[Polwenna Bay 01.0] Runaway Summer

by Ruth Saberton

  “Maybe I’ll just try on the off chance? Then if he could make it at least you guys would get to spend some time together?” Ella glanced at the expensive watch that was hanging on her skinny wrist. “Anyway, I can’t stand here chatting all day. I’d better go; we’ve got a lot to get through.”

  Strange that Jake hadn’t mentioned this, thought Summer. Then again he’d hardly be likely to admit that he was seeing the girl who’d once done her best to make Summer’s life a misery, not when he’d been doing his best to… to…

  Well, to be honest she wasn’t quite sure what Jake had been intending or what he’d wanted to say. Still, one thing was abundantly clear: he’d very nearly been another huge mistake. When it came to men she obviously had zero judgement. So the snippets of the stories that her brothers had told her over the years were true then: Jake wasn’t the same guy she’d dated all those years ago. He was as much a player as all the other single guys who lived in this holiday village. Ella was welcome to him.

  Not that she wanted him anyway.

  Bidding Ella goodbye, Summer turned towards her cottage. Her stomach was in knots. Should she go back and tell Ella that under no circumstances was she to try contacting Justin, or would that just arouse suspicions and complicate the situation even more? Knowing Ella, this would make her all the more inclined to try to reach him, just out of spite.

  She glanced over her shoulder but Ella had vanished into the drizzle. It looked as though the matter was out of her hands. All she could do was hope that Ella took her at her word and didn’t bother to call Justin’s management.

  If she did, the consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

  Chapter 19

  While Summer had been fast asleep in the Tremaines’ bath, Mo had been sitting in the family kitchen and thinking that she was starting to know how Faust must have felt. Although her particular deal with the Devil meant that she now had sixteen hands of talented horse to enjoy, rather than Faust’s unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures, the nagging sensation that this agreement was going to cost her more than she’d ever imagined was surely one that Goethe would have recognised. Granted, Ella didn’t want Mo’s immortal soul – but she did want to know Jake’s every movement. Mo, who was at heart a very honest person, was growing more and more uncomfortable with that arrangement.

  Today was proving far too wet to school the horses, so once all of her stable chores were completed and she’d given herself a headache trying (and failing dismally) to balance the books, Mo had left her four-legged charges rugged up and chomping hay. Then she’d pulled on her waterproofs and stomped over to Seaspray. She’d been rather hoping for a cup of tea, a thick wedge of her grandmother’s homemade fruit cake and a big heart-to-heart with Alice about her finances. Mo hadn’t dared tell anyone just how bad things were without Ella’s contributions, but the constant text messages and interrogations about where Jake might be and what he was doing were starting to make her nerves jangle so badly that the horses could feel her tension down the reins, and now she was longing to tell somebody her woes. Yesterday at a regional qualifier Splash had knocked the show-jumping course flying like heaps of stripy matchsticks, and even the new horse seemed off his game. It was superstitious nonsense, of course, but Mo couldn’t help feeling worried that by accepting Ella’s strange offer she might have jinxed herself.

  It was unusual for Mo to feel in need of reassurance. She was normally secure in her own judgements and never doubted the choices and decisions she made. Sometimes she lost her temper but generally Mo believed she was justified in all that she did, given that she always had the best intentions. The problem was that this agreement with Ella, for all the good it was undoubtedly going to do for the yard, didn’t make her feel like this at all. No matter what she told herself, Mo just couldn’t shake the fear that she’d made a big mistake. Always frank with herself and others, almost to the point of bluntness, Mo knew that her desperation had enabled Ella to manipulate her and that, in turn, she would be manipulating her brother so that Ella could get her French-manicured claws into him. It made her feel quite sick inside.

  The ugly truth was that she’d sold Jake down the river to save her business and boost her career. Not great, Mo, she said to herself. Still, it was too late to back out now; the deal was done. Besides, she’d fallen head over heels in love with The Bandmaster from the second he’d exploded out of the horsebox, all blood-red nostrils, flying mane and ear-piercing snorts. Once she’d sat on his back and felt the power surge through those muscles as he flew over the jumps, each long stride eating out the distances with mind-boggling ease, Mo had known that she was lost. She had to have that horse.

