“First of all, I would thank you for making the effort to come on up this evening but I know you’re a nosey bunch of buggers and would have been sticking your beaks in anyway!” Big Rog announced. “I also know you’ll all do anything for free booze and a sandwich, you bunch of bleddy freeloaders!”
“I’m insulted,” huffed Sheila, through a mouthful of cake.
“Get on with it!” boomed Eddie Penhalligan, waving a sandwich. “What are we waiting for? If you take as long with this speech as you do to paint a window frame we’re all going to die of old age.”
There was a ripple of laughter.
“I’ll have you know it takes skill and time to paint a window properly, Eddie Penhalligan!” said Big Rog. “These things can’t be rushed.”
“We do know. We’re your customers!” shot back Eddie, enjoying his newly discovered talent for heckling as there was more laughter. “Cleared any drains lately, or should I look forward to mooring my trawler outside my house?”
Big Rog’s face was red. “Those floods were not my fault! You come up here and say that!”
It was at this point that Jules stepped in to calm things down.
“We all know none of that was your fault and Eddie was only teasing, weren’t you?”
“Course I was, mate,” said Eddie. “I was pulling your chain! Come on! I want to see this famous boat.”
“Shall we press on?” Jules asked, doing her best to move things forward.
“Dad’s written a speech,” piped up Little Rog. “Haven’t you, Dad? We need the speech.”
His father waved a tatty piece of paper in the air. “That’s right, my boy! But, do you know what? I think we should just get to the main event.”
He strode over to the shed, ducking under the Union Jack bunting, and threw the door open with pride. “Here she is!”
There was a wave of excitement as everyone surged forward for a look. Emerald hopped down from the wall and eventually managed to get a peek inside the shed too, where she saw a pretty little clinker boat. The wood gleamed, the brass work glowed and the vessel was clearly a labour of love, but it was still just a boat. Speculation regarding Big Roger’s creation had ranged from a distillery to a cinema to a pole-dancing studio for Mrs Rog, so to discover that he really had been building a boat was a bit of an anti-climax.
“It’s not a bar then,” said Nick sadly.
“Or a pole-dancing club,” sighed Caspar. “It’s just a boat.”
“Of course it’s a bleddy boat!” Big Rog looked put out at this distinct lack of enthusiasm. “I told you all I was building a boat. What’s the problem?”
“We thought the boat was a cover for something,” explained Adam Harper. “A bit like the beach café was.”
Big Rog looked shocked. “You all thought I was growing drugs?”
“That would have been more exciting than a boat. What do you think I look at all day?” asked fisherman Eddie.
“But what a great boat she is,” Chris the Cod said kindly as Big Rog’s face fell. The others all nodded hastily and made approving noises.
“You’re very clever, Roger. The church hall roof will be nothing to you after this. I’ll pencil you in for Monday, shall I?” said Jules.
Mollified, yet sensing he’d just been outmanoeuvred, Big Roger nodded.
“Well done, she’s a beauty,” Jonny St Milton commented admiringly. “I used to have one of those when I was a boy. We went out on it, Alice? Do you remember?”
Alice’s eyes were bright and her cheeks pink. “Of course I do.”
At least the elderly couple were talking again. Emerald was relieved to see this because she still blamed herself for causing trouble.
“I bet Adam Harper a tenner you’d built a bar in there,” sighed Nick. “I’ve flipping well lost. It really was a boat.”
“It’s a great boat, Roger,” Jules said. “I’ll do the whole launch thing if you like? With prayers and champagne? God bless her and all who sail in her?”
Roger Pollard beamed at her. “Proper job!”
“Silly to waste the champagne on a boat,” said Caspar quickly. “Maybe we could have that as a toast instead? A glass each?”
“How will you get the boat to the ocean?” Emerald wondered. It was a long and steep road down to the harbour. They didn’t do things like this in San Francisco.
“It’s on a trailer,” Nick explained. “We’ll tow it down with a car.”
“The tide’s in, so let’s do it now,” suggested Little Rog excitedly and there was a cheer at this. He dived into the shed and moments later called, “Err, Dad, how do we get her out?”
