by Lily Graham
I turned. A woman in her fifties with short, ash-blonde hair, wearing a gilet and rubber boots, was staring at me. She had warm brown eyes and soil beneath her fingernails.
‘Was it urgent?’ she asked. ‘I have Adam’s mobile.’
‘Oh, no… I just wanted to ask them about a property they manage.’
I expected her to say something along the lines of ‘Try tomorrow.’ Instead, she surprised me by asking, ‘Is it Rose Cottage? I heard that the Waymans’ tree split that wall. Told Angie just the other day that the new owners were likely to kick up a fuss.’
I frowned. ‘No, um – it’s not about that. I don’t live here.’
The woman laughed. ‘Sorry, sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. Professional hazard, you know.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I help manage the Harbour Cafe, there,’ she said, pointing at a small shop with a blue and white awning just off the high street next to the harbour. ‘Any news worth knowing round here seems to break there first.’
I smiled. ‘I can imagine.’
‘I’m Sue,’ she said, holding out a hand, and then wincing when she spied her fingernails. ‘The state of these – sorry! I’m just back from the allotment. The water was turned off, so I haven’t had a chance to scrub up properly.’
‘I’m Victoria,’ I said. ‘An allotment! That’s wonderful. My brother got the green fingers in our family, but I must admit every time I see his polytunnel I feel a bit envious. I’d love to have a garden of my own some day, but until recently I haven’t had the time to give it a try.’
‘You should! I never could keep a thing alive, to tell you the truth, but then a few years ago my friend, Abbie – she owns the cafe – got a space at a nearby allotment and asked me to share it with her, and I thought why not. Now I’m hooked. Can’t wait for spring. We use a lot of the produce at the cafe – best butternut risotto in Cornwall, if I do say so myself.’
Thinking of the inn’s cold beans and instant coffee, I said hopefully, ‘Is that available today?’
She grinned. ‘Of course! We could whip you up some right now if you want.’
‘Well, you’ve sold me,’ I said. ‘I’m starving. This is a great sales technique, by the way. Do you always round up the tourists this way?’
‘I should! Come on then, step right up, best risotto in town!’ she said, beckoning for me to follow, like she was a circus ringmaster.
I laughed. It was the lightest I’d felt in days. The blue door to the cafe opened with the sound of a tinkling bell and I felt a wave of warmth enfold me. A few minutes later I was watching the boats in the harbour and sipping on a cappuccino so good it was like a little taste of Italy itself. Sue had laughed at my visible pleasure when I’d taken the first sip, and I’d had to explain about the tasteless instant coffee at the inn.
Hands freshly scrubbed, she asked, ‘So, will that be one butternut risotto then?’
I gave her a crooked smile. ‘Yes, please.’ The scent coming from the kitchen was indeed mouth-watering. When was the last time I’d eaten a proper meal, I wondered.
She winked. ‘Excellent choice.’ And she went off to hand in the order, and then busied herself behind the counter, restacking the cups.
When Sue arrived with my risotto, I said, ‘You said that you heard all the news here… Do you know if it’s true that the lawyers in town are going to go ahead and demolish a cottage near the daffodil farm?’
She looked at me in surprise. ‘The abandoned house there, do you mean?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded. ‘Happening the end of the month.’
My eyes widened. ‘So soon?’
I felt a twinge of sadness. I couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t the end that the place deserved.
She gave me a puzzled look. ‘That place has been abandoned for decades! It’s because of Adam that it’s finally happening now. Still, I suppose it is a bit sad, you could see it was really beautiful once – went there when I was a child.’
I nodded. It was nice to know that I wasn’t the only one who’d seen its potential.
‘The lawyer – is that Adam?’ I asked.
‘Graham Water’s nephew. He’s been looking after the office these past few weeks. Looks like they’re getting ready to close it down, what with Graham being so sick. Maybe that’s why they’ve finally made a decision about the cottage. I sort of hoped that they would have found a buyer – despite everything.’
