The Cornish Escape: The perfect summer romance full of sunshine and secrets

by Lily Graham

‘Wait, please. I can explain!’ I called. Though I didn’t see how I could explain that I’d simply decided to trespass. But he was moving at high speed, ignoring my calls, the wheels creaking in time to his brisk pace.

  ‘It’s not how it looks!’ I shouted. That was a lie. It looked like trespassing, which it was.

  The old man didn’t slow down, just made for the faint amber light coming from the small garden shed at the end of the path.

  I stood rooted for a second in an agony of indecision – go after him or make a run for it? Something told me that an idiot wearing an electric-pink cardigan in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t be that hard to track down, should he decide to report me. So I made my way to the shed, hoping he’d give me a chance to discuss it before he called someone. The door was open as I launched into an explanation, but there was no one there.

  I spun on my heel in surprise. The shed was cold and dark, and when I left, I saw the wheelbarrow lying on its side, an empty beer bottle rolling out onto the frosted grass.

  I sighed.

  Of course, he’d been a trespasser as well. I’d startled him too.

  I set the wheelbarrow right, only to frown. He’d left something else behind. I bent down, finding an old tan leather book, bound by a long, thin ribbon of aquamarine-hued suede. I picked it up, and then started; the old man was standing an arm’s length away. His eyes were pinned on me, on the book in my hands.

  I couldn’t make out his face in the gloomy light. He was wearing a knitted cap and an old tweed jacket, the kind with leather patching the elbows.

  ‘Y-you forgot this…’ I said, holding it out, edging closer to him.

  He shook his head. As I neared I saw that his eyes were sharp, and very blue. I couldn’t tell how old he was. He was the sort who could have been seventy or a hundred and you wouldn’t be all that surprised either way.

  He stared at me for a long time, making no move to take the book. Finally, one shoulder came up in a sort of dismissal. ‘’Tisn’t mine,’ he muttered, his voice hard, like gravel.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, lowering my arm, preparing to put the book back where I’d found it.

  ‘May as well keep it,’ he said. ‘Not like they’re coming back for it.’ He nodded towards Seafall Cottage. We both looked. No, that seemed unlikely.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, looking at the leather book in my grasp and wondering that I was having such a strange conversation with an old man in this wintry garden. But he didn’t answer, and I looked up to find that he’d left as silently as he’d arrived.

  It was only later, after I’d trekked back to the Black Horse Inn, following a warm bath with a glass of whisky for company, that I picked up the book, unwound the suede binding, and found that it was a diary.

  It was filled with tight, black writing in a slanted hand. There was no helpful inscription in the front cover, no name written on the front page. But that wasn’t what made me sit up straight, something like a smile ghosting across my face for the first time in days, nor was it that the diary belonged to that oddly haunting house. It was the fact that it was all written in code.

  Chapter Two

  I read somewhere that the receptors in the brain respond to emotional pain in the same way they do physical pain. I wasn’t sure how reliable the article was, but allegedly it makes little difference whether we’ve been hit by a hammer or jilted by a lover. In fact, the article suggested that if you take a painkiller during a traumatic period, you might end up feeling better.

  It was hard to believe that an ibuprofen might help, but I took one anyway, washing it down with whisky for good measure. What was the standard prescription for when your husband told you he was in love with someone else?

  Morphine, I supposed.

  It was so cold that my breath came out in a fog. Heating in this dead-end inn seemed to be something of a myth. I felt old and tired; my face wan, eyes swollen and red-rimmed. The inn’s bland instant coffee did nothing to fight the fatigue from the needle-like bedsprings that had found purchase in the small of my back the night before, no matter how much I tried to twist away in the night.

  As I climbed into bed for my second night at the Black Horse Inn, I pulled the duvet around my shoulders in an effort to keep warm and the diary fell onto the floor. I picked it up and rifled through the pages, noting the tight black writing, the frequent use of numbers that made up the coded text, and wondering again what it was doing at that house and why someone had decided to write it this way. It was hard to tell if the writer was male or female, but I suspected the latter. The penmanship was elegant – though back then that wasn’t uncommon in either sex.

