The Runaway Year

by Shani Struthers

  Regarding Alex, there was plenty to tell. When he had turned up on her doorstep last week, she’d nearly dropped down dead. She couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d opened the door to find Queen Elizabeth II herself standing there, in full royal regalia with guards trooping the color behind her. For a while, they had stood and gawped at each other. Well, she had gawped at him, until at last he had broken the silence.

  “Can I come in?” he had said, his agitation clear. “I need to talk to you.”

  Adopting what she’d hoped was a suitably haughty manner, she had replied, “I don’t think so. We have nothing to talk about.”

  “Please,” he had begged, and she’d been surprised to see a hint of vulnerability in those deep brown eyes of his, although whether it was as genuine as it looked, she couldn’t tell. She had a sudden impression of the cat from Shrek, the one who could switch from being lethal to lovable with one glorious sweep of his eyelids.

  Curious, she had let him in, but no further than the hallway.

  “Be quick,” she had snapped. “I’m busy.”

  “Where’s Layla? I need to clarify something with her. It’s important.”

  Clarify? What sort of a word was that? she remembered thinking. Did he think they were in a business meeting or something?

  “She’s gone, left Brighton. I’m afraid it’s too late to clarify anything with Layla.”

  Her smugness at throwing such an inappropriate word back at him was swiftly replaced with shock when he bellowed back, “I know she’s gone, for God’s sake! That’s why I’m here. I’ve been to her flat. Some bloody student answered the door, didn’t know who the hell I was talking about. Where is she?”

  Recovering quickly, she had yelled back, “As far away from you as she could possibly get, that’s where!”

  In the face of her spirited response, all fight had left him. He had just stood there, shoulders slumped. “This has all been a terrible mistake,” he muttered pitifully. “All of it. I need to find her. Help me find her. Please.”

  Penny had looked at him then—really looked at him. He was far from the confident figure he usually cut. In fact, he looked wretched. Heavy black rings encircled his eyes, his hair was unkempt, and his jaw was covered in stubble. Gray stubble, at that. He wouldn’t look out of place down at the nightly soup run on the seafront, dejectedly shuffling his way to the front for a bowl of vegetable broth.

  “Why?” she had asked, softening. “Why should I help you?”

  Perhaps encouraged by her more gentle tone, he had leaned forward in an almost conspiratorial manner. “She needs to come clean about an email she wrote, an email she pretended was from me. Once Jack realizes I had nothing to do with it, nothing at all, I’ll be able to get the merger back on track. Until then I’m stuffed.”

  Email? What email? It hadn’t clicked at first. Then the memory of their drunken escapade had come flooding back. Of course! The email she’d sent to FarScapes’ managing director telling him Easy Travel was no longer interested in joining forces with them, that they were, in fact, a bunch of losers. Clearly he thought Layla had written it and wanted her to absolve him.

  Penny was about to tell him the truth, but she stopped. How much damage had that email actually caused? Was Easy Travel really in trouble because of it? If she did own up, could it impact on Richard in any way? Alex was a powerful man hereabouts, probably a member of the Rotary Club or even the Masons. He could jeopardize Richard’s chances at a partnership even more so than she had done by insulting his client.

  Rapidly she decided it was best to keep quiet, to feign complete and utter ignorance. What did she care about his company anyway? Let FarScapes think the worst. Besides which, was that all he cared about? What about the small matter of ripping her best friend’s heart to shreds?

  Her fury rising again, she had said as much to him.

  “Of course I care about her,” he had insisted, “but she left me in a real mess. My business is suffering because of her. I have to sort it out.”

  “How do you know she wrote that email, anyway?” she had dared to ask. “Anyone could have.”

  “Because of this,” he’d replied, grabbing his wallet from his back pocket and pulling out a Post-It note before waving it in her face.

  Snatching it from him, she’d read the message Layla had left on his desk that night back in January.

