The Secret Seaside Escape: The most heart-warming, feel-good romance of 2020, from the Sunday Times bestseller!

by Heidi Swain

  He looked at me and I was relieved to see him crack a smile.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘No worries,’ I smiled back, accepting his apology. ‘Do you play?’ I asked, nodding at the case and feeling relieved that the moody moment had passed.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, securing his seatbelt, ‘I thought I’d just bring it with me so we would have something else to sit on.’

  I leant across and lightly punched him on the arm.

  ‘Has no one ever told you that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,’ I tutted.

  ‘Funnily enough,’ he said, locking his gaze on to mine as he turned the key and started the engine, ‘they have.’

  I felt my heart rate quicken and the inside of the car seemed to shrink around me. Finding myself in such close and confined proximity to him was making my temperature rise. It didn’t seem to matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t shrug off my feelings for him.

  ‘Do you mind if open the window?’ I murmured, looking away and trying to locate the right switch. ‘It’s a bit warm in here.’

  ‘It’s this one,’ he said, his hand reaching for it, just a millisecond after my fingers found it.

  We pressed it down together and then his hand closed around mine. What was he doing?

  ‘Tess,’ he said, making me feel even hotter.

  I couldn’t look at him.

  ‘There’s something you should know . . .’ he began.

  ‘Are you two now going to the beach?’ asked George, his head shoved so far through my window he was practically in the car.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him, pulling my hand free and thinking that he really did have the most amazing timing, ‘yes, we are.’

  ‘I would offer you a lift, George,’ said Sam, ‘but I’m out of space.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, quickly hopping out. ‘You get in George. I don’t mind walking back.’

  ‘Well as long as you’re sure,’ he said as Skipper hopped nimbly into the footwell. ‘I know it’s not far, but I’ve got this cool-bag of snacks from my sister and it’s heavier than I thought.’

  With the bag balanced on his lap, he buckled himself in and Sam pulled away.

  ‘See you in a minute!’ George shouted out of the window.

  ‘Yes,’ I called after him, as I looked down at my hand and realized that those inconvenient feelings I still harboured for my new best friend’s boyfriend just might be reciprocated, ‘I’ll see you there.’

  Chapter 21

  In my defence, I did what I could that evening to keep extra busy and out of Sam’s way. To begin with, it wasn’t too difficult because seemingly everyone who lived within and around the village had turned out to celebrate and I was easily lost among the throng.

  However, after the cheering, chanting and drum-banging which accompanied the setting sun as it left behind a sky beautifully streaked with gold and rose-coloured clouds, most of the crowd began to dwindle away. Everyone was full of the delicious food Sophie had provided and Hope’s cookies, which had gone down a storm, along with a measure or two of the far from innocuous punch, and staying out of sight became considerably harder.

  ‘Tess, would you mind helping me hand out the sparklers?’ Hope asked as it began to get dark. ‘I don’t want to leave lighting them too much longer because I think Mum’s punch is a bit stronger than usual.’

  No one was falling-down drunk, but I could understand her concern about offering around mini explosives to revellers who weren’t quite in full control of their faculties. I was beginning to feel a little light-headed myself.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ I said. ‘I’ve only had one cup and I’m already feeling it.’

  Hope, taking in my chilled-out aura, rolled her eyes and smiled.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said, handing me a few of the packets. ‘Let’s see if we can find any takers.’

  It turned out that everyone wanted to light a sparkler and make a wish and there weren’t quite enough to go around. I was willing to forgo the pleasure of burning one, but Sam wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘Here you go, Tess,’ he called, when he noticed I wasn’t joining in. ‘They were your idea, so you can’t miss out. Come and share mine.’

  ‘But what about Hope?’ I said. ‘She hasn’t got one either.’

  Sam pointed to where Hope was laughing with a guy I hadn’t seen before. He was standing behind her, a little too close for comfort, I couldn’t help thinking, and together they were making shapes in the air with the sparkler she had given him.

