Chapter Three
Now
T he day was agonizingly quiet. I pottered through the tasks Spence had given me and kept an eye on the clock, which seemed to have ceased moving at its normal speed. Eventually it was time for me to change into my work outfit, collect my bag and leave.
I already felt like I was walking towards a doom-laden fate, and Spence came to wave me off at the door, which was a big deal for her and somehow made it all worse.
I thought my best course of action was to minimize the whole thing, turn it into the list of simple actions she’d given me: take photos; ask polite, probing questions; have a nosy in all the rooms; find what you need to and get out.
I had memorized them while I was folding up Spence’s correspondence, sliding letters into envelopes, writing addresses on the front.
One: take photos. Spence always replied to her fans using a fountain pen filled with navy ink, on pure cotton writing paper she got me to order online from L’Ecritoire.
Two: ask polite, probing questions. Her handwriting was elegantly slanted, like something out of the earlier Cornish Sands books, when children had to practise their upstrokes and compound curves in school instead of learning how to turn on a computer.
Three: have a nosy in all the rooms. I felt a sharp spike of adrenaline at the thought of slipping through the house unnoticed, seeing Ethan’s attention to detail embodied in every square foot.
Four: find what you need to and get out.
Spence hadn’t clarified exactly what I needed to find so we could resurrect Amelie and Connor, so I assumed it was that flash of creative inspiration at seeing the old mansion revitalized, a mental lightbulb flaring on.
Now, Spence pressed her palm into the door frame, her other hand clutching her stick. ‘Don’t sweat it,’ she said, when she saw me looking at her with concern.
‘ You are,’ I replied. ‘Can’t I help you back to your chair?’
‘That would completely negate me coming to the door to see you off.’
‘It was a struggle, though.’
‘Life is full of them. If it wasn’t, nobody would bother writing books. We’d all just sail through our days on a cloud of easy contentment, and where would the fun be in that?’
I thought of the last few days before Mum had gone, the mix of anger and loss mingled with guilt-tinged relief; of Ethan in my bedroom doorway all those years ago, a blink that took his expression from pleading to shuttered, before he turned and walked away from me; of the scattered beginnings of stories and ideas on my laptop and in various notebooks, none of them even close to ‘the end’.
I would prefer easy contentment: it seemed a whole lot more fun than the alternative.
‘The struggles elevate the good parts,’ Spence went on, as if she could see the thoughts spinning through my head. ‘When I get back to my chair, I’ll be relieved and grateful, and I’ll have earned the Cornish pasty Denise is bringing me for my tea. It’ll be sweeter.’
Denise was Spence’s evening carer, a broad woman with dyed-scarlet hair, talons for nails and a voice so soft I sometimes wondered if I’d accidentally muted my surroundings.
‘And if tonight is so hideous I run screaming from Sterenlenn?’ I asked.
It was the first time I’d said the name aloud, and I wanted to know how it sounded.
Verdict? It sounded beautiful, as if music had been captured in those three syllables, and it was the perfect name for the house on the cliffs. I swallowed.
‘Then you’ll have felt everything out loud, and that can sometimes be a blessing.’ Spence patted my arm. ‘Off you trot. You don’t want to be late and draw even more attention to yourself. You’re far too pretty to be a journalist. Wynn could never send you undercover.’
I smiled at the compliment, and at the thought of the North Cornwall Star covering something so serious and newsworthy that they needed a reporter on the inside. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t get me to wear a bodycam so you could see tonight play out in real time.’
She gave me her wickedest grin. ‘I might win awards for my nosiness – the burden of every writer – but there are some things that simply aren’t for my eyes.’
I narrowed mine. ‘What does that mean?’
‘The time , Georgie.’ She tapped her bony wrist where a watch would be if she still wore one.
‘Fine. I’m going.’ It felt like the hardest thing to turn away and trudge down her front path, with its bright marigolds and sweet williams, hot pink poppy anemones dancing in the breeze. The afternoon sun shone mercilessly, a little too intense for June. It felt like a storm was brewing.
‘Spine straight!’ Spence called, and I jerked upright, then cursed myself for being her obedient little marionette.
