A Perfect Cornish Escape

by Phillipa Ashley

  A PERFECT CORNISH ESCAPE

  Phillipa Ashley

  Copyright

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2020

  Copyright © Phillipa Ashley 2020

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover illustration © Hannah George / Meiklejohn

  Phillipa Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008371579

  Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008371586

  Version: 2020-05-04

  Dedication

  Dedicated to all the brave volunteers who save lives at sea

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  Also by Phillipa Ashley

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  September, seven years ago

  Marina pressed her back against the door of the wooden building, seeking shelter under what remained of its porch. The coastal lookout station had been left to the mercy of the elements a decade ago, but now she was desperate.

  Hail battered what was left of the roof. When she’d set out on her walk an hour before, it had been a fine evening, blowy but with hardly a cloud in the sky. She hadn’t bothered with a coat. She hadn’t expected it to rain and almost hadn’t cared if it did. The little things – getting caught in the rain, getting soaked to the skin – didn’t matter.

  Nothing seemed to matter any more, not now Nate was gone.

  Marina had headed out for her walk straight after work. The new term had begun at the college where she taught English. It had been the beginning of the summer holidays when Nate had vanished but that was two months ago and she couldn’t stay on compassionate leave forever. Her students needed her, however much she might feel like curling up in a ball howling, or spending her time here, looking out over the coast, hoping, waiting, praying …

  She’d been drawn to this spot even more in the few months since Nate had vanished in his fishing kayak off the cove below the abandoned lookout station. The station had once been well equipped with powerful binoculars, which enabled the coastguards to watch and listen in to the marine traffic passing by. They could see for many miles, and alert the search and rescue services to anyone in trouble, not only shipping, but local fishermen, windsurfers, divers, even walkers on the coast path.

  Once upon a time, they had watched and logged every vessel, person and incident, large and small, because one day their vigilance might save a life. It had saved lives … but not Nate’s.

  The station had been closed long before Nate disappeared. The fishing kayak was a new ‘toy’, one of many, and purchased from a mate at a knockdown price. He said he was going to flog his catch to the fancy restaurants in Porthmellow, Newlyn and St Ives. It would be a nice little earner, he said, and give them some extra income while he got his real business – one of them – off the ground.

  She’d told him to be careful, hiding her dismay at yet another of his schemes. At least this one seemed to involve little outlay or risk. Nate had been born and brought up in Porthmellow and for a brief time before she’d married him, had worked on a fishing boat. He knew the sea well, and she’d thought it was one thing he respected.

  Not enough. A storm like this one had been forecast when he’d set out in the kayak from Porthmellow Harbour for a fishing session. Even today in the murky conditions, Marina could see the place he liked to fish from, near a rocky outcrop.

  The battered craft had been washed up a few days later, minus the gear and minus Nate.

  If the station had been open, he would surely have been spotted. Someone would have been watching out for him and surely seen when he got into difficulties. Those eyes would have known he was in trouble and alerted the coastguard and the RNLI. A lifeboat or helicopter would have been scrambled, and he might be here now. She might have been tucked up safe and cosy in their cottage, sharing a glass of wine with him in front of the fire and dreaming of a brighter future.

  Their marriage hadn’t been perfect. Far from it. Nate had debts, and he wasn’t always the most considerate of partners and they had their spats. He could be thoughtless, he wasted too much time and money on crazy schemes, but she’d loved him.

  They’d had an argument about his latest ‘plan’ the very morning he’d been lost. Marina had taken on some extra private tutoring to help keep a roof over their heads and she’d begged him to try and look for permanent work – he’d turned down a job offer from Porthmellow Sailing Trust because he’d pinned all his hopes on the fishing kayak. He’d claimed he could ‘make a mint’ supplying fresh fish to the local restaurants.

  Marina squeezed her eyes shut, letting the rain blow into her upturned face. She wanted to be wet and cold; she wanted to feel she was alive in some way – or was she punishing herself? If they hadn’t argued that morning, if Nate hadn’t set out angry and distracted …

  ‘I’ll show you!’ he’d shouted, snatching up the keys to the boatshed in the cove. ‘I wish you’d bloody believe in me more!’

  At the time, she’d been upset and called after him: ‘Th
en give me something to believe in, Nate! I’ve had precious little so far.’