“Through the door, my boy!” Big Rog rolled his eyes. “How do you bleddy think we’ll get her out? By magic?”
There was a scuffling and a bumping for a few moments but no boat emerged.
“Err, Dad?” called Little Rog. “I think it’s stuck.”
“Stuck? What do you mean, stuck?”
“I can’t get it out the door.”
“For heaven’s sake, if you want something done do it yourself,” said Big Rog to the others. He ducked into the shed.
“No! Not like that, you harris!”
There was more thumping and scraping, followed by a few grunts while everyone outside waited patiently for the boat to appear. And waited. And then waited some more. Finally, Big Rog emerged with a sweaty face and an embarrassed expression.
“The boat’s stuck.”
Everyone gaped at him.
“What do you mean, the boat’s stuck?” asked Mrs Pollard. “How can it possibly be stuck?”
Big Rog pulled off his cap and twisted it nervously in his hands. “It’s too big to get out of the shed, love.”
His wife stared at him. “You did measure the door, didn’t you?”
The silence told everyone all they needed to know. Big Rog had built a boat that was stuck in his shed. Emerald felt Nick start to shake with silent laughter. She elbowed him in the ribs.
“Stop being mean!”
“I can’t help it!” Tears were running down Nick’s cheeks. “Only the Pollards could build a boat inside a shed and not think about how to get it out!”
The Pollards were now squabbling amongst themselves while everyone else laughed until their sides hurt.
“We can still get her out, Pa! We just have to take the side off the shed,” said Little Rog eventually.
“That’s right, my boy!” Big Rog looked relieved. Honour was saved and he clapped his hands together. “Fetch a crowbar, son, and we’ll have the boat out in a jiffy.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said his wife. “My jasmine’s climbing on that shed – and the clematis.”
“I know you have a few plants growing on it, love, but needs must!”
Mrs Pollard placed her hands on her hips and glowered at him. “You are not going to pull my climbing jasmine down.”
“But my boat’s in there!”
“I don’t care if you’ve got the QM2 in there, Roger Pollard! You are not disturbing my plants!”
“What did I say? Great strife and terrible destruction,” Silver Starr crowed. “My spirit guides are never wrong!”
“It’s a shame they couldn’t help Roger Pollard measure up,” Nick whispered in Emerald’s ear.
While the senior Pollards argued about whether or not to rip down the shed, everybody else busied themselves finishing off the wine and nibbles. By the time night had fallen and the windows in the village glowed with lamplight, it was Mrs Pollard and her plants one, Big Rog and Shed Armageddon nil. Gradually the villagers drifted away.
“Looks like the party’s over,” said Nick, once Alice and Jonny had kissed him and Emerald goodbye and Big Eddie and his crowd had departed for the pub. “I’m going for a drink. Want to come?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m going to FaceTime my mom and record my vlog.”
“I’ll come with you, Nick. These two will be arguing all night and by the time they’ve fin
ished it will all be my fault anyway,” said Little Rog gloomily. “Everything usually is.”
“Yep. National debt. Global warming. All your fault,” Nick teased. “You need some serious cheering up, Roger. Hey, Em, have you come up with any of those single cheerleader friends yet? I bet they’d go crazy for our English accents and even Rog here would be in with a chance!”
Emerald laughed. “You need to stop watching High School Musical. I really don’t have any cheerleader friends and, before you ask again, I don’t have any who work in Hooters either or who are Playboy Bunnies.”
“You,” said Nick gravely, “are an utter disgrace as an American sister. Oh well, looks like the pub it is, Rog.”
