Summer at Blue Sands Cove

by Chris Ward

  Summer at Blue Sands Cove

  CP Ward

  Contents

  By CP Ward

  1. Weekday blues

  2. Temptations

  3. Spinning

  4. Breaking point

  5. Escape

  6. Reunion

  7. Return

  8. Old things and memories

  9. J’s Surf Shack

  10. Breakers

  11. Old friends

  12. Teenage summer

  13. The Mourning Lady

  14. Old flame

  15. Private audience

  16. Barbeque truths

  17. Rival

  18. Companion

  19. Old friends

  20. Training

  21. Surprises

  22. Dating

  23. The library

  24. Acts of hostility

  25. Research

  26. Heartstrings

  27. Resolutions

  28. Ice-cream mystery

  29. Suspicions

  30. Lost boy

  31. Date night

  32. Influence

  33. Hobbies

  34. Sundown

  35. Competition

  36. To the finish

  Afterword

  I’m Glad I Found You This Christmas

  We’ll Have a Wonderful Cornish Christmas

  Coming Home to Me this Christmas

  Contact

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “Summer at Blue Sands Cove”

  Copyright © CP Ward 2021

  * * *

  The right of CP Ward to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author.

  * * *

  This story is a work of fiction and is a product of the Author’s imagination. All resemblances to actual locations or to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  By CP Ward

  The Delightful Christmas Series

  I’m Glad I Found You This Christmas

  We’ll have a Wonderful Cornish Christmas

  Coming Home to Me This Christmas

  Christmas at the Marshmallow Cafe

  Christmas at Snowflake Lodge

  * * *

  The Glorious Summer Series

  Summer at Blue Sands Cove

  1

  Weekday blues

  ‘I’m coming!’

  The man in the business suit had his hand in the air, waving it back and forth as though directing a plane to land. Carrying the tray in one hand, Grace Clelland weaved her way through the packed tables as the customer’s expression slowly changed from a peculiar look of frustration to one of outright anger.

  She had only just lowered the tray to the table and begun to offload the drinks when he shook his head.

  ‘No, no, no. I ordered soy latte. This is whole milk.’

  Grace looked at the glass of brown liquid topped with whipped cream and strawberry sauce, a little flag with the café’s logo poking triumphantly out of the top.

  ‘It says soy latte on the receipt,’ Grace said, nodding at the piece of paper poking out from underneath.

  ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

  Grace gave a vehement shake of the head. ‘No, of course not. It’s just that the receipt says—’

  The man poked a finger at the glass, tapping it with a manicured fingernail. ‘You can tell from the way the liquid swirls that it’s whole milk. Do you people think I’m stupid? What, do you save a quid or something? You think once I start to drink I won’t bother to complain?’

  Grace had no words. She shook her head openmouthed, glancing up at the suit’s companions, two similarly attired men, their shirts alone worth more than a month of Grace’s salary, their hair ruffled in a magazine-styled way, stubble just apparent enough to suggest they liked to go canoeing or wilderness hiking in their free time when not running up millions on stock deals. Both pouted. One winked and turned up a corner of his mouth in a gesture which was equal parts come on and disgust. On top of the latte, the little flag began to tilt in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘What’s that accent anyway?’ the first man said, frowning again. ‘Romanian? A bit of a problem now they’re shutting the borders, isn’t it?’

  Grace winced. ‘Cornwall.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Same difference. All gypsies, aren’t you?’

  Grace held her breath, resisting the urge to pitch the drink over the man’s expensive shirt. While her manager Don might approve, he would have to fire her in order to save money for the lawsuit.

  ‘I’ll get you a replacement, sir,’ Grace said, refusing to meet his eyes as she scooped the tray up and spun on her heels before she could think to do anything else. From behind her she heard a snigger.

  ‘Look, she’s got straw poking out of her skirt.’

  ‘O-da-lay-ha-ho.’

  Snorts of laughter. Someone thumped the table top, and chair legs creaked as another man rocked back and forth.

  Grace closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. A moment later the kitchen doors swung open and she entered the safety of the staff area.

  ‘The toff on table nine says we’ve used whole milk instead of soy,’ she said to no one in particular, quickly setting the tray down on the stainless steel unit before she gave in to her frustration and threw it down instead. ‘And he called me a gypsy. I’m going on a break.’

  She headed for a back door that led out of the kitchen and into a short corridor which opened outside. She pulled off her apron and hat and pushed out through the doors into the Bristol sunshine. Two older waitresses were already outside, both smoking. Grace gave one a shrug, muttering, ‘Bankers lunchtime is the worst.’

  ‘Just one letter you need to replace and you’re there, dearie,’ said one of the other waitresses. ‘Never done a day of real work in their lives. It’s why they use computers. Their hands are so soft they get tissue cuts.’

  Grace smiled, then took out her phone and walked a few paces up the alley, wanting to be alone. She pulled up her ongoing conversation with Joan and typed a quick message.