I nodded. ‘I’ve heard that people around here think it’s haunted,’ I said, thinking of Gilly and Betsy and how they’d called it ‘Cursed Cottage’.
She shook her head. ‘Hardly haunted. People round here will believe anything. Though it’s had its share of scandal. The only thing wrong with that cottage is that it’s falling apart. It’s just a sad old place really, especially with what happened to the daffodil farm. Did you know it used to be called Idyllwild? Such a pretty name.’
I shook my head. ‘What happened?’
‘The family that owned it lost it in the First World War. There were so many rumours about what really happened, though my aunt – she grew up on the old estate – said that it was some family scandal that led to it. Afterwards, no one wanted to buy the estate or that cottage, so it was just left. Though, about twenty years ago now, a couple came from abroad and started it up again.’
While Sue left to bring me my plate of butternut risotto, I opened my backpack and looked at the diary I’d found at the cottage, turning the pages full of spidery black handwriting and noting the jumble of letters and symbols. As I turned the pages, a small, folded-up piece of paper fell out onto the counter. I opened it, and found to my surprise that it was part of a letter. I didn’t know who wrote it or to whom, but the words washed over me and caused tears to prick my eyes. I felt each word as if I had written it myself.
I feel lost. I don’t know what to do with myself, how to carry on with my life. I’m finding myself trying to fill the hours. Everyone is just going about their business as usual. How can I when the world has turned off its axis?
How do I go about my day without you in it? How do I cut out all the years in between? Everyone wants me to forget you, but I can’t. How can I forget my best friend? How did this happen to us?
Yours,
T
I folded the letter, put it back in the diary and closed my eyes, taken back to a night filled with lantern light, in the warm June air, beneath a canopy of stars – to what had been the most beautiful night of my life.
‘I met my best friend two years ago. I didn’t realise that’s who she’d become. At first, all I saw was this beautiful girl, with this incredibly sexy back…’ There were titters of laughter across the room and a few people raised their glasses of champagne. My mother grabbed my arm in a vice-like grip in a rare show of emotion.
‘She has these soulful eyes and I was smitten from the start – talk about a lightning bolt. That’s the thing about falling in love. In the stories it’s all about that moment, you know? Girl meets boy. The very important butterflies. All that jazz – well, we definitely had that, but what I never expected was that here was the one person I wanted to speak to when I’d had a horrible day and nothing seemed right, who always knew the exact right thing to say. Here was the person who could make me laugh so hard – she makes a grown man cry that he’s going to pee his pants.’ There were more titters of laughter.
‘I didn’t know any of this when I first met her. That she’d have this effect on me. That one day I’d be standing in a room full of the people I love and marrying my best friend in the world.’
‘You okay?’ asked Sue, as I wiped my eyes.
‘Yeah, course – just allergies,’ I lied, pushing around the butternut risotto with my fork, my appetite gone.
Later, when I got back to the inn, I poured myself a whisky and took out the letter again. I felt lost too, and like ‘T’, whoever that was, that I’d also given up someone who had once been my best friend. I couldn’t get the letter
out of my mind.
I had a shower and wrapped myself in two pairs of pyjamas and a thick jumper. Afterwards, I paged through the diary, wondering if it had been written by the author of the letter, and if its contents were the reason the journal had been written in code.
I glanced at my phone, thinking. It was after eleven, but as Stan was a night owl, I didn’t think he’d mind. Perhaps my old mentor would know something about cipher text – there was a good chance he’d come across a coded diary in the past.
I sent him a message, as well as a snap of some sample text from the diary.
‘I’m in town for a bit. Found a journal. Probably pre-WWI, no one we know, but it’s written in code. Any ideas?’
Half an hour later, just as I was nodding off – helped by a large glass of whisky – he sent a response.
‘Hello to you too, Smudge. Thanks for sending me Enigma – nice way to ruin an old man’s retirement. Why not come for brunch tomorrow?’
