Christmas on the Little Cornish Isles

by Phillipa Ashley

  ‘The game?’ Maisie could barely get the word out. ‘Did Hugo recognise you?’ she said, almost choking on the words.

  ‘I doubt it as he’s only ever seen photos of me as a baby. Maybe he had a private detective checking me out or he just put two and two together. It was only a matter of time and he told me himself he thought I was hiding something, but I swear, Maisie, I was going to come clean with you and everyone.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After your party. When we were alone together. On my life, Maisie, you must believe me.’

  ‘I don’t have to believe another word you say, Henry.’

  Patrick covered his face with his hands and let out a cry of agony. ‘Don’t call me that.’

  Maisie didn’t feel a shred of sympathy for him. ‘All you had to do was tell me the first time we met. It’s that simple.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t that simple for me. You don’t understand.’

  ‘Then try and help me understand. Help me understand why you would do this to me – to us all.’

  A woman appeared at the gate to Hell Cove House and whistled to the dog, which ran back to her.

  ‘Walk with me?’ Patrick asked.

  Maisie nodded.

  ‘It’s your ancestors who are from Scilly, isn’t it? Not Greg’s? I knew you were hiding something, I felt it, but I was too bloody infatuated to follow my instincts. Jesus, you must think I am such a fool.’

  ‘No. I don’t. I’m the bloody fool. I love you, Maisie.’

  Maisie felt as if he’d dealt her another blow. They were empty words coming from a serial liar.

  ‘Mum and Dad never wanted Petroc. They were young and bohemian – hippies – and they took off and instantly fell in love with Australia where no one gave a toss about their background. We were happy, we would have been … if they hadn’t been killed.’

  ‘And I’m very sorry for that, Patrick. Truly I am, and I can understand that it was a horrific shock to you, but the fact is that you do own Petroc and the fortune that goes with it.’

  ‘Yes, but Mum and Dad never drew on any of it and the fund built up. They left Graydon in charge and when Hugo grew up, he started to run the business. He knew I existed somewhere but I never had any direct contact with him. I changed my name to Patrick McKinnon when I was eighteen. The trust fund is still in the Scorrier name and administered by my team of lawyers and accountants and all the decisions and paperwork were signed off by them. But when Hugo made an offer to buy me out they had to contact me directly. Greg had been diagnosed by then and he said I should come here and see the place for myself before I made a decision I might regret forever.’

  ‘I’m deeply sorry about Greg, but pretending you’re some kind of impoverished barman when you have so much power over us was cruel.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I never meant it to be. The only time I’ve ever touched the money was to arrange for some treatment for Greg … and help the islanders here. Hugo has offered me a very generous settlement. I could rattle around the Fingle, never having to worry about money and being a barman as a hobby, but I don’t want the money. Never did and never will.’

  Maisie gasped. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you were in financial trouble or lived hand to mouth. We don’t at the Driftwood, but some people here do.’

  ‘That was tactless. I’m sorry, but like I said before: people treat you differently when you have money. There’s no peace with it.’

  ‘And even less without it,’ said Maisie tartly. ‘Why didn’t your dad turn Petroc over to Hugo and take the money if he wanted it so much? Why haven’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe for the same reason you don’t like Hugo. Maybe Dad didn’t trust Graydon to own it completely, only to run it. Maybe he wanted to leave the door open for me to take it over one day, though he never said so. I was only thirteen when they died and I never thought about the place, I was too busy being a teenager, getting into trouble and playing Aussie Rules. It was only when they said it was mine but it was in trust that I realised it was going to be my responsibility.

  ‘Since then, through my lawyers and trustees, Hugo and Graydon have been given carte blanche to run Petroc, and reap all the profits. They’ve spent years building up the business and, as you know, Hugo’s now hell bent on getting Petroc transferred to him once and for all. I didn’t know his plans for Gull and the Driftwood until I’d been here a while. I swear and I don’t agree with them pressurising people like the Bartons and your parents.’

  ‘What Mum and Dad do is their own decision. But why should you care? You’ve said yourself that you only wanted to take Hugo’s offer and wash your hands of us all.’

