Page 69 of One Cornish Summer With You
A shadow at the side of the house. A moving shadow that passed over the front of the wall then vanished at its corner.
He strained his eyes. There was nothing there now and yet he had seen something in the moonlight.
A cloud had passed over the moon and it was dark again. An owl hooted and another replied.
Could it have been a bird flying low, hunting mice?
It hadn’t seemed like a bird. It had looked like a figure.
Ruan switched on his phone torch. It was possible that an intruder was hanging around; perhaps someone needing somewhere to sleep for the night. His pulse was beating faster but he didn’t feel afraid. He couldn’t have whoever it was entering the house: it was dangerous in there.
He walked forward confidently, shining the torch ahead. ‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Is there anyone there? Don’t be afraid, but if you’re thinking of going inside the house, don’t. It’s not safe.’
He shone the beam all over the front of the house, with its broken windows and the scars left by ivy and the plaque that read ‘Rosewarne’.
There was nothing. He was simply on edge and his eyes were playing tricks on him. What he really needed was to go to bed and get some sleep after a couple of nights when that had been in short supply. He was about to switch off the torch when he heard a rustle and glimpsed a flash of white. A badger waddled round the edge of the house and quickly into the undergrowth at the edge of the stream.
Ruan laughed out loud at his own jitteriness, unlocked the door of the caravan, and turned on the light.
‘Ruan.’
He nearly jumped out of his skin and spun round. ‘Tammy?’
His heart was going like a jackhammer. Tammy stood ina shaft of moonlight, her face pale like a spectre that had materialised out of thin air.
If only she was an apparition,Ruan thought, lead settling in his stomach. If only she wasn’t all too real and standing in front of him. If only he’d spoken to her before. It was all too late now.
Surely, his heart should have stopped thumping by now. He was a fit young man and Tammy was a young woman, not some mythical beast lurking in the dark waiting to jump on him. Yet his pulse still cantered away.
‘Tammy. I—’
‘I have one question. Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to find out from Sean?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
With a huge effort of will, Tammy was able to stop trembling when she’d stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight. She’d so wanted Sean to be lying to her so she could go back to him and say,You made it up. Ruan isn’t living at Rosewarne.
However, she’d known he wasn’t lying as soon as she’d seen the caravan in the grounds. That was almost as much of a shock as seeing the state of her former home. Rosewarne and its neighbour, now one house again, was a wreck and, if anything, even worse than Sean had painted it.
Her initial instinct had been to run because she couldn’t bear to look at the dilapidated wreck that reminded her of so many shattered hopes and unhappy memories. Instead, she’d escaped on to the beach and watched the sun set and the egg-shaped boulders glow bone-white in the moonlight. Their warmth had cooled as she’d waited, hunched up, and finally, she’d walked back to the grounds and made a circuit of the house.
She could almost hear the echoes of the past. Her mother singing along to the radio, her father hammering somewhere, her own laughter ringing out as she played with the neighbour’s kids in the garden.
‘How long have you been here?’ Ruan asked, his face almost white in the light. ‘I didn’t see your van in the lane.’
‘I parked further up the road and walked down here.’
He nodded, crestfallen. Tammy had no sympathy.
‘How’s the migraine?’ he asked.
‘Better. I did have a headache and I did feel like shit but that was because I didn’t want to be right about this,’ she said, sweeping her arm in the direction of the house. ‘I wanted to be mistaken.’
‘You say Sean told you?’ he asked and covered his face. ‘You mean Sean Carrow, the builder. I didn’t realise. Christ. I’m sorry. He came to give a quote for the work.’
‘Does it matter how I found out?’ Tammy said, regretting she’d even mentioned Sean, even though she was gutted that her ex had been the one to shatter her illusions about Ruan. She’d defended him so staunchly and yet Sean had been correct for once: Ruan had been lying and her faith in him lay in far greater ruin than the house itself.
‘I am so sorry—’ Ruan began but Tammy cut him off.
