A Perfect Cornish Escape

by Phillipa Ashley

London

  Two weeks later

  ‘Settle down, everyone. Let’s welcome our new features editor, Tiff Trescott, to the Post.’

  Yvette Buttler’s Geordie accent cut through the chatter around the boardroom table. It was Tiff’s first editorial meeting at the Post. The other department editors murmured their welcomes and Tiff smiled her thanks. She knew a few of them personally and the rest by reputation; she trusted some and had the measure of the others. She’d survive.

  Yvette peered at Tiff over the specs she kept on a gold chain. ‘Just so everyone here is forewarned, I hear you can be a bloody difficult woman.’

  Tiff smiled at the murmurs of amusement in the room. ‘I do try,’ she replied.

  Yvette’s eyes gleamed. ‘I’m pleased to hear it because I can be a bloody difficult woman too. In fact, I think we’re going to rub along well together. Right, let’s hear what delights you all have in store for tomorrow’s edition,’ Yvette said, sweeping the room in one glance. ‘Go on, astound me.’

  Tiff’s nerves eased a little. It was a new job in a tough business, but it was the second chance she’d doubted she’d get and she was going to make sure she didn’t waste it. Yet, when she stopped racing around and allowed herself a moment to dwell, she couldn’t help thinking that it had come at a great cost, and that there would be no second chance with that.

  Hours later, Yvonne called Tiff into her office. She had a proof page of the next day’s ‘Female’ section on her desk.

  ‘Are you sure you want this to go out, Tiff?’ she asked.

  Tiff’s eyes flicked over the proofs of her feature. She hid her nervousness with a smile. ‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?’

  Yvette nodded. ‘True. It was a rhetorical question.’

  ‘Is the story that bad?’ Tiff asked, her light tone hiding the beating of her pulse.

  ‘It’s good, Tiff. It’s very good …’ Yvette met her eye. ‘Though I’ll admit it’s unexpected.’

  ‘Unexpected in what way?’

  Yvette pushed the feature forward. ‘Unexpected as in a surprise, fresh, from the heart.’

  Tiff laughed. ‘I bet you didn’t know I had a heart.’

  ‘Oh, I did. I have one too – a very bruised and battered one – but in this business, particularly as a woman, I’ve worked very hard to hide it and I know you have too.’

  Tiff shrugged. ‘Hmm. Well, I think I’ve blown that myth out of the water, haven’t I?’

  A few days later, Tiff lay back on the teal velvet chaise longue in her flat. Miraculously, it had survived the attentions of the tenant, who’d had a cat. Tiff had vaguely known the man, and hadn’t the heart to separate him from his beloved pet, so had agreed to allow him to rent her home. However, the whole place had had to be de-furred according to the letting agent. Tiff didn’t mind too much. She half wondered if she should get a cat herself for company, but decided it wouldn’t be fair to have a pet when her new role meant she was out much of the time. Even when she wasn’t at work, she was socialising with colleagues and contacts. Since she’d been back in London, a constant stream of invitations to parties and events popped up in her inbox every day, but she delegated a lot of them to junior colleagues or she’d have been knackered and pickled.

  She lay back on the chaise longue.

  ‘Alexa, play “Ride of the Valkyries”,’ she instructed the Echo she’d bought herself on her return home.

  Well, it was as far from Dvořàk as she could imagine, and she needed a rousing tune to stiffen her spine and raise her spirits.

  She closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the music, and embrace the solitude after a day of constant noise in the busy newsroom. Even though she had her own office, most people kept their doors open and the chatter and phones ringing had been a shock after the peace of Cornwall. She’d been reminded of her first day as a reporter, way back in the day, when she’d been amazed that anyone could ever focus on their own work amid the din and distraction.

  The music thundered out but Tiff’s mind was still three hundred miles away in Porthmellow. Her life there seemed a distant memory now. She’d been anxious about leaving her cousin, especially with the situation with Nate not finally resolved, but she was in regular touch with her and expected a visit from Marina within the next few weeks. Most of all, she felt confident that Marina had good friends around her, and now she had Lachlan at her side. He was a good man, like Dirk … Marina would be fine.

