Page 12 of A Cornish Love Story
‘I am, thanks. What about you? Are you doing OK?’
‘Oh, I’m great!’ I tried to picture the most recent woman he’d shown off on Instagram. Did he have a girlfriend here tonight? A wife? I shouldn’t care. ‘Everything’s fine and dandy here in Alperwick.’
Ethan frowned. ‘Are you—?’
‘The house is beautiful.Sterenlenn. A blanket of stars.’
He pressed his lips together. ‘Georgie, I—’
‘I was saying to Sarah that it’s going to be a great piece for the paper. Huge local interest because everyone’s so nosy, and a whole lot of history because of the Cornish Sandsseries, and because you knew it when you were younger. You obviously set your sights on it as a project a while ago. I’m glad it’s all working out so well.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to see how this evening goes first.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be a success.’
The silence between us was punctuated by the wind picking up, loose bits of gravel skittering over the driveway.
‘I didn’t know if you’d be here,’ Ethan said eventually. ‘I thought, maybe, but … I also thought you might stay away.’
‘I wish,’ I muttered, but there was a traitorous part of me that was rejoicing at seeing him again, at my game of spot the difference:what was the same about him, and what had changed. I could play it for hours.
‘I need to go inside,’ he said, as two men in the hot weather skeletons of business suits strolled past us, one of them jostling against me, as if I was taking up too much space. Ethan wrapped his hand gently around my arm and pulled me to the side of the path. ‘I need to greet people.’
‘Of course. You’re the architect, after all. And congratulations – I should have said that first. It’s what you always wanted, and I … I’m really happy for you.’
‘Thanks.’ He nodded. ‘And Georgie?’ He took a step closer.
‘Yes?’
‘There he is!’ Sarah’s singsong cut through the humid air, and Ethan closed his eyes briefly. ‘Ethan, Mr Jasper is keen to hear all about Sterenlenn. The champagne’s waiting for you, chilled as requested.’
‘I have to go.’ He looked down at me. ‘Come and find me later. I’d love to know what you think.’
‘I can’t wait to see it.’ I let him stride ahead of me,so he could reach Sarah and all the people he needed to glad-hand. I wondered if he was feeling as shaken by our reunion as I was.
Then I saw him pat the back pocket of his trousers, and I was there again, at our first meeting, when I’d searched for my phone in his jeans. But I knew that gesture meant he was nervous, because at eighteen he’d been a smoker – a small rebellion against his overbearing father, one of the things that had surprised me about him. We were only together for a few months, and I’d quickly convinced him to stop, so then the action – looking for his lighter in his back pocket – became something he did when he was anxious: reaching for the mood calmer that was no longer there. Or maybe he smoked again now? It had been thirteen years, and I didn’t know him any more.
One, take photos, two, ask questions, three, have a nosy in all the rooms, four, find what you need to and get out.I repeated it as I walked up to the house, joining the other guests gravitating towards the porch, with its spotlights and glass panels either side of the open door, the scents of vanilla and mandarin wafting out to greet us, a slice of gleaming pine floorboard visible in the entrance.
There was an elaborate-looking panel next to the front door, a digital screen above a keypad, showing the date and time:Friday 20 June 2025, 4:48 p.m.;the conditions:25 degrees Celsius and 60 per cent humidity; and the status of the house:Front door unlocked and open. This must be part of the Sparks automatedsystem, I realised, and I had a sudden, fatalistic urge to press some random buttons and see what would happen; anything to relieve the tension that had crawled inside me.
I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath. I was a reporter, I needed to shake hands and seem interested, drink a glass of champagne and be enthusiastic about taking photographs. I could do this in my sleep, if I put everything else to the back of my mind. I stepped over the threshold, into the most magnificent house I’d ever seen.
Chapter Six
March 2012
Ikept bumping into Ethan. It wasn’t a big sixth form, so it wasn’t exactly unprecedented, but after that first time in the bathroom, the way he’d looked after me even though he didn’t know me, I kept thinking about him, and then there he’d be. We’d pass each other in the corridor, and he’d give me a knowing, secret smile; I saw him on the opposite side of the lunch hall, where he usually sat by himself, or occasionally with a couple of boys who Freddy said were in their Art and Design class. One day, I summoned up the courage to ask him to join us, but then a girl with long caramel hair put her hand on his arm and my confidence deserted me.
‘His surname is Sparks,’ Kira announced, one unusually warm afternoon in March when we werewalking from school to Alperwick Bay, dawdling and decompressing from lessons.
‘What are you talking about?’ I pretended I didn’t already know.
‘Ethan,’ she confirmed. ‘He’s called Ethan Sparks.’
‘It’s better than Spunk,’ I said, but I felt disloyal bringing up that joke again now that I’d met him.
‘I can’t believe he took you into the girls’ toilets.’ Freddy liked to pretend he was an anarchist in training, but he was as sweet as they came, and even his dyed black hair and multiple piercings couldn’t disguise it. ‘Weren’t you worried he was going to push you into a cubicle and ravish you?’
