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

by Lily Graham

  ‘Some sort of posy, I found it at the cottage.’

  I didn’t mention the rolled-up note that had been with it, or the coded diary. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

  ‘It’s amazing how preserved it is,’ said Ivy.

  ‘Blue thistle,’ said Stuart. ‘Really cool – quite rare.’

  ‘Blue thistle?’ I asked.

  He picked it up and examined it closely. ‘Yeah, definitely. You got this at the cottage, you said?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Strange.’

  ‘Why’s it strange?’ asked Ivy, sitting down in the egg chair.

  ‘Well, it’s not a common flower, is it? I don’t think it grows here at all. I mean, nowadays you can get almost anything online, or at a flower market, but this would have been, what, thirty, forty years ago?’

  I shrugged. ‘Longer, I think. From what I’ve heard, the cottage hasn’t been occupied since the thirties.’

  ‘Wow!’ whistled Stuart. ‘I can’t believe it’s so well preserved. And, yeah, someone had to have gone to a lot of trouble to get this. Especially back then. It’s really beautiful. Different.’

  I thought of the code. The words ‘My love’ written in Tilly’s cipher text, the unusual flowers. It spoke of a devotion that, along with the secrecy that surrounded it, was perhaps as unusual as the blooms accompanying it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cornwall, 190

  Tilly

  It was spying, and I’d get in trouble if anyone found out, but I had to know if he was real. If any of it was.

  I’d tried to put the house out of my mind, along with the soldier, and the pair of men’s trousers in the buggy that was going somewhere I wasn’t allowed to visit and no one else seemed to be all that bothered about. For everyone else, life had gone back to normal. It’s what I was trying to do too.

  But that was until I saw the boy. No one had said anything about him.

  I was lying on the grass by the little brook, far away from the house – my ritual escape from Celine – reading an illicit chapter from a novel that she disapproved of when I saw him.

  He was around my age, with dark curly hair, standing in the middle of the water with a fox in his arms. But he couldn’t have been standing on the water, could he? And it wasn’t an actual fox, was it? As soon as I stood up, he turned towards me in surprise, his eyes wide and so very blue. By the time I’d managed to wade through the ice-cold water to get to the other side, my skirts dragging me down, boots filled with riverwater, there was no trace of him. He was gone.

  When I got back to the house, my lips were blue and I was shivering rather theatrically. Celine gave me a scolding that lasted half the evening, and ended with her favourite admonishment, one I heard at least twice a day. ‘Your sister was never like this.’

  ‘She was always a lady,’ I echoed, while I defrosted by the fire. I was wary of this admonishment. Wary of Rose’s perfect example.

  In the morning I’d made up my mind.

  When Edmund had spoken about the house while they were lighting the fire in the library, and I was hidden in the window seat behind the curtain, he told Martha, the parlour maid, that they were building it at the very bottom of the estate, past the fields and gardens to where the land met the sea and sky. Exactly where Father had forbidden us to go.

  Martha had told Edmund that he couldn’t be right. ‘Nothing but cliffs there – that’s no place for a house. Someone’s pulling your leg.’

  I told myself I wouldn’t linger long enough for anyone to see me. I’d go just as far as I could so that I could find it – just so that I could see it for myself. See if the boy was part of it. Then I could come back and forget about it.

  The next morning, I set off before anyone was awake, slipping past Celine’s room on tiptoes, my heart thrumming in excitement. There was frost in the air, and my feet were half-frozen when I slipped my boots on outside and set off.

  If I were brave, like one of the children in the stories I read – in the books that Celine disapproved of – I’d saddle up a horse and ride out. But I wasn’t, nor did I know how to saddle up a horse all by myself, or ride well enough to go without a saddle. I wasn’t a natural horsewoman. Not like Rose anyway, who was jumping fences by the time she was seven, while I could barely keep Jewel on a straight path.