  ‘That was before I came here. Before Greg made me come.’

  ‘Why did you stay on and ask for the job?’

  ‘I wanted to see for myself what was really going on before I signed over my power to stop it. And I wanted to be close to you … believe me.’

  Maisie tried not to burst into tears at his admission. She did believe him but it was too little truth too late for her to take him back into her life.

  ‘Why did you buy those supplies and encourage us all to fight Hugo?’ she asked.

  ‘Because I didn’t want Hugo to buy Gull. I wanted you all to succeed on your own terms.’

  ‘You mean you wanted to have your cake and eat it.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘In fact, you wanted to get out of this mess without having to help us out of it.’

  They’d stopped on a stretch of shingle, halfway back to the Driftwood. ‘Wouldn’t that have been the best solution?’ Patrick said. ‘I did want that until I decided to stay. I was about to come clean, Maisie, you have to believe me.’

  She couldn’t speak any more.

  ‘But you never will, now, will you?’

  ‘I can still stop Hugo,’ he said. ‘I won’t sell and I’ll stay and sort it out for as long as you want me to. I’ve nothing to lose now.’

  Maisie bit back her frustration. Within a moment, she’d heard the Driftwood was safe and that Patrick would stay. She had everything she wanted, so why did she feel as if she’d lost everything?

  ‘I genuinely don’t mind you being wealthy. I’m not one of these people who think everyone with money is a bastard. I’m not envious – I don’t care – but the important thing is, Patrick …’ She said his name as if it burned her mouth. ‘Is that you do own the place, and more hurtfully, that you chose to lie about that.’

  ‘I can’t undo that. I wish I could but I can stop Hugo from buying anything on Gull. Save the Driftwood. Your parents don’t have to sell.’

  ‘They want to sell, Patrick. That’s the point. They’ve given up on the pub and they own most of it so why would I stop them? I don’t want you saving me or the Driftwood. I want you to get out of my home and out of my life. If that means I lose everything in the end, I don’t care. I won’t put my future in the hands of someone I can’t rely on to be honest with me, ever again.’

  ‘Maisie, wait!’

  She stumbled off over the loose shingle. ‘Go home, Patrick, to your real home, and do what you want with your money. We don’t need you.’

  Chapter 37

  Ray and Hazel were waiting on the terrace when Maisie arrived home.

  Her mum ran forward to meet her and hugged her. Maisie patted her back briefly and then pulled away. ‘Thank God. We were worried you might have …’

  ‘Done something stupid? I have. Trusted Patrick Scorrier.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the way you found out. Hugo’s a bastard – Patrick too. We had no idea,’ said Ray. His face was grey with fatigue and Maisie felt terrible. They probably hadn’t slept a wink either and her father didn’t need extra stress.

  ‘Why would you?’ Maisie asked, patting her dad on the arm.

  ‘Patrick’s the one at fault. He stitched us up,’ said Hazel sharply. ‘He was probably only working here to size up this place’s prospects for Hugo.’

  ‘No. No, he
wouldn’t do that,’ Maisie cried.

  Her mother frowned. ‘How do you know what he’d do?’

  ‘I just do. I’ve seen him this morning and stitching us up wasn’t why he took the job.’

  Ray and Hazel exchanged glances. ‘We’ve been talking. Now we know what the Scorriers were really up to, we don’t want to sell. Not after this, love. We can carry on for a good while yet. Hugo’s offer was – is – so tempting but we won’t take it now.’

  Maisie felt tears coming. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘You have to do what’s right for you and anyway, some battles aren’t worth fighting.’

  It took the Samsons most of the day to clear the Driftwood up. Maisie spoke to Jess on the phone for over an hour, telling her about Patrick – the parts she could bear to share, anyway. Later in the afternoon, Ray and Hazel went to see Javid and thank him for his help with Hugo but in reality Maisie guessed that they all wanted some space and time alone.

  She was pottering around, tidying up the last of the mess because she couldn’t face her room, when Patrick knocked at the back door.

  ‘I’ve come to collect my stuff,’ he said.

