Christmas at the Cornish Café

by Phillipa Ashley

  ‘Hello, Cal. Taking a break?’

  ‘I was about to leave, actually. I didn’t know you smoked.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to give up, which is the added bonus of renting a cottage in a no-smoking resort, but out here, I’m afraid I’ve lapsed.’

  Kit smiles, which has the effect of raising my hackles instantly. It could, of course, be a complete coincidence that he’s in the same alley as me. Then again, he might well have been listening to my conversation with Demi. In fact, I think that’s exactly why he was hiding in the shop doorway. He only just lit that fag or I’d have smelled the smoke. It’s tempting to wonder if Mawgan’s lurking near too.

  ‘I’m glad we could help.’

  ‘You’ve helped me a lot already. Kilhallon has. It’s going well, is it?’

  ‘What’s going well?’ My reply is terse but I don’t care. Kit makes my skin crawl.

  He waves his hand towards the harbour. ‘Tonight. The festival. It’s good for business, I assume? Demi’s stall has been packed all night and I see you’ve had a lot of interest for the resort. You must be thrilled, both of you.’

  ‘We’re pleased, yeah, but you can’t afford to rest on your laurels in our trade. You have to keep up the promotion, develop the offers and find new ways of attracting customers.’ I don’t like his tone. In fact, I don’t like him full stop.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘In fact, I really have to get back to the stall now. I only came out for a quick chat with Demi.’

  ‘Yes, so I saw.’

  ‘And heard?’

  ‘I couldn’t help it, I’m afraid, I was standing in the doorway out of the wind, trying to decide whether to resist temptation.’ He takes a drag on his cigarette and blows out the smoke.

  ‘And decided you couldn’t?’

  ‘Life’s too short not to have any vices, don’t you think?’ he says.

  ‘I don’t have time to think. Enjoy your lapse. I have to go.’

  ‘Wait!’ Kit’s hand is on my shoulder, briefly, but long enough to make my skin prickle. This is stupid. My reaction to him is over the top. Maybe my instincts are wrong. He’s just a time waster and a bore.

  ‘I’ll try not to detain you too long, but there’s something I have to say. I heard you tell Demi that she shouldn’t pretend her family doesn’t exist.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘As well as overhearing you, I also saw what happened at the stall before I came up here for a smoke. That was Demi’s father who turned up, I presume?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t understand how you know that?’

  ‘Polly also saw and heard what went on. When I mentioned that Demi and the couple seemed very upset, she told me who she thought they were. There’s a family resemblance too, of course, if I needed any more confirmation.’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him.’ My anger spills over. If he blackens our name on every holiday review site in the universe, I don’t give a toss any more. ‘I know you’re a guest, and I’m grateful for your help on the night of the fog, but I really don’t think Demi’s personal life is any of your business.’

  ‘No, you’re possibly – probably – right about that.’ Although Kit is agreeing with me, the smug, almost delighted expression on his face winds me up even further.

  ‘Then I’m glad we agree on something,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry if you think I’m interfering, but I wonder if you’ll be so quick to criticise me if we were talking about your own family. There are some people there you’d rather pretend didn’t exist, aren’t there?’

  ‘My family? What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean the Penwiths. Actually your father, specifically.’

  That’s it. He’s pushed me too far for any attempt at politeness. ‘What the hell does my dad have to do with you?’

  ‘Well, perhaps you should ask my mother that. As you can’t ask yours.’

  Acid swirls in my stomach. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘That your father was a lying cheating bastard who ran away from his responsibilities.’ He smiles like he’s offered to buy me a pint. ‘If you’ll forgive my bluntness, mate.’

  The barb hits home and sticks deep, but I just about manage to stop myself from flattening his smug face. And anyway, why is he talking about my father? I thought it was Demi he was interested in.

  ‘I think you should stop talking right now. You’re on dangerous ground, Bannen, but you’re still a guest of ours so I’ll refrain from smacking you in the mouth.’