  She didn’t feel very proud of herself, though. All she could hope for was that Ella and Jake turned out to be a match made in heaven.

  So, feeling in need of a change of scene, Mo had headed to Seaspray and arrived to find her grandmother all at sixes and sevens because none other than Summer Selfish Penhalligan was upstairs wallowing in a bubble bath while Jake and Nick were about to race around South East Cornwall trying to sort out her ridiculous sports car. The stupid cow had run out of petrol, apparently.

  “Are you mad?” Mo hissed as Jake gathered up his car keys and shrugged on a Helly Hansen jacket. “Let her call the bloody AA; she can afford it. You don’t have to run around her. She’s not your problem.”

  Jake frowned. “She’s on her own, Mo. She needs a hand.”

  “Not from us she doesn’t! It suited Summer Penhalligan to turn her back on this family once, remember. But now she needs us so we’re useful again? Grow a backbone Jake, for Christ sakes! Can’t you see she’s using you?”

  Her brother didn’t rise to any of this. If Mo had been given all the fiery genes from the Tremaine pool, then Jake had been awarded her share of the placid ones.

  “She didn’t ask for help, Mo. I happened to run into her when I was going to Liskeard. Helping out was my idea. So drop it.” Jake turned to Nick. “Ready? Got the fuel can?”

  Mo decided to appeal to her little brother’s innate sense of bone idleness if Jake wouldn’t see reason here. “Come on, Nick, don’t be such a sap. Why should you run around her on your day off?”

  Jake answered for their brother. “Because this isn’t his day off. Eddie Penhalligan won’t let him come back to work after the other morning’s antics and, if Nick wants to keep his job, he needs to get back in Eddie’s good books. Isn’t that right, Nick?”

  Nick, who was looking sheepish at this reminder of his latest escapade, nodded.

  “What did you do now?” Mo asked, intrigued in spite of her bad mood. Eddie Penhalligan was regularly threatening to string his crew up by their bollocks for some offence or other. His rants were what often passed for entertainment in The Ship during the long winter nights, with Nick usually bearing the brunt of his ire.

  “He turned up for work when he was still drunk,” Jake said bluntly, and Alice’s hand flew to her mouth in horror.

  “Nicky! You didn’t?”

  Nick’s lower lip jutted out just like it used to when he was a baby. Mo knew that lots of women (the stupid ones, in her opinion) found her brother’s sulky good looks endearing – sexy, even – but personally she just wanted to slap him. He was a spoilt brat at times.

  “You were seriously going to set out to sea when you were pissed?” she asked incredulously. “Bloody hell, Nick. That’s really stupid, even for you.”

  “I wasn’t pissed. I was just a bit hung-over,” muttered Nick mutinously. “Big Eddie was just making a fuss. It would have been fine.”

  “It would not,” said his grandmother. “You would have put the lives of you and your crew in danger. Nick, how can I get it through to you? Fishing’s dangerous. You need your wits about you.” Alice looked worried, as well she might. Mo knew that her brother may as well have his fingers in his ears and be singing la la la, for all the notice he was taking. He thought he was immortal. It was what made him both a brilliant skipper and also a ver
y hazardous one.

  “The Penhalligan boys were hung-over too. When are you all going to stop having a go at me?” he complained.

  “When you stop risking your life and being a twat, Nick,” Mo told him.

  “That’s rich coming from you,” Nick shot back. “You risk your life every day jumping horses over stupid fixed fences.”

  “That’s totally different! I never ride drunk! I know I need my wits about me to get my job right,” countered Mo.

  They continued in this tit-for-tat vein for several more minutes until Alice couldn’t bear any more.

  “That’s enough! Both of you! I can’t listen to this squabbling for another second. Nick, you know how we all feel about this. If we didn’t love you then we wouldn’t worry about you.”

  “I’m twenty-two. I can look after myself,” grumbled Nick, sounding about six.

  “So prove it,” Jake suggested drily. “Stay out of the pub on days when you’re working. Now, are you ready? I’ve got an Audi TT to rescue.”

