Page 26 of A Cornish Love Story
I glared at Ethan and he gazed back at me, amused. ‘Sparks,’ I said, ‘what’s the weather like today?’
‘The humidity is high, at 74 per cent, with a chance of thunderstorms overnight. Now please say:Sparks, turn on the underfloor heating.’
‘Sparks, turn on the underfloor heating.’
‘The underfloor heating is activated,’ the voice said, then she made me run through a few more questions to get the timbre of my voice. ‘Thank you, Georgie,’ she said when I’d obeyed all her commands. ‘You have been added to Sterenlenn. I am here to help you with anything you need.’
‘Very impressive,’ I said to Ethan. ‘Can she bring you breakfast in bed, too?’
‘That’s one of the few things I haven’t got her to do yet.’
‘Shame. What about a back massage?’
He shook his head, smiling at me.
‘Fine. Sparks, please turn on the disco lights in the shower.’
‘Shower lights activated.’
I glanced behind me and saw the rainbow glow emanating from the bathroom doorway. I thought of one night when we had come up here as teenagers, when the rain had been relentless and our path from the broken wall to the front of the house was a quagmire, the stones slippery and the vegetation slick,the earth turned to sludge. We’d let the mud dry on our jeans while we talked and drank inside, then had to face the same obstacle course on the way out. We’d walked down the hill with our clothes plastered to us, mud mingling with rainwater so we looked like swamp monsters.
‘My dad isn’t going to be impressed when I turn up like this,’ Ethan had said.
‘He’ll still be awake?’
‘Yeah. He always has a beady eye on us when he’s home.’ He’d sounded defeated, which was so unlike him.
My mum would be sound asleep this late, and sometimes took pills to ensure she slept through. ‘Come back to mine. You can have a shower, or …’
‘OK,’ he’d said immediately, then grimaced at how eager he’d been, but I’d laughed and leaned into him. We’d slept together by that point, and he’d sneaked into my room more than once. That night we’d peeled each other’s clothes off in my tiny, humid bathroom, and got into the shower together even though it was barely big enough for one person. I remembered urgency and gasping, slippery skin, falling onto my duvet still damp, and Ethan scrambling for a condom in the pocket of his ruined jeans.
It had been this house, in its dark, horror-film incarnation that had led to us being pressed together in my cramped, dated shower all those years ago. Now it was a gleaming masterpiece with an en-suite bigger than my bedroom.
‘It was important that the shower had a lot of space,’Ethan said, and from the gravel in his voice I wondered if he was remembering the same night I was.
‘I don’t know,’ I said lightly, ‘we achieved quite a lot with limited room.’
He cleared his throat.
‘Who needs disco lights in their shower anyway?’ I said, trying to dispel the tension.
‘Who needs separate beer and wine fridges, alongside their giant, American-style fridge-freezer?’
‘Those are essentials,’ I said with a laugh.
‘It keeps a record of everything inside and updates your shopping list automatically. And it has a self-filling water dispenser.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Check this out.’ There was a gleam in Ethan’s eyes as he walked to the bed, toeing off his polished black shoes without bothering to untie the laces.
‘What?’
‘Come on.’ He held his hand out.
I hesitated. He was tempting me, just like he’d done when I’d fallen for him at eighteen. He had that look of quiet amusement that told me I was about to be let in on a secret, and it was impossible to resist.
‘George.’ He waggled his fingers.
