Page 89 of The Cornish Cream Tea Holiday
Chapter Twenty-Three
Esme was sitting on the sofa, readingThe Greek Escapeby Karen Swan, but she put it down as soon as Thea walked in.
‘How did it go?’ she asked.
‘Not great,’ Thea admitted.
‘You told him it was all a misunderstanding, though?’
Thea perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘I did, but he’s been hurt recently, by someone else, and I think I’ve just exacerbated things. I hope that if I give him time, he’ll realise I was telling him the truth, that I haven’t been leading him on.’ She shook her head. ‘How’s Alex?’
‘Sleeping,’ Esme said. ‘Which means it’s just us for a while. I want to knoweverythingabout your bookshop, the places you’ve seen while you’ve been here, and then, if you wanted, we could talk about Ben? I don’t know if I can do anything, but I’m here to listen if you want to tell me about him. I could crack open one of the bottles of wine we brought with us, and you could spill the lot.’
Thea smiled, her nervous energy receding a little bit. ‘I would love that,’ she admitted. After all that had happened between her and Esme recently, Thea wanted nothing more than to reconcile properly, to put all their niggles behind them. ‘You get the wine, I’ll get the glasses.’ For a couple of hours, at least, she would try and put thoughts of what to do about Ben to the back of her mind, and focus on her friend.
Thea stared at the building that, for the last few days at least, she had imagined could be her bookshop. She huffed out a laugh. It looked like something from a horror spin-off ofBridgerton. With the sun coming up behind it, the facade was still in shadow, though the promise of honey-coloured stone showed through the ivy, and there was a bird – a goldcrest, she thought – chirruping in the foliage. She’d come out early, sleep proving difficult after everything that had happened the day before.
She heard a whistle behind her, thought she was being summoned, and spun to find a man in sunny yellow shorts and a blue T-shirt, his dark beard greying, walking a sleek black dog that might have been a lurcher. It was snuffling in the bushes at the edge of the space in front of the Old Post House.
‘Sorry, I—’ she started, but Ben’s words about apologies came back to her, and she swallowed the rest of her sentence. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ she said instead.
‘It’s looking like a grand one,’ the man concurred. He was in his late forties, Thea guessed. ‘Are you from the council?’
‘What? No! I just came to look at the building. You can tell it’s empty now, can’t you?’
‘Probably breathing a sigh of relief,’ he said with a grin. ‘I expect Sylvia’s driving her daughter around the twist.’
‘At least she hasn’t got to deal with the bats any more,’ Thea said.
‘There are bats here?’ In reply, Thea gestured to the building, with its foliage cloak and the worn windowsills, and the man laughed. ‘Fair point. Do they do a lot of damage then, bats?’
‘If they stay in a place long enough, their … guano, their, uhm, poo, can cause some erosion. But there’s a lot of structural damage that has nothing to do with them.’
The man put his hands on his hips while his dog continued snuffling. ‘It does need a lot of work, but we shouldn’t let it become the spectre on the hill.’ He pointed behind him, at the attractive view of rooftops that led down to the picturesque harbour, the water shimmering as the sun rose up to meet it. ‘It’s part of this town’s heritage, and it needs to be cherished.’
‘Is that why you asked if I was from the council?’
‘Sylvia’s gifted it back to the town, hasn’t she?’
‘I think so,’ Thea said. ‘I don’t know all the ins and outs, because I don’t live here, but that’s what I’ve heard.’
‘So someone needs to make a few decisions. We have a post office in town now, in the corner shop, but it could be useful again. What it shouldn’t be isa bloody second home. We don’t want some fancy-pants Londoner finding their way around the listed building regulations and turning it into a modern playpen they only visit for two weeks every year.’
‘OK then.’ Thea bit back a smile and the man’s stern features softened.
‘Sorry, I do tend to get on my high horse. I’ve lived here all my life, and wouldn’t go anywhere else. These towns are in danger of losing their integrity. Port Karadow still has some left, and the council works hard to keep the locals and tourists happy, but I’m worried they’ll fall short here, because it’s such a big job.’ He sighed, then gave her a sunny smile. ‘Anyway! I’d best be off. Pronto gets bored if he has to stay in one place for too long.’
‘Nice to talk to you,’ Thea said. ‘Enjoy the rest of your walk. Bye, Pronto,’ she added, to the dog who hadn’t paid her a second of attention.
She felt a pang of longing for Scooter and his easy affection, and that led her thoughts to Ben, and the pang intensified. She wondered how long she should leave it until she tried to talk to him again. How long did he need to calm down? Or – maybe that was doing him a disservice, and he didn’t need to calm down. His feelings were valid, and she had to respect them, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t plead her case again before she left.
Before she left.That thought was the least pleasant of them all.
She walked up to the Old Post House, which she imagined was looking sullenly down at her like a teenager – she’d met enough of them at the library, conveying aSo what?attitudewith only their eyebrows and the sulky set of their mouths. They were churlish. It was a good word.
‘Are you a churlish building?’ she asked the Old Post House. Only the goldcrest replied, but its high, liquid trill didn’t sound remotely ill-mannered. Thea patted the stone. ‘You have potential,’ she whispered, then turned away.
It was just before eight on Tuesday morning, and she had crept out of the house with her reusable water bottle and herLakes for Lifecap, which had, over the last couple of weeks, become a talisman as well as protection from the Cornish sun. Esme had still been asleep when she’d left, so Thea had written a note and left it in the kitchen, saying she’d be back later.
