CHAPTER ONE
Flick negotiated her little purple Mini through the twisty country lanes as she made her way to Lovegrove Bay at the furthest end of Cornwall.
What was she doing?
Her nan had emotionally blackmailed her into taking over Waterfall House just a few weeks ago and, with Flick’s childhood ties to the seaside town and with her being currently jobless and soon to be homeless, Flick had agreed but now she was having doubts. Well, she’d had doubts from the start.
She had six months to turn around the finances of Waterfall House, a large Victorian style building filled with rooms selling different crafts from local artists, otherwise when her nan got back from her six months in Australia she was going to sell the whole thing to a hotel developer. It was in a prime position on the clifftops overlooking the sleepy little seaside town ofLovegrove Bay and her nan had been approached many times to sell the place.
But Flick didn’t have the first idea how to run a business. Sadly neither did her nan which was why she barely had a penny to her name and Waterfall House hadn’t sold a single item since Christmas. Her nan hadn’t even had enough to fly out to Australia to help look after her sister after surgery, her sister had to pay for that.
The trouble was the house didn’t even have a café anymore, which had been very successful back in the day. Her nan had stopped doing that side of things years before when her chef quit and she couldn’t get anyone to replace him. So sadly the art studios didn’t even have that revenue or footfall to fall back on anymore – the kind of people who would stop by for a sandwich and then also buy a few knick-knacks. The other problem was the things on sale weren’t actually cheap knick-knacks but wooden sculptures that cost seven hundred pounds or paintings that cost three thousand pounds. Lovegrove Bay had a large retiree population and in the summer months the town was filled with average families, the types of people who would spend money on crazy golf or the amusements on the pier, but not the types of people who would spend three thousand pounds on a painting.
Somehow Flick had to get more people to visit the house on Waterfall Hill and either they had to be the kinds of people who had hundreds to spend on a beautifullyembroidered quilt, or she’d have to get the artists to create more accessible artwork – and she knew that wasn’t going to go down well.
Maybe she could get Luke Donnelly on her side. He was going to be her flatmate. The top floor of the Victorian town house had been converted into a two-bedroom flat and her nan had spent the last six months living with a man who was a third of her age. It seemed like an unlikely friendship but somehow it had worked.
Flick reached the top of the hill and could see the whole of Lovegrove Bay laid out below her, twinkling in the moonlight. All the houses, seemingly piled on top of each other, looked cute with their windows lit up with golden lights. She had spent every school holiday here with her nan and grandad, playing on the beach, sitting on the harbour wall eating an ice cream, or fish and chips, spending her pennies on the arcades on the pier. She had loved it here but it had been many years since she’d come back. Life had just got in the way.
She rounded the corner and there was Waterfall House or, as the locals knew it, the House with the Wonky Tree.
The tree itself was a giant sycamore tree that gave the Leaning Tower of Pisa a run for its money. It was such an unusual-shaped landmark, bent over as if in a gale force wind, that it often ended up on thousands of Instagram photos. Over the years, it had been fortified with various cables and poles to stop it falling over completely because cutting it down was unthinkable. Itwas looking a little worse for wear though now; it was the middle of summer and it should be full of leaves but only half the branches had a handful of leaves on. Her nan had called an arborist for it the year before and he’d said that because the tree was growing at such an angle the roots were coming away from the soil and it wasn’t getting the nutrients it needed. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot they could do to save it. Thankfully if it did ever give up the ghost and fall, it was leaning in such a way that it would land in the private garden next to the house and miss the house completely. Flick had spent many an hour climbing it, hanging from it, sitting underneath it, even drawing it. It was as much part of her childhood memories as the house itself.
She turned her attention to the house. Waterfall House was a large four-storey house with little nooks, unusual-shaped rooms and little stairs that curled up to tucked-away secret places. It even had two turrets. It had been the perfect place to play for a little girl with a big imagination.
Waterfall House had been here as far back as Flick could remember and she’d loved watching the artists creating their masterpieces. It had inspired a love of being creative in her. She spent a lot of time painting or making crafty things. She wasn’t particularly good at it but she always enjoyed it.