  ‘I’m only speaking the truth, but I can see that it hurts.’

  ‘Ah. Now I see. Well, I always thought you were a bit of a tosser, to be honest, mate, but now I know exactly where this is coming from. Did Mawgan Cade tell you this? Christ, I thought you were an intelligent guy. I never thought you’d listen to her poisonous crap.’

  ‘Hmm. Mawgan may talk a lot of crap but she’s right about this.’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your sodding business, I know the gossip about my father and I know what people say. Some of it – probably a fraction – might be true. Dad was no saint, not that it’s any of your business. Or Mawgan Cade’s.’

  ‘Ah. But I’m afraid it is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You really don’t know, do you? It’s ironic actually.’

  ‘Ironic? Stop talking in riddles.’

  ‘Mawgan’s mother had an affair with your father.’

  ‘What?’ His words stop me in my tracks. I must have misheard them. ‘What do you mean, an affair?’

  ‘That’s why the Cades’ marriage split up and why Mrs Cade went off to Australia. That’s why Mawgan isn’t your greatest fan, I should imagine, among other things, I really don’t know.’

  ‘One, there’s no proof of that, and two, what she’s told you while you were shagging her can hardly be relied on. I don’t think you have any idea.’

  ‘Funnily enough, I haven’t shagged Mawgan, but I do happen to believe her and if you choose to ignore her story, then you definitely can’t ignore mine.’

  I glance down at my wrist, though I’ve no idea what my watch says. ‘Is this going to take long, only I’m a little bit busy for fairy tales right now. In fact there’s a kids’ book stall on the harbour if you want to waste their time.’ I want to leave but my feet are rooted to the cobbles and Kit goes on.

  ‘I’ll start the story anyway and it’s up to you whether you want to hear it.’

  ‘Get lost, Bannen.’

  I turn, forcing myself to move away from him, but his smooth voice follows me.

  ‘Picture a young woman, only nineteen, visiting Cornwall. Picture an older man, handsome, pretty well-to-do, with land and a farmhouse and a business, albeit a crumbling one, and with a wife who was pregnant with his son.’

  The words echo in the narrow alley. They clutch at my clothes and drag me back, no matter how much I want to run away.

  ‘Picture the rich guy meeting the young woman while she’s on her first holiday without her parents, and having a brief but passionate affair with her. At least it was passionate to her: she thought he loved her. She definitely worshipped him.’

  ‘What are you making up now? Your new novel? I’d ditch it. Bit over the top, even for you, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I admit, it’s not my usual style, but it’s effective in this case. Shall I tell you how it ends?’

  ‘You’d better, before I lose the will to live.’

  ‘As I was saying … Of course, the older man had no intention of leaving his wife or his baby son. He never did. He was only interested in a fling with a young woman he regarded as disposable; another notch on his four poster – a conquest. The woman had been sheltered by her parents and you could say she was naïve, so when the man rejected her and told her he was married and didn’t want to see her again after her stay in Cornwall, she was devastated. Are you with me, Cal?’

  ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘He still wasn’t interested, although
a little annoyed, when the young woman told him she was pregnant. Still not interested when she had the baby, another little boy, only a few months after this first son was born. ’

  The cobbles seem to shift beneath me. ‘Tell me. Is this fairy tale the reason you came to Kilhallon in the first place?’

  ‘One of them. Your father ruined people’s lives round here. He was a lying, irresponsible coward.’

  He steps closer. We’re inches apart, his breath is hot on my face, and not only does he smell of fags but of booze, and not of the mulled cider that Demi’s been peddling from the stall. It’s whisky, and beer, and a lot of it because his clothes stink. I’m not one to judge; I’ve been there with booze, but he’s aggressive with it. Dangerous.

  ‘So, have you worked out the ending yet?’

  ‘It’s not the subtlest of narratives, is it? There’s a twist, I suppose?’ I say, affecting boredom, while sick to my stomach at his story.

  ‘Not with this tale, no.’

