Chapter 2
To understand what happened all those years ago, it’s important to know a bit about where I grew up.
Maybe you were sent a postcard from there at some point.
Maybe it was one of those kitschy ones that are split into quadrants.
If it was, it probably had a picture of the beach and the Pellar’s Stone, and maybe a photograph of the old mine, or an aerial shot that looks down on the V-shaped bay and its two uneven headlands – the giant Tregarrick and its smaller brother Penleaze – that hold the village in a crooked vice.
The sea on these postcards always seems to have been altered slightly to make it bluer than it really is.
Wish you were here! they shout from every side of every spinning rack in every shop.
But if there is a slogan that sums up the feeling among the locals it would be the exact opposite: wish you weren’t here.
To say St Hellion is a bit backward would be an understatement.
To say the locals are set in their ways would be a bigger one.
The biggest point of pride for the people of St Hellion is how far back they can trace their family name in the local cemetery.
It’s as if the place is stuck in a kind of time warp, where medieval stubbornness has stopped minds from being corrupted by science and logic.
If you went there on holiday for a week, you would probably dismiss the everywhere-you-look references to olde Cornish lore as a novelty to entertain the summer hordes.
But if you stayed for a winter – when the second homes are empty and the whole place is frozen and quiet – and you really opened your eyes and ears, you’d realise the people there actually believe it.
They live it. You’d discover it’s a place where horseshoes are nailed above doorways and people salute magpies for good luck.
After a while, if you met someone wearing the breastbone of a bird hanging around their neck, that wouldn’t be conversation-startingly unusual.
The people of St Hellion range from the mildly superstitious, to dedicated herbalists and pagans, all the way up to the full-blown occultists.
Some believe in haunted stiles and cursed fields and sea spirits.
They bathe their babies in salt water to protect them from something or other.
There are people in the village who honestly believe the sight of a lamb in the graveyard means a child could be about to die.
Renovations on some of the older buildings have found skeletons, some human, embedded in the walls and foundations.
The gift shop on Fore Street dedicates about a third of its cluttered display space to healing crystals and the like.
The popular belief is that people from St Hellion are a bit mental.
But the truth is we’re not. We are no crazier than any of the billions who believe in a god.
When you grow up immersed in a culture, you don’t think anything of it – it’s always there, in the background.
And while you can dismiss something as nonsense all you like, eventually, when you’ve heard it so much – be it in a local phrase, an off-curriculum lesson from your schoolteacher, a playground rhyme – it seeps into every pore of your brain, becomes completely normal.
You don’t realise it’s happening. Not that any of that concerns you one bit when you’re sixteen years old.
Back then I had much more important things to worry about.
Back then, Bayview was part-finished after the developer went bust halfway through its construction.
Lucy’s street was eerie and carless, with houses on both sides in various stages of completion.
With no traffic, and the pavements unsealed, I walked up the middle of the road to its far end, where Lucy’s was one of only a handful of occupied houses.
It was late afternoon and the light was fading, a little dry heat clinging to the air.
My mouth was parched, and a trickle of sweat in the crease of my back went cold as I crossed the driveway and rang the bell.
Lucy’s mum opened the door immediately, as if she’d been poised behind it waiting for me.
‘Is Lucy home?’ I was in a daze; I’d left my body; the words were being spoken by someone else. They must have been, because I’d gone over what I was going to say a hundred times and they still came out in the wrong order. ‘I’m revision for her science retakes, here to help.’
Lucy’s mum cupped a hand over her mouth, stifling a laugh. ‘She’s in her room, love. Turn left at the top of the stairs.’
My stomach swirling, I removed my trainers and crept up, thinking how awful it would be if I was sick on the pale, almost white, carpet.
Then I got to the top and there she was.
Her door was ajar, and Lucy was lying on her front, on the bed.
She scrambled to her feet and turned her back to me, hiding whatever was in her hands. ‘Do you always turn up unannounced?’
‘I was passing.’
‘Passing?’ She crouched at the base of a tall bookcase. Her eyes were wide. ‘There’s nothing past here but a load of salt water. Were you on your way to Canada?’
I forced an awkward laugh and looked at the floor, fumbling the coins in my pocket. This is not going well. ‘I did say I’d help you with your chemistry revision.’
‘That’s great, JP, but maybe give me some notice next time, yeah?’ She rolled her eyes, then looked at me with a playful smirk that melted my anxiety. ‘You better come in, although, honestly, I think I might be beyond help.’
We sat at her desk, in front of a small window that looked out on to a sliver of sea.
She wore a white vest that burst bright against the deep bronze of her skin, and her sleek inky black hair framed her heart-shaped face in a perfect arch.
Her elbow brushed against mine. I suggested we start with some chemical equations.
Nothing that was coming out of my mouth was what I wanted to say, and yet every word exchanged between us, however cold and empirical, was thrilling because it was said in private; we were alone, cloistered against it all, every breath amplified, her musky scent warm around me.
Time spun off into an incalculable vortex and I’d no idea how long I’d been there when Lucy got called downstairs for dinner.
She put her face in her hands. ‘I’m never going to get my head around this.’
‘You will. I can help you again tomorrow, if you want.’
Lucy groaned. ‘I can’t bear it.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Actually,’ I said, suddenly light-headed, a tingle spreading over my skin. ‘I was wondering whether you might want to do something that isn’t chemistry revision. You know, only if you want?’
She peered through her fingers. ‘OK, strictly no chemistry.’
‘Strictly no chemistry.’
Lucy smiled. It was a big, broad, luminous smile, her eyes wide with it, and for a moment the brightness of it seemed to light up the entire world.
‘I’m working at the cafe tomorrow, but I should be free in the evening,’ she said. ‘One thing, though. Don’t just turn up at my house this time. Text me, OK?’
I did text her, straight away. And all evening, and the next morning, every phone bleep launching dopamine fireworks through my whole body. I had the unshakeable feeling that my luck was about to change. And it was – just not in the way that I’d hoped.