Page 73 of A Cornish Love Story
Now
Ihad a key to Spence’s house, but it was still only early, and for a few moments I hovered on the doorstep wondering what to do, trying to ignore the fact that if I turned around I would be able to see up to the top of the cliff, to Sterenlenn bathed in the golden light of dawn. It was still too early for the trains to be running, and I wondered if Ethan had found some other way of getting home, or if he was still lying peacefully asleep in the huge bed, or if he’d discovered I’d left. I tried to ignore the niggling internal voice that said walking away from him after I’d discovered his messages with Sarah was yet again the path of least resistance. It felt like history was repeating itself, and I couldn’t cope with that. What I needed to do was find out exactly what had been going on with Spence.
I took her house key out of my rucksack and unlocked the door.
‘Hello?’ I called softly as it swung inwards. Spence was usually an early riser, but this might betooearly even for her. The corridor was thick with the vanilla scent of her air diffusers, and I called out again as I rounded the corner into the living room. ‘Jesus!’ I jumped. It had felt so quiet, so still, that I hadn’t expected her to be here. ‘Hey.’
‘Georgie.’ She was sitting in her chair, a cup of coffee resting in her lap. ‘You’re back.’
‘Of course I am. The open house was last night.’
She sipped her drink and I scrutinized her, wondering if my slowly developing hypothesis could be close to the truth, or if it was just the madness of having everything turned on its head in less than a day.
‘There’s coffee in the pot.’ She gestured to the kitchen, and I poured myself a cup, adding a generous slug of milk because she always made it strong enough to stand the spoon up in. She hadn’t bombarded me with questions the moment I walked in, which was what I had expected after sending me on a mission like that. I was sure, now, that there was something more going on than the simple plan we’d hatched.
I sat on the sofa opposite her. Outside, the sea was the colour of forget-me-nots, the early morning sun dancing across it. There was little evidence of the previous night’s storm, apart from the raindrops clinging to Spence’s immaculate front lawn and making it shimmer.
‘The event finished on time, did it?’ Spence asked.
‘For most people.’
She raised an eyebrow.
I took a deep breath. ‘For other people it turned into the world’s most ridiculous escape room, because Ethan’s Smart system malfunctioned and we got trapped inside.’
‘Goodness! I hope you weren’t stuck for too long.’
I briefly closed my eyes at her less than Oscar-worthy performance. ‘Only about half an hour,’ I said, and caught her quick-as-lightning frown. I put my coffee on the floor. ‘You knew about it. You knew the house was going to go wrong, and that Ethan and I would be trapped. How did you know?’
Spence smoothed down the skirt of her bottle-green dress. ‘You do remember that I was famous for creating love stories? And unlikely ones at that.’
‘Of course,’ I snapped. ‘We’ve spent hours talking about your books, about how we’re going to reunite the characters you let escape.’
Spence nodded. ‘But what if I found a more deserving couple? Another pair of lovers destined for each other, who had been torn apart at the worst possible moment?’
I stared at her. ‘But …’
‘It was obvious as soon as you started working for me, as soon as you mentioned his name, that Ethan was the love of your life. Never mind Rick in the Sailor’s Rest – Ethan was the man you were supposed to be with.’
‘We weren’ttorn apart.’
‘No? From what you’ve told me, your families made it impossible for you to be together. His, mostly.’
I thought of the Sparkses’ trip to Scotland, how his dad had put Ethan beyond my reach for the whole of that summer. ‘Mum loved him.’
‘But she was over-protective of you. She’d been hurt, abandoned by a man when she was young, and she didn’t want the same to happen to you.’
‘Right, but with Ethan, we could have made more of an effort – we could have stayed in touch; used Facebook or email – I could have messaged and asked for his new number. But I was banking on him being here that first Christmas, then, when he wasn’t, contacting him when he hadn’t reached out to me felt like …’the path of least resistance, the voice in my head finished for me.
‘You thought you didn’t deserve him?’ Spence said.
‘No! That wasn’t it at all.’ I wasn’t sure how convincing I sounded. ‘Anyway, never mind why we broke up. I want to know what you had to do with last night, because not all of it was fun, and I need to know exactly how many people conspired to put me in that situation. Was it just Sarah? You and Sarah? Allthreeof you?’
‘Oh tosh.’ Spence waved a hand. ‘Ethan had nothing to do with it. Sarah and I simply altered the system to suit our purposes.’
I reached down to pick up my mug, and realized my hand was shaking. ‘So it was you, too? It wasn’tjust Sarah?’ On some level I had already known that, and my hurt mingled with the relief that, according to Spence, Ethan hadn’t been involved.
‘I saw a golden opportunity, but I needed a little help to turn my plot into reality.’