  Now, she would give everything to snatch back every bitter word, every row they’d had in their two years of marriage. No matter what had passed between them, she loved him and missed his handsome face, his funny jokes, his enthusiasm for life, his touch, his warmth in her bed. She felt as if her heart and soul had been ripped from her body and cast into the sea along with Nate. The torment was unbearable and yet she went on living every day. It seemed wrong that the sun rose in the morning, and the rain fell from the sky, and the world turned – and yet it did.

  She so badly longed for answers; she felt she might die if she never found out what had happened to him that summer morning. Yet as each day passed, she began to realise that she might live with the agony of uncertainty forever.

  ‘Why did you do it, Nate?’ she called out. ‘Why did you have to leave me on my own?’

  Her plea was drowned in a rumble of thunder. She hammered her fists against the door of the station in frustration, and, tiring, rested her head against its peeling wood. Its very presence added to her agony. What business had it standing here, abandoned and ramshackle? It would be better if it had never existed because in its present state, it was worse than useless.

  Still all she could think was that if someone had been watching the day Nate set out, maybe she wouldn’t have been standing here in the storm, tears mingling with the rain, drawn to the spot where she lost him. She might have some answers, instead of being doomed to look out over the cove forever and never know.

  As the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed, she called out to the sea and the storm.

  ‘Nate. I love you, and I always will,’ she called as the thunder shook the station. ‘Wherever you are and no matter what happens, I swear, I’ll never stop loving you.’

  Chapter One

  April 2020

  ‘Marina! Quick. There’s a body washed up in Silver Cove.’

  Marina yelped as a droplet of boiling water splashed onto her bare skin. Abandoning the kettle in the staff area at the rear of the lookout station, she strode into the control room, sucking her hand.

  ‘What? Where?’

  Gareth’s eyes were glued to the telescope in the lookout station. He could hardly get his words out. ‘Down there at the western edge, by Cormorant Rock. Look, it’s rolling around in the surf.’

  He pulled his face from the scope and swung it towards Marina. ‘Here. Have a look for yourself.’

  Marina hesitated. Gareth’s shout had unleashed memories that had swept her off her feet and left her tumbling over and over, powerless to do anything except hope she broke the surface again and could breathe.

  He hopped up and down. ‘Go on, look!’

  Marina felt sick but Gareth couldn’t have been more excited if a mermaid had been washed up.

  ‘Shall I call the police?’ He snatched up the radio handset.

  Marina composed herself. ‘Hold on, Gareth. Let’s make sure of what we’re seeing, first. And if it is something sinister, remember we’re talking about someone’s loved one.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s just … I’ve been doing this for four months now and I’ve never seen anything … you know … It’s quite exciting.’

  Ignoring him, she pressed her face to the eyepiece of the high-powered binoculars. They were so powerful you could make out the name of the lifeboat in the station at Porthmellow a mile away and see that Craig Illogan, hauling in his lobster pots beneath the lighthouse, was wearing a red beanie hat today.

  So she ought to be able to tell if the object rolling to and fro on the shingle was vaguely human or not. From two hundred yards away, she ought to be able to make out its face. If God forbid, it had a face – or once did. Fighting down a flutter of panic, Marina fine-tuned the scope and looked at the object again. It certainly looked like a body: right size and weighty, and it was clothed, but it was being tossed around by the waves, and never stayed still long enough to tell for certain. And yet, she was almost sure that the object wasn’t human.

  She could almost feel Gareth humming with nervous energy by her side. She had one more look, to make doubly sure it wasn’t a person.

  ‘Is it?’ he hissed, still sounding worryingly excited. She decided that it wouldn’t do any harm for him to learn a lesson.

  ‘I’m not sure … I think we should make a closer inspection. In fact, I think you should go down and check. Tide’s going out so you’ll be safe as long as you take care on the steps.’

  ‘B-but shouldn’t we call the police or the coastguard or the lifeboats?’ Gareth had turned several shades paler in the past ten seconds, but, given his excitable behaviour moments before, Marina knew this was the time for her newest recruit to discover what their role as volunteer coast watchers really entailed. Even if that meant a baptism of fire – or salt water in this case.

  ‘Don’t want to get them out on a wild goose chase – there’s a swimming race at Porthmellow and they’ll be flat out helping with safety for that. I think we can handle this. You can, Gareth. You said you wanted to do something more exciting than making the tea and writing in the log.’

  ‘B-but – what if it is a … a real body?’

  ‘Then you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly and radio me and we can get the emergency services involved. Off you go, take the radio and be careful. Sooner we get this sorted the better.’