  My thoughts turned to the curious old man. He’d said it wasn’t like they were coming back. Like he knew who they were.

  I rubbed my eyes, and with it, rubbed away the thought. It was just a turn of phrase, nothing more; a tired brain looking for a distraction. The code was a puzzle – and I’ve never really been able to resist them.

  I shook my head. It was typical that this would fall into my hands now that I had wound up my latest biography, after four straight years of zero holidays or time off, of endless travel for work, which had involved over thirty-two trips last year alone for book tours, all of which had gone a long way towards the disintegration of my marriage. I was meant to be looking forward to a much-needed break. I’d had lengthy discussions with my editor at Rain River Books, and we’d agreed that a sabbatical was a good idea – there was never a good time to do this sort of thing, but I had insisted. I’d spent years working twelve- to fifteen-hour days, getting up every morning at 5 a.m., even on weekends. Especially on weekends. I was tired. I loved my job more than anything in the world, but what I loved most was the research, the discovery, the writing. But the curse of doing that well meant that I got to do it even less, my time spent talking about my work rather than doing it. We’d carved out six months of freedom, six wondrous months of idle stillness as delicious as thick Cornish clotted cream with strawberry jam.

  I was supposed to be lying in bed past nine, rediscovering the joys of wearing pyjamas past noon, of wearing flat shoes and relegating heels to date nights only, not worrying if I put on weight because I wouldn’t be in a press shot for some time.

  The next six months were meant to be time for me to recharge, recover my creative energy and focus on my marriage to Mark.

  They say life happens when you’re making other plans, I just wished that the bastard who’d said that wasn’t always right.

  Another missed call from Mark.

  I took a breath, my chest tightening painfully, and called him back. He answered on the first ring. ‘Where the hell are you?’ he snapped.

  I stayed silent while his voice got higher, more agitated. ‘I’ve been out of my bloody mind, Victoria! Jesus Christ! WHAT. THE. FUCK. Were you thinking? It’s been almost two days!’

  I closed my eyes, pictured him pacing the linoleum, barefoot, in his old pyjamas, the ones with the grey, vertical stripes. I pulled a loose thread from the duvet cover; watched as it puckered and rent the otherwise smooth surface.

  ‘That you had an affair with your personal trainer, which you lied about for weeks, and that you only told me about while we were having—’ I couldn’t finish. He’d told me that he was having an affair while we were having sex. I still felt shamed, like I’d never feel clean again.

  There was a sharp intake of breath. He was silent for a long time. Despite everything, maybe I was still hoping he’d tell me that he wanted to fix it, that he loved me. But there was no absolution. Not from this.

  ‘Oh, Smudge,’ he said softly, pleading. The word, the old nickname, like a dagger through my shattered heart. ‘Please, just tell me where you are.’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ I said, trying not to cry.

  I heard him swallow. It didn’t make me feel any better when he said, ‘Okay.’ Like he’d do whatever I asked. Anything except take it back. ‘I still care about you,’ he said.

  The tears came t
hen, stinging the raw skin where the past tears had already burnt. I was beginning to make that sound again, like something wild. Nine years of marriage reduced to ‘care’? I didn’t have it in me to bite off a sarcastic retort. ‘Mark, you were the one who asked to be apart… That’s what this is. And I’m in Cornwall,’ I said, and hung up.

  I decided against finishing the bottle of whisky, choosing instead to find the landlady, Gilly, to complain about the lack of heating.

  I unzipped the first kitbag I found, slipped on a pair of Converse trainers, pulled on a Batman jumper, followed by my thick, old coachman’s coat and went downstairs.

  My classless ‘biographer’s coat’ was a charity find, chosen more for its warmth than its style, and was a source of despair for my mother, someone mildly stuck in the eighties, who still believed that power came in suits.