  For the umpteenth time, she made a conscious effort to remind herself how happy she was, how it was all for the best, and to dismiss Dirk from her mind.

  Weren’t you supposed to emerge from an experience like hers by having learned some lessons?

  If the purpose of her fall from grace was to persuade her to give up being a journalist and settle down to a life of embroidery in front of the fire, it was never going to happen.

  Dirk had recognised that. She was never going to change her love for her career, and why should she?

  Had she emerged from it as a nicer person? She didn’t know, but what she had taken from Porthmellow – from Marina and the locals and above all from Dirk – was that she could still love someone, with her whole heart.

  He’d reminded her that she was a decent human being. You had to make hard decisions in her job – in his too – but he’d never wanted her to be anyone but herself. She knew that he hadn’t even tried to persuade her to stay because he cared about her.

  Should she have given him the chance by agreeing to see him? The signs weren’t pointing in that direction. He texted her and she’d WhatsApped him a few times in the past few weeks, but that was their only contact. Light-hearted stuff about London and Porthmellow … nothing heavy. The relationship, from his side at least, seemed to be already dying.

  She lay back again, having deliberately put her phone in the bedroom out of reach. If Elvis came back to life, if Lord Lucan was found working in a pasty shop in Porthmellow, it would have to pass her by for the next fifteen minutes while she tried to calm her thoughts.

  Ten had gone by before she heard it ringing, and she dashed into the bedroom to answer it.

  ‘Tiff. Why aren’t you answering your phone?’

  ‘Because I’m trying to have a bloody life, that’s why,’ she tossed back. ‘What I could say is “Dirk, why are you calling me?”’

  ‘Because I want to know if I have the right flat.’

  ‘What do you mean “the right flat”?’

  ‘Look out of your window.’

  ‘What?’

  Her stomach was doing an Olympic floor routine when she rushed to the window and flicked the blinds open. Dirk was standing by the wheelie bin under the orange streetlight. He spotted her and waved.

  ‘What is this? A Richard Curtis movie?’ she said, unable to stop her heart from racing.

  ‘I don’t have a bunch of cards declaring my true feelings for you, if that’s what you mean,’ he said tersely. ‘Can you please open the front door before I get arrested for stalking?’

  She pressed the buzzer to give him access and thirty seconds later he was walking into her sitting room. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Nice to see you too,’ he shot back.

  In a black reefer coat and jeans, he filled the small space. He was even more heart-stoppingly handsome than in her wildest dreams and there had been many of them since she’d walked out of his cottage.

  ‘I can’t cope with you out of context,’ she said, in wonderment at his presence.

  He frowned. She loved him frowning. She’d got it so bad … ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked

  ‘It just feels strange you being out of Cornwall,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to process that you’re here now.’

  He arched an eyebrow. ‘Would it help if I had a box of pasties with me?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She laughed, but what she’d told him was absolutely true. She simply couldn’t believe he was here in her flat, all her fantasies turned to flesh a
nd blood. However, the shock and awe were fading rapidly to be replaced by the same fear that had driven her to make a clean break with him in the first place.

  ‘Dirk. It’s wonderful to see you, naturally, but why are you here at all?’

  ‘I want to talk to you face to face. I read this.’ He thrust a copy of the newspaper at her. ‘Is it anything to do with me or am I making a massive dick of myself?’

  Tiff shook her head before touching the lapel of his coat. ‘Oh Dirk, how many other people have I left a piece of my soul with?’

  His smile was the widest she’d ever seen and he started to read from the newspaper.

  She put her hands over her ears. ‘Oh, don’t. Don’t, please.’

  He ignored her.

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  Tiffany Trescott on how being in exile saved her life –

  and broke her heart again

  I was sent into exile earlier this year. Against my will, I was despatched to the end of the world – otherwise known as the Cornish harbour town of Porthmellow. A brush with high politics ended in disaster. I lost my job, my reputation, my partner and my home.

