Page 25 of Welcome to the Cornish Country Hospital

14

Brenda had a split personality. When it came to doing anything she didn’t want to do, getting into the car for a check-up at the vet’s for instance, she acted as if she might well be on her last legs and needed to be carried outside and lifted in. Danni couldn’t help thinking that the dead weight of a full-grown basset hound would have been good training for Olympic powerlifters. But as soon as Brenda heard Danni unhook her lead from the coat rack by the front door, she shot out of her basket and skidded to a halt, half on the front doormat and half off it, as her back feet seemed to overtake the ones at the front.

Like most basset hounds, Brenda had a saggy face, which meant slobbering came with the territory and there was now a liberal coating of it up the door. ‘Oh Brenda, that’s disgusting. It’s a good job I love you.’

In all the excitement to get out, she’d knocked into the hallway table, causing the letter to Richard to fall on the floor, right into the path of some more of Brenda’s trademark slobber.

‘This might be the most important letter Richard ever gets; you do know that, don’t you?’ Danni laughed as she looked at Brenda, who couldn’t have appeared less bothered if she’d tried. Taking a tissue out of the box that had somehow remained on the hallway table, Danni wiped the corner of the envelope. ‘Right, good as new. Come on then, let’s get going before you can do any more damage.’

Putting the letter into the pocket of her coat, Danni stepped outside the cottage and breathed deeply. When she’d considered leaving London to move back to Cornwall, the fantasy she’d built up in her head could have turned out to be a big disappointment. But, instead, it had managed to exceed expectations and it had taken her right back to the time when she’d been happiest in her life, when her father was still alive and her little family had been intact and impenetrable. But then Lucas and Esther had arrived, and all her dreams of building a life for herself and creating a family like the one she remembered from her childhood had suddenly felt like a distant dream again.

She really didn’t want to leave Port Kara or the little cottage that already felt more like home than anywhere had in years. Breathing in again, Danni could taste the salt on her lips, and the sun in the cloudless blue sky above her radiated the sort of gentle, autumnal warmth that made it her favourite season. Most of the holidaymakers and second-home owners would be long gone now too. She could almost picture her father setting up the wickets for a game of cricket on the almost empty beach as she headed across the sand with Brenda. It was still quite early and, despite it being way past the end of the season, the beach would fill up a bit more later. But after witnessing Connie meeting Charlie for the first time the evening before, being in possession of Connie’s letter to Richard had felt like even more of a responsibility and she didn’t want to delay delivering it for any longer than she had to. There was a lot riding on Richard’s reaction to what was in the letter, and Danni knew that Connie wouldn’t be able to think about anything other than that until she’d heard from him. It must have been terrifying for her, stuck in the hospital, waiting for news. Danni could feel the nerves bubbling up inside as she set off towards Trengothern Hall.

When she’d searched for Richard online, there’d been a webpage about the self-catering holiday cottages rented out in the grounds of Trengothern Hall, but there’d also been some old pictures of the place on Google Images and the aerial shots had given Danni a good idea of what it looked like now. It had clearly been quite grand in its time and more recent photographs of the hall were still beautiful, with its position high on the cliffs, surrounded by acres of land. But unlike many of the old houses in the area, which were more often than not home to wealthy incomers, Trengothern Hall was clearly staying true to its roots. Danni still didn’t know if Richard had married Fiona or not, but the website said the self-catering cottages were set on a two hundred acre working farm, so he’d clearly found a way to hold on to a lot of his family’s land.

Taking the coastal path was the quickest way to get to the farm, and Danni relished the opportunity to be so close to the sea, with uninterrupted views all the way out to the headline at Port Agnes, and the Sisters of Agnes Island just beyond it. The coastal path on this side of Port Kara was undulating, sometimes dipping down much closer to where the water broke over the rocks at high tide. And Danni was just reaching that point when a Labrador, with a shiny black coat, came bounding towards her, trying to engage Brenda – who was having none of it – in a game.

‘Maggie, come here, girl. Not everyone wants to be your friend.’ Danni might only have met him once, the day before, but Charlie had the sort of voice that made it instantly recognisable. It had a rich, deep tone, and when he’d told Connie that he was a writer, Danni had been tempted to ask him if he did the recordings for his own audiobooks. If he didn’t, he was missing a trick. It was the sort of voice she could have listened to all day, and it suited him too, which wasn’t always the case. He didn’t look anything like Connie. He was tall, with curly dark hair and bright blue eyes, which were probably the first thing people noticed about him. When he’d said he was renting a cottage with Maggie, Danni had instantly pictured him having a beautiful partner, but it turned out that Maggie was a Labrador. Although that didn’t stop her being every bit as beautiful as Danni had imagined.

‘She’s okay, don’t worry. Hello, sweetheart.’ Danni bent down to stroke Maggie’s head, which felt like silk beneath her fingers. ‘Brenda can just be a bit of an old grump at times.’

