Page 60 of One Cornish Summer With You
‘Yeah. Fine … It’s been crazy and exciting and exhausting and now there’s the anti-climax. And … I wish Dad had been here to see it.’ As she admitted that, her throat was fuller, her chest tighter.
‘Of course you do. So do I,’ Ruan said as they strolled off the beach towards the performers’ parking area.
She stopped. ‘I wish he could have met you.’
Ruan didn’t reply but when Tammy looked at him closely, his eyes seemed bright, almost with tears.
‘I wish it too,’ he said. ‘You must miss him so much.’
Tammy started walking again, with her hand in Ruan’s. ‘I do miss him, but he would hate the thought of me spending my life grieving for him.’ Yet he’d never actually said that to Tammy. They hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. She’d had no idea when he’d set off that morning with his fishing gear that she would never see him alive again. Her heart squeezed painfully.
‘No … I’m so sorry,’ he said again.
‘It’s not your fault I lost him. I only wish I knew what had happened that morning,’ she said.
She saw him swallow and glimpsed a deep sadness in his eyes – as she had done several times that evening.
When they’d reached his car and she climbed in, he added, ‘Not knowing must be agony.’
‘It was. It still is sometimes, but not all the time – tonight was a good night. Every day lately has been a good day.’ She almost said since he came along but checked herself. He was clearly on edge about something. She wondered if he was tired, or stressed about work, because he’d been thoughtful all evening.
Even when the band had been playing and he’d been singing along, she’d thought he’d seemed distracted. Maybe she was being oversensitive. It had been a very hectic and emotional time and she was probably reading far too much into the situation.
‘I need my bed,’ she said, yawning, when they finally reached Porthmellow. Ruan parked outside the gallery on the harbour front.
‘Me too. Early start tomorrow. Hector has potential new clients coming into the office and wants the senior team in at seven to have a pre-meeting war council.’
‘Seven?’ she gasped in mock horror. ‘That man sounds like a tyrant.’
Ruan laughed. ‘He’s OK. I know where I stand with him and my colleagues are great. I feel valued and it’s nowhere near as cut-throat as my old firm in Bristol …’
‘You’re glad you moved then?’ she asked.
‘What do you think?’ Ruan said, and leaned over to her seat, kissing her, long and deliciously, uncaring of anyone walking past.
She was in two minds about whether to ask him back to the flat but tomorrow was Monday and he’d made it clear that he had an early start.
‘Speak tomorrow then?’ she said. ‘And don’t forget it’s Hattie’s birthday barbecue on Porthmellow beach on Wednesday evening.’
‘I won’t. Speak tomorrow.’
After another lingering kiss, Tammy got out of the car and was left alone outside the studio.
She brushed her fingers across her lips, wanting to reignite the fireworks that exploded when Ruan kissed her, and when he took her hand and touched her. Despite the success of the evening, and the past three days, she couldn’t stop a tremor of worry running through her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Ruan arrived home after work on Monday, hardly able to lift his eyes to the house, which seemed to loom through the sea mist, its blank windows accusing him.
He unlocked the van, threw his keys on a pile of papers, and swept dirty clothes off the sofa so he could sit down.
Hehadto tell Tammy about his suspicions. Every hour that he didn’t was another hour when he was breaking her trust, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to. Last night had felt like a sham – if he’d slept with her, it would have been dishonest.
How could he possibly have overlooked the previous history of the property? It was literally his job to check details. After his meeting, in his lunch break, he’d done some digging around online and found for certain that Seaspray had once been two dwellings. He felt so troubled, he had no appetite, and one of his colleagues had asked him why he’d left most of his sandwiches. He’d laughed and blamed a heavy night at the festival even though he’d been perfectly sober.
He checked the notes he’d made in his file again and revisited the online sites he’d used to confirm his suspicions,even though he hated reading the evidence presented in black and white on the screen.
He knew now that it had been one house until the 1930s, then converted into two ‘cottages’ until Walter had once again had it restored to one large residence. One half was called Vine Cottage and the other was Rosewarne. Inheriting Tammy’s home was bad enough, but that wasn’t what sickened him.