Emerald was still smiling to herself as they went their separate ways; Nick and Little Rog turned left at the church to walk downhill into the harbour, while she turned right and took the steep lane away from the village. The night was dark and quiet except for the trembling hoots of owls. Clouds had drifted over the sky and wiped out the stars and the moon too, so that the only light she had was her iPhone torch. Usually the dark didn’t bother Emerald in the least but, all the same, when the battery died and the beam of light went out her heart started to patter. Nick had taken great delight in telling Emerald all kinds of terrifying Cornish ghost stories, from ones about mysterious prowling black cats to tales of a phantom smuggler who haunted the caverns beneath the village. In the daylight it had been easy to dismiss these, but when you were walking in the pitch blackness and with only the looming shadows of familiar landmarks to guide you? Then it seemed very different. In her dark jeans and hoody, she felt as though she was melting into the night. Emerald could sense unworldly eyes watching her and she shivered.
She rounded the curve in the lane, yanking her backpack up onto her shoulders and readying herself for the steep climb up to the yard. The last thing she’d expected to see were two headlamp-yellow eyes bearing down on her out of the night. For a moment she was frozen in horror, dazzled by the full beam as her ears filled with the roar of a powerful engine in full throttle. Before she’d registered what was happening, the car was almost upon her.
There was no sidewalk here. How was she to get out of the way?
The vehicle was travelling downhill at such a pace Emerald didn’t stand a chance of dodging it in time. All she could do was press herself into the hedgerow and hope this would save her. Thorns and twigs sliced into Emerald’s arms and legs but she hardly noticed in her panic. Breath in! she told herself desperately.
It wasn’t enough. The vehicle clipped Emerald and flipped her sideways until she was trapped between unforgiving metal and hawthorn. Then she slammed into the tarmac and there was nothing but a darkness a thousand times thicker than the blackness of a cloudy Cornish night.
Chapter 26
“OMG! Emerald Tremaine’s been knocked down!”
Tom Elliot was wide-eyed as he delivered this news to Ella, who was busy packing up her office. Straightening up from filling boxed with all her files, Ella stared at him aghast. This explained why Symon hadn’t returned any of her calls or text messages.
“Is she OK?”
“I think so,” said Tom, “but I only just heard it myself. Apparently she was found in the lane up by the stables by some holidaymakers walking back to a cottage last night. She’s in the hospital.”
“Do they know what happened? Who hit her?” Abandoning her packing, Ella perched on the corner of her desk and did her best to ignore the cold dread seeping through her every cell. As she waited for Tom’s reply she realised she was holding her breath.
“No idea. Hit and run apparently, at least that’s what Betty Jago says. I thought I’d let you know, since you and Sy seem so friendly these days.”
Tom lolled in the doorway, clearly gagging for some gossip. Ella ignored him.
“Haven’t you got some work to do?”
“Err, I hate to point this out but you’re not my boss anymore?” said Tom. “See how the place is already going to pieces without you?”
But Ella wasn’t in the mood to banter with Tom. She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and shrugged it on. The packing she would finish later. Right now she had several very urgent things to see to.
As she walked out of the hotel, looking out over the choppy sea and at the louring clouds that heralded a change in the weather, her brother was headed in the opposite direction and on foot for once rather than behind the wheel of his sports car.
“Teddy, I was hoping to catch you,” she began, but her brother just held his hand up as though warding her off and continued on his way.
“I can’t stop right now, sis. Far too much to do! Some of us have a hotel to run, you know!”
Ella clenched her fists and counted to ten. By the time she’d finished Teddy was leaping up the steps to reception as though he hadn’t a care in the world. There was no point asking for a lift.
Irritated, Ella walked down the hill into the village. She eyed the sky and the churning water with concern. It looked like rain to her and the wind was already whipping up the waves in the bay. A squall was marching across the horizon, blurring the sky and sea together in a watery grey smudge, and if she didn’t hurry Ella knew she’d get soaked.
Ella made it to The Plump Seagull just as the heavens opened. It was only early morning but already the place was buzzing with activity. Tara was folding napkins and Kelly was busy restocking the bar area, both women singing along to Pirate FM as they worked. It was a far cry from the usual quiet that Ella insisted upon for her guests, and she found herself thinking that maybe it didn’t hurt for the staff to have some fun. When she and Symon were running the manor together this would be just the kind of work atmosphere she would aim for. A sense of being part of a valued team drew people together far more effectively than rigid rules ever could.