  Weekday lunchtime blues … I’ve been hit on three times—two guys and one girl—asked the best place for a discount hair stylist, and told there’s a sale on in TK Maxx so I can upgrade my footwear. And I got called a gypsy.

  There’s a sale on in TX Maxx?? There’s a train that leaves here in ten minutes. Call in sick tomorrow and we’re there.

  Grace smiled, then typed her reply. All quiet down there?

  Surf’s flat so we’ve got all the hunks in the café eating pasties. Air’s so full of testosterone I’m growing pecs just from breathing it in.

  I need pictorial evidence.

  Of my pecs?

  Of the guys!

  Joan was typing. Grace waited patiently for a reply, but the next message that flashed up wasn’t from Joan but from Gavin. She felt a little tingle in her stomach as she opened it, but it wasn’t want she was expecting.

  We need to talk. Can you come over tonight?

  Grace stared. They’d been dating just two months. It was the first message that she’d ever received without an xx. Something was up.

  Seriously, it’s raining so the place is dead, but Blue Sands looks all right in the rain anyway, and there’s a ton of books on the stand that I haven’t read. I wish you’d come down and visit. I miss you so much.

  What’s up?

  It’s raining, I just told you. Forecast said sun s
o we ordered a ton of pasties in. Silver linings—who gets to eat them??

  Grace frowned. Sorry, that was meant for Gavin. He just messaged me. He must have seen I was online.

  Gavin? That’s the new guy? The guy with the Range Rover?

  It’s a Rover Mini. But it’s only two years old. Yeah. The guy I met in the gym.

  Smoooooooth….

  Grace blushed. She glanced up at the other waitresses on break outside the doors, but one was smoking another cigarette and the other was having a loud conversation on her phone with a car rental firm.

  It really wasn’t. I nearly spilled a coffee on him by the vending machine. Hang on, I just have to message him.

  Is everything all right?

  I’ll tell you later.

  Grace felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was about to message Gavin against when the door opened behind her.

  ‘Clelland! This isn’t a working holiday!’

  Grace raised a hand at Don, the manager, leaning around the back door. ‘I’m coming!’ she called.

  I’ve got to go, she typed to Joan. And to Gavin, she said, I’ll call you later.

  As she jogged for the back door, mentally steeling herself for another round of abuse from overpaid button pushers, her phone beeped once.

  Love you, Joan’s message said. Please come and visit. It’s been too long.

  2

  Temptations

  It didn’t bode well that Gavin suggested a neutral location for their evening meeting, a park which happened to be a couple of miles closer to his place than to hers. She got off the bus, walked up the street and through the park gate, only to be confronted with Gavin standing by a fountain in his running gear, already warming up.

  ‘Hi,’ Grace said, approaching him. ‘Should I have come prepared? I dressed for something a little more casual.’

  Gavin shook his head. ‘You look fine.’

  Fine. Just fine. It was what her mother would have said before a job interview.

  He was all thick shoulders, lyrca running trousers, and an expensive Mont Bell running jacket, his breath puffing out in little gasps as he pumped his legs up and down.

  ‘Did you want me to hold your stopwatch or something?’ Grace asked, the sinking feeling that had left her unable to eat anything after lunch making way for something just a little more hopeful, that her sports-mad new boyfriend wanted something other than what she had been suspecting all day. Perhaps he was planning to run around the world or something. Only five people had supposedly done it, and while it might mean they were apart for most of the next two years, at least it was something she could—in a superficial way, at least—support.

  ‘I wanted to talk. About us.’

  Nope. It was heading in the same direction that her other relationships had gone.

  ‘Look, just get it over with. I like you, Gavin, but it’s only been a couple of months. I can handle it. You don’t think we fit well enough. That’s okay.’

  It wouldn’t matter that it was the fourth guy in three years who would duck out before the three-month mark had passed. Grace would get over it; she would drink and message-Joan her way through it, like she had the previous three. The world wouldn’t end, even if it felt like it might for a while.

  Gavin gave her a pained smile. ‘You’re kind, Grace,’ he said. ‘And there’s a lot to like about you. I mean it. It’s just … there are a couple of things.’

  Which I don’t need to hear.

  ‘Like what?’

  Gavin grimaced again and Grace hoped he would save her the humiliation of a list. But when he cleared his throat, she knew it was coming. Perhaps that was why he had worn his running gear: so he could get away.

  ‘You get up too late,’ he said. ‘I mean, you’re not going to get anywhere in life getting up at seven, are you? The day’s half done. And you have no ambition. You’re what, thirty-five and you work in a café.’

  ‘I’m twenty-eight.’

  Gavin sighed. ‘Well, you look thirty-five. Okay, maybe that’s harsh. Thirty-two at least. It must be the way you do your hair. I mean, can’t you go somewhere a little more upmarket?’