  ‘How do you know you’re my brother?’

  ‘Because my mother told me,’ Kit says.

  ‘She’s lying.’ Even I know that’s not worthy of me.

  He nods sagely. ‘Mawgan said you’d react like this.’

  ‘What the hell has Mawgan got to do with any of this?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter now. My mother isn’t lying and I have a DNA test to prove that your father is also mine. Even without that, your father had already accepted I was his and that’s why he was paying my mother an allowance until I left university.’

  I can no longer pretend I don’t care about his accusations. His story has found its mark and lodged in my heart, like a barb. ‘I thought you said that your mother and father lived in London. I thought …’

  ‘They do. I didn’t lie. You assumed. My mum married again when I started high school. I think of Roger Bannen as my dad, and have done for a very long time. He’s always treated me as his own and I’ve never known any different. So you see, although your father rejected me and disowned me and hid my existence from everyone, I’ve been a lot luckier than you in one respect. My father was a decent, honest man who loved me even though I was someone else’s child.’

  ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve. I loved my dad. Things weren’t the best between us, but I knew I was loved.’

  ‘Maybe, but he still had all those affairs.’

  Hairs prickle on the back of my neck.

  ‘We’re brothers, Cal. Though I’d rather be Mawgan’s brother than yours, any day.’

  ‘What the hell does Mawgan have to do with this?’

  ‘From the look of horror on your face, I take it your father neglected to mention he’d fathered another child?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Or children, of course. For all I know, I might not be the only other Penwith kid knocking around. He spread it about enough. Some of them may not even know who their dad was.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Call me what you want, the facts are undeniable. Even for someone who enjoys spinning yarns to those closest to him,’ he adds.

  I laugh at him, even though I feel sick to my stomach. What is he hinting at?

  ‘When your father found out my mum was pregnant with me, he didn’t want to see her again. He didn’t want to see me after I was born, even though she phoned him from the hospital. She sent him some photos and he sent them back. I’ve been lucky; I’ve had a wonderful father who brought me up as his own. Bit of a contrast with yours, don’t you think?’

  Only with a great effort do I restrain myself from punching his sneering face. ‘Even if you what you say is true, what’s brought you here now? I don’t understand. If you’ve had such a happy childhood and you don’t care about my father, why turn up here now?’

  ‘A number of reasons. There’s no special reason for this moment. I’ve always been fascinated by the man who rejected me and didn’t want to acknowledge me as his son. I’ve wanted to see Kilhallon and meet you for a long time. Who wouldn’t want to meet their brother, especially when he’s a famous hero? I saw the magazine feature.’

  ‘That was crap, but you know journalists. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’

  ‘No. They don’t.’ He smiles.

  ‘Has Mawgan Cade got something to do with you turning up now? She’s been stirring up trouble, hasn’t she?’

  ‘You really don’t deserve Demi, do you?’ he says.

  Ignoring this last piece of rubbish, I try to focus on the bile he’s spewed about my family. ‘You’re sick. Even if your claims are true about being my father’s son, what does that have to do with Demi? If you’re telling the truth, I don’t care who knows. My parents are dead, the news can’t hurt either of them and I don’t give a toss what anyone else thinks. Demi won’t care. So go ahead and spread your news, if that’s the kind of twisted thing that gives you satisfaction. If you’d come to me and told me this from the first day you arrived at Kilhallon, I’d have been shocked, granted, but ready to listen and talk. This … melodramatic way of announcing it only tells me what I’ve suspected all along: that you’re a cunning, deceitful tosser.’

  ‘I agree with you, she’ll take the news we’re half-brothers in her stride, but our being brothers isn’t the only story Demi might be interested in, is it?’

  My chest tightens, my throat constricts, yet somehow I manage to sneer at him. He can’t know exactly what happened to me in Syria, no one can. Even if he does, it can’t affect my relationship with Demi. Kit’s trying to wind me up, to hurt me. Even so, I don’t want Demi to hear about Soraya and Esme from a stranger who might not have the full story. I don’t want to tell her what happened at all, because I can’t face telling her. But Kit obviously has other ideas, the bastard.