  “And?” she’d asked. It seemed innocent enough.

  “‘Good luck with FarScapes. You’ll need it,’” he’d read aloud, stabbing with his index finger at the words. “That proves she did it. It’s my only evidence, but Jack Thomas won’t have it. I’ve been trying to make him listen for weeks now. Layla needs to tell him herself; get me off the hook. He’ll listen to her; he respected her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry with her. Not at all. I just want things to go back to the way they were. Everything.”

  “When you were top dog, you mean? Swanning around Easy Travel like some sort of Roman emperor. Working your way through your adoring but deluded minions. You needed taking down a peg or two. Whatever’s happened with FarScapes, I’m glad. You deserve it.”

  “I know you think I’m only concerned with my company,” he had replied, “but I’m not. I do have feelings for Layla. I realize that now. I miss her more than I thought I would. But I’m a business man. Layla appreciates that.”

  “She didn’t appreciate your liaison with Sarah-Jane, though,” she had growled back.

  “That was a mistake. A moment of weakness. She’ll understand.”

  “A moment of weakness?” she had practically screamed at him. “A pretty impressive moment, if you ask me! How long were you in Florida with her? Two weeks? And before that, you were shagging her in your office. Don’t tell me you have feelings for Layla because I don’t believe you. You’re incapable of feeling anything for anybody but yourself.”

  He had looked downcast at that, as though she’d struck a nerve.

  “I’ll find her,” he’d said finally, every word coated in determination. “I’ll put things right. With Easy Travel and with Layla. Just watch me.”

  “I’d rather watch paint dry, thanks.” Then she’d slammed the door in his face.

  Going over it in her head now didn’t make her dilemma any easier. How was she going to tell Layla about this, or more to the point, what was she going to tell her? Every last word that idiot had uttered, or a scaled-down version? Layla sounded much happier these days; the last thing Penny wanted was to unsettle her again. She knew she’d have to eventually, though. Keeping secrets wasn’t her forte, as the current mess she was in with Richard proved. But the FarScapes fiasco she’d definitely keep quiet about. She knew what Layla was like: she’d feel responsible. Layla would rush back to Brighton, straight into his smug embrace, after publicly taking the blame, of course. And as much as she wanted Layla back in Brighton, she didn’t want her to be hurt again. And Alex would hurt her again; his type couldn’t help themselves.

  As she left the deli to return to work, her phone beeped. Someone had left a message. Tingles ran up and down her spine as she skidded to a halt to read it.

  Are we still on for a drink after work? D x

  Unable to stop a big grin from spreading across her face, she quickly replied.

  Okay, just a quick one. 6:30 at The Grenadier?

  An obscure pub, out of the way. Surely they wouldn’t bump into anyone they knew there?

  Looking forward to it. D x

  That was something else she wouldn’t mention to Layla, either. That she had started seeing Dylan again. Strictly as friends, nothing more. She’d been absolutely clear with him about that. He was a laugh, though, and she could do with a laugh. Richard hadn’t been exactly tickling her fancy lately.

  As she reached New Britain House, a thought crossed her mind. I’m not bad at keeping secrets, actually. In fact, I’m really rather good. But it was a thought, she realized, that filled her with dismay, not pride.

  Chapter Eight

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nbsp; AFTER FINISHING HER CONVERSATION with Penny, Layla wondered for a few moments whether to phone her mother next, before deciding against it. She needed to crack on with the cleaning as well as preparing tonight’s meal.

  When she had first told Angelica she had moved to Trecastle, the news had been greeted by a stunned silence at the other end of the line.

  “Mum?” she had said, worried. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, darling, of course I am. I just can’t quite believe what you’re telling me, that you’re living in Trecastle, of all places.”

  “You remember it, then?” she had asked, only half jokingly.

  “I remember it well,” had been Angelica’s answer. “Very well, indeed.”

