Page 76 of A Cornish Love Story
I hesitated, wondering what my title should be, then I just wroteList.
One, speak to Mum about the house. Pay rent, decorate, make it my own.
Two, speak to Wynn at the Star. What do I want to write? Go to her with ideas, don’t just wait for the next cow disaster.
Three, Spence’s book. What shall I do?
Four,MY BOOK. Gather up scribbles, turn them into a plot.
Five, Ethan??
I sat back, chewing the end of my biro. Walking away from the house, I had realized that the letters I’d written, back when I’d given up on university and returned to the village, were a catalogue of everything I didn’t like about my life: work; living with Mum; the fact that I wasn’t writing; some of the decisions I’d made. I’d focused all my sadness on not being with Ethan, but he wasn’t the problem. I needed to understand all the ways I’d been stalling, everything I’d failed to do that I’d blamed on my doomed teenage love story.
‘New article idea?’ Nick put my coffee and bun down, the scent of cinnamon sugar making my stomach rumble. I hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday lunchtime, apart from a few style-over-substance canapés, and I was ravenous.
‘New life idea,’ I said with a smile, and Nick laughed and went back to the kitchen, where a local radio station was playing Noughties hits.
I pulled at the doughy, delicious pastry of my cinnamon bun, unravelling the curl. There was a flash outside and I looked up, realizing it was the sun hitting Sterenlenn’s glass on the other side of the bay. From here it was a gleaming toy house, shimmering and impossible, and my breath hitched as I thought about Ethan waking up in that huge bed, discovering he was alone. Was he already on his way back to Sarah? I turned my gaze to the surfers, and then, when I’d finished eating, to my list.
The least daunting task was number two. Speaking to Wynn would be easy, because she always wantedme to push myself, and as much as the paper was being squeezed out by online news sites and social media, she cared about providing the residents of North Cornwall with high-quality information and entertainment.
I chewed my pen, icing sugar transferring from my lips to the tip, and felt the crack of the casing vibrate through my teeth. ‘Fuck.’ I reached into my rucksack for a new pen and my fingers found something weighty and familiar, wrapped in a soft velvet bag. I took out my silver mermaid and put her on the table, on a tile coaster with a painting of a robin on it.
All these years I had been sure she’d been sent to me by the Mythological Society, when really it was Ethan. He’d seen my piece, how Wynn had published my short story alongside it, and he’d wanted to mark the occasion, albeit anonymously. Now, with distance from him and the house, all his revelations were sinking in: how often he’d been thinking about me in the years we were apart.
I smoothed my hand down the mermaid’s back, along her shimmering scales. He was worried about my article, what I would say about the open house, and the impact it would have on his career. It was a good story, great gossip for the village: the clifftop house, shiny and fresh, ready to be sold to new owners who could gaze down on Alperwick like royalty. Did they need to know about the lock-in? There were so many details I didn’t want to share, but I was a writer. I could be creative.
I turned to a new page and wrote:A Night in Sterenlenn.I started scribbling, the words flowing out of my brain and onto the paper through my cracked biro. Occasionally I remembered to have a sip of coffee.
If you were invited to the lifestyle event of the year, the grand launch of an architectural masterpiece and the transformation of Alperwick’s most notorious house from abandoned relic to gleaming modern mansion, would you go? The answer, I was quick to realize when I got such an invitation, was yes.(It was good that this was partly a work of fiction, because I hadn’t been invited, I’d gone because Spence had told me to. I thought of lovely Aldo’s warm, guileless welcome, and smiled.)I was lucky enough to be one of the first people to see what had become of S. E. Artemis’s old house. Transformed into Tyller Klos in her bestselling Cornish Sands series, now it is Sterenlenn, with a brand-new façade, interior, and future, as well as a new name.
