Page 72 of A Cornish Love Story
‘But I want you to know that I think it’s a mistake.’ Mum planted a swift kiss on my cheek, then turned to the cupboards, taking out a saucepan and a tin of baked beans, flashing me a smile as she got out the grater. ‘Beans on toast for tea?’ she asked, as if I hadn’t upended both our lives with this decision, by not telling her until it was a done deal and I was back on the doorstep. ‘We can do something fancier tomorrow, now I know you’ll be here.’
‘Great,’ I managed past the lump in my throat.
It was this: sliding back into our old ways, almost as if I had never gone to university in the first place, that made me really question what I was doing for the first time. But I’d done it, and there was no point crying about it. I was back in Alperwick, and I would just have to make the most of it, do whatever I could to make this part of my life count.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Now
Alperwick was preening after the thunderstorm had washed it clean the night before. The sky was a deep, mesmerizing blue, and the biscuity slabs of Sterenlenn’s front path glittered in the glow from the low-slung moon. The fresh scents of newly washed vegetation and the salty clean of the sea filled my nose as I tiptoed away from the entrance, and a couple of birds – robins or blackbirds – had begun to sing in anticipation of the dawn, their jaunty chorus soothing when I felt so defeated.
At the gates, I turned to look back. The house was magnificent, standing proudly against the sky. The windows were in darkness, but the porch light and spotlights along the path glowed gently, as if pointingthe way to a magical kingdom. In some ways, it had been, and I had been fully caught up in the fairy tale.
I turned away, and for a horrible second thought the gates wouldn’t let me out, but as I pulled on a green rung, the gate swung easily inwards, creating a gap that was big enough for me to slip through.
I took my time walking down the hill, my rucksack slung over one shoulder. I got my phone out and checked it, but it was completely out of battery, and wouldn’t have helped me when the Wi-Fi came back on in the middle of the night. As I passed Barry Mulligan’s house, I wondered if he ever peered through his telescope at this time of day; if he looked for cheese on the moon. But his windows were dark and still, and only a few lights shone further down in the village.
I walked past the turning to Spence’s road, and wondered how I could possibly tell her about the night I’d just had, and which bits I was prepared to share with her. She would delight in all the drama, but right now I didn’t have the energy for it. Something flickered in the back of my mind, a weak flare of connection, but I was too exhausted to grab hold of it. I kept going, reaching my quiet road, then let myself into my house, dumped my bag in the hall and went to make a cup of tea.
I leant against the counter while the kettle boiled, and couldn’t help appraising the kitchen, trying to imagine what Ethan would have thought if he hadknocked on my door. It was mostly the same as when I was growing up; I’d made hardly any changes sinceMum had left, unable to think of it as permanent when I knew she would be selling it. I was stuck between the past with her and the prospect of moving on, finding my own place.
I let out a long, slow breath. I’d been living in the same house I’d grown up in, using the same chipped crockery, and Ethan had reimagined, redesigned and then got a whole team to create Sterenlenn. He hadn’t given up on his dream, despite what he’d had to sacrifice for Sarah. He’d done the courses and the training, he’d forgiven and then hired his sister, and he’d come back and transformed Tyller Klos into something remarkable. He hadn’t let setbacks stop him, and he hadn’t settled for second-best.
I had quit my degree before the end of the first year and returned home on the pretence of looking after Mum. I’d worked for the local paper, written stories and letters, but never tried to get any of my fiction published – or even shown it to anyone – since the competition at school. I’d gladly accepted Spence’s offer of a job because it was easy, while telling myself I was closer to my dreams because she was the author I’d loved growing up. Now she was giving me the chance to write something with her, and I should have felt triumphant, but I thought of what Ethan had said, and wondered how much of it would really be mine: the publicity, the credit – the story itself.
I poured water on top of a teabag and added milk, then took it into the living room and sat on the edge of the sofa, remembering when Mum had found methe morning after prom night, after Ethan had walked out in the face of my silence.
She’d been sympathetic, rubbing my back while I cried, making me tea and a cheese toastie. When I’d finally run out of tears, she’d waited until I’d wiped my streaked face, and said, ‘You don’t always have to take the path of least resistance, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’ I’d asked, my voice thick.