  I wrapped my scarf around the lower half of my face, thrust my gloveless hands into my pockets and headed towards the bar. I found Gilly wiping down the counter with a well-worn rag, deep in conversation with a red-haired man who, despite the early hour, was nursing a beer. Sitting next to him was an old woman with a blue-rinse helmet of hair, huddled under a heavy brown shawl, her expression bleak as she contemplated her morning meal of baked beans on toast.

  I took a seat opposite. Gilly nodded her spiky magenta head in my direction and then carried on her conversation with the woman about a spring festival at the nearby daffodil farm that had been cancelled.

  ‘It’s been the longest winter in history,’ said the woman to me. ‘I feel like I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be warm.’

  I nodded. ‘Me too. Though I think the heating seems to be off in my room.’

  The red-haired man grunted in response. Gilly shot him a look. ‘Told yer,’ she said.

  He sighed loudly. ‘Blast it all! These pipes are the Devil’s work this winter. I’ll go have a look,’ he said, draining his glass.

  Gilly shook her head. ‘Like I haven’t asked yer to go and check the heating since sun-up?’

  I heard him mutter darkly as he went up the stairs.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Gilly, with a pained look in his direction. ‘I coulda got yer some blankets until Henry arrived, if you’d let us know earlier.’ She nodded in the direction the red-haired man had just left. ‘Local handyman,’ she explained. ‘Useless as anything, but he’s all we’ve got.’

  ‘You mentioned a daffodil farm. Is that near here?’ I asked. I hadn’t seen it yesterday.

  ‘Not far, about a fifteen-minute drive. It’s near the cliff road along the coast. An absolute picture in the spring months, I can tell you.’

  The woman next to me nodded, and her bleak expression seemed to melt momentarily. ‘’Tis a real sight in the spring, I don’t mind telling yer, golden flowers for miles…’

  Gilly looked at me. ‘Can I get yer something to drink or eat?’

  ‘Tea would be great, and some toast with jam,’ I said, not willing to risk the instant coffee again.

  While she was busy, I thought about the abandoned cottage I’d found. It couldn’t be too far from the farm, as that was the only coastal path around here.

  ‘Have you lived here long?’ I asked.

  ‘All my life,’ she said, handing me a teapot, cup and saucer.

  I nodded. ‘Perhaps, then, you could tell me about a house I found. It’s close to the farm, I think?’

  ‘A house by the farm? There are no houses down there… Though the new owners have converted some of the old barns for holiday lets,’ she said with a disapproving sniff, obviously not keen on the competition.

  The old woman next to me, who was now eating her baked beans on toast, muttered, ‘Couldn’t you have even heated them up, Gill?’

  Gilly ignored this. ‘Betsy, it’s just the farmhouse up there these days, right?’

  Betsy nodded but didn’t volunteer any speech while she chewed, her expression grim.

  I shook my head. ‘But I saw one – a couple miles from here, sort of unusual, tucked away really, and set in the cliffs themselves. I was walking yesterday and I saw it – sort of by accident.’

  ‘A house in the cliffs?’ said Gilly, as if I were mad.

  ‘I think it’s called Seafall Cottage,’ I said, tensing as I said the name aloud, as if I were exposing something delicate to the light, though I had no idea why I should feel that way.

  ‘Seafall Cottage?’ She shook her head slowly, then her gimlet eyes went large and she turned to Betsy, smacking her hand on the wooden counter. I jumped back slightly. ‘She can’t mean Cursed Cottage!’

  The older woman’s mouth grew tight. ‘You want to stay away from that place,’ she said, giving me a similar look to the one that she’d given her cold beans.

  ‘The Cursed Cottage?’ I said in disbelief, wondering vaguely if she was pulling my leg, perhaps any minute now I’d hear the opening strains to Psycho.

  Gilly nodded quite seriously though. ‘Oh yes. I don’ much put stock in curses and things like that…’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Especially here.’

  I took that to mean Cornwall and its propensity for myth and fable.

  ‘But that place’ – she gave a shudder – ‘makes it hard not to believe. Gives me the creeps.’