  There had been a wistful tone to her mother’s voice that had surprised Layla, an echo of sadness. Soon after, Angelica had cut the conversation short: she had a lunch date and was running late. Same old Mum. Always busy. Always rushing to do something, see someone.

  She’d been that way since Dad had died, when Layla was seven, filling her life with an almost endless stream of visitors coming and going at all hours. Rather than turn to her only child for solace, she had turned to them instead, their constant company, Layla suspected, some kind of coping mechanism. Unfortunately, most of these “friends” had regarded children as nothing but a nuisance, and so Layla had learned to avoid them, her mother included.

  Before Greg’s death, Layla remembered a happy family unit, the three of them together, close, always laughing. After he had gone, she had needed her remaining parent more than ever, but instead of pulling together, they had grown increasingly apart, unable to recapture what had once been.

  Except in Trecastle. It was on holiday that Angelica relaxed, the years visibly falling from her as she allowed the demands of her hectic life and the people in it to retreat, for a short while at least, into the shadows. During this time, she seemed to look at her daughter with fresh eyes, remembering who she was and what to do with her. And that’s when the fun would start!

  Grabbing a duster and some all-purpose cleaner, Layla began wiping surfaces. As she worked, a favorite memory came to mind of her and Angelica, running along the beach, their feet splashing the cold Atlantic Ocean. They would cry out every time the icy foam washed over their bare toes. Normally it was daytime when they visited the beach, but this time it had been dusk and there was no one around, just the two of them, playing on what she would think of thereafter as “their beach.” As the tide made its way back in, they had retreated to the rocks, and there Angelica had told her all about the smoke fairies who lived in the west country. Wispy, ethereal creatures, hidden in beachside caves and on the moors, their task to sprinkle magic into the humdrum lives of mere mortals. Pragmatic, even as a child, Layla had laughed, but Angelica had chided her, told her it was true, and to believe in them at all times. Listening to the gentle lilt of her mother’s voice, Layla had found herself mesmerized by her storytelling, in the end, believing wholeheartedly in this mysterious and benevolent population. Certainly, the memory was magical. Whether it was for her mother too, she didn’t know.

  Having finished dusting and polishing, she turned her attention to the meal she was cooking for tonight: a Thai concoction she had managed to rustle up all by herself. Usually she stole from magazines or cookbooks, but this time she had devised a recipe of her own making. Joseph was a natural cook, an instinctive cook, often using ingredients she’d never heard of—such as samphire, a sea vegetable apparently, and gurnard, a type of fish—to create delicious dishes worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant. She wanted to show that she, too, had an ounce of culinary flair. Although, if she were honest, she much preferred to eat than cook.

  As she bruised lemongrass, peeled ginger, and tore up lime leaves (she’d had to make a special trip for such exotic ingredients to the supermarket in Bodmin), her mind drifted back to the short story she had recently written and sent off for possible publication.

  Why she had been inspired to write again, she didn’t know. Maybe living in a cottage that belonged to an artist and writer had encouraged her creative streak. What people didn’t know—well, everyone except Mum and Hannah—was that she’d won a writing competition when she was sixteen. A potted rip-off of Wuthering Heights, it had nonetheless impressed the judges who had sent her a book voucher and a Parker pen for her efforts, along with a letter telling her she had definite talent and to hone it well over the coming years. She smiled as she remembered how proud she’d been of that letter, how she had kept it pinned to her bedside wall until it quite literally fell apart from too much reverential stroking. Despite the advice, the last time she had written anything creative had been when she was eighteen, just before starting City College and embarking on her marketing and business diploma. There just hadn’t seemed the time after that to indulge in anything quite so frivolous.

  Well, now she had finally made time, in between hanging out with Hannah and the gang and working at the pub. And she was pleased she had. It was really rather good, a tender mother-daughter story with Gull Rock featuring heavily. Flicking through the first edition of a new magazine called Izabel, she had seen an advert asking for contributions. And so, feeling vaguely hopeful, she had sent off her first story in years.