  ‘It can wait. There are no flights out of here until tomorrow.’

  ‘I want to be out of your hair. I can stay at Hell Cove overnight.’

  ‘That place isn’t finished,’ she said.

  ‘No. But it will be. I’ll make sure of that … Maisie, I can understand why you’re angry.’

  The hurt bubbled over again. ‘No. No, you can’t. You can’t possibly understand how I feel. Please collect your stuff and leave.’

  His face was agonised and she thought he was going to plead with her. If he had he would have destroyed the tiny fragment of feeling she had left for him. The respect had already vanished, she didn’t even like him any more but she did, despite all the anger and disappointment boiling within her, still love him.

  There was nothing she could do to remove that pain but she could remove the source of it.

  Patrick nodded, turned away and quietly closed the door behind him.

  Maisie watched him enter the Piggery and leave a short time later with a bag of stuff. He glanced at her and nodded but she turned away.

  When she looked up again, he was gone. She ran into the bar to see if she could catch sight of him through the front window but it was too late. In the gathering dusk, she stood, her arms clasped around herself so tightly she was almost hurting herself. She was afraid that if she let herself go, she might quite literally fall apart. She stood in the same place until darkness fell. Finally, she lowered her aching arms, surprised to find that she was no longer crying. She switched on a lamp because a gentle light was all she could bear to shine upon her misery. She felt angry with herself for letting another man make her feel less than the strong woman she was.

  She stooped to pick up a glass that had rolled behind a chair and threw out a hand to steady herself on the table top. An overwhelming feeling of exhaustion overcame her, rapidly followed by light-headedness. There was a strange metallic taste in her mouth, and a few seconds after that, her stomach turned over. She staggered across the hall to the bathroom and flipped the loo seat up just in time. Even while she was throwing up, she knew exactly what was wrong with her because she’d had the exact same light-headedness and strange taste once in her life before.

  Of course the nausea, faintness and exhaustion could be down to a hangover, lack of sleep or the shock, but Maisie knew it wasn’t. She sat on the floor, leaning against the bath panel, trying to regain her breath after being sick. There was no doubt in her mind: she was pregnant with Patrick’s child.

  Chapter 38

  Two weeks later

  The Fingle Bar, Melbourne

  ‘Patrick? Patrick McKinnon? What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Are you determined to destroy yourself again?’

  Patrick tried to open his eyes and failed. Evil elves had crept up on him in the night and superglued the lids together.

  ‘Come on. Get out. Jesus. This place stinks like a turps factory. It’s past noon and it’s a lovely day. Look.’

  Patrick prised his eyelids apart. The rattle of the blinds opening was like a load of barrels thundering past his head and the light blinded him like a nuclear flash.

  ‘Jesus, Judy. Leave me alone.’

  ‘No, I won’t. You bloody idiot. I’ve put up with you hanging around the place making everyone miserable and carrying your own personal storm cloud with you. I’ve heard you whingeing about how sorry you are, and how bloody guilty, and I’ve held my tongue but I won’t have you killing yourself.’

  A red face framed with a shock of platinum blonde curls loomed inches from Patrick’s.

  ‘Get up!’ she shouted, making Patrick’s ear drums throb and his head pulse like his own personal metal band had set up inside his skull.

  ‘What’s the point?’ he muttered, then immediately regretted it.

  The sheet was whipped from his body and he looked down in horror.

  ‘Fucking hell. I’ve no clothes on, Judy!’

  ‘No. Because you stank and me and some of the bar team stripped you last night before we threw you on the bed. You were making a nuisance of yourself in every bar in the city. It’s a wonder the coppers didn’t throw you in the cells. Now, I’ve got a pot of black coffee on and there’s plenty of hot water. Get yourself into that shower, Mr High and Mighty.’

  Judy threw the sheet back on him, covering his dignity.

  Patrick pushed himself up on his elbows while his stomach did a triple Salchow. His head felt like it had been used for kicking practice by the Wallabies.

  ‘I’m not back in prison, you know!’ he called as Judy bustled out of the door.

