Page 26 of The Cornish Cream Tea Holiday
‘You don’t know I’m going to fail,’ she said, but it came out wrong: defensive, as if part of her believed him, rather than defiant.
‘I know this business, love, and the amount of pie-in-the-sky dreamers who’ve come through my properties and gone under swifter than a tanker with a socking great hole in it, you wouldn’t believe.’ He was staring out of the window again, as if she wasn’t even worth looking at.
She ran through responses in her head:And what about you – was your business an overnight success? Did you do anything to help these people: introduce them to other business owners in the community, champion them in your networking circles, or did you start off by telling them they’d fail, before they’d even signed a contract? What do you think your unfounded assessment did to their confidence, to their chances of success? Do you take any responsibility for itat all?
She didn’t say any of them, though.
‘Do you have a business plan?’ he asked.
She had spent so long putting it together: researching the market, consulting other independent shop owners, going over and over the financial projections until her head hurt. Mr Scable sounded slightly relenting, as if he realised he’d been harsh, but the damage had been done. She wasn’t prepared to have him trash all her hard work in the same way he’d dismissed her dreams.
‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t think I needed to bring it with me for this.’
He scoffed. There was no warmth in his dark eyes, and Thea decided that some time long ago he’d had it sucked out of him, by ambition or greed or some awful event that had made him focus on profit and nothing else.
She felt as if there was a pressure cooker building up inside her, and the thing that would burst out when the lid popped off wouldn’t be anger, or righteous indignation, but tears. Jamie Scable was the kind of man who made her want to hide in a corner; who looked at her and decided she was nothing, and who had the ability to almost make her believe it.
She had thought that Ben was too cool and aloof for her, the type of person who would dismiss her instantly, but now, standing in this empty, echoing space that could have held her dreams, he was the person she wanted to run to. But, if she told him, it would give him the chance to see her the way Jamie did. He might agree with the landlord that her plans were the stuff of fantasy. She hadn’t told Ben what she was doing while they were walking, and maybe deep down that was because she knew he’d think it was as pointless as Jamie did.
‘I’ll have to have a think,’ she said now. She tried to sound businesslike, but her chin was aimed at the floor.
Jamie glanced at his watch. ‘You do that. I’ve got someone else coming in five minutes, anyway.’
Thea walked towards the door.
‘Oh, and love? Next time, if you’re really serious, you might want to think about asking a couple of questions. If you want to make it look like you know what you’re talking about.’
Thea couldn’t get out of there fast enough, the fresh air a balm against her hot cheeks. She had imagined going tothe café further up the hill and getting an iced mocha, or browsing the gift shop, perhaps finding something to give Ben as a thank-you gift. But now, all she wanted was to go back to Sunfish Cottage, shut the door and lose herself in the last pages of her book.
If she was honest with herself, she could easily do that for the next two and a half weeks, until it was time to go home to the safety of her flat and the library, to Esme and Alex, and her quiet, unambitious life.
But as she walked, her hard soles tapping out a rhythm on the cobbles, the gentle wind caressing her, listening to people laughing, discussing which flavour of ice cream they wanted, and whether to head to the beach now or after lunch, hearing the ping of a bell over a shop door, she remembered why she had steered Esme towards thisparticular town when they had been planning their Cornish holiday.
It was here, after a damp, dreary week staying in a faded guest house near Penzance when she was ten, her mum and dad arguing constantly, that their holiday had – in her eyes, at least – been rescued. Her mum had got a migraine less than an hour into their journey home and, in her usual, dramatic way, said she couldn’t possibly sit in the car for another four. So they had stopped in Port Karadow, found a B&B with a vacant family room, and she and her dad had left her mum to rest, exploring the town on their own. There had still been a bookshop then, and her dad had known this was where Thea most wanted to go.
She had spent ages browsing, had chosenTiger Eyesby Judy Blume as her prize, and then she and her dad had bought fish and chips, gone down to the harbour, and saton a bench. The ground had been glistening after a heavy rain shower, the water grey-green and choppy, the boats bobbing and twisting, as if they were trying to outrun the weather. Thea had always felt calmer when it was just her and her dad, and she had soaked up the town’s charm, the simple pleasures of the seaside view and the moreish, salty chips, and the haven of the bookshop, her new story wrapped in a paper bag and laid carefully on her knee.
Her parents had divorced not long after that, and now she kept in touch with them as separate entities. Her mum, always talking about her latest crisis, putting herself in the centre of every story, and her dad: quiet, gentle and practical. It was books that had got her through their divorce, hiding from the worst of it inside a different world, and she still had the copy ofTiger Eyes.She reread it once a year, using the faded receipt as her bookmark. She could still, just about, read the words,Port Karadow Bookson the top. Even though the shop itself was long gone, the memory remained.
Thea watched a young boy waving a fishing net in the direction of the harbour wall while his mother held onto him, not letting him get too close to the edge, the dad helping a little girl pick up pebbles and put them in her castle-shaped bucket. Soon, Thea thought, it would be filled with sand instead, and upended on the beach. A fisherman was unloading crates from his boat a little way along the wall, and an old couple, arm in arm, said hello to him, then stopped to chat, as if they’d all known each other for years.
There was too much here, Thea realised, for her to let Jamie Scable dampen her dreams. She had picked PortKaradow for a reason, and she couldn’t let him dissuade her. There would be other options, other properties. She just needed to find out what they were, rebuild her confidence, and keep going.
The cottages were almost blindingly white in the sunshine, Thea squinting against the glare as she walked up the hill.
She was putting her key in the lock when she heard footsteps behind her.
‘Thea.’
Ben was standing a few feet away. Had he been waiting for her to get back? She dismissed the thought immediately.
‘Hi,’ she said, trying her best to sound chirpy.
‘You OK?’ he asked. ‘How did your appointment go?’
‘It wasn’t … I might have to rethink a few things. But it doesn’t matter.’ She forced a smile. ‘How are you?’
He didn’t answer immediately, as if he was weighing up whether to accept her change of subject. But then he said, ‘What do you know about barbecue food?’