  ‘She’s all set by the looks of it,’ said Sam.

  He didn’t seem at all bothered by the sight of his other half wrapped up with a random reveller.

  ‘All right,’ I relented, thinking it would be rude to refuse, ‘we’ll share. Thank you.’

  Rather than go for the cosy set up Hope and her friend had opted for, I held the sparkler until it had burned halfway down and then, fumblingly, handed it to Sam. When our fingers touched this time, I didn’t go quite as hot as when he held my hand in the car, but it was a close-run thing.

  ‘What did you wish for?’ he huskily asked, ramping up the heat again in spite of my best efforts to keep it at bay and making my insides fizz as dramatically as the cheery display which was still going on around us.

  ‘If I tell you that,’ I swallowed, ‘it won’t come true.’

  The truth was, I hadn’t made a wish. I’d been so pre-occupied with keeping my temperature in check, that I hadn’t had time.

  ‘That was fun,’ said a girl next to me as she pushed her extinguished sparkler into the bucket of sand. ‘Are there any more?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll have to buy more next year,’ remarked Sam, as he breathed in the evocative but not unpleasant acrid tang the sparklers had left behind.

  I liked the thought of Wynmouth celebrating the solstice again next year, even though I wouldn’t be there to join in with the fun.

  ‘Smells like autumn,’ said Hope, as she wandered over, with a big grin on her face. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘It does,’ I agreed, ‘we’ll all be wanting toffee apples for breakfast at this rate.’

  ‘I have a spicy baked alternative to those,’ said Sophie as she began refilling everyone’s cups with yet more punch. ‘Remind me to give you the recipe, Tess.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, throwing caution to the wind and holding out my cup for a refill. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Are you going to play?’ Hope asked Sam with a nod to where his guitar case was propped against a deckchair.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘perhaps later when everyone is too tipsy to take much notice of my mistakes. It’s been a while. One thing I am sure of though, is that we need to move the party further up the beach before the tide catches us.’

  By the time we had moved everything and were settled on to the sand in front of the café where I’d never seen the sea reach, there weren’t many of us left. Multiple stars were beginning to shine and someone had lit a small fire in a brazier in celebration of the season. I helped pass around the blankets and sleeping bags to the hardy last few which would help stave off the developing chill.

  We all found a comfy spot and Sam began to quietly strum a melody on his guitar and sing a few words. I didn’t hear any bum notes as I closed my eyes, thinking that I probably shouldn’t let Sophie top my drink up again. I couldn’t remember if I’d three or four cups now, or possibly even five. I breathed slowly and deeply, thinking that there was something very hypnotic about the lapping waves, the crackle of the fire and Sam’s surprisingly soulful voice.

  I sat and listened as he softly worked his way through Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’. I remembered how much I had loved the video which had accompanied the release and how I had wondered whether I would ever find someone who would feel like that about me.

  I had once thought I could have felt like that about the person who had given me my first kiss and I had certainly still b
elieved it might be possible the day he dramatically pulled me away from the cliff edge, or rather rescued me from his dog who was intent on tipping me over it, but my memories were a fantasy. That kiss hadn’t been what I remembered at all, just like lots of other things in my life, including my parents’ far-less-than-perfect marriage. It seemed I had skipped merrily through life either wearing rose-tinted specs or a blindfold.

  Before I had a chance to check them, I felt warm tears running down my face. I quickly wiped them away with the back of my hand, stood up, turned my back on the party and walked down the beach back to the shoreline. I wasn’t quite as steady on my feet as I would have liked, but I needed to compose myself away from the group. Sophie’s punch was clearly having an impact I hadn’t expected. It was releasing my pent-up emotions as well as relaxing my body – a truly heady combination as it turned out.

  ‘Tess!’

  I closed my eyes and ignored the voice behind me because it was the last one in the world I wanted to hear.

  ‘Hey!’ it called again. ‘Wait up.’

