Page 51 of The Cornish Cream Tea Bookshop
Ollie laughed, hoping it would cover the sound of her clattering heart. He’d been intrigued by her the first time he saw her? ‘Firstly,’ she said, ‘that sounds like the start of a joke:A redhead and a chocolate Lab walk into a café …And secondly, why was I so intriguing?’
‘I’m intrigued by all my new customers,’ Max said, but he stuttered slightly at the beginning of the sentence, and Ollie wondered if he was covering for himself. They walked in silence for a while, the space between them charged.
‘We’re just down here: the beach marked by a standing stone.’ Ollie gestured to the stone, which was about shoulder high and in the shape of a roughly carved obelisk. It marked the point where scrubby heathland turned to sand.
‘You’ve been here before?’ Max asked, pulling his scarf tighter.
The sea fret was blocking out the first rays of the sun, and the air was icy. It was the type of day where, in Ollie’s old life, she’d have pulled the duvet up and stayed in beduntil the very last minute. But here she had Cornwall, in all its varied, beautiful forms, and Max, who was willing to accompany her on her legend quests.
‘I had to come and find it beforehand,’ Ollie explained, ‘or we would have ended up wandering aimlessly until we had to go to work, and we would have failed our mission.’
‘Mission?’
‘Mission,’ she confirmed. ‘Come on. This way.’ She led him towards the water, the ground going from spongy to soft beneath their boots, the visibility narrowing even further as they got closer to the sea.
‘This is a ghost story all by itself,’ Max said, shuddering. ‘I can hear the waves, but I can’t see them.’
‘Imagine if we were peering through the mist, and a figure walked out of it towards us: a dark shape with glowing, empty eyes.’
‘Jesus. Is that the legend we’re tracking down today? I wouldn’t have come with you if I’d known that.’ He turned around and made to walk away.
Ollie laughed and pulled him back. ‘No, I just invented that. It would be creepy though, right?’
‘Too creepy,’ Max murmured. ‘So, come on then, what are we doing here?’
‘Right, well this is Stone Cove. I expect it’s named, imaginatively, after this strange stone. And legend has it that one of the most devastating shipwrecks off this stretch of coast happened close to here. In the eighteenth century, a trade ship calledTheScarletcrashed into rocks during a storm and sank, losing hundreds of lives, and produce that was being relied upon.’
‘Grim,’ Max said. Their pace had slowed, and Ollie wondered if he was as nervous as she was about walking deeper into the impenetrable fog.
‘Very grim,’ she replied. ‘But the story in this book says that on foggy or misty days – days where there’s a heavy sea fret – some of the lost souls come onto the beach, and leave behind unusual auger shells.’
‘Auger shells? The cone-shaped ones? I thought they were common along here.’
‘Not the ones left by the shipwreck victims. Apparently they’re larger than most, and a different colour: white, with a blueish, pearlescent hue. Supposedly that’s the tears of those who were lost, and their family members helpless on land, knowing there was nothing they could do to save them.’
‘God.’ Max shivered. ‘This is all very miserable for this early on a Tuesday morning.’
Ollie faced him. ‘You know those books I told you about? The mysteries by Bryan Mailer? One of them is based around this legend. Roskilly and Faith find a dead body on this beach and have to investigate, and it gets tied up with the auger shells legend.’
‘Have you read them all, now?’ Max asked.
‘Nope. I’m up to number four, and I only have five. There are four more, but I need to get them on AbeBooks because they’re out of print.’
‘Has anyone else heard of this mystery author?’
Ollie walked further onto the beach, Max keeping up with her, which was a good thing because she didn’t want to lose him in the fret. ‘Lizzy has – she’s read themall,said she devoured them years ago. I need to speak to Thea, seeif we can get them stocked in A New Chapter. It’s strange that Liam and Marion, who I would have picked as the first people to know about him, both drew a blank when I brought him up.’
‘Liam hasn’t heard of him?’
Ollie shook her head. ‘Not a whisper.’
‘Are they particularly grisly?’ Max picked up a stick and threw it for Henry. The dog ran after it, barking into the fog.
‘They’re dark, but they’re funny, too. The characters are memorable – they’re always arguing, which lightens things up, because the subjectsareon the sombre side. I mean, I’ve never come across a myth or legend that hasn’t got some sort of tragedy woven into it.’
‘There must besomewith happy endings,’ Max said. ‘Surely.’
He walked towards her, and Ollie felt a growing pressure in her chest that she thought must be anticipation. They’d seen each other several times since he’d admitted he wanted to kiss her, but since then he’d backed off, as if he regretted the confession. Now, though, she didn’t know if it was the eerie light cast by the sea fret, the sense of danger – however imagined – or her own excitement at being on this strange hunt with him, but she thought she could see something new in his expression: a hunger that hadn’t been there on Sunday, when they’d done yoga together; the hunger she’d seen at the end of the ghost walk.
