Page 57 of A Cornish Love Story
‘Fair enough,’ I said with a smile. ‘I didn’t ever plan for you to read these, though.’
I was trying to remember everything I’d said, the ones I’d written after I’d come home from university for good. I had convinced myself Mum couldn’t cope without me, and the Sparks family had moved away before that first Christmas. My anger had been short-lived, replaced by desolation that all my daydreams over the last few months – bumping into him in the village, us patching things up, resurrecting our plans of a happy future together – weren’t ever going to happen.
‘You mean you didn’t have faith that I would get my qualification and make it back here to renovate this house?’ Ethan raised an eyebrow.
I laughed. ‘You have to admit, a whole lot of stars had to align to make this possible. It was such a pipe dream when we were eighteen: the house could have been demolished or bought by someone else; you could have picked other projects to work on, or decided on a change of career any time over the past thirteen years. The fact that the house was still waiting, when you were ready for it, is a miracle.’
‘This was always the one I wanted, though,’ Ethan said. ‘And when AP handed me the letters – they felt like a gift.’
‘Did you ever think about coming to see me? Once you’d read them?’
‘All the time. Whenever I came to the site, I made a plan to walk into the village, go to the Sailor’s Rest for lunch, get a beer and work up the courage to knock on your door. I made it to the pub once, but I heard the landlord say your name, and it spooked me.’
‘Rick,’ I said. ‘I went out with him for a few years.’
‘Right.’ Ethan swallowed. ‘Anyway. I have nobody to blame but myself – my ego and my fear. I didn’t know how long ago you’d written them, but when I read the letters, it gave me hope that you weren’t still angry with me. But I wanted to wait until this place was finished, until I had something impressive to show you.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Not that I thought … I did wonder if you’d come to the open house, but if you hadn’t, I would have walked to yours tonight or tomorrow and knocked on the door.’
‘You say thatnow.’I smiled.
He didn’t return it. ‘I would have. Even though I was still scared of being turned away – or discovering that, in the years since the letters, you’d got married, had a family. I’m not saying that I expected anything, but we were such a big part of each other’s lives, and I’ve never …’
‘Never what?’
He shook his head. ‘Never mind.’
‘Ethan, come on. You’ve read my letters now.’
‘Why did you bring them here?’ He put the tea towel ice-pack down and looped his arms around my waist.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘I was a mess when I left university. I came back here and Mum was horrified I’d given up on it. Then my life turned into this treadmill of looking after her, occasionally getting out to cover stories for theStar,and I still missed you, so much. You’d obviously changed your number, Kira andFreddy couldn’t get hold of you, and Orwell didn’t have your details either. So I just … it was how I’d done it while we were together: it was like a journal, but you were the only one I wanted to talk to.
‘So I kept writing, kept us as Connor and Amelie, but I also wanted the letters to be special. I bought notepaper and wrote them out properly.’ I chewed my lip, thinking back to the last letter I’d written, how vulnerable it had felt, even though it would never – I thought – reach him. ‘I didn’t want to get rid of them, but I was trying so hard to move on. This place felt right: we had spent time here when we were together, talked about it so often, and you loved the fireplace. I thought that the letters would be destroyed when the house was.’
‘Are you mad that I found them?’
It seemed impossible that the dominoes had fallen this way, but also, somehow, inevitable. ‘No. But I’m just … some of the things I said.’
‘I wanted to hear it all.’ Ethan brushed hair off my forehead. ‘Once I realized you had written them, and I’d read the first one and understood that Amelie and Connor were you and me. I wish I could tell you that I wasn’t going to read them, that I considered how much I would be invading your privacy, but I was desperate to see what you’d said. I sat in my car, in the Alperwick Bay car park, and went through them all. It was hot, my car was like a greenhouse, but I couldn’t get enough of your words. It felt like having a direct line back to you, like all those times we’dwalked on the beach or talked in your bed, and I …’ He stopped, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
‘What?’ I traced a line along his cheekbone, the freckles I’d once turned into a dot-to-dot.
‘I have something to show you.’ He looked nervous. ‘I don’t think you saw it earlier.’
‘Saw what?’ I clambered off the sofa so he could stand up.
He held his hand out. ‘I’m sure you would have mentioned it if you had.’
I put my hand in his. I no longer wanted to keep my distance. This house, the two of us trapped here, was a limbo, set apart from reality, and – like Ethan finding the letters – it felt like the universe was giving me this one night with him, a bubble where we could pretend the last thirteen years had gone differently.
He wrapped his fingers around mine and led me through the kitchen, into the foyer. The space was tinted a strange, yellowish-grey by the storm, and rain drummed against the windows as we climbed the stairs, Ethan holding onto me tightly. I paused halfway up, staring out at the raging sea, the churn of the waves, seagulls wheeling chaotically in the sky.
‘What are you thinking?’ Ethan asked me.
‘I’m thinking that there are worse places we could be.’
He squeezed my hand but didn’t say anything else. He led me up to the landing, then walked past the bathroom and turned left, where a narrow corridorled to the far side of the house, above where the French windows must be on the floor below.
He paused outside the door, then turned and leaned against it. His shoulders were up, breath and anticipation held tightly inside him. ‘Don’t freak out, OK?’