  “You’re seriously going out in a gale while Lady Muck wallows in the bath?” Mo couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No way. I’m going up there right now to tell her that she can get her skinny butt out of there and sort her own car.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Alice’s voice might be quiet but there was an edge of steel in it that all her grandchildren recognised. Hands on her hips, she gave Mo a furious look. “Summer is a guest in this house and as such she’ll be treated with respect. Do I make myself clear?”

  She certainly did. Mo had seen that expression many times over the past twenty-eight years and she’d never yet been brave enough or foolish enough to argue with it.

  “Where’s all this bitterness come from?” Alice asked, almost to herself. To Mo she added, “People make mistakes, love. It’s part of being human. Sometimes decisions that seem good at the time turn out very differently to how we hope they will. Summer was only sixteen. She was still a child; you were all children. How about letting it go and moving on?”

  Trying to ignore a nagging little voice that said she now knew exactly what it felt like to make a huge mistake, Mo snorted and flung herself onto the battered sofa at the far end of the kitchen. “Well, I think you’re all being taken for a ride. Move on and forgive her if you all want to, but I haven’t forgotten how she dumped Jake and headed off to the city and her big acting career without so much as a second glance. I haven’t forgotten how she chucked away all those years we’d been friends, either – and I never will.”

  It never ceased to surprise Mo how much it hurt, even after all these years, that her best friend had turned her back on them all so easily. She’d cried her heart out over it and seeing how much pain her big brother had been in had almost destroyed her. Mo thought that if she lived to be a thousand she would still be able to see the greenish-white pallor of his skin and the bruises of sleepless nights beneath his haunted eyes. It was hardly any wonder that when Summer had written to Jake several weeks later and Mo had intercepted the letter, she hadn’t felt inclined to pass it on. Instead she’d picked up the pink envelope addressed to her brother in that familiar looped handwriting and taken it down to the beach, where she’d ripped it into a thousand pieces. As the pink confetti had whirled away on the wind, Mo had sworn that she’d never forget the heartache that Summer Penhalligan had caused.

  “I haven’t forgotten that either,” Jake said quietly. His dark blue eyes met hers and Mo saw that there was pain there still. He gave her a tired smile. “But maybe I have forgiven? It was a long time ago. We’ve all moved on.”

  Maybe for Jake this was all in the past, but for Mo that windy July morning felt like yesterday. Jake had seemed liked a different person, and eventually he’d packed his bags and gone travelling, on a six-month trip that had stretched into over a decade. They’d not had him back long and Mo was determined not to let Summer drive him away for a second time.

  Once the boys had left to collect the Audi, she sipped her tea, ignoring her grandmother’s gentle arguments for letting go of the past. Mo was fighting the urge to storm upstairs and have it out with Summer. Her temper simmered. Wasn’t blood supposed to be thicker than water? What the hell was wrong with everyone?

  The rain was still falling like tears against the windowpanes, and below the house the sea was boiling. It was like her anger with Summer, ceaselessly churning and dashing itself against the rocks. Or is your anger really aimed at yourself, wondered that annoying quiet voice of conscience, and is finding Summer here just an excuse to vent it?

  Her mobile vibrated and Mo’s heart sank because this was Ella again, wanting to know where Jake was. God, thought Mo despairingly, the woman kept tabs on him with such diligence that she made an Orwellian totalitarian regime look sloppy. She sighed loudly and slammed the phone down onto the arm of her chair, deciding to ignore the text for a while. Not that this would stop Ella, who was bound to fire several more messages until she got a response. The woman was more persistent than a verruca.

  “I take it this bad mood of yours is because of Fernside?” Alice asked. She was sitting at the table now and flicking through the local paper.

  “Fernside?” To be honest Mo hadn’t given the woods a second’s thought for quite a few days. Being in cahoots with your brother’s stalker didn’t really leave a great deal of headspace free.

  “Well, I know it can’t be the stables since the St Miltons have decided to place their eventer with you. That must have made life a lot easier. It was a very fortunate decision, wasn’t it?” Alice gave Mo a searching look from over her reading glasses, and Mo felt her face start to heat up.

  “I’m a good horsewoman,” she said, hating the defensive note in her voice.