  ‘I just need a minute,’ I croaked, still not looking back and taking a few further steps.

  My voice was filled with so much emotion, I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone, but I wished he would. Perhaps that was what I should have wished for when we burned the sparklers: to free myself of the stupid feelings I had for a man I couldn’t have.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Sam asked, eventually catching up with me and sounding out of breath. In my haste to get away from him I’d forgotten that he found walking on the sand so difficult. ‘My singing wasn’t that bad, was it?’

  He was trying to coax a smile, but he had no chance of achieving that.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘of course not.’

  I shook my head and took another step. There’d been music the night I went out with Joe, but it had been loud, brash, raucous and fun. What Sam had just delivered was completely different. Stirring, sensitive, and expressive, he had moved me in a way I hadn’t been touched in a very long time. Probably forever. It had felt like far too intimate a moment to share with someone who was supposed to be just a friend, and a friend who was attached to another friend at that. I couldn’t let him see the impact his impromptu performance had had on me.

  ‘It was wonderful,’ I sniffed, pulling my sleeves down over my hands and staring out to sea.

  I really didn’t want to carry on crying, but I just couldn’t seem to stop now that I’d started.

  ‘I just needed a minute to myself,’ I sobbed, my breath catching in my throat as I tried not to sound as if my heart was breaking and roughly brushed the relentless tears away with my cuffs.

  ‘Hey,’ said Sam, quickly closing the gap between us again as my sobs grew louder and before I had a chance to move away, ‘come here.’

  He wrapped his arms around me and instinctively I clung to him. His embrace felt warm, safe and strong and I let myself melt into it even though I knew that I shouldn’t, even though I knew that it was wrong, even though it felt like I was betraying Hope. In spite of my guilt-ridden awareness of each and every one of those things, I also knew that there was no magnet in the world strong enough to pull me out of his arms. It was where I needed to be. Exactly where I had wanted to be from the moment I had caught sight of him for the very first time.

  He pulled away a little so he could wipe away my tears with his thumb before gently tucking my hair behind my ears. I couldn’t be sure if it was the feel of his fingers on my skin or the act of kindness itself, but something stirred within me. As he bent his head and lowered his lips to mine there was an electrifying certainty coursing through my system that I was about to feel something familiar, even though it was years and years since I had first felt it, and only then for a minute or two.

  The touch of him and the taste of him was exactly as I remembered it. Sam had been the boy at the beach hut who had delivered my first unforgettable and never since matched kiss, not Joe. Sam had made my legs shake then and he was doing it again, only now with double the intensity. So, I hadn’t embellished this memory or woven it into an improbable fantasy, I had simply kissed the wrong man before and that was what made me think that I had, but now I had found the right one.

  Lost in the moment, soft, slow, sweet and tender kisses rained down, before gathering in passion and purpose. This latest development was a brand-new addition and goodness only knows what we would have ended up doing were we not on the beach, at the party, just a stone’s throw from where other people were sitting, including Hope . . .

  I was the one who stopped, and quite suddenly once the thought of Hope spotting us had popped into my head. I looked over to the group but no one was taking any notice of us and thankfully I couldn’t see my friend among them.

  ‘Tess,’ Sam murmured seductively, his voice thick as he dipped his head to kiss me again.

  As much as my body yearned to reciprocate, as tempted as I was, I couldn’t let the magical moment carry on and I turned my head slightly away, but that didn’t help at all because he then began to caress and kiss my collarbone. Tiny kisses which blazed a trail and lit up every erogenous zone in my body, some of which, until that moment, I had no idea even existed.

  We had decided not to have f ireworks at the party but my libido was experiencing the biggest display. The rockets launching in my loins far outshone those which lit up the midnight sky over the Thames every New Year’s Eve.

  ‘Sam,’ I managed to gasp, ‘stop. Please stop.’