She had come into my life when I was lost and lonely, with nobody to talk to besides an overworked editor and a best friend in London who was navigating being a new mum.
I was just Spence’s employee, I told myself for the millionth time, and she was offering me an opportunity I couldn’t turn down.
It was one night: one uncomfortable, awkward evening – a few hours at most – and then it would be done.
I could close the door on the feelings still lingering from that part of my life, and move onto the next, hopefully brighter one.
Alperwick village hugged the Cornish coastline, the houses clustered low in the valley, getting sparser the further you got from the sea, a mishmash of town houses, terraces and bungalows.
The mid-terrace I had lived in with Mum, which I now had to myself, was one road back from the beachfront, tiny but so close to the white sandy expanse and aquamarine water of Alperwick Bay that I never felt hemmed in.
Spence’s bungalow was a little way up the hill, set back from the wide road and with breathtaking views of the sea over the rooftops.
She had a front and back garden, space around her slice of land, but it was nothing like what she’d once owned.
Her old house, now Sterenlenn, was on the top of the hill, at the south end of the village.
It looked down on Alperwick and the coastline from its clifftop perch, as if it was a castle.
The main through road rose steeply on either side of the village, and was especially winding at the southern end. Minutes into my walk I was breathing heavily, and could feel the sweat slipping down my spine and between my boobs, already slightly uncomfortable in the bra I’d chosen.
I hadn’t known about Ethan when I’d picked my outfit that morning, and I congratulated myself on not having rushed back home to reconsider my options.
I’d chosen one of my favourite sundresses, rich blue with sprays of yellow flowers that clustered more tightly towards the hem.
It had tiny buttons down the front and finished at the knee, and I had worn it to cover stories in the past, so it felt appropriate.
It also matched my naturally blonde hair and blue eyes, and now all those things felt like an added defence, a flimsy wall of confidence that would help me make it through this.
But, halfway there, my bare shins brushing the sprays of tufted vetch and oxeye daisies along the verge, I knew I was going to turn up a hot, sweaty mess.
The straps of my rucksack, heavy with my notebook and camera inside, were digging into my shoulders, and I chided myself for leaving my twelve-year-old Polo at home, because I had decided it was too short a journey to drive.
My rucksack was a tatty thing that had followed me around for the last decade, worn patches in the tan suede like points on a map, the zip on the front pocket broken, so I could only put tissues in there and often ended up losing them.
I had forgotten my spare camera battery, and hoped that I could take enough photos for Wynn and Spence before I ran out of charge.
It wasn’t going to be the most groundbreaking article, unless the house caught fire or someone kicked up a fuss about the building practices, but then Ethan was a master at tidying away problems. He’d done it when we were together, and …
there it was, a faint flare of bitterness.
Honestly, I was relieved. I needed to stay as far away from him as possible, and thinking bad thoughts was preferable to remembering his tenderness; how he was mostly self-contained but had always been tactile with me; how safe he’d made me feel.
I swallowed and tripped on absolutely nothing, then jumped when a voice bellowed ‘Georgie!’
I spun to find Barry Mulligan standing in his front garden, the handle of his lawnmower resting against his paunch.
‘Hey, Barry.’ His bungalow was one of the closest properties to Sterenlenn, and he’d been the main source of news about the Big House while the changes were happening. ‘How are you?’
‘Off to cover the event for the paper?’ he asked, ignoring my question. ‘Caterers’ trucks coming in and out all day today, so it should be a good spread.’
‘Right.’ Barry couldn’t see Sterenlenn’s gates from his garden because the hill was too steep, but he had a telescope set up on a tripod in his roof conversion.
Supposedly it was for spotting dolphins during the day and constellations at night, but none of the locals believed that.
‘Anything else?’ I asked, hating myself for fishing.
Would Ethan come with the caterers? Would he have a sleek Audi or Porsche with a personalized numberplate?
I thought of the images I’d seen on Instagram, of him with various tousle-haired women, one after the other, often against European, city-break backdrops.
His captions were always annoyingly brief and superficial, but the photos told me enough about how much he’d changed.
‘A couple of Range Rovers with blacked-out windows.’ Barry scratched his scalp through his thick brown hair. ‘All a bit over-the-top, if you ask me.’