  So I walked all along the brook, where I’d found the boy, past the empty daffodil fields, to where the cultivated earth changed from perfect rows to wild scrubland, full of wind-battered seagrass and plants that bent sideways in the wind, like old men walking in a storm to the very edge of the earth, to the sheer cliffs and the green sea that churned beneath.

  Not a house for miles; nothing but cliffs.

  If I hadn’t seen the builders trekking their materials past the fields, I might even have thought they had made it all up.

  ‘You’re looking for it, aren’t you?’ asked a voice from behind.

  I whipped around.

  It was the boy, the fox at his heels, like a dog. They were both staring at me. The boy’s eyes were very pale and blue, like two chips taken out of the summer sky. His hair was messy and wild, dark curls fell all across his forehead. The fox sat at his heels as if he were contemplating his words. ‘Aye, you’d almost think from ’ere that there was no house.’

  My mouth flopped open.

  ‘But that’s the whole point, ye ken?’ he said, smiling like he was letting me in on a secret. Which, I suppose, he was.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  The boy smiled widely, his teeth even. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Tilly,’ I said, holding out a prim hand so we could be properly introduced. ‘Tilly Asprey.’ I wanted him to know that I wasn’t completely trespassing, even if I was.

  He shook my hand, his fingers warm, and introduced me to the fox. ‘This is Arthur.’

  ‘Arthur!’ I said, delighted that the creature had a human name.

  The fox looked at me with solemn eyes, then turned and walked away.

  ‘Oh no, please come back,’ I said, watching him leave.

  The boy shrugged, nonchalant. ‘He can’t be hanging about all day. Got fox business to take care of.’

  I wondered what a fox’s business consisted of. ‘Like what?’

  The boy waggled his brows mysteriously. ‘Oh, I’ve never asked.’

  I laughed but then pulled a serious face. ‘So there is a house?’ I asked, looking at the cliffs in doubt.

  ‘Oh yes… with a secret entranceway and everything.’

  I looked at him, and then narrowed my eyes. ‘You’re just making fun of me.’ I didn’t like it when people did that.

  ‘I’m not!’ he protested. ‘Look…’ He pointed to the cliff wall. ‘See there, in the middle.’

  I looked. For a long while I saw nothing. Then, suddenly, I saw a hairbreadth’s gap.

  ‘See it?’

  I nodded.

  ‘That’s how you get in. Though you could get in from the sea, I think, if you came by boat. There’s steps in the cliff that take you down to the cove. I’m sure that’s what the old pirates used, back in the day.’

  I looked at him in surprise. I’d lived here my whole life and I didn’t know about those steps. He smiled and shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t have shown you the cliff entrance, you know. My Da won’t like it. It’s meant to be a secret.’

  ‘What’s meant to be a secret?’ I asked. ‘The house?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not the house, exactly, just where it is.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Why did you tell me where to find it then? What if I told?’

  He looked at me. ‘You won’t,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because Arthur trusts you,’ he said, as the fox came bounding up to him, back from his fox business, and climbed the boy’s legs and arms like a tree, till he came to rest on his shoulder, as though the boy was some forest-dwelling sprite. He was a world away from depo
rtment lessons, Father’s rules and Celine’s tireless crusade to turn me into a replica of my sister.

  ‘I’m Fen,’ he said. ‘You’ve already met Arthur. Go on, you can touch him – he won’t bite.’

  I held out a hand in trepidation and touched his tail, which was springy and silken all at the same time. I was surprised to see the fox close his eyes. I didn’t know foxes could be like this. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe it was only with Fen.

  ‘Do you like boats?’

  ‘What?’ I asked in surprise, looking from Arthur to Fen.

  ‘I found an old dinghy near the river, want to see it?’

  What I wanted to do, of course, was to see the house. To ask what he knew about it. Did he live there? Did he know who did? But more than anything, I realised, I wanted to spend time with this odd boy who charmed foxes and knew secrets that I didn’t, and who wasn’t afraid of sharing them with me.