  ‘No. This is worse. I’m your boss so present yourself in that bloody bar within twenty minutes or you’re out on your arse, mate.’

  Under the steam of the shower, with a couple of paracetamol swishing round his stomach, Patrick gradually came to something like life. The bender had obliterated his pain for a while but it came back to him now in all its horrible glory. He was lost. He’d been lost and alone before. After his parents died, at school, in prison, and again after Greg had gone. No one had died this time but this loneliness was worse.

  Since he’d left Maisie, and all the way home on the plane, he’d asked himself the same questions time and again. What if he’d marched into the Driftwood and the moment he’d spotted Maisie, said: ‘I’m your Prince Charming and can solve all your problems. Jump on my white horse and we’ll live happily ever after.’

  He could have done that, but he’d walked onto Gull swearing on his life that he didn’t want the place, not a stone or grain of it and definitely not one of its residents.

  Once he’d started lying – or rather, not telling the truth – it had become harder to unpick the web he’d woven and he was enjoying being Patrick McKinnon. For God’s sake he was Patrick McKinnon. He’d never been Henry Scorrier. Just like his dad and mum had never truly been Scorriers. They’d wanted to escape the life set out for them and so had he, but they wouldn’t have wanted him to do what he’d done to Maisie.

  Judy was sitting under an umbrella on the terrace when he finally made it down. She was leafing through a newspaper but glanced up when she spotted him.

  ‘You’re two minutes late but I’ll let it pass this time. Your coffee’s here.’

  He walked gingerly to the table, wincing at the bright sunlight bouncing off the Yarra despite his dark glasses and the heat pounding down, searing his skin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he began.

  Judy shoved a mug at him. ‘For the love of God, will you stop saying that and do something to put things right with this woman?’

  ‘I’ve tried. I’ve tried calling her, emailing her and she doesn’t want to know.’

  ‘And are you selling the bloody island?’

  ‘I don’t know. After I’ve sorted a few things, probably. How can I go back after what I’ve done?’

>   Patrick took a slurp of his coffee and almost gagged but Judy was as sympathetic as a croc about to swallow a fluffy duck.

  ‘Probably? That’s pathetic and, more importantly, it’s not the Patrick I know.’

  ‘Which one is that?’

  ‘The one who lost his parents and turned his life around. Who stopped drinking and destroying himself. Who came here and made himself one of the family. Who loved Greg and me and supported us through the darkest, shittiest times of our lives. Who loves this Maisie and wants her more than I’ve ever seen him want anything. The poor little rich boy who knows it’s time to grow a pair and do what’s right, even if it means I lose him to some strange bunch of Poms on the other side of the world.’

  Patrick couldn’t speak or drink or move. There were tears in his eyes and he couldn’t see the river any more. Judy patted his arm and spoke to him gently.

  ‘What I want to know is – and what my Greg would want to know, Paddy boy, is – are you really going to give up that easily or are you going to fight?’

  Chapter 39

  One week later

  Gull Island Community Hall

  ‘Good afternoon and thanks for coming out on this glorious sunny day. The Samsons have kindly passed on all the details of my proposal, which I hope you’ve all had the chance to read by now. Don’t worry, I’m not about to play lord of the manor. I’ll leave that to Hugo.’

  No one in the Gull Island Community Hall laughed at Patrick. Maisie cringed. She’d only heard about Patrick’s return a few days earlier, after she’d received a call from Judy Warner. She’d avoided taking any of Patrick’s calls or emails but her mother had answered the house phone to Judy and Maisie didn’t want to insult Judy by refusing to speak to her, even if she was trying to plead Patrick’s case.

  In the end, Judy didn’t make any excuses for him at all. She had only phoned to make sure that Maisie was the first to know that Patrick would be back and wanted a meeting of all the Gull islanders affected by Hugo’s proposals. Maisie had agreed to pass on the message and so here they were, assembled in the room on a dull January Sunday afternoon. She hadn’t even seen Patrick before she’d entered the meeting room but she’d heard on the grapevine that he’d chartered a fast boat to bring him from St Mary’s where he’d been staying in a rented cottage since arriving by plane the day before.