Chapter Forty-Eight
The evening drew in and Effie realised, as she waved Maddie off, that she was now stuck in Polcarrow and all her things were back home in Penzance.
Grabbing her phone from her pocket she almost called Maddie, asking her to come back and collect her, but she remembered Jake and. the conversation they needed to have.
She’d phoned her parents earlier that evening to explain the situation and they were both outraged at Zach’s behaviour and gutted that they hadn’t been there to witness Effie’s moment of triumph.
As she’d hung up, Effie glanced around the busy pub garden and over at the lazy evening sea, her heart swelling with just how loved she was.
How lucky she’d been to be able to reclaim her dream life.
She would never have felt confident to fight her battles if it hadn’t been for how much Polcarrow had got behind her.
Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she caught Jake’s eye and watched as he nodded towards the garden gate.
Everyone was engrossed in their own conversations, so didn’t pay much attention when Effie slipped away.
Jake was waiting outside the pub, bouncing nervously on his toes.
He was here, in Polcarrow, that had to be positive, didn’t it?
Her heart lurched and she tried to hold it back, needing to hear what he had to say before she got carried away with a romantic fantasy.
Effie walked slowly over to him, setting the pace of whatever was going to happen next. She stopped a foot’s breadth between them. They each drank the other in, desire for the truth and for each other thrumming between them. Effie shivered and Jake unzipped his hoodie and handed it to her.
‘Won’t you be cold?’ she asked as she snuggled into it, the residual warmth of his body wrapping around her. She just about managed to stop herself from lifting it to her nose to inhale his scent.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Effie, we need to talk.’
‘Now?’ she asked and hiccupped from her second cider. She felt nicely blurred around the edges but not drunk, just enough to soften any blows. ‘Yes, now, of course, of course we do.’
She turned away from the pub and headed back along the harbour, Jake following. The sound of every-one else trying to decide if they should order fish and chips carried on the air. Effie’s stomach grumbled. Chips sounded good, but clearing the air with Jake was more important.
Effie made her way down onto the beach, and perched on the bottom step.
Jake dropped down beside her. The sun was setting in a slow, gentle, golden way.
The cool evening air was laced with the briny scent of the sea.
Effie inhaled it, allowing it to ground her.
Here was where she was happiest, but what about Jake?
‘I missed this view,’ Jake admitted, breaking through the moment.
‘What? Even when you were on a tropical island?’ Effie asked, her words coming out harsher than she had meant them to.
Jake flinched at them. ‘I missed it more when I was on a tropical island. All that white sand, turquoise sea, yeah, it’s good, it might be paradise, but it’s not as good as growing up with this on your doorstep. It took me too long to realise that.’
‘I agree. Well, about this being on the doorstep. I’ve never been to a tropical island.’
‘You’re not missing much.’
Effie turned to him. ‘Really? You’d pick this over the Maldives? I’ve seen the photos, Jake.’
He swallowed at this. ‘Right, the photos. Effie, I’m sorry, I should never have gone.
The second I got into Tara’s car I knew I was doing the wrong thing.
I made a mess of everything. I didn’t explain it very well to you before I went.
I thought you’d understand that Tara and I had an obligation, that I’d tried to be honest with you, but I didn’t do it very well.
I think needed to go away again to see what I really wanted. ’
‘And were you undecided about Tara the whole time?’ Effie asked, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.
Jake hesitated.
‘You were?’ She swallowed.
‘We’d been together a long time. I had once thought we’d be together forever and I didn’t want to throw that away so easily. Maybe we got engaged because it was what was expected more than because we really were still in love with each other,’ Jake admitted.
Effie nodded. ‘And when you were away?’
‘It was nice to slip into the familiarity of being with her. We had a lot to talk about, figure out and unwind between us. After she’d spent the flight going on and on about the contracts she was bringing in, all clothes and makeup and boutique hotel stays, I realised I wanted more from life than jumping from place to place.
The same boredom that had made me leave her set in again. ’
‘You didn’t look bored in the photos.’
‘It wasn’t real, none of it. You have to believe me, Effie . . .’ he paused before saying ‘. . . Eff, look at me, please, don’t shut me out.’
The desperate tone in Jake’s voice made her turn towards him.
Effie’s eyes flickered over his face but she remained silent.
There was nothing for her to say. Jake reached out and took her hand.
Effie tried to resist the way her fingers curled into his, the link between them that felt so safe, so right.
She swallowed. The lowering sun flicked golden across his face, lighting him up, softening all the sharp edges she’d got herself caught on.
‘I missed this. I missed this view, but mostly I missed you. Meeting you, Effie, changed my life for the better. I spent so long running away from village life, thinking I was living a better, more exciting life than everyone else. Yeah, maybe I was a bit smug about it. It was a huge shock when things ended with Tara. We’d both invested too much to call it quits, hence the break,’ he scoffed.
‘Either way, I never expected that someone who had spent her entire life devoted to Cornwall would help me see that it has more charms than anywhere else I’ve been. ’
Effie stared at him, heart hammering, hardly daring to believe what he was telling her. ‘What’s happened with Tara?’
‘You didn’t see the latest post?’
Effie shook her head and admitted, ‘I blocked your profiles.’
If Jake thought this was an overreaction, he didn’t say. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Effie watched as he clicked on the app and brought up a video that had tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. He pressed play.