  We walked over the scrubland, through tall seagrass that rustled in the wind. When a flock of seagulls cried above, Fen whistled in response, his call a perfect imitation. I stared in wonder as they came swooping low.

  It was only as we got to the brook that I saw that there was something wrong with his leg, which seemed to twist ever so slightly inward. I hadn’t noticed while we’d been walking side by side. It was only as he got onto the rocks ahead of me, crossing the little stream, I saw. He caught me looking.

  ‘It was an accident, when I were little,’ he explained. ‘It’s not normal looking, I suppose, but it works fine. Only gets sore in winter, when the muscles get cold, but it’s never slowed me down or nothing – wouldn’t let it.’

  I looked at his blue eyes, at the fox on his shoulder, his wild, curly hair, the way he seemed to be made of magic itself, and I thought of how everyone seemed hell-bent on making me just like Rose. ‘Normal is boring.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cornwall, present day

  The old photocopier in the Waters Solicitors Office made a sonorous hum as it spat out page after page of Tilly’s diary.

  We’d decided to split it every four pages and to swap it as we went. Adam came up with the idea that we could take photographs of the work we’d transcribed and send them to each other. I was touched by his enthusiasm.

  I was surprised that he wanted to get started straight away, but he explained that it was like solving a case – and around here there were very few of those.

  Adam made us coffee from an ageing percolator while I divided up the pages. There was a part of me that still felt a small residue of apprehension at the thought of having someone else look at her diary. I’d developed a soft spot for Tilly and was reluctant to have her over-examined. I didn’t know what Adam would think of her. What he’d feel about reading her private thoughts. It had been a safe place for her, something she had never intended anyone to read, and now she had not one but two unintended readers.

  It turned out to be an unnecessary fear, as Adam took to Tilly straight away.

  One evening, after a long day of working on the cottage with Jack and Will, I got a text at 11.15 p.m. from Adam: ‘You’ve got to read this!’

  Attached was a picture of two transcribed pages of Tilly’s diary. This was followed quickly by another, more apologetic, message: ‘Sorry. Hope I didn’t wake you? Bloody Americans and our enthusiasm…’

  I texted back quickly.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Never get to sleep before 1 a.m. on the best of days.’

  ‘So you’re a night owl?’ he asked.

  ‘Always, only way I get anything done.’

  ‘In that case, feel like company?’

  I blinked in surprise, feeling my throat go a little dry, and then I had to remind myself that we were simply friends. What was wrong with a bit of company? I had a quick mental flash of his lazy smile, and the way it made his blue eyes crinkle, but pushed it aside. I wanted to find out what had got him so animated, that was all, I told myself firmly.

  ‘Why not?’ I replied.

  My pulse began to race. I poured myself another glass of wine, drank half of it for Dutch courage, and then quickly went and changed my pyjama bottoms for something slightly more appealing.

  A few seconds later there was a soft knock on the door and I let him in, noticing, as I opened the door, the gentle sounds of the river at night – the lapping of the water, crickets on the banks and, in the distance, a low, still hum.

  ‘Evening,’ he said with an easy grin.

  ‘Evening,’ I replied.

  ‘Wine?’ he said, managing in his confident, American way not to seem at all bashful.

  ‘Why not?’

  I went and fetched him a glass from behind the multi-coloured curtain in the kitchen. When I came back and filled up his glass from the bottle on the coffee table, he said, mock seriously, his blue eyes solemn, ‘So, what exactly have you done to me?’

  I blinked, suddenly nervous. ‘I’m sorry?’ I said, eyes wide, reddening slightly.

  He handed me a few sheaves of paper. ‘Here’s my sleep-killer. It’s a bit like a spy novel, in that every time I think I’ll stop, it keeps getting better and I find myself unlocking more and more. I never knew my great-grandfather had a disability. Or that he was originally from Yorkshire.’