  But I found my self-esteem – and at the risk of turning into a pound shop Pollyanna, I realised what truly mattered to me.

  If you’re looking for a happy ending, there is and there isn’t one.

  The fact I’m writing this piece, back in the offices of the Post, tells you that I clawed back some part of what I thought I’d lost forever. My career – being a journalist and hopefully a teller of truth does matter a great deal to me. Losing my job on a bleak day at the end of winter was like having my heart ripped out and fed to the crows.

  It felt like my soul had been torn away although I now realise I didn’t know how much pain I was in until I lost all the other things. I chose not to share that loss for a long time, but if I really do believe in telling truth, I must shine a light on that pain now.

  I don’t know if I’ll get another chance at love. I’d like to think so. The past few months have shown me it’s fine to dream other dreams …

  I don’t need a partner to be happy, successful or fulfilled.

  And yet … I left something elemental behind in that little town at the edge of the world. I’m not going to say who it was, but if that person is reading this, I want them to know that they will always be with me, wherever I go. A piece of granite lodged in my heart. A grain of sand that I will never be able to remove.

  Finally, he stopped and dropped the paper on the table. Gently, he removed her hands from her ears. ‘Granite? Sand?’

  ‘It sounds ridiculous now you say it out loud.’

  ‘Ridiculous?’ His gaze was intense, a searchlight that she couldn’t hide from and didn’t want to. ‘So, did you mean it?’ he demanded. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course I do!’

  He kissed her and she kissed him back, drinking him in deep until she thought she might bruise his lips or hers or both.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s been a long time.’

  Gently, he pulled her down next to him on the sofa. ‘I have something to say that can’t be said over the phone and I knew that if I tried to write it down, you might dismiss me or misunderstand. The only way is to tell you … I’ve been for a job interview up here.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘Don’t look so surprised. There are four lifeboat stations along the Thames alone, plus the ones along the coast in Essex and Kent. There’s a place for a full-time mechanic come up at Gravesend so I applied and got an interview. I’ve come from there now.’

  ‘That’s, um … that’s intriguing …’ Tiff dared not acknowledge what she hoped and feared he meant in almost equal measure. ‘How do you think it went?’

  He shook his head. ‘Pretty good. They were interested because I used to work at the City station, obviously, and I’ve a lot of experience of the river and the class of vessels they operate.’

  ‘That sounds positive,’ she said.

  ‘I think so. I’m optimistic about the job, but what I came here to ask you was how you feel about it? About me, moving back to London? If I get it.’

  ‘You know you’ll get it, Dirk. They’d be crazy to turn you down.’

  ‘You turned me down.’

  ‘You didn’t ask me,’ she said. ‘You refused to ask me to stay.’

  ‘Well, I am now. I’m asking you, if I get this job – and even if I don’t – will you let me back into your life? Not in the half-arsed way we were going about it in Porthmellow, but properly. Like grown-up people do. Committed people.’

  ‘We’d have to be committed to do this,’ she said lightly, but Dirk was unsmiling.

  ‘Tiff, be serious for once – take off the armour and answer the question. God knows, that’s what you always want from other people, isn’t it? I’m here telling you that I love you and I want us to be together and I’m prepared – happy – to do whatever it takes to make sure that happens.’

  ‘You have no idea how much I want this to work, but I can’t ask you to do this for me, make these big changes in your life.’

  ‘What if I want to? We can work it out. I like Porthmellow but I’m not wedded to it in the way some of the crew are. Before things went wrong with Amira, I loved London and I still miss it. You’ve reminded me of what I enjoyed about it: the buzz, the vibrancy, the unpredictability.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve got a mate who’s going to work in the States for a year and he says I can have his flat. It’s on the river.’

  Tiff was overwhelmed that he would make such a sacrifice for her. ‘How can I deprive Porthmellow of one of its finest?’