I grinned. The Enigma machines had been used by the Nazis to send coded messages during the Second World War. The Bletchley codebreakers had spent years trying to break it. I just hoped it wouldn’t take as long for me to unlock the secrets of this diary.
The next day, I embarked upon the long drive to Stan’s remote lakeside cabin in rural western Cornwall, the heaters on full.
Stan had always been a bit of a recluse, preferring the company of books to people, but for all his attempts to block out the human race, and his ongoing attempts at retirement, they were a puzzle he couldn’t resist. It was something we had in common, and I suspected one of the reasons he had befriended me early on in my career.
I followed the winding path to the lake and pulled up next to a small wooden cabin built on stilts over the water, reminding me of something out of mountainous Canada. Especially when I found Stan sitting on a camping chair on his veranda, fishing. His beard had turned white since I’d seen him last, and he had traded his old patchy suits for country tweed.
‘I’ve set yours up. With any luck we’ll have salmon for lunch,’ he said, getting up and giving me a whiskery kiss. He had on a green fishing cap and looked more relaxed than the last time I’d seen him, despite his near-white beard. I took a seat next to him in a camping chair and grinned. It was good to see him.
‘There’s salmon here?’
‘Well, no… I doubt it,’ he said, eyeing the lake. ‘Pike, though.’
I wrinkled my nose, and he shrugged. ‘Fennel makes all the difference, trust me.’
‘I’ll reserve my judgement.’
He grinned. ‘So, did you bring it?’
‘What?’
He shot me a look. ‘Don’t play coy. Hand over the goods.’
I grinned as I opened my backpack and handed over the diary, along with a bottle of whisky – both of which were met with enthusiastic approval.
He opened the diary and whistled, turning the pages. ‘The handwriting – feminine, would you say?’
I nodded. ‘I think so… but it’s hard to know for sure. With the code it’s difficult to tell.’
He peered at the piece of pale blue leather suede, winding it with his finger. ‘I looked at those pages you sent me – ran it into a program on my computer, some cheap app I downloaded a while back, but I couldn’t find anything. Probably a waste of money. Who do we know in cryptography?’
I shrugged. ‘I can ask around.’
He nodded. ‘Have you shown Mark? All those war diaries – maybe he’d have some idea?’
Mark was a biographer too. It’s how we’d met.
My face must have shown something, because Stan’s grey eyes showed concern. ‘What is it?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ I lied. ‘He’s away, so maybe when he’s back…’
Stan looked at me for some time. He didn’t say anything, but then, he didn’t have to. There had been nights in the past when I had had to call his couch home, something that had occurred with increasing regularity over the past few years as Mark’s career began to stall during the economic downturn. Over time, he’d begun to feel that my success was a mark against his own. What was worse was that he never really came out and said it. If I tried, he looked at me like I was full of it. He’d once ruined a dinner party by making several rather demeaning insinuations that he did all the work in the house while I flitted about being ‘an artiste’, which in turn had the effect of making me feel both ridiculous and guilty for my full workload and travel schedule. I’d made the mistake, once the guests had left, of asking if he felt a little envious. I wanted us to work through it, perhaps collaborate on something together, or think of a topic that might interest a wider audience. I thought it could be fun. But his reply had stung.
‘Jealous? Of you? Honey, I may not sell as many books as the great Victoria Langley, but at least I’m not peddling celebrity biographies. Any hack could do that.’
He’d apologised later, said he didn’t mean it – he was tired, stressed out from having his last book cancelled. But it still stung, and I couldn’t help wondering how we’d gone from being each other’s biggest supporters to the ones who could hurt each other the most.
‘Whisky?’ said Stan.
‘Sounds great.’
He popped inside to fetch some tumblers, then pivoted on his heel in the entryway. ‘You know, I’m not great at names – I only found out recently that Kerry could be a man or a woman’s name, like Ashley. But Tilly has to be a girl’s name, unless it’s a nickname, don’t you think?’