‘Brenda? That’s a brilliant name!’ Charlie laughed. ‘It’s Danni, isn’t it? We met at the hospital yesterday.’

‘Of course, hello again.’ She had no idea why she was pretending to be so nonchalant, or trying to give the impression that she hadn’t instantly recognised him and would have done from his voice alone. It wasn’t like she sat in on a reunion between a patient and their long-lost child every day, but she just had to go with it now.

‘I’m supposed to be working on some illustrations for my next book, but Maggie needed a walk and I need some inspiration.’ Charlie smiled again, a dimple appearing in his right cheek as he did and for the first time Danni could see a resemblance with Connie. ‘It’s certainly the right place to get it. Have you seen the seal pup down on the rocks?’

‘On my God, really? Whereabouts?’ Spotting seals had been an obsession for Danni for as long as she could remember. It was just one more memory she had of her father, who had taken Danni and her brother searching for wildlife whenever he had time off from work, but especially when they had the chance to get to the Atlantic coast. More often than not, her mother would stay behind to indulge in whatever her latest passion was. Her father had always been supportive, and given her mother so much time without the children when they were on holiday, that Danni had never noticed how hard her mum found it to cope with her own offspring. At least until her father had died, and then it had been brutally obvious. They were still happy memories, though, and Danni had spotted seals with her father many times, but rarely a seal pup.

‘Just down there, see?’ Charlie moved closer to her, pointing to a crop of rocks, jutting out below where the clifftop dropped to its lowest point.

‘It’s so beautiful.’ The seal wasn’t white, as Danni had thought it would be, but more of a golden colour.

‘It must have been born fairly recently; it hasn’t even started to moult yet.’ There was an expression of wonder on Charlie’s face that somehow made him even more attractive. Danni had to look at him again, as the shock of realising she found someone who wasn’t Lucas attractive suddenly hit home. It had been so long since she’d felt that way, it took her a moment to work out what the sensation that could only be described as butterflies meant. It was something she’d wanted to feel for someone else for years, and the realisation left her with a weird mix of nerves and excitement as Charlie spoke again. ‘It reminds me of Maggie when she was a pup, a bit. The same huge black eyes, but it was two of Maggie’s siblings who had yellow coats.’

‘He looks nice and fat at least.’ Danni forced herself to turn her attention back to the seal pup.

‘I think I’m going to have to put him in one of my stories. We’re assuming it’s a him, and there’s no way of knowing without looking at its belly, but I’ll have to come up with a name.’ Charlie turned towards her. ‘What do you think would suit him?’

‘Trevor.’

‘I can’t say it’s the first thing that springs to mind when I look at a cute little seal pup, but why not?’ Charlie’s eyes sparkled when he laughed and Danni had a feeling he did a lot of laughing. The sunny disposition he’d displayed when he’d met his biological mother for the first time clearly hadn’t been an act.

‘It was my father’s name.’ Somehow saying it to Charlie enabled her to smile too. Her father would have loved this, Danni bumping into someone who was every bit as excited about seeing a seal pup, and who wanted to immortalise the moment in a children’s story. It made saying her father’s name, without feeling the sting of tears, easier than she could remember it being since he’d died.

‘Trevor it is, then.’ Charlie snapped a picture on his phone. ‘I’ll check if there’s somewhere we need to report the sighting, in case they’re monitoring the health of the seal pups. But other than that, I think it should be our secret. We don’t want to risk hundreds of people flocking down here, when it’s so close to the lowest point of the pathway. I’d better haul Maggie in the other direction as it is. Otherwise, knowing her, she’ll be trying to get down there to investigate further.’

‘Sounds like a good plan. It’s been nice seeing you again, Charlie.’ It really had been lovely, and unexpected in more ways than one, but the letter to Richard still felt as if it was burning a hole in her pocket. ‘I’d better get Brenda moving again too, or she’ll decide she’s finished with walking for the day and I need to get up to Trengothern Hall.’

‘Me too!’ Charlie held up his hands. ‘I promise I’m not some weirdo following you, but that’s where the cottage I’ve rented is.’

‘Oh right, of course.’ Danni’s breath had caught in her throat. Charlie hadn’t been there when Connie had asked her to deliver the letter to Richard, so he’d have no way of knowing why she was headed to Trengothern Hall. And he wouldn’t be able to piece the puzzle together and work out who his father was before Connie had been given the chance to explain. But it still made her feel uneasy.

‘We could walk together.’ Charlie hesitated for a moment, searching her face. ‘But I won’t be insulted if you’d rather not.’

‘No, of course, that would be lovely.’ She was already wracking her brain about what to tell him if he asked why she needed to go to the farm. She’d just have to say it was about some medical results she wasn’t at liberty to share. It was a plausible reason and in a weird kind of way it wasn’t really a lie. So she had absolutely no idea why her heart was still thudding as hard as it was.

* * *

---