided to finally wake up, have you?’ he said in a soft voice. ‘You lazy sod.’ There was an acre of affection in his words, and Thea was treated to a view of his profile: dark brows, a square jaw, cheeks with a tinge of pink showing through the tan.
The dog raised his head, accepting the attention, then turned in Thea’s direction. The man followed his pet’s gaze, and Thea sucked in a breath as their eyes met. His were brown, but not dark: somewhere close to hazel, she thought.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ she replied. Her voice was a squeak, as it often was when faced with strangers outside the safe confines of the library, where knowledge of her job gave her a confidence that wasn’t always present in other areas of her life.
‘Staying in the cottage?’ He nodded at the house behind her.
‘I arrived yesterday,’ she said. ‘Are you … working on the house alone, or waiting for your colleagues to turn up? You must have a hard taskmaster to be working on a Sunday.’ She was pleased she’d got the words out, and that she was no longer squeaking.
This man, who was crouching in front of her, holding onto his dog’s collar to stop it approaching her, was not Thea’s type of person. He was too handsome; too coollysure of himself. She was 28, a decade removed from school, but her time there had given her a mistrust of people like this that she hadn’t, despite common sense and all the logical arguments she’d levelled at herself, been able to banish.
‘The hardest taskmaster,’ he said, agreeing with her assessment. She could already see the glimmer of amusement in his eyes. She’d managed two sentences, and he was already laughing at her.
Something deflated inside her, and she picked up her book. ‘Well,’ she said, turning back to the pages, ‘he’s probably paying you double time, so there’s that.’
He laughed abruptly, then muttered, more to himself than her, ‘I’m not getting paid anything.’
Thea was intrigued – and shocked, if he really was having to work for free – but she wasn’t going to bite. She also wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of going back inside, even though her mug was empty. This was her outside space as much as his.
‘You know,’ he said, standing up slowly, ‘I’ve heard that every time you take a selfie, it steals a part of your soul. Take too many, and there’ll be nothing left.’
Thea clamped her jaw shut to stop it from gaping open, like a fish. ‘Is that so?’ she ground out. ‘Good thing I wasn’t taking one, then.’ She realised, a second too late, what she’d just admitted to.