  While Gareth scooted down the steps from the eyrie of their lookout station, Marina ran the cold tap over her scalded hand, thinking about the object washed up on the rocks. It could have been much worse. It could have been some poor drowned soul and, to be fair, it did very much look like a body. When Gareth had shrieked from the control room, for a moment she had wondered, before she’d focused on the object rolling in the waves.

  Gareth emerged at the bottom of the staircase and picked his way between boulders. He’d joined the Wave Watchers a few months ago and was a student at the local college where Marina taught part-time.

  Gareth was very excitable and a little too keen for ‘action’, but the group couldn’t afford to turn down a willing recruit and Marina was hopeful that he’d calm down once he’d gained more experience.

  She’d never forgotten her vow to Nate and, four years previously, had finally found a way to honour his memory. In the early days, she’d been too overwhelmed by grief and hope to focus on anything but praying that Nate might come back. She’d no idea how she’d got through every hour, let alone each day and, of course, she’d had to use what energy she had to deal with the police investigation.

  After his disappearance, it became apparent that Nate had been in debt up to his eyeballs, that he’d re-mortgaged the cottage. Marina had always suspected he had a few secrets but had had no idea … Had he taken his own life to escape his problems? Or was it simply a tragic accident – from venturing out in a storm to make a few pounds from fishing?

  As she began to rebuild her life, she discovered not all the pieces could be found, and the result could never be the same. However, the Wave Watchers offered a new way to fill part of the gaping hole.

  She’d become fixated on the disused lookout station that had once been run by the coastguard and manned round the clock. Cuts to their funding had meant they couldn’t afford to keep it open so, along with similar stations, it had been closed and fallen into disrepair – but, in her heartbreak, Marina had decided to change that.

  Fundraising to restore the building and equip it with the technology required had given her a new sense of purpose and brought her into contact with some amazing people. She’d never thought she could get it off the ground at all until she’d discovered a national charity of coastal watchers who helped to support the station with some apparatus and training. However, the day-to-day staffing was entirely down to a team of around thirty local people who gave up chunks of their time to watch over the seas within sight of the station. They kept an eye on everything within view – be it divers in trouble, a yacht drif
ting with no engine, a child on an inflatable blown out to sea or walkers cut off by the tide.

  She’d finally cleared Nate’s debts and, with a legacy from her great-aunt, she’d also managed to pay off the mortgage on the cottage. She worked four days a week at the college these days, and had dropped her private tutoring to give her more time to spend at the lookout station.

  Everyone in Porthmellow, and most of all herself, felt it was a fitting tribute to Nate. It had been an emotional day when, surrounded by a crowd of friends and neighbours, she’d unveiled the bronze plaque on the wall of the station that read:

  In memory of Nathan Hudson

  Forever in our hearts

  From his loving wife, Marina,

  and the people of Porthmellow

  Despite the lump in her throat, even now, at the reminder of her loss and of the circumstances that led to the re-opening of the station, Marina was proud of what she and the people of Porthmellow had achieved and the difference they had already made to the lives of those they helped. It meant the world to her that she could help prevent another family going through what she had.

  Her radio crackled. Gareth’s voice was a squeak. ‘Jesus. Christ. Ewww!’

  ‘Gareth! Are you OK?’

  ‘No. I’m not. I almost threw up. It’s not a body, it’s a dead seal and it’s all chewed up and rotten and manky. It’s tangled up in seaweed and some old clothes and there are things crawling all over it. Crabs and sea creatures with far too many legs. And it stinks!’

  ‘But it’s not a person.’

  ‘No. No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Then we should be very, very grateful. That poor seal probably died of natural causes and the body got tangled in the clothes off the container ship that was wrecked in the spring. I’ll come and take a look myself once you’re back here.’

  ‘I was sure it was a real body.’ Gareth sounded mutinous.

  ‘Thankfully not, and let’s hope we never have to find one. Come back up. I’ll make you a cuppa and we’ll talk about it.’ She cut off any further protest.

  Marina wrote down the incident for the record and ladled an extra spoon of sugar in Gareth’s tea. For good measure she spooned some in her own, too. Even though she’d known within half a second that it hadn’t been a person washed up in the cove, that moment had been enough to send bad memories flooding back, even after all these years. Today had shown her that the past was always lurking like rocks below the surface of the cove, ready to catch her out when she least expected it.