It has been reimagined by up-and-coming architect Ethan Sparks and, as a beautifully appointed luxury house, it hits all the right notes. It is spacious and welcoming, shimmering and soft. He’s made the most of the house’s enviable position on the cliffs above Alperwick, the views of the sea and sky, the twinkling lights of the village. It’s as if he’s giving the house to its surroundings, rather than focusing on seclusion and exclusivity. I was enthralled by it,and I’ll never forget the few hours I got to spend there.
But Sterenlenn has a hidden magic too: the Sparks system, a comprehensive, ambitious application that turned it into the smartest of Smart homes. Everything can be controlled by wall panels, voice activation and the elegant app: the heating and lights, the sound system and security; the massage table; the tint-level of the windows. Fall sleepily onto the beds and your bedside lamp comes on automatically; ask for a specific song to be played and the music washes over you, the bass rumbling in your bones as you walk into the sleek study. There are, I’m sure, other tricks I didn’t have time to discover, but this is just the first building with Sparks installed, and the possibilities are endless.(An old man who had been flicking throughThe Timesat the next table was giving me a curious look, and I realized I was grinning.)
As I took in each exquisite space, trailing my fingertips across the textured wallpaper and velvet cushions, gleaming handrails and cool tiles; as I discovered the greens and blues of the coastline had been threaded throughout the design, and heard the clunk of a door locked securely into place by someone saying a few words, I let my imagination run away with me.
The Sparks system has been tested for thousands of hours by the hard-working team who conceived it, and on my visit nothing was left to chance, but– in my writer’s mind – I conjured up a scenario where, instead of being trappedoutside(something we can all identify with because, let’s face it, this house is a one-off), what if you were trappedinside?What if you got to luxuriate in Sterenlenn for a night, enjoy everything it had to offer, because the Smart system you were relying on malfunctioned and you physically couldn’t leave? We all know AI is going to take over soon, so let’s indulge in some positive repercussions of that before Arnie comes to seal our fate.
So. This is my fantasy: what it would be like to spend a night trapped in Sterenlenn.
By the time I’d finished my draft, my hand was aching and lunchtime had been and gone. Nick had kept me fuelled with coffee, and I ordered a chicken and bacon sandwich and ate it slowly, looking out over Alperwick Bay, now teeming with locals and holidaymakers in the summer sunshine. I felt strangely satisfied, getting out a version of the previous night that was at least close to the truth, though in my imagined piece the two captors hadn’t had inside knowledge of the Sparks system, and they certainly hadn’t ended up testing out the master bed together.
I didn’t know if Wynn would want my hybrid of fact and fiction, but I thought it spoke to everyone’s desire to see how the other half lived, and if someone had told me that I’d get trapped in a dream house with a man I loved, it would have sounded pretty amazing.The reality had been a lot more complicated, but that wasn’t what readers of theStarwanted to hear.
My ten-minute walk home felt like a trudge through wet sand, my lack of sleep catching up with me. My house looked the same, with no gorgeously dishevelled architect leaning against the front door, disgruntled that I’d made him wait but elated that I was finally here. I sighed. Walking away from him had been the right thing to do, but it didn’t feel great right now.
I unlocked the door, intent on charging my phone because it had been dead for hours now, when my foot skidded on something on the mat. I pulled the folded piece of paper out from under my trainer and opened it, reading the few words that were written there in handwriting I recognized:
Georgie. I woke up and you were gone, and now you’re not here. Please call me. E x.
He’d put his mobile number at the end, giving me a direct line to him, and it took all my willpower not to stand over my phone until it had a hint of juice and then do as he’d asked. Instead, I made a cup of tea and took his note to my room, then stripped and got in the shower, pushing away the memories of a cubicle that was five times the size of this one, a rainfall spray that was hot in seconds, disco lights and speakers, and Ethan walking towards me, joining me under the water, bending his head to meet mine.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Now
The next couple of days were ceaselessly bright, the sun refusing to break its hold even as the humidity rose again, and I used it to keep me on course: if the sun could keep shining, then I could keep going, too.