  Betsy nodded. ‘Aye, it does. Was horrible what happened there.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  Gilly gave me a meaningful sort of look, her black eyes boring into mine. ‘It’s hard to say, exactly… was all kept quiet, like. Even me nan wouldn’t talk about it, and she worked at the big house as a girl, yer know, during the summers. The only thing I know for sure is that it happened during the Great War, and that it had to do with the Aspreys, of course. They say that it’s why they all sold up and left.’

  ‘The Aspreys?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ said Betsy. ‘They used to own the farm and all the land around it, back when it was a grand estate.’ She pulled her shawl close around her body. ‘Most of it’s been developed over the years into the village of Tregollan now.’

  ‘Why did they leave? What rumours?’ I asked.

  ‘That old John Asprey kept someone locked up there – someone mad.’

  My mouth fell open in surprise.

  Betsy nodded. ‘People think whoever it was still haunts the place now.’

  ‘That’s because it is haunted…’ said Gilly.

  Betsy shrugged. ‘I didn’t really put much stock in the rumours myself, until what happened a few years back.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘A girl from the village disappeared there in the eighties, local teenager by the name of Mary Evans. She’d gone to meet some of her friends up there – they used to sneak inside and have a bit of a party. Except when it came time to leave, no one could find her.’

  ‘She just disappeared into thin air, they didn’t find her body or anything,’ said Gilly.

  Betsy gave her a look, and I wondered if they’d had this conversation before, because she said, with a look of exasperation, ‘We don’t know for sure what happened, really. Mary was in a bit of trouble, some of her friends admitted as much later, so it’s possible that she just ran away. One of her classmates said she thought she saw her a few years ago, working in Shropshire.’

  ‘Shropshire?’ scoffed Gilly. ‘And what trouble could Mary Evans have really been in?’ She looked at me. ‘She wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, if you get my meaning…’

  ‘She could have been pregnant,’ said Betsy. ‘You know how harsh Ted Evans was – he would have killed her, if he’d known.’ Then, for my benefit, she added, ‘The girl’s father, Ted, was the strict type, fire and brimstone and all that. All the Evans children were terrified of him.’

  Gilly shrugged. ‘Yeah, but to run away? Most people around here think that the police just invented that story as a cover-up for what really happened, just so that they could finally sell the place. No one wants to buy a haunted house. Not that it worked. No one would touch it. Would yer believe they’re
still trying to sell it – like anyone’d buy it.’

  ‘It’s for sale?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Must be more than thirty years now. No one here will go near it, of course, don’t blame them. I heard even old Waters has given up on the place at last. Going to demolish it and sell off the land. Though why he took this long to give up is anyone’s guess.’

  ‘Waters?’

  ‘Graham Waters. Local lawyer up in town – he got stuck with the deed. No estate agent round here would touch it.’

  ‘Really? Because of some old rumours?’

  Gilly gave me a look, like pity mixed with something else. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’

  Chapter Three

  The village of Tregollan had a natural harbour and a small high street that served its population of some two hundred residents. It was the kind of tiny, seaside place where everyone knew each other’s names and nobody minded their own business.

  The whitewashed cottages and terraced homes perched along the water’s edge had doors and shutters in shades of cherry, mint, salmon and sea foam. There were leftover Christmas wreaths and plants that grew sideways from the sea wind, and here and there the odd rose bloomed in defiance to the icy chill.

  As I walked, I breathed in the briny scent of the water, and listened to the cry of sea birds that circled above, snuggling my chin into my thick tweed scarf.

  There was a general store with a half-price special on Christmas goods, a library that only seemed to open twice a week, a coffee shop, a post office, an antique store and a solicitor’s office – the one Gilly and Betsy had referred to, back at the inn. It had a small sign that read ‘Waters Solicitors’ in elegant copperplate. I stopped and peered through the window, trying to see if anyone was there.

  ‘Closed for the afternoon. They’ve taken Graham to Truro for treatment,’ said a woman’s voice from behind, clearly assuming that I knew the people from the office. ‘Don’t know why they don’t just use the closed sign.’