Chapter Four #2
Today was an opportunity for these businesses to make as much money as possible to help see them through the off-season.
Ruan might have been a city boy until very recently, but he knew that life could be tough in a coastal area.
Come autumn, fierce storms would batter the Cornish coast, the tourists would hunker down at home, and the worry about surviving through the winter would sully the enjoyment of the quiet beaches and roads for some of the locals.
Ruan wondered if Tammy felt the same. Both her jobs, artist and gallery assistant, must be highly seasonal. Yet he had the feeling she didn’t care about money beyond making enough to live on.
She’d be a rare one if that was true.
In his line of work, he could count on one hand the number of people he’d met who didn’t care about money. Whether he was administering an estate or advising a client in a dispute over a will, money was always the driving force.
‘Next please! What can I get you, mate?’
His attention snapped back to the red-faced ice-cream man, who looked fed up with serving an endless queue of emmets waiting for cornets and tubs.
When he returned a few minutes later carrying two strawberry cones with chocolate flakes, Tammy was chatting to a bloke around his own age sporting oilskin trousers and a bushy beard.
She was laughing at something the fisherman had said. With their relaxed body language, they were clearly good friends.
He held back a little, not wanting to interrupt, even though the ice cream was melting on to his fingers.
‘See you later,’ the fisherman said when Ruan approached. ‘Let me know how the festival job goes.’
‘Don’t tempt fate, Rory, I haven’t got it yet,’ Tammy warned.
‘You will. They’ll be lucky to have you.’
She held up crossed fingers and, spotting Ruan approach, moved forward to rescue her cone.
‘It’s already melting,’ he said, watching the pink cream trickle down the side of his thumb.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said, licking the ice cream from her own fingers.
Ruan did the same. Wow, the sweet strawberry tasted so good, and it was made even more delicious by the chocolate flake.
‘Good?’ she said after they’d both demolished half their cones.
‘You can say that again. I’d forgotten how delicious Cornish ice cream is.’
‘Real Cornish is unbeatable. This stuff is made at the dairy on the Lizard, so it doesn’t travel far. I bet you drove past the cow that gave the milk on your way here.’
Ryan laughed. ‘I’ll be sure to shout “thanks, Daisy” on my way back to the office.’
‘Where is your office by the way?’ she said in between licks.
‘I work for a law firm in Penzance. Moved down here a few weeks ago. How long have you lived in Porthmellow?’
‘Most of my life, give or take,’ she said. ‘I’m part of the scenery now. Literally.’
Ruan followed her gaze to the design and noted the waves had now erased the top section of the sun’s rays completely.
She turned away, seemingly untroubled by the destruction. ‘I know the guy in the ice-cream kiosk. He’s Trev,’ she explained. ‘That fisherman is Rory, who was born in one of the cottages by the Smuggler’s. That’s the old white inn on the far side of the harbour.’
‘What about … her?’ Ruan said, pointing to a woman propping open the door of a gallery with a painted stone.
‘That’s Breda St James. Not born in Porthmellow. She moved here from London when I was a teenager. She’s an artist.’
Ruan laughed and spotted, on the opposite side of the harbour, a bunch of shirtless men on the scaffolding around an old cottage.
‘And – that bunch?’ he said, pointing the cone in their direction.
‘Who?’ Tammy glanced across at the building site and her eyebrows met in a frown. She shrugged. ‘Sorry. No idea.’
‘Ah, so you don’t know everyone here.’
‘I might if I had binoculars. I know almost everyone. I enjoy living up to the cliché. Now come on, you know everything about me. I want to hear about you.’
Actually, he decided he knew very little about Tammy apart from the fact she liked strawberry ice cream and wrong-footing people. Or wrong-footing him, at least.
‘We-ell, like I said, I’m a solicitor working for a practice in Penz – What the—!’
His expletive was cut off by a whoosh of air followed by the brush of feathers against his cheek and an ear-splitting squawk. The next thing he knew, a seagull was flying off with what remained of his cone and sticky ice cream was running down his front.
