Page 56 of One Cornish Summer With You
They drank up, talking about the work that needed to be done.
Kane said he’d noticed the helmet and strimmer on the ground. He laughed. ‘Don’t say you’ve been trying to clear this with that puny thing?’
Ruan laughed. ‘Well, I must admit, I haven’t made much progress.’
‘No shit, Sherlock?’ Kane scoffed. ‘You’d be here until next summer with that. The best thing you could do is wait until the winter when it all dies down naturally and then clear it, but if you’re wanting to get rid of it now, you’ll need everything we can throw at it.’
‘I’d like to clear it so I can see what I’m dealing with better. Somewhere under there is a really great garden.’
‘And we’ll find it, but first it’s going to take at least a month of working part-time to clear it. Now let’s set to work. We don’t have long. Sorry, I have to leave at lunchtime. I’veput another crew on the early shift at the festival, but I need to be there for the mad rush come five o’clock.’
‘I’m going along myself so I can see Tammy’s last installation,’ Ruan said.
‘Of course you are,’ Kane said with a smirk. ‘Better keep your mind off her artwork and on this job for now or we’ll never make progress.’
They worked flat out until 1 p.m. when Ruan heated up the pasties in the caravan oven and handed them out. Progress had definitely been made. The digger had cleared a huge patch of weeds that had once been a lawned area at the front of the property. They had decided to leave the gunneras by the edge of the stream to die down naturally. Ruan liked them anyway; they were exotic and other-worldly.
He and Kane had also cut back some of the thorn bushes and rhododendrons that were obscuring the view. Ruan was no expert gardener, but under it all, even he recognised pink hydrangeas, flaming crocosmia and white climbing roses.
He looked forward to showing the flowers to his mother, knowing she would consider it a sin to get rid of them. At least now that they had some light to grow, they could start to flourish.
When Kane and co. had left, Ruan had a quiet sense of satisfaction at their handiwork. There was still lots to do, but the glimpse of sea was now more of an actual view and it sparkled through the hazy sunlight. Finally, he could begin to imagine the place restored to its full glory: a place he’d be proud to invite Tammy to visit.
A place heshouldask Tammy to visit, he resolved, nomatter how bad he felt about it dropping into his lap. He knew her well enough by now to realise she wouldn’t begrudge his good fortune. If he tidied up the caravan, perhaps she wouldn’t even mind spending the night there.
He winced as he saw the thick trail of mud from the shower room to the door. God knows what state the bathroom was in. He’d definitely have to fumigate the place before he could invite Tammy, but he could show her the site and tell her about his plans. Prove to her he wasn’t going anywhere.
With two hours before he had to pick Tammy up, he decided to carry on working, enthused by the progress made that morning and at ease with the decision he’d made to share it with Tammy.
Tomorrow, after the festival, he’d invite her here and explain about his Great-uncle Walter and Seaspray. If they were to have any kind of future together, there needed to be total honesty between them. Tammy had been messed around too much. She deserved nothing less.
Wow,thought Ruan. Here he was thinking of the future – of ‘long-term’ – within less than a month of having met a woman. On the surface, there was nothing rational or sensible about his feelings for Tammy. He certainly hadn’t experienced anything that came close with Alexandra – or any of his previous girlfriends, come to think of it. He was shocked at how powerful his feelings were and how quickly they’d swept him along. Could this be what ‘falling in love’ actually felt like?
His romantic thoughts were definitely something tokeep to himself, and however pleasurable it was to be carried away by this feeling, it also unnerved him. He tackled the façade with renewed intent, hacking at the ivy that had captured the stone in its embrace. Removing the vegetation which had wormed its way through the cracked windows would be a good place to start.
It was satisfying to rip the tough stems from the walls and expose the handsome granite underneath. The sitting-room window was almost free by the time he had to go for his shower, with only a stubborn thick patch left near the front door.
With a grunt, he ripped it away and almost toppled backwards, coughing in a cloud of dust and tiny insects. He was glad he’d worn the safety glasses. As the dust cleared, he saw the walls were marked with long streaks, like scars; and, by one of the windows, there was also something else: a stone plaque set into the granite, blackened and dusty.
He coughed and the plaque came into focus through the grimy lenses of his safety glasses. It had letters etched into it like one of Tammy’s designs, though they were almost obliterated by dirt. Even so, he could still make out the name.
‘No …’
He ripped off the glasses and blinked in disbelief at what he was seeing.
The glasses slipped from his fingers and fell to the earth amid the leaves.
Ruan rubbed the sign with his hand, his own sweat revealing a word he didn’t want to see – and couldn’t believe. Maybe the heat and dust was making him hallucinate.
Yet the word was there, carved in stone, as it had been for years.
ROSEWARNE
It couldn’t be.
He remembered what Tammy had said about going to the nearby primary school … but Seaspray wasn’t a two-bed cottage. It was a five-bedroom house. Therefore it couldn’t have been the Rosewarne that she’d once lived in. After all, Rosewarne wasn’t a unique name for a Cornish house … he was almost sure.
Yet the more Ruan stared at the plaque and that one word leapt out at him, the more he needed to be absolutely sure that he hadn’t somehow, by a horrible twist of fate, inherited her former home. Almost wasn’t enough, not for a lawyer and not for a man who was falling in love with this woman and would never want to hurt or upset her, even inadvertently.