  Her grandmother nodded. “I’m not disputing that, my love. I’m pleased for you if you think it’s the right thing. It’s just that you seem a bit out of sorts lately and since it can’t be to do with the business I thought it must be because the woods have been sold. There’s a piece on it in today’s paper.”

  “What?” Mo leapt up from the sofa. “Let me see that!”

  Her grandmother pushed the paper towards her. “There’s just a paragraph at the bottom on the fourth page but it definitely says Fernside has been sold. Apparently there was a private auction held in Truro. It doesn’t mention him by name, but I suppose that Ashley Carstairs has got his way after all. He’ll build a drive, of course, and the woods will have to go. What a shame. I played there as a girl, you know. We all did.”

  While her grandmother reminisced about her childhood Mo scanned the short article. Alice was right: Fernside woods had been sold at auction for an undisclosed sum to a London property company. Mo’s fists clenched in rage. It had to be Cashley. Nobody else in London would be interested in a small piece of Cornish woodland. It was worthless to anyone else anyway, since the only place that the woods led to just happened to be his remotely situated house.

  “Bloody Ashley Carstairs! I take my eye off the ball for just a few days and look what happens! Well, he isn’t getting away with this.”

  “Sweetheart, I think he already has,” Alice pointed out gently. Getting to her feet, she put her arm around her granddaughter’s shaking shoulders. “Pick your battles wisely, Morwenna. You can’t win this one.”

  “Want a bet?” Mo wasn’t finished yet. She was so angry with herself she feared she’d combust. With her thoughts filled with new horses, the business and Ella’s Jake obsession, Mo had make the mistake of thinking that Cashley hadn’t been pressing on with his stupid road project. Of course he had. When nobody from PAG had shown up at the auction to raise environmental and ecological objections he must have been rubbing his greasy paws together in glee.

  The fact that Ashley’s hands weren’t greasy in the least, but were actually brown and strong and with nails like seashells, was one that Mo chose to overlook. She didn’t want to dwell on that revolting man at all.

  How he must be laughing at her now, especiall
y after their argument in the pub. I never lose was what he’d told her. Mo’s temper, already bubbling, began to boil. He never lost, eh? Well, she’d soon see about that. When she’d told him that she’d chain herself to the trees or lie down under the diggers she hadn’t been kidding. Standing at the Tremaine family’s kitchen table Mo swore there and then that she’d become the next Swampy to save Fernside, or die in the attempt.

  Hmm, knowing Cashley, that was very likely. He’d probably take great pleasure in crushing her with a JCB. Or, truer to form, he’d pay one of his henchmen to do the job and save getting his white Musto sailing jacket dirty.

  “Right,” said Mo. “This is war.”

  Grabbing her phone and kissing her worried grandmother goodbye, Mo tore out of the house and stormed through the garden. It was still raining heavily but she hardly noticed the stinging drops that whipped against her cheeks or the mean wind that blew them into her eyes and cruelly spurred white horses across the bay. She was far too busy planning what she was going to say to Cashley.

  Mo hurtled through the garden gate and strode down the narrow street, her yard boots stomping through puddles and her waxed riding coat flying behind her like a superhero’s cape. Two more texts came through from Ella, each more impatient than the last, but Mo didn’t have time to worry about her. She was starting to think that Ella might be slightly unhinged. If she wanted to find Jake then she could brave the weather and walk over to Seaspray, Mo decided. That would soon show how keen she was!

  The rain had emptied the village of visitors. Instead of meandering through the streets, gazing into windows or munching pasties on the quayside, they were now squeezed into cafés and pubs, steaming gently in the fug and causing the windows to weep with condensation. A few brave souls tried to carry on, but the driving rain and biting wind soon sent them scurrying into Magic Moon for some shelter amidst the shop’s twinkling crystals. Depressed seagulls huddled forlornly on the rooftops, too soggy even to bother squawking. Tripping boats waited at the bottom of the harbour steps, on the off chance that somebody might be crazy enough to want a half -hour tour of Polwenna Bay and the coastline in a heavy rainstorm. May in Cornwall was as changeable as a moody teenager, Mo reflected as she crossed the bridge and took the footpath up to Mariners. Yet like a stroppy adolescent, you still loved it for what it had been before and what you knew it might become in the future.