Page 63 of A Cornish Love Story
‘What do you think will happen to this place if we don’t visit any more?’ Freddy rested his elbows on his knees.
‘You mean, will it be sad without us?’ Kira asked. ‘Of course it will be. Who wouldn’t want the pleasure of our sparkling company?’
‘Either the guy who owns it will get around to developing it, or he’ll sell it to someone else.’ Orwell grabbed a handful of Pringles. ‘A plot of land like this is prime for a hotel or an old people’s home.’
‘Fuck that,’ Freddy said. ‘Old folk with glaucoma won’t appreciate the view.’
‘Freddy.’ Kira leaned against him and he put his arm around her. ‘Don’t be so cruel.’
‘Nah, maybe you’re right. I can’t be jealous of whoever ends up getting this place. It’s not like any of us have a chance.’
‘It needs someone with a great imagination, a confident vision, and a whole lot of love in their heart,’ Kira said dreamily. ‘Ethan’s rambled on about it enough. Maybe when he’s a high-flying architect, he’ll come back and transform it?’
Orwell shook his head. ‘Someone else will make a decision long before he gets the chance. This place isn’t going to be abandoned for much longer, I bet.’
I shuffled away from him, reaching for the bag ofHaribo. It felt all kinds of wrong that Ethan wasn’t here on our last night, with Freddy off to Spain in two days.
‘I hope it gets the future it deserves.’ I slid my hand over the moulding around the fireplace, the swags of plasterwork leaves and flowers.
‘We haven’t checked if anything’s been hidden up there.’ Freddy sounded sombre, as if – even though we were sitting right next to it – we’d somehow lost the opportunity to look.
I took my phone out, not expecting to see anything from Ethan, but he’d sent me a message. My heart leapt, and I opened the screen to read the whole thing in one go, but all it said was:
I’m so sorry, Georgie. I’ll explain everything as soon as I can. Ex
My insides clenched with worry, but when I tried to call him, it rang and rang then clicked through to voicemail. Kira gave me a puzzled look and I shook my head, not wanting to say anything in front of Orwell, who would pounce on Ethan’s ambiguous words with malicious glee.
As Freddy launched into a story about Dagger Dave climbing up to the school roof with his maths teacher’s satchel on our last day, my ears tuned into the sound of sirens, somewhere not too far off. I didn’t think anything of it, because it was a common enough sound, especially in the summer months when spiritswere higher, beer gardens were open late, and the fields on the outskirts of Alperwick were dry as tinder when the rain had stayed away, and susceptible to the smallest, most innocuous spark.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Now
‘What’s it like working with the great S. E. Artemis?’ Ethan stroked his hand up and down my arm, and I tried not to think about how good it felt to lie here, my head on his chest, like we used to. We’d pulled back the covers, got in under the silky eiderdown and plump duvet, the moonlight lying across us fragmented by the raindrops on the window.
‘It’s exhausting,’ I told him, ‘but not always in a bad way. She’s feisty and confident, not at all introverted. Did you know that she ended the Cornish Sands series the way she did because her husband left her?’
‘She decided she couldn’t write a romance because she didn’t believe in it any more?’
‘She didn’t put it like that. She said she’d had enough, that the Rosevar family had run out of steam,but I think you’re right – she was heartbroken. Now she’s found some new inspiration, and she’s ready to give her readers the happy-ever-after they always deserved.’
His laugh was a low rumble. ‘You like working with her, then?’
‘I’m really workingforher. Part of the reason I came here – aside from the letters – is that she said if we were bringing Amelie and Connor back, we needed to have a good idea of what the house was like inside.’
‘Couldn’t you just have created that, though? I know it was an important part of the series, but it’s still fiction. And Sterenlenn’s been in magazines,’ he added, a little sheepishly. ‘You told me you saw the pictures.’
‘Nothing beats being here, experiencing the view and how the light floods in; all the little touches like the disco shower. I do get what you mean, though.’ It had seemed strange at first, her insistence that I come to the open house. ‘I think she was desperate to see what it was like herself, because it used to be hers, and she can’t because of her limited mobility, so she’s using me instead.’
‘And you’ll give her a few more photos and a report of your visit?’
‘I’m a great storyteller, Ethan.’ I poked him in the ribs. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you that?’
‘Which is why you should be writing your ownbook, not going on missions for someone else, helping them writetheirs. You’re good enough, Georgie. More than.’
‘It’s so hard,’ I mumbled into his warm skin. It was hard when I was trying to get a journalism degree, trying to put my heartbreak over Ethan into a box, fielding calls from Mum. Then I abandoned university and came back here, looking after her and getting reporting gigs at the same time. I’d put any thoughts of writing fiction on the backburner.
‘The worthwhile things often are,’ Ethan said, ‘but you have to do them anyway.’