His white shirt was stuck to his chest with pink goo. Great. Just great. He now looked a total idiot and was in no state to meet his client.
‘Oh dear,’ said Tammy solemnly while stifling her giggles.
Ruan pulled a clean handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed at it.
‘Hey. Stop. You’ll only make it worse,’ Tammy said. ‘That stain needs washing out.’
‘There’s no time for that. Is there anywhere round here where I can buy a new shirt?’
She shrugged. ‘Truro?’
‘My meeting’s in half an hour. I can’t make it to Truro, can I?’
‘Only if you have wings.’
‘Bloody seagull!’ Ruan exclaimed, glaring at the bird, which was sitting on a bin a few metres away, looking smug at having ambushed his ice cream.
‘There’s no such thing as a standard seagull,’ Tammy said solemnly. ‘That guy was a herring gull. In fact, it looks like Malcolm to me.’
‘Malcolm?’ Ruan echoed.
‘Yes, he’s quite the celebrity in Porthmellow. Expert cone snatcher. He’s notorious.’
‘Now you tell me,’ Ruan said as the pink stain seeped through the cotton. He could feel the sticky mess in the hairs on his chest. Yuck. ‘Whoever he is, he’s ruined my shirt. I knew I shouldn’t have stopped to have the ice cream.’
‘Ruan. Relax. There’s a surf boutique in town. It sells cool shirts and smartish shorts. That’s all you need for any meeting in Porthmellow. Trust me.’
Ruan didn’t want to give her any more reasons to think he was uptight – even though he was – but he had to be honest about his situation. ‘You’re right but this isn’t any meeting, unfortunately. I’m here to speak to a bereaved person about an inheritance.’
She paused and wrinkled her nose. ‘Ah. Now I understand. I’m sorry. That’s pretty crap for you and them.’
‘It is sad, obviously, but the bereaved and the deceased weren’t close,’ he explained, touched by her genuine concern for the person he was going to see, and for his own task. ‘In fact, the deceased was a distant relative they didn’t even know existed.’
Her eyebrows met in the middle. ‘That’s even sadder that they didn’t even know they had relations. I’d like to know everyone I was related to.’
‘It happens sometimes when people die without making a will and they’d lost touch with all their relations. In this case, we managed to track down their only heir and I’m off to tell them how much they’ve inherited.’
‘What a weird thing it would be to come into money from somebody you’ve never even met. I think I’d feel a bit of a fraud.’
‘It happens more often than you’d think but I agree, it is a bit random …’ Ruan said, feeling more uncomfortable by the second. ‘Look, I’d really like to introduce myself properly when I’m not covered in strawberry ice cream. Here’s my card. It has my personal mobile number on it.’
He held out the plain white card with its crisp navy typeface announcing his name and title.
Ruan H. Mitchell LLB
Solicitor
Gaverne Legal Associates
At the bottom, it had the contact details of an office in Penzance and a mobile number.
‘Neat,’ she murmured, tucking it into her shorts pocket. Ruan didn’t think she meant ‘neat’ in the American sense, but in the literal sense of uncluttered.
She delved into her own bag and handed over a card. ‘I also have cards.’
It was white too but with a simple design of a rising sun like the one that was fast disappearing beneath them, along with her name, Tammy Pendower.
‘This is the coolest business card I’ve ever seen. Looks like the same design as on the beach?’
‘Similar … though all my creations are different. You can never replicate the same piece twice when nature is your canvas.’ Her gaze flickered over the sands and a brief smile touched her lips.
It was fleeting, yet full of such sadness that Ruan wanted to ask her more – so much more – yet he had no right. He didn’t know her at all.
She turned her face to his. It was gilded by the afternoon sun, her eyes dancing with light as if all was right with the world and they hadn’t just been talking about such dark matters.
‘Look, Ruan, your shirt isn’t going to clean itself and you won’t get another in town, but I may have the answer.’