  He pulled back and looked down at me, pinning me to the spot with those green eyes that I had always found so intoxicating. His pupils were massively dilated and I realized now it was little wonder that I had felt that magnetic pull towards him from the very first second I had seen him.

  I might not have been aware of it, but the universe had known he was the answer to a question which hadn’t even existed when I first arrived in Wynmouth. I didn’t know how it had happened, why Sam and Joe had switched down at the huts, or why I couldn’t remember Sam at all, but it had. For some reason they had swapped places; Sam had delivered that all-consuming first kiss and I had just been treated to a toe-tingling, mind-blowing second performance. Only now the boy was a man and he was the boyfriend of someone I had come to consider a very great friend.

  It pained me to think that I could never kiss him again, but at least now I knew that there was one thing about Wynmouth that hadn’t changed. That kiss had been every bit as amazing as I had remembered and that had to be worth celebrating.

  ‘I’m going to get another drink,’ I said, tearing my eyes away from Sam’s handsome face and looking back to where the fire was burning like a bright beacon of hope. ‘Do you want one?’

  I broke away from him and the chilly air which pushed its way between us made me shiver. Locked together we had generated enough heat to rival the log burner in the cottage, but now it was gone.

  ‘No,’ said Sam, shaking his head as his eyes followed my progress back up the beach, ‘not for me, thanks. I’ve had enough.’

  I hadn’t. In fact, by the time I had taken the short walk back to the revellers I felt ready to indulge in at least another half a dozen measures of the stuff. I took a clean cup from the stack.

  ‘Any chance of some more rum?’ I asked the guy currently in charge of the ladle.

  What happened after that soon became hazy. I was fairly certain another cup full followed it, and there might have been another after that. I was pretty certain there had been music and then dancing because everyone got a second wind as the moon appeared, bright, theatrical and full, above the horizon.

  I know I looked for Sam and Hope among the happy throng who were partying with abandon, but finding neither, I carried on without them. Some time after midnight, I was struggling to remember what it was that we had all come down to the beach to celebrate and when I eventually settled on the sand under a blanket that wasn’t quite thick enough and gazed up at the stars, I found the sky was spinning, and when I closed my e
yes, it whirled all the faster.

  *

  When I woke again, just a few short hours later, it was already beginning to get light and I could feel the blanket I had fallen asleep wrapped up in had left a haphazard imprint down the left side of my face. I was freezing cold and my body ached almost as badly as my head. Although not quite. My head seemed to be the real problem, or so I thought until I sat up and felt my stomach churn.

  Gingerly, and as quietly as I could, I shakily stood, carefully stepping over the half a dozen or so other partygoers who had also opted to sleep under the stars and were still out for the count. From the little I could remember, we hadn’t ended up identifying the constellations, as had been the original plan, but we had had fun nonetheless. I also thought I had, at some point, been intent on celebrating something, but whether that was the solstice or something else entirely, I had no idea.

  I steadily walked back along the beach and up the lane to the cottage. I trod lightly, feeling like I was taking the walk of shame, turning up on the doorstep in last night’s party gear, but I’d done nothing to be ashamed of, had I? After the classic painkiller, caffeine and dry toast combo, I took myself off to bed, barely registering when the letterbox rattled as my head hit the pillow and only coming back to life much later.

  The letterbox had rattled courtesy of a note shoved through it from Joe. He said that he hoped everyone had enjoyed the party, that he was sorry to have missed it, that maybe he would be able to manage it next year if he was invited and then issued me with an invitation of my own.

  With harvest waiting in the wings, I’m going to be around even less, so I was wondering if you would like to come to the farm for a tour of the place and then stay and have a meal with me, Charlie and Bruce after?

  My curiosity about the farm had been piqued for ages, so I was keen to accept and, if I played my cards right, I might even be able to use my visit to work out how I could, discreetly of course, help Hope get Joe and Sam back on even friendlier terms. I didn’t know why, but I had the strangest feeling that I owed Hope a massive favour.