I looked at him in surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘The name, there on the suede string,’ he said, pointing at the diary he’d left on his chair.
I picked up the ribbon. There it was, right at the end and embroidered in the same shade, making it almost impossible to see. I traced over the name: Tilly.
How had I missed it?
Chapter Four
I went back to the cottage, as I knew I would. I wanted to see it again. I wanted to see it hidden amongst the cliffs, the roses that bloomed despite no one being there to care for them, the round, almost otherworldly window that overlooked the ocean, the spiral staircase patterned with sea glass. This beautiful, eerie place seemed to reach out to me with its neglected beauty, as if it was calling my name in its sleep.
I wanted to find out who Tilly was. Perhaps find the first part of her letter. For I was sure now that she was the one who had written it. This person who had put into words so painfully what I felt now – lost and alone.
I was due in Fowey in a few hours to meet up with a woman called Moira Bates. She’d helped me enormously while I had been writing my latest biography of Daphne du Maurier, offering up never-before-seen letters from the well-known author, written throughout their friendship.
Now that I had finished the book, I should have been looking forward to spending the next few days in Fowey, in a hotel with real central heating, in a room that overlooked the winding, blue estuary, visiting my favourite cafe, the Pinky Murphy, taking time off to recharge, discussing what had been such a special project to me over the past few years with someone who had become a dear friend, but all I could think of was the cottage. I didn’t think I could leave without seeing it again – it might be the last chance I ever had if Sue from the Harbour Cafe was right and they demolished it by the end of the month. When I’d most likely be back in London, trying somehow to put my life back together without Mark in it. Every time I thought of it, of Mark, my old life in London, I felt a sense of dread.
When I’d finally gotten round to visiting my brother Stuart, his wife Ivy and new baby Holly in Cloudsea the day after I saw Stan, and told them what had happened to my marriage, they’d suggested that I stay with them for a while. ‘You don’t have to rush back there – especially now that you’re on sabbatical. Why not take some time for yourself down here? We’ve got a spare bed, stay with us,’ said Stuart.
Ivy had agreed. ‘We could have such fun, I know Holly would love to see more of her favourite auntie!’
>
It was a sweet offer, and I was tempted – especially as I’d soak up some quality time with my little niece – but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a third, broken wheel, infecting their happy home with the gloom from my failed marriage.
What I really wanted was to spend more time down here. There was something about Tregollan, about the cottage and the diary I’d found that wouldn’t let me go. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to.
It was quicker to get to the cottage the second time around. I seemed to see more, too. Like the stone steps that led right down the cliffs themselves to a small cove, making for a precarious yet striking footpath. I felt a sense of peace descend as I walked amongst the seagrass, listening to the roar of the ocean below.
I walked around the concealed entrance and stopped in surprise. A tall man with dark blond hair in a slim-fitting navy suit was nailing a noticeboard into the ground.
‘Hello?’ I called.
He started, and then swore softly when the hammer he’d been holding landed on his foot. He turned to me, his eyes startlingly blue and wide.
‘Sorry!’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Ah, no – it’s my fault. Shouldn’t have listened to all the rumours.’ He shook his head, giving me a sheepish smile that revealed his white, even teeth. He had a deep voice and an American accent, and he was rather, distractingly, handsome.
‘For a sec there, I thought you were a ghost,’ he said, standing up and holding out a hand. He was very tall, with a slim, athletic build. ‘I’m Adam Waters, the lawyer handling the estate. Can I help?’
So this was Adam, I thought.
‘Victoria Langley,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘It’s true then?’ I asked, looking at the noticeboard and feeling a sense of inexplicable loss.
He nodded. ‘Yeah, ’fraid so. Saw it properly for the first time today – incredible place. I can’t understand why it was left like this… I mean, you can see it must have been really something back in its day.’