  He burst out laughing. ‘I’ll miss my friends and neighbours, but there’s a few in town who’ll be glad to see the back of me and my moods. No more Mr Dirk ’n’ Stormy – I know what they call me.’ He looked down at her. ‘They’ll survive, but I’m not sure I will without you.’

  ‘M—’ A strangled squeak came out.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ he asked, doubt creeping into his voice. ‘Have I got this badly wrong? I can withdraw my application.’

  ‘No!’ She hadn’t meant to say it so loudly. ‘No. I’m … simply lost for words.’

  ‘That’ll be a first.’

  And trying not to cry, she thought. Trying very hard and failing.

  She didn’t have an answer but he did. He kissed her gently, almost tentatively, a kiss that showed her he had no idea of what her verdict would be.

  ‘Is it too much?’ he murmured, holding her around the waist.

  She shook her head. ‘No one’s ever done anything like this for me before. No one has ever offered to give up so much for my sake. I can’t quite handle it.’

  ‘Then let it be a first. Let it happen and see where it takes us. After all,’ he said with a gleam in his eye, ‘we can always change our minds.’

  ‘No. That’s just it. I won’t want to change my mind if you do this and come to London with me. I won’t want you to change your mind.’ There she’d said it: opened herself up completely to this man she’d never sought out, never expected to find at the end of England, in that tiny quirky town.

  ‘Then, I promise I won’t change my mind if you don’t.’ He crossed his heart.

  ‘How can you know that?’ she said.

  ‘My good opinion once lost is lost forever. Didn’t Darcy say that?’

  Tiff laughed, carried away on a tide of euphoria. ‘You said Darcy was an arse.’

  ‘In some ways. Not in others. He was able to admit he was wrong and grovel, I’ll give him that.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I’ll take the job then and, if I don’t get it, I’ll keep looking and applying until I do. We have that much in common. We’re both stubborn, and if we want something, we carry on with bloody-minded determination until we get it.’

  She laughed. ‘We’ll drive each other insane,’ she said, as if it was the most wonderful thing in the world.

  ‘I hope so beca
use personally I couldn’t live with someone safe and steady. I’m not cut out for peace and harmony. I like the excitement. I also happen to love you.’

  She sighed. ‘I suppose there’s no point denying I feel the same.’

  ‘None at all,’ he said, holding her tightly. ‘None whatsoever.’

  Epilogue

  The scent of the sea and the cries of choughs filled the air as Marina walked along the path towards the lookout station. Russet bracken brushed her jeans and the bushes had been stripped of their leaves by the gales that had torn through Porthmellow that week.

  October was racing by and the nights shortening, but on this early evening the sun was orange as it sank to the horizon. The post lady had brought some mail that morning – a card from Tiff, a happy card, simply to say thank you and tell her how thrilled she was that Dirk was applying for a job in London. No one knew but Dirk and Marina, nor would they until he’d secured the job and put his cottage on the market. She’d miss him as a friend and neighbour but she was delighted for Tiff, and for Dirk.

  Along with the card and some legal papers, there had also been a letter. It was one sheet in a white envelope, postmarked from Liverpool.

  She knew the handwriting but hadn’t opened it until now. It felt like a letter to read under an open sky, with a fresh wind blowing; a letter to read in a place where she could put all that happened, for good and ill, into perspective – a place where she could feel at one with the home she loved, yet remind herself of how inconsequential her troubles were when set against the magnitude of sea and sky.

  She made her way into the heathland, to the ‘hidden’ bench, and took the paper out.

  Dear Marina,

  I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I thought if I sent an actual letter, it had more chance of being read.

  I’ve moved to Liverpool and I hope to stay here, find a job and try to turn over a new leaf, as they say. I’ve had the papers from the solicitor and won’t contest the divorce, not that I’d be able to after what I’ve done to you.

  No matter what you think, I swear I did love you. You probably won’t believe me. I don’t deserve you to. As I said, I’m not a decent man. I might have been once for a moment or two, when we were together. The thing is, I’m weak – but you are strong.