‘You’d better hurry or she might go off the idea,’ Liz teased. ‘Besides, I’m dying to buy myself a big hat!’
‘Get down on your knees, man. What are you waiting for?’ Robert joked, and Jesse blushed furiously.
‘Leave us alone, will you?’
‘Maybe I’m not the marrying sort anyway,’ Loveday sniffed. She glanced at Jesse slyly. ‘Maybe I’m a lesbian!’
‘What’s a lesbian?’ came a child’s voice. It was Oscar, hidden in the branches above and listening to every word.
Maria rattled her cup and saucer loudly.
‘It’s a—’ Shannon’s brother Liam piped up.
‘How about a flapjack?’ Tabitha said quickly, passing him the plate. ‘Have you tried one yet?’
The sun peeped through the overhanging trees and a shaft of light fell on Bramble’s face. Resting on her hands, she leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the warmth, the low sound of happy chatter, the occasional higher-pitched shout from the children, the buzzing bees in the lavender bushes nearby.
‘How Pat would have adored it here!’ she heard Liz say, and a shadow seemed to pass over Bramble, for she, too, was feeling the absence of someone she’d loved and lost.
Often, she managed to blot Matt out, or at least to pack him carefully away in her bottom drawer, but at times like this, when everything was otherwise so perfect, she seemed to miss him more keenly – and worry about him a little, too. Was Lois looking after him? Did she know how to make his steak and chips just how he liked them, and was she familiar with his allergy to biological washing powder?
‘Why did your grandfather never marry?’ Danny asked, returning to the subject of weddings and bringing Bramble back to the present.
‘He was very much in love once,’ she said carefully, ‘but unfortunately the woman didn’t feel the same.’
She glanced at Maria, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
‘It was my grandmother he loved actually,’ Bramble went on, emboldened. She hadn’t told anyone else the story up to now. ‘He wanted to marry her after she got pregnant with me, but she turned him down. He never really recovered and he became a hermit after that.’
‘How sad,’ Liz commented. ‘Everyone said he was strange and reclusive, but I never knew what lay behind it. I just thought he wasn’t the marrying type.’
‘I thought he was more than strange,’ Bramble replied. ‘I thought he was a horrible person until I found out otherwise.’ She sighed. ‘My mother had an unhappy life, too. I’m afraid it’s in my genes.’
‘But you’re not unhappy!’ Shannon cried, sitting bolt upright. She seemed quite upset, and the others looked at Bramble expectantly.
‘Of course not,’ she said quickly, not wishing to dampen the occasion. ‘I’m incredibly lucky. The past year has been amazing.’
‘And I’m sure the next one will be even more so,’ said Robert, raising his glass. ‘Happy first birthday at Polgarry!’
‘Yes, Happy Birthday!’ the others chorused. ‘Thank you for inviting us.’
They didn’t leave until nearly eight, having taken almost everything into the kitchen first. Maria was tired and wanted to rest, so Bramble watched the guests drive away, the gravel crunching beneath their tyres, before padding alone across the grass to fetch the last plates, reflecting on everything that had been said.
The air was much cooler now and the setting sun had turned the sky a vivid shade of orangey-red as if someone had taken a paintbrush to it. As she wandered back towards the manor, flooded with rosy light, she almost gasped; it was so beautiful, like something out of a fairytale. Tonight, far from looking gloomy and forbidding, Polgarry’s windows were flung open, the breeze catching the curtains so that they seemed to dance, as if they were having a party all by themselves. She fancied that she could hear music and laughter coming from within and a whisper in the encroaching dusk: thank you.
Despite her pleasure, she hated to think of her grandfather watching Polgarry deteriorate before his very eyes. He’d loved this place enough to wish to pass it on to her, yet not so much to nurture it himself, so that it would have been a constant reminder of his own despair and decrepitude.
‘The last time I came it seemed so sad and neglected. You’ve worked wonders already. It’s quite different now.’
That voice, at once familiar and strange... Her heart leaped. Her pulse started to race, and she felt her legs buckle as she spun around. His fair hair, receding at the temples, was slightly shorter, his face perhaps a little thinner, but the soft grey eyes were the same, the broad shoulders, that gentle, stoic expression.
‘It’s you!’ she gasped, blinking a few times in case she’d been out in the sun too long. ‘Why—?’
‘Come with me,’ he interrupted, taking from her the small pile of plates and the picnic rug that she was carrying and laying them on the ground. ‘We’ll fetch them later.’
Too stunned to protest, she slipped her hand in his and he started to pull her back through the orchard and over the fields towards the cliffs. She was wearing only shorts and flip-flops and the long grass prickled her legs and feet, but she didn’t complain.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked in something between a laugh and a cry, but still he didn’t explain. He was walking very fast, her hand felt hot in his and she could hear his breath coming in short, sharp bursts, or was it her own? She wasn’t sure.
‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Or we’ll miss it.’
