Page 15 of A Cornish Love Story
‘After you, then.’ He gestured to the water, where Kira, Freddy and Orwell were already splashing in the smaller waves.
‘OK.’ I sprinted into the water, squealing at just how right I’d been, the cold numbing my feet and legs in seconds. Ethan was behind me, a hint of warmth at my back.
‘Jesus fuck it’s freezing,’ he panted out.
‘The trick is to not hang about,’ Freddy said, wading further out. We followed him, dodging breakers and ducking under swells, bobbing up to wipe water from our eyes.
The sun was already sliding towards the horizon, making diamonds out of the surface that were blinding to look at. I turned to check on Ethan and found him beside me, treading water.
‘OK?’ I asked, as icy currents drifted around my legs.
‘I’m good,’ he said, with more conviction than he’d had on the beach. ‘This is good.’ He laughed. ‘I’m swimming in the sea, in my pants. This is not the sort of thing I do.’
‘It’s inevitable when you live here.’ With his wet hair slicked back, his face was all sharp angles, his eyelashes dark and glossy. I risked a step towards him, the water swirling around us, making us weightless. Orwell andKira called out from beyond the biggest waves – they were near the rock, we had lost the race – but I ignored them.
Ethan moved closer too, cupping my shoulder like he’d done in the courtyard. But this time my skin was bare, and he was mostly naked, and I felt the pull of him, the way his touch made me ache in other places. Our childish seaside game, our way of letting off steam, changed for me in that moment, and I thought of the way Ethan had said ‘Good’so firmly when I’d told him I was eighteen.
‘I might have to get used to it then,’ he said.
‘Which bit?’
‘All of it. The sea. Swimming. You.’
Me.‘Glad I could introduce you to this important Alperwick tradition,’ I said loftily, daring to flick my eyes down to where he was hazy and indistinct under the water, ‘in your pants.’
He grinned, the surface of the sea bouncing sunlight onto his cheeks and making them glow. ‘Not to sound like a dickhead, but I’m glad you got hit by that football.’
‘Me too. Though you could have just spoken to me whenever, not waited until I needed rescuing.’
‘I wasn’t …’ he started, then looked away. ‘I was going to. I was working up the courage.’
I was about to ask him why he needed courage to talk to me, and why my words had frustrated him, because he had rescued me, hadn’t he? In a very small way. But then Kira shouted over, in a voice I was alwayssurprised could come out of someone so delicate, ‘Hello!? The rocks arethisway! Have you got lostin the open sea?’
Freddy joined in, cupping his hands around his mouth. ‘This isn’t make-out time! Ethan and Georgie, you are not limpets! Get your asses over here!’
I laughed, hoping it would cover up my mortification. ‘We’d better go before they get even more creative. Limpets is bad enough.’ I waded forward, Ethan alongside me.
‘Why are we limpets?’ he asked. ‘We weren’t kissing.’
I was going to tell him that the truth didn’t matter when it came to my friends and their insults, but I got distracted by the wordkissing. And then, although maybe I imagined it, with the waves crashing around us and the shouts of people enjoying the spring afternoon, I was sure he added quietly, ‘Not yet, anyway.’
After that, I couldn’t think of anything but kissing him, and even when I made it home to Mum’s strange mood and a heap of English work I couldn’t find the enthusiasm for, my dress sticking to my damp costume, hair in rattails, I felt like I was still floating in the sea, weightless and without limits.
Chapter Seven
Now
The inside of Sterenlenn was like nothing I’d ever seen in real life, and it was a world away from the dark shell I’d known as a teenager.
It was a palace of open spaces and polished textures, marble and chrome and wood that was buffed to a high shine. The entrance was double height, the pale wooden stairs with open risers at the back of the airy foyer, where tall windows showed off the blue-green of the sea and the hazy sky beyond, so it felt as if the landscape was breaching the walls. To the left, a door led into a study where I could see pine bookshelves, each row of paperbacks subtly lit with LED lighting, and a sleek desk in front of the window, the only item on top a brushed chrome uplighter. I hesitated on thethreshold, wondering if any of the books were from Spence’s Cornish Sands series.
People milled about in the foyer, stopping to look at a large, spangled mosaic that was part decoration part mirror, and the discreet, gunmetal wall panel that I realized, after a few confusing seconds, was a built-in sound system: part of the Sparks set-up that ran the whole house. But most of the guests had gravitated towards the kitchen, which was to the right of the entrance. I’d glimpsed black marble countertops, pearly white cupboards with sage green trim, a room big enough for a squashy sofa in front of the sea-facing window and a double sink at the other end, a hot-water tap probably the most mundane of all the luxurious features.
There were wall panels in every room, with winking lights to represent the status of the underfloor heating and the water pressure, the ambient air and the speaker settings. It was in complete contrast to the peeling paintwork and mouldy carpet the five of us had been greeted with when we sneaked in with torches all those years ago. To a soundtrack of scrabbling rodents, I had told Ethan that I wanted to be a writer, and he had explained how he would bring buildings back from the brink of collapse; that he wanted to be the kind of architect who took what was broken and made it whole again. It had been a statement so entirely Ethan, that my chest constricted just thinking about it. And, standing here, in the realization of his dream, was a stark reminder of how far I was from mine.
‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’
I turned to find the woman with the bright yellow heels standing next to me. Her dark hair was a glossy wave down her back, and her eyes were a darker blue than mine: cornflower instead of forget-me-not. I thought I recognized her, and knew it could only be from Ethan’s Instagram posts.