Her grandad had bought the house before Flick was born and after many months of renovations, he’d opened it as an artists’ retreat. He’d had a stroke a fewyears before that, which he’d talked about often as being the thing that saved him. He’d been in a high-powered job in London which was always fast-paced and very stressful and he said that it was only a matter of time before he burned himself out completely, had some kind of nervous breakdown or died of a heart attack. The stroke had been a huge wake-up call and he’d changed his life completely, taking early retirement and relocating to Lovegrove Bay. He’d talked often about his rehabilitation after the stroke and how much art therapy had helped him. Once he was back on his feet, he’d decided he’d wanted to open a place where he could run art workshops to help others with brain injuries and that was how the idea for Waterfall House came about. Later the workshops were extended to encompass anyone who had suffered any kind of physical injury that needed physiotherapy or some kind of rehabilitation. Hundreds of people had come through the doors over the years and aided their recovery with painting, clay work or other arts and crafts. Over the years it had developed into a space where artists could sell their work too. Sadly after her granddad had died, the workshops had dried up; her nan hadn’t wanted to run them in his place or get someone in to replace him, so it had just become this space where artists made and sold their work instead. But now even that was failing.
Flick pulled up outside and got out and looked around. Even in the darkness she could see how tired the place looked. It had always had pale pink walls but alot of the paint was peeling away, as it was on the wooden window frames. Her grandad had painstakingly laid some hexagonal stepping stones that led to the front door, but some of these were cracked, missing or half buried under dirt. It desperately needed some TLC, although as there was no money to do so, they would have to make do with what they had for now.
She was too tired to think right now after her long drive from London and now she was faced with introducing herself to Luke, someone who, despite having lived with her nan for the last six months, she knew very little about. Her limited experience of artists at various craft shows was that they were a pompous bunch who looked down at herpatheticefforts. Although she wouldn’t be sharing any of her art tonight, she didn’t want to face anyone who behaved that way.
It was a shame her nan had left two weeks before, it would have been nice if she’d been there to introduce her to Luke and the other artists. It would have certainly made things easier.
She grabbed one of her bags, the rest could wait until morning. She let herself in with the key her nan had sent her and made her way up the back staircase to the top-floor flat. She hovered outside for a second wondering if she should knock but this was her home now, she shouldn’t have to knock to go into her own home. But equally she didn’t want to just walk in on him. He could be doing anything.
She knocked but there was no sound behind thedoor, no call to say he was on his way to answer it, not even the sound of the TV. She knocked again but when there was still silence on the other side, she let herself in.
‘Hello!’ she called but there was no noise at all to indicate that someone was home.
She wasn’t expecting a welcome home party but she’d kind of thought he’d be there. She’d told her nan what time she was arriving and assumed that information had been passed on. Was he not at least a bit curious about who he was going to be sharing a flat with for the next six months? Or was this some kind of silent protest against having a new boss foisted on him?
Although Flick was actually a little bit relieved he wasn’t here. She was too tired to deal with any confrontation tonight.
The flat looked comfortable and clean. A large horseshoe-shaped sofa stood in the middle of the room, with an open-plan kitchen and dining area up one end and a few doors leading off the main living area.
She looked around trying to find out more information about the man she was going to be living with. He was clean and tidy, that was something. A bookshelf was filled with books which had to be his. Her nan was a big romance reader and these books with their mostly black covers were definitely not romance. She wandered closer. You could tell a lot about a person from their bookcase. She could see all of Tolkien’s books,The Lord of the RingsandThe Hobbitobviously but some of hislesser-known titles too likeThe Adventures of Tom BombadilandThe Silmarillion. She lovedThe Lord of the Ringsthough she secretly loved the film more than the books, although she would never admit that to any of the die-hard Tolkien fans. Luke had some of her favourite Terry Pratchett books too, plusGame of ThronesandThe Wheel of Time. He clearly loved his fantasy, which was a bonus for her. Although she would read pretty much any genre, fantasy was probably her favourite. There were also some well-thumbed copies of Shakespeare’s plays as well as more classical literature like Dickens’sOliver Twistand Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein, and a whole range of Agatha Christie. She liked that he had diverse tastes.
She wondered which room was hers. All the doors were closed. She’d only been a child when she’d last been up here, and back then it had been used just as guest bedrooms for people attending the retreats The last time she had visited her nan, she’d still been living in a tiny cottage in the main part of the village before her nan had sold that to help to fund this place.
She approached the first door, knocked and, when there was no sound from within, she opened it and saw a large bathroom which was all white but with seaside paraphernalia everywhere. She moved to the door next to it and knocked again. There was still silence on the other side so she opened it and froze.
This was definitely not her room, she could tell that from the man standing naked on the other side. She noticed he had earphones in his ears, which wasprobably the reason he hadn’t heard her, but she couldn’t help noticing that he seemed to be studying himself in the mirror and one area of his body seemed to be holding his attention, avidly.
She screamed in shock. His eyes widened in horror as he saw her and he screamed too, grabbing a cushion to hide his manhood. She quickly hurried from the room but she heard him chase after her.
‘I’m so sorry, I knocked but there was no answer.’ Flick cringed. Of all the ways to introduce herself to her new flatmate, this had to be the worst.