Now he broke into a proper trot. His legs were longer than hers and it was a struggle to keep up, but she sensed his urgency and upped her pace accordingly. Soon they were in the wooded area beyond the fields and they followed the track in the direction of Fergus’s old cottage, which had remained empty since he’d gone.
‘This had better be worth it,’ she gasped, trying to ignore the nagging stitch in her side.
Once out in the open again, it was just a few paces to the edge of the cliff, where he stopped short and released her hand, leaving it dangling at her side.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing. ‘I stood here once before, when I came to say goodbye.’
Together they watched the sky fade to pink and then purple, darker and darker, until the sun shrank to a glittering dot and threw out an orange flame across the black sea, lighting a path between land and horizon.
‘I feel as if I could walk across the water,’ Bramble whispered, awestruck, ‘right to the very edge of the world.’
‘Me, too,’ Matt whispered back hoarsely.
Soon they were engulfed in velvety dusk, while in the distance the twinkling lights of Tremarnock started to shine as the moon rose slowly and majestically, sprinkling her silvery magic around them like stardust.
‘I hear you’re quite the businesswoman now?’ Matt murmured, still staring at the spectacle. His voice echoed in the stillness and his words seemed to bear no relevance to their real meaning, though she wasn’t sure what that was.
‘I guess so.’ She was merely being polite. ‘I hope I can make it work.’
‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I saw you last,’ he went on, and now her ears pricked up. ‘I was cut to pieces when you finished with me, but I picked myself up and tried to get on with things. I even dated someone for a while. She wasn’t really my type...’
He paused and Bramble forced herself to wait.
‘I didn’t want to leave London. I liked my job, our friends, our life...’
‘I know.’ She could barely speak.
‘Everything I’d heard about your grandfather convinced me we shouldn’t have anything to do with the place, but I was being stubborn and it was wrong of me not to come and look.’ He shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘I know there’s been a lot of water under the bridge...’
Could he hear her thumping heart, the blood whooshing in her veins?
‘There’s a job for me in the Plymouth gym if I want it, quite a good one. I thought I might rent somewhere nearby and give it a try?’
>
He took a deep breath. ‘What I’m trying to say is, would you consider giving us another go? If you say no, I promise I’ll never bother you again. I won’t even come here for holidays – I’ll stick to Kent or Sussex instead.’
She ignored the joke, which seemed so out of place. Wasn’t it their lives he was talking about? Weren’t their whole futures at stake?
‘You can move into the manor with me,’ she mumbled, shocked at her own boldness.
‘What did you say?’
Her face leapt into flames and she wished that she could swallow the words. She must have misunderstood. She was about to mutter that she hadn’t said anything, didn’t mean a thing, when she felt a hand on her shoulder, a strong arm pulling her close.
‘I love you, Bramble.’ His voice was thick with emotion. ‘I thought I was going mad.’
There was a catch in his throat and she turned around, but before she could reply his lips were on hers, their bodies pressed tight against each other’s, so that if you looked down from above it would have been difficult to tell where he ended and she began. She was shaking slightly and her face was damp with tears, but he brushed them away with his fingertips.
‘No more crying,’ he said softly. ‘Everything’s going to be all right now.’
She wanted to lay down on the grass right there and then, to smother him in kisses and wrap herself around him so tightly that they could never be separated again, but she had something to ask first.
‘How did you know I was missing you so much?’
‘Katie told me.’
Bramble smiled. Her friend had always been a schemer. ‘We’d better phone to tell her the good news then.’
‘Later.’ He tried to kiss her again.
It took all her self-control to push him gently away, and then she laughed, a tinkling sound that seemed to echo around the fields and cliffs before melting gracefully into the silent sea.
‘What’s the hurry?’ She was so full of joy that she thought she might burst like a dam and flood the surrounding hills and villages with happiness. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’
He smiled, a smile so warm and passionate that it seemed to light up the night sky, and without further ado they walked slowly, hand in hand, back across the darkened fields, through the shadowy orchard, past the broken mermaid fountain, through the wrought-iron gates, along the crunchy gravel path and up the old stone steps that led to Polgarry Manor – and home.
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About Emma Burstall
EMMA BURSTALL was a newspaper journalist in Devon and Cornwall before becoming a full time author. She now lives in South West London with her husband and three children. Tremarnock, the first novel in her series set in a delightful Cornish village, was published in 2015 and became a top-10 bestseller.
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About the Tremarnock Series
Tremarnock is a small Cornish village. Houses cluster around the harbour, it has a pub and a sought-after little restaurant. The village is crowded with holidaymakers in the summer, but is a sleepy backwater at other times of the year.
But there is more going on than first appears – as with all villages, there are tensions, secrets and ambitions.
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First published in the UK in 2017 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © Emma Burstall 2017
The moral right of Emma Burstall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781784972530
ISBN (E): 9781784972523
Map: Amber Anderson
Jacket painting: Claire Henley (Tremarnock series)
Author Photo: Anna McCarthy
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Tremarnock Summer Page 38