Careful! The ice maiden really was melting, thought Ella. She’d be taking them out for team bonding days next.
“Hello there,” she said, spotting Symon seated at a table studying menus with a determined intensity. His left hand was swathed in a bandage and she wondered what he’d done. Cut it cooking? Burned it? She wished she’d been the one who’d dressed it and tended to him. Her heart constricted with tenderness.
He looked up. “Oh. It’s you.”
Rather than the warm tone and smiles Ella had grown used to, Symon was cool. Was it because he was in his place of work or that she had interrupted? Wrong-footed momentarily, Ella said, “Sorry if I’m disturbing you. You weren’t answering your phone.”
“No. I wasn’t.”
This wasn’t much better.
“I was worried about Emerald,” Ella said. “And you. What’s happened to your hand?”
Symon glanced down at it as though he’d barely noticed. “Just a cut. It’s nothing important. Emerald’s in a worse way. She’s concussed and she’s broken her arm. Jules and Granny are at the hospital now.”
Ella’s hand flew to her mouth. “That’s awful.”
“Yes.”
More stony monosyllables. Why was he so off with her?
“Kelly, give me a hand in the kitchen, please?” said Tara, nudging the younger girl. Switching off the radio, they tactfully left Ella and Symon alone together.
Symon didn’t speak for a moment and Ella was gripped by unease. What had happened? What had changed? Her hands tingled with fear. This aloofness was frightening her and not being close to him was unbearable.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said finally.
“Why didn’t I tell you what?”
“That you were screwing Charlie Barton? Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? Come on, Ella! Kitchen staff love to gossip. Your thing for chefs is common knowledge, apparently. After me, who next? Tony? Klaus? Rick bloody Stein?
Cold horror swamped her. Oh God. She should have known that Charlie bloody Barton would come back to haunt her.
“Please, Symon, let me explain—”
“You don’t
need to explain!” snapped Symon, cutting her off. “It’s all totally self-explanatory, thanks Ella. There was I feeling sorry for you and thinking how badly Charlie had behaved when all the time you’d been sleeping with him.”
“It didn’t mean anything!”
“Of course it didn’t! It never does to women like you,” he snarled. “Out with the old and in with the new, eh? Isn’t that how it goes with you lot?”
“No! It isn’t like that!”
“It’s exactly like that,” said Symon bitterly. “Come on, Ella. You can drop the wide-eyed and innocent act now. You use people to get what you want. You wanted a celebrity chef so you slept with Charlie and got him. You needed somebody to bail you out and here I was. It’s how you’ve always operated but I was actually stupid enough to think I was falling in love with you and that maybe you felt the same. What an idiot. You must have laughed so hard when you checked back in with lover boy.”
Ella’s heart was hammering in her throat. Only minutes ago she would have been turning cartwheels at the mention of love. Now these were the most painful words she’d ever heard. She had to make him see that Charlie had meant nothing. She’d never let Charlie into her heart the way she’d let Symon Tremaine in.
“That’s utter nonsense! Like I said, Charlie meant nothing! It was just a stupid fling and it was over almost as soon as it started. I’m not proud of being involved with him and I swear to God we’re not in touch now.”
He laughed harshly. “I should have known what was really going on when you said he had your car.”
“He took it in payment! He was practically blackmailing me!” Ella cried. “Just listen, will you? I need you to know nothing serious went on between me and Charlie.”
Symon gave her a cold look. “For once, Ella, this isn’t about what you need.”
“Charlie meant nothing. It was just fun. Yes, I was stupid to get involved with him, but it was never serious. He didn’t mean anything to me, whereas you… You’re everything.”
She’d never been so honest with anyone in her life and Ella’s throat tightened because suddenly she realised exactly what Symon Tremaine had come to mean to her. Against all the odds and without her even noticing, he’d edged closer and closer, slipping into her hopes and dreams and even her future. She had trusted him in a way that she’d never trusted anyone before. She’d let him see her, the real her. If he pushed her away now it would be a rejection in every respect.
Recipe for Love: A gorgeous Cornish romance (Polwenna Bay Book 5) Page 25