  I breathed out. Of course he meant the diary. ‘So you caught up,’ I said with an approving nod.

  ‘Yeah, I was meant to be filing something and lost track of time at the office,’ he laughed.

  I grinned. ‘I can see how that could happen.’

  He took a seat in the egg chair and I handed him his glass of wine.

  ‘You know,’ he said, with a self-deprecating laugh, ‘in the beginning, when I was reading it, I really thought that it might have been a secret cottage, the way she seemed so convinced that it was, but that doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, especially now.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean. I think you have to remember that she’s telling the story the way she remembers it, from when she was a child. The cottage was unlikely to have really been a secret.’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, it was only later, after I read those’ – he pointed at his freshly transcribed sheets – ‘that I saw that it wasn’t intended to be secret so much as private.’

  That made sense. Especially considering that most of the staff knew that the cottage had been built. There were certainly enough rumours circulating. It would be easy, as a child, to see the house in the cliffs as a place of mystery and secrets, even now.

  ‘What did you find out that made you think that?’ I asked, taking a sip of wine.

  ‘After I found out that my great-grandfather had helped run the flower farm.’

  I sat back, closing my eyes as I realised. ‘Oh God, I should have remembered…’ I said, getting up and fishing around in my backpack. I pulled out the book on Victorian farming that I’d gotten from the London Library, and flicked to the page with the photograph of the Aspreys.

  ‘This is a photograph of John Asprey with his daughters, Rose and Matilda. Standing next to them is Michael Waters,’ I said, handing it to him.

  ‘So that’s him?’ he said in surprise, staring at the grainy image of the tall, strong-looking man. ‘My great-great grandfather.’

  ‘Did you know he worked at Idyllwild?’

  He shook his head. ‘I had no idea.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cornwall, 1905

  Tilly

  For weeks I had been hearing about the new head gardener at Idyllwild, but a fresh whisper pricked my ears while I was reading Walter Scott behind the velvet curtain in the library one wet afternoon.

  At first they were the ordinary rumours, the ones that always surround a new appointment. The usual grumblings that always seem to accompany change when the newcomer was that most dreaded of things – an outsider.

  Edmund, the footman, said that many of the workers complained that he was full of new ideas – particularly for someone who had never worked with daffodils before.

 
‘Well, I heard Mr Davies tell our William,’ Martha whispered, ‘that he likes to disappear.’

  ‘Disappear? Where?’

  ‘No one knows.’

  It was only later that I realised they were talking about Fen’s father. It should have occurred to me much earlier. Father was nothing if not practical. If Fen’s family moved here, there was bound to be a reason. It appeared that everyone downstairs was wondering why my father had replaced Mr Rivers, the previous gardener, and appointed someone whose background had very little to do with horticulture.

  ‘Mr Rivers has been given the tenancy of the east farm,’ said Edmund. ‘Apparently he’s happy with it, but he was surprised. The move was rather sudden, so I hear.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why couldn’t Lord Asprey give Mr Waters the east farm instead of moving Mr Rivers?’ said Martha.

  ‘Search me. My uncle – you know he works at Idyllwild? – asked his lordship. He just said they were trying something new. Something that would put the farm on the map.’

  ‘Do you think that’s likely with someone like Mr Waters, someone who has never worked on a flower farm before?’

  ‘I don’t like to speak against someone who has done battle for his country, but I do believe in having the right man for the job. If it goes wrong, his lordship will only have himself to blame. Apparently, Mr Waters was happy to work on the east farm, but it was Lord Asprey who insisted that he head up Idyllwild.’

  ‘But why? Why would he do that?’

  ‘Lord knows. I just hope it doesn’t blow up in their faces. It’s the biggest earner on the estate. I can’t see why he’d risk it, myself.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Martha, before they left.

  I peeked out from behind the curtain with a frown, wondering about all I’d heard. Why I hadn’t realised that Fen’s father had been brought here for a purpose after all.