  Content with how her Thai dish was shaping up, she rubbed the paste-like substance into some pollack—caught by Mick, of course—and left it to marinate while she went upstairs. Joseph would be here in a couple of hours. It was time to spring clean herself, instead of the cottage. Her hair could do with a really good condition, and a face pack wouldn’t go amiss either, one of those deep-cleansing clay ones.

  In the bedroom, putting away clothes fresh from the tumble dryer and changing the bedsheets, Layla marveled at how well she got on with Joseph. They’d actually become firm friends, despite their less than auspicious start. Penny had been surprised that they were spending so much time together, but as Layla had pointed out, they were next-door neighbors; it wasn’t so strange. They had common ground too, and not only because she was Hannah’s best friend and he Jim’s. Once upon a time, he, too, had come to Trecastle to escape.

  Hannah had told her that Joseph’s ex-girlfriend was, in fact, a friend of Jim’s. Tara and Jim hailed from the same village, not far from Trecastle, just along the coast. Tara made regular visits back home to visit parents and friends and had often brought Joseph along with her. Jim had usually been around on these occasions, and that was how the two boys had met.

  Joseph and Tara had split when she’d decided she wanted to spend time backpacking in Australia with a view to settling there. She’d wanted Joseph to join her, but he had been hesitant, finally deciding against it. After she was gone, however, he’d confessed to Jim that he may have made a mistake. He’d felt lost in London without her.

  Layla had quizzed further on this point.

  “So was he, like, I don’t know, heartbroken then?” she had asked Hannah.

  “Heartbroken?” Hannah had pondered. “I don’t know whether I’d go that far, but he was down about it, certainly. When I first met him, I could tell he was pining after her still.”

  Jim had been the one to persuade Joseph to move to Trecastle, a village he himself had only just moved to. Like Layla, Joseph had laughed at the idea initially, but the thought of sun, sea, and sand, as well as his best mate at hand had finally proved too tempting, and he’d arrived in Trecastle with little more than a couple of suitcases and high hopes. His profession as a carpenter meant he could pretty much work anywhere, and after finding a suitable workshop, business had boomed, enabling him to move off Jim’s sofa and into a place of his own.

  Joseph saw himself as one of the locals now, and he certainly knew his way around this neck of the woods, taking her to some very pretty villages. Each village had, at its heart, a pub, and many an evening they had whiled away in one of these charming hostelries, nestled beside the ocean, perhaps, or further inland, on the bleak but beautiful moor.

  On one
such evening outside The Anchor Inn—a gem of a place less than two miles away—they had sipped lazily at their respective drinks, watching the sun sink slowly behind Gull Rock. If she’d been with Alex, it would have counted as one of the most romantic nights of her life, with everything bathed in the soft golden glow of the setting sun, and the Rock deepening in shade as night encroached. Instead, she had sat cozily beside Joseph, hardly bothering to talk at all, she was so taken by the stunning view before her. They were lovely evenings, so different from the drink-fuelled, club-orientated nights she was used to in Brighton. Much more simple, carefree.

  Looking at her watch, she was surprised to find another twenty minutes had passed. He’d be here in just over an hour and a half now. She’d have to skimp on pampering slightly, which was a shame. Although she must paint her nails that lovely shade of varnish—“Blue Lagoon” she thought it was called—purchased from Harvest Moon. Rapidly becoming her favorite shop in the village, it was filled with the kind of exotic lotions and potions she loved.

  She also needed to sort out what she was going to wear. Usually she slung on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, but tonight she wanted to look different, the warm spring day filling her with excitement at the prospect of a long, hot summer to come. Perhaps a dress would be nice, one of her long, floaty ones—floral and feminine, but also very trendy right now. She’d dress it up with some chunky jewelry and add a few tiny plaits to her hair like Hannah sometimes did, embracing that bohemian look.