  Instead of ripping off one of her shoes and hitting him around the head with it, Grace just felt an easy sense of resignation. Best to let him have his moment and be done with it.

  ‘I have a mortgage to pay,’ she said. ‘I don’t live with my parents, Gavin.’

  He scowled. ‘That was cheap. It’s temporary.’

  ‘You’re calling me cheap?’

  He obviously misunderstood. ‘Look, I appreciate that you always contribute to dinner when we go out, picking up the odd.’

  ‘I always pay half! It’s you who “picks up the odd”.’

  Gavin ignored her. ‘It’s very modern of you. But your money doesn’t impress me.’

  Grace sighed. ‘You’d have low standards if it did.’

  ‘I’m just not a materialistic guy.’

  Grace could have picked five labels off his current attire which suggested otherwise, but she was too tired to prolong this torture any longer than necessary.

  ‘Goodbye, Gavin. It was nice, for a while.’

  She started to turn away, but he danced around her like some kind of exercise fairy, doing little sidesteps, puffing out his breath in short, sharp gasps.

  ‘But the worst is the snoring,’ he said. ‘Honestly, you should have someone check that. It gave me night terrors. I thought I’d got over my childhood traumas, but since I met you, the nightmares I’ve had … they’ve been strong. I’ll say that. Strong.’

  ‘I’m sorry that your childhood sucked.’

  Gavin shook his head. ‘I opened the car door and fell out on my parents’ drive when I was just five years old,’ he said. ‘A lorry was passing on the other side of the street, and the sound left me crying for a week. So my mother said. And your snoring brought that sound back. I’m going to a therapist tomorrow. I don’t like to say this, but I think you could have ruined my life.’

  Grace smiled. ‘Nothing that a bit of exercise won’t fix.’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny? Is that all you thought of our relationship? Like it was a big joke? Or did you just get together with me out of some sadistic need to make a person suffer?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘If that’s your attitude, then I think I’m better off without you.’

  Grace just stared. Gavin’s cheeks puffed out like a frog about to croak. She wondered if he was hyperventilating.

  ‘Do you want me to pat you on the back? Will it help?’

  Gavin shook his head. ‘Words fail me,’ he said. ‘Was this a set up from the start?’

  Quite unsure how being dumped had twisted around to her ruining Gavin’s life, Grace shrugged. ‘I think I’ll be going home now,’ she said.

  Before Gavin could respond, she started walking away.

  ‘I’ve changed spinning classes!’ he shouted. ‘If I see you again I’ll have flashbacks!’

  Grace sighed, pulled her bag up over her shoulder, and ran to catch a bus which was just pulling into the bus stop outside the park gates.

  It didn’t matter where it was going.

  Chipping Sodbury, so it turned out.

  Grace bought a kebab in a Turkish takeaway across the street from the little bus station, and sat on the one chair by the window to eat while she waited for a return bus, her phone beside her.

  Prickprickprickprick, was Joan’s first message. You just dodged a bullet.

  Another one, Grace answered.

  We’ve got a lovely sunset tonight. You should visit. Can’t you jack in your job? I can find hours for you at the café.

  Grace paused before replying. Her teens had been good years, working alongside Joan in the Blue Sands Café, owned by Joan’s parents, but she was twenty-eight now and didn’t need a backwards step. Plus, it would only be for the summer. At least her job now—bankers, be damned—was year-round, even if a future in the catering industry was hardly
turning out like she had hoped.

  Her phone buzzed again; Joan had sent a picture. Grace opened it up and smiled: a miserable scene of rain teeming down the window with the vague outline of a sandy cove in the background.

  You lied.

  Just like the tourist brochures. Doesn’t it make you feel at home? Remember all those summers we spent drinking cider in the chalets because it rained so hard even the sea got annoyed? Come on, Graceful. Give me one more. It’s so boring here without you.

  A throwback summer. It was very tempting.

  I’ll think about it, she messaged back.

  Come on. And with all those spinning classes, you can finally take on the Hill of Suffering. You could be the first official local to cycle faster than walking pace. Come on, Graceful. You know you want to.

  I’ll think about it, Grace messaged again, then closed her messaging app before Joan had enough time to convince her.

  And anyway, the bus was coming. If she was lucky, she’d still be back in time for spinning class. Gavin be damned. He was nothing on Mike Anderson anyway.

  3

  Spinning

  Although it kept her fit like nothing ever had in her life before, Grace would be the first to admit—drunkenly, to Joan, at least—that she had signed up for spinning classes in order to get in the kind of shape that would one day allow her to cycle all the way from the bottom to the top of Melrose Hill—what local kids had called the Hill of Suffering for as long as she could remember—both without stopping and at faster than walking pace. No official local had ever done it. Some smarmy bastard called Matt who had done a few stages of the Tour de France had visited one summer and pulled it off, but he had moved away shortly after and therefore didn’t officially count.