Effie wasn’t sure she wanted to look but she leaned over anyway and saw Tara perched on the edge of a very luxurious-looking hotel bed, Jake beside her looking as if he wanted to be anywhere else but there.
‘Hi, everyone.’ Tara waggled her fingers at the camera.
‘This is just a little, long-overdue life update from Jakey and me. I know, I know you’ve been asking where he’s been.
Well, he’s been back home in Cornwall. You’ve all been such wonderful supporters of us together that we were both very nervous to tell you that we’ve parted ways.
Professionally and romantically. I’m sorry!
I know you thought we were true love and all that.
Maybe we were once. But everyone grows and changes, that’s what life is about and sadly after many happy years together, we’ve grown apart.
But we’re both happy, honestly, and hope you’ll continue to support both of us in our new ventures, you guys literally mean the world to us. ’ She blew a kiss and the video ended.
Effie stared at the blank screen, then at Jake. Could this mean . . . ?
‘I got home this morning to find that bully in the shop. I went to Lola and she told me what had happened. Within minutes, Sue was bundling us into her car. I couldn’t believe I’d been so careless with you. For a split second I thought I’d lost you, that’d you’d left because of me.’
‘It wasn’t because of you,’ Effie said, ‘but I did wonder if it was for the best. I didn’t know if I could stay here if you were with Tara.’ She turned to him. ‘Jake, what is your plan?’
He entwined their fingers tighter and tugged Effie towards him. ‘I’m staying here. In Polcarrow. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.’
Effie stared up into his eyes, melting under the intensity of his feelings shining back at her, hardly daring to trust the edge they were teetering on.
‘Nowhere else I’d rather be, Effie, because you’re here.
When I first came back, I was at a complete loss over what to do.
I was floundering. All that photography business stuff was a way of trying to get myself grounded.
I just floated about looking for something to moor myself to.
Then one morning I got chastised by an angry mermaid and I was transfixed.
I loved helping you in the shop. It was the best thing I’d done in years, it even made me think about joining Dad’s business again,’ Jake laughed.
‘I’ve had some really positive enquiries from people wanting my photography skills, and I’m meeting with the hotel from the showcase on Thursday.
It’s all promising enough to make me think it could be a viable business, that it’s really worth a shot.
Of course there’s Lola and Tristan’s wedding in a couple of weeks, my big break—’ he exhaled ‘—not nervous at all.’
Effie laughed. They both knew Lola had some very exacting demands.
‘Effie, please say something, anything to make me feel like you’re not mad at me about the Tara thing. Even though you have every right to be.’
‘I’m not mad. I never was. I was sad. Sad, because I thought we had something.
OK, so it hadn’t really got off the ground, and I suspected you weren’t ready for a relationship before you even told me.
I respected that but I felt safe with you, comfortable, which I’ve never felt before.
I could be me, and you didn’t judge. When you left with Tara, it made me feel I wasn’t enough.
Look at her, all glamourous and jet-setting, and I’m walking around with sea-frizzed hair and dungarees.
I just didn’t think it meant to you what it meant to me. ’
Jake pulled her into his arms. ‘Oh, Eff, I’m sorry I made you feel like that.
I never meant to. You’re perfect as you are.
You’re beautiful with your wild mermaid hair and I love how excited you get when a new shipment of books arrives.
How you inhale the smell off the pages. I love how you put yourself out there even though you are absolutely terrified and somehow you manage to win every time.
You really underestimate yourself, Effie, if you think I was going to run off with Tara when I’ve fallen head over heels in love with you. ’
Jake tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
His eyes beseeched her, vulnerable and sparkling with desire.
Effie allowed everything he’d said to wash over her.
He loved her! It spread a smile across her face.
She leaned in and kissed him, slowly, as if for the first time.
Jake loved her, it bloomed in her chest, unfurling like petals on a rose.
She pulled him in closer, deepening the kiss.
They pulled apart and snuggled into each other as the sun ducked behind the horizon, a shower of gold over the sea. Somehow it felt like a blessing.
‘I know I did the wrong thing, Effie, and I know you shouldn’t just change your mind because I love you. You can take whatever time you want or need, I’ll be here, waiting.’
Effie thought about it, about being angry with him, about being upset, but it was her he was with watching the sun set in Cornwall, not on a tropical beach with Tara. He’d made his choice. How could she keep him waiting when she already knew her answer?
Turning to him, she kissed him again. ‘I don’t want to wait, Jake. I know I shouldn’t have done, and I tried not to, but I couldn’t help it, I’ve fallen in love with you too,’ she said, the words forming like a smile on her lips.
Jake let out a sigh of relief as he pulled Effie in tightly against him. ‘I don’t deserve this but I’m not going to protest and risk you changing your mind. Effie, I am the luckiest man alive.’ He beamed down at her.
‘Jake, I’m not going to change my mind. Anyway, I need somewhere to stay tonight.’ She glanced up at him in what she hoped was a seductive way.
‘Oh.’ Jake caught her meaning. ‘Of course, if you’re sure, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want—’
She silenced him with a kiss. ‘I want to,’ was all she said before standing up and holding out her hand to him. ‘But can we also get some chips, I’m starving.’
‘Anything for you,’ Jake said, pulling himself up to his full height, and instead of taking her hand, he swung her up into his arms. Effie let out a surprised squeal of delight as Jake carried her up the stairs and across the road, into their future.