  ‘You’ve totally lost the plot, mate,’ I say, mocking him.

  My fist is tight, nails digging in my palm. His arrogant face stares back at me. The cobbles seem to shift beneath me, as if I’m losing my footing.

  ‘I don’t think so. You see, I do write thrillers and I am a freelance journalist, but not with a solar energy journal these days. For a while I’ve worked for a national newspaper, undercover mostly. I’ve been following up a story, about you as a matter of fact. You weren’t just an aid worker, were you? You were captured by insurgents. But you were lucky. Someone died, didn’t they, Cal? Because you got involved with things you shouldn’t have. A woman you were close to, who trusted you lost her life.’

  It’s all I can do not to hold on to the wall to steady myself, but I have to keep it together, no matter what. ‘Is this the plot of your latest novel, Bannen, because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

  ‘When I found out you’d been an aid worker I decided to do a little digging about your time in the Middle East. I got in contact with a couple of war correspondents I know and one of them told me that you’d been held by insurgents.’

  ‘How can he know that?’ I snap, panicking inside.

  ‘He has his sources. Credible sources,’ Kit says. ‘I met the source myself and he told me about the circumstances that led to you being captured. You may have claimed to be an aid worker, but that’s only half the story, isn’t it? You were a lot more than that and you ended up involving innocent civilians and getting one of them killed.’

  I can’t speak, my chest tightens.

  Because maybe he’s right.

  The doubt, the fear that I was responsible, comes back to me. I definitely wasn’t only an aid worker; that much is true, and one of my decisions did partly contribute to Soraya’s death. That’s why his words make me feel physically sick and why I hate him for saying them.

  Clinging on to control of my emotions by my fingernails, I laugh at him again. ‘You’re talking absolute rubbish.’ Then another fear strikes me. ‘What’s Mawgan Cade got to do with this crap anyway? Has she been helping you make up your stories?’

  ‘She really doesn’t like you or the Penwiths, does she? She has serious issues of
course – she came to my writers’ talk to see me. She’s no more going to write a bonkbuster than I’m going to rule over a small town and wear leopardskin, but she can look after herself. She dished a load of dirt on you and was happy to share her own story of how your father ruined her life. A regular home wrecker, wasn’t he?

  ‘You’re lying about Mawgan Cade, talking crap about Syria and you’re wrong about my dad and me. Liar!’ I shout, losing it totally. I grab his jacket and he grunts as I force him up against the wall. I can’t help myself. The rage, the desperation and fear takes over: It’s been a long time since I felt this way, but at this moment I could kill Kit Bannen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Demi

  ‘Stop it! What the hell are you doing to each other?’

  I fly up the alley, shouting at Kit and Cal. Cal has Kit by the collar of his coat, crushing him against the alley wall.

  ‘For God’s sake, Cal!’

  Cal bunches Kit’s coat in one fist. I don’t think he heard me. Kit has his eyes closed like he’s some kind of sacrifice. As if he’s expecting Cal to hit him, as if he wants Cal to hit him.

  I scream. I don’t care if the whole town hears me. ‘Cal! Don’t do it!’

  Cal’s fist hangs in the air, inches from Kit’s face. Kit’s eyes are still shut. ‘Go on,’ Kit says. ‘You know you want to. Bro.’

  ‘Stop this now!’

  ‘Keep out of this, Demi!’

  ‘No, I won’t. You total prats. I don’t know what’s caused this but you’re like two stupid kids scrapping in the playground!’

  Cal turns to look at me as if I’m a ghost. He blinks and then drops his hand. Kit opens his eyes and my stomach turns over. For God’s sake, don’t let him smile or laugh at Cal because that will tip him over the edge. Instead, Cal staggers backwards.

  ‘What’s going on? It’s a miracle no one’s heard you or seen you.’