‘You don’t have to accept things as they are, go with the flow. You canmake things happen, Georgie. You’re bright and kind and you know your own mind, and you don’t always have to accept it when someone else tells you how it’s going to be.’
I’d nodded and told her I understood, but then I’d waited for Ethan to contact me. A couple of days later he was in Scotland, far away, and the fact that he didn’t try and get in touch told me he’d already started to move on.
It wasn’t until I was in York, trying and failing to embrace everything that was so unfamiliar, that I found out through Freddy that Ethan had got the grades he needed – of course – and was in Sheffield. I sent him a congratulatory text, but it bounced back and I realized he must have got a new phone: a new number for a new start. He didn’t use Facebook much but he had a profile, and I could have got in touch with him that way, but I was stung that he hadn’t contacted me at all, so instead I set my sights on that first Christmas holiday. I would go home and see Ethan in person, not try and repair all the damage I’d done with a DM.
I’d driven myself mad thinking about the girls he would be meeting in Sheffield, aspiring architects like him, engineers and mathematicians who didn’t write stories about mermaids. But I’d held out hope, and felt almost as if Santa was still real, I was so giddy with anticipation that December. I bought Ethan a beautiful stone model of one of the old, higgledy-piggledy buildings along the Shambles in York, wrapped it carefully and nestled it inside a gift box, tied with a crimson bow. I wanted to apologize for my reaction the morning after prom night, for dismissing him so quickly, and ask him to give me a second chance. I had realized that he was the most important thing in my life.
I sipped my rapidly cooling tea, remembering the day I’d lugged my bag off the train at Alperwick station that December, and – before I’d even made it home to Mum – bumped into Orwell, who’d told me the Sparks family were gone for good. I had been devastated, furious at the gleam in his eye, his obvious satisfaction at knowing something I didn’t, and when he’d tried to comfort me, I’d pushed him away and hurried home, my bag bouncing painfully against my hip, all my Christmas spirit gone.
Ethan and I had fizzled out, and I knew it was a lack of bravery on my part, not telling him how much I loved him and wanted to make it work. But, even then, I hadn’t messaged him on Facebook, had accepted it when Orwell told me he didn’t have Ethan’s new number, even though that was probably a lie. I’d beenresigned to my heartbreak, and then, only a couple of months later, I’d told myself that Mum couldn’t cope without me and so had come home for good, deciding that university wasn’t for me.
‘The path of least resistance,’ I whispered, the mug cool between my palms.
It was, I realized, what I’d always done. I’d accepted things, hadn’t fought for them, and yet I’d been mad at Ethan when he’d walked away from me the morning after prom instead of staying to try and fix us. At least he’d gone on to do what he’d always intended. And what was I doing? Feeling grateful that an author in her eighties who hadn’t published anything for thirty years was offering me the chance to write a new book with her? The truth was, I would still be her PA. I would do the leg work and the research, and maybe she would ask what I thought of her chapters, but it wouldn’t ever bemybook.
I finished my cold tea and went upstairs to get changed. My gaze was drawn to the neat row of Cornish Sands paperbacks on the shelf above my cluttered desk. They weren’t fancy editions, and the spines were cracked where I’d read them over and over.
I picked upThe Whispers of the Sands, thinking how much the names Connor and Amelie had come to mean to me. I remembered something Ethan had said last night, when I’d told him about Spence, and her insistence that I see inside Sterenlenn for the new book.Couldn’t you just have created that, though?I know it was an important part of the series, but it’s still fiction.
Why had she needed me to see it? If it was just curiosity about what her old house had become, she could have got a car, a driver, someone to give her a proper tour, while she waxed lyrical about accessibility, making enough fuss that everyone, Ethan included, would have done whatever she asked. But she hadn’t wanted to go herself: she had wantedmeto go. She’d said we needed to recreate the modern house in the new book. But we didn’t – we could have turned Tyller Klos into anything we’d wanted, because it was fiction. And, as Ethan had said, there were already shiny, professional photographs for her to pore over.
There was something else to all this, something Spence had been keeping from me from the beginning.
I threw on a pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt, tied my hair up into a messy ponytail since I’d slept on it wet, and shoved my feet into trainers. I had a whole lot of thinking to do, but I couldn’t start doing it until I knew what was really going on.
Chapter Thirty
