Page 1 of A Cornish Winter's Kiss

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Ever since she was a child, Emily had been certain that one day a magical moment would change everything. She’d meet the person capable of altering the entire path of her life and, when their eyes met, she’d know that this was it. Okay, so she was still waiting, and her certainty might have wavered a long time ago if she hadn’t watched almost every romcom ever made and devoured romance novels like her life depended on it. They were her escape whenever things got tough and they’d saved her during the most difficult time of her life.

Emily had been fifteen when her mother, Patsy, had been involved in a car accident that had threatened to tear her whole family apart. Patsy had been in a coma for five days, and the road to recovery was gruelling, painful and terrifying. Emily’s father had been forced to keep working full time to pay the bills, and her older sister had just left home to start university. So it was Emily who sat by Patsy’s bedside for days on end, not knowing if or when the mother she adored would ever fully come back to her. The doctors had warned them that the head injury she’d sustained might change her forever, but Emily couldn’t bear forthat to happen, and she’d promised herself she’d do whatever it took to get the mum she knew back.

Emily had been there to help with physio and all the practical support her mother needed. She didn’t mind that her entire life consisted of going to school and coming straight home to care for her mum, or that she never got to see her friends. Prior to the accident, Patsy’s two main passions had been reading and listening to music. Before Emily left for school, she’d put the radio on for her mum, but as soon as she got home, she’d turn it off and sit down to read to her instead. Patsy had always been obsessed with the Brontë sisters and Emily had reread the classic novels to her first, but then they’d moved on to paperbacks that she’d picked up from a charity shop in the next road to her school. She’d always pick cheerful stories, with colourful covers, that promised both her and her mother an escape from the harsh realities of what they were going through. Family holidays were on hold indefinitely and, for the best part of a year, Emily was almost as housebound as her mother. But it was those romance novels that had transported them both to another world. Emily could lose herself in the stories, living a completely different life through the characters’ eyes. She’d travelled the world without ever leaving home and had worked her way through countless careers, when in reality she didn’t even have time for a paper round. Best of all, the stories guaranteed the kind of happy ending she’d so desperately needed to believe in back then.

Even after her mother eventually made an almost complete recovery, and Emily had managed to put the whole experience behind her, that love affair with a happy ever after had never waned. She didn’t care if some people thought she should be reading Tolstoy or Virgina Woolf for it to be worthwhile. Reading was all about joy for Emily, and there was nothing morejoyful than a good romance, even if her best friend in the world still didn’t understand why she loved those novels so much.

‘This is why you’re still single.’ Jasmine jabbed a finger at the book Emily had just put down on the kitchen worktop. If she could have found a way of reading and chopping vegetables for the stir fry at the same time, she’d have done it. Her inability to put down a book when she was really into it had got her into trouble in the past. She’d stopped borrowing books from the library after dropping one into the bath, and she’d even walked into a lamppost trying to read and walk at the same time.

‘Reading is why I’m still single?’ Emily ran a hand through her honey-blonde hair and gave her friend a quizzical look. ‘If I have to choose between books and a boyfriend, I’ll take the books.’

‘Hmm, exactly, but it’s not even that.’ Jasmine’s voice was muffled as she reached inside the fridge for some milk. ‘It’s giving you unrealistic expectations. Real life isn’t like a romance novel.’

‘More’s the pity.’ Emily laughed at the look of exasperation on her friend’s face as she turned back towards her, milk in hand. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to settle.’

‘I’m not talking about settling. I’m talking about expecting some kind of love-at-first-sight encounter where fireworks start exploding in the sky the moment you lock eyes.’ Jasmine wrinkled her nose. She was a data analyst, and if something couldn’t be explained logically, she wasn’t interested. There was nothing she liked better than an algorithm, and the fact that one had matched Jasmine and her now fiancé, Sam, via a dating app made her an even bigger fan.

‘It doesn’t have to be fireworks, I just don’t want to swipe right on an app, that’s all. We could just be in a shop, reaching for the same thing, at the same time and…’

‘Serendipity.’ Jasmine shook her head. ‘Seen it. They reach for the same pair of cashmere gloves and then pow, fireworks, and a connection they can’t deny. Like I keep saying, Em, life isn’t a romance novel, or even a romcom.’

‘Okay then, maybe I’ll be somewhere, doing something really ordinary, like queuing for the loo, and he’ll step aside and let me go ahead. What better way could there be to show who he is?’

‘Yeah, but Matthew Perry already did that to Salma Hayek.’ Jasmine’s voice was monotone. ‘Your Mr Right is going to have to be more original than that.’

‘For someone who thinks romance novels and romcoms are ridiculous, you certainly seem to know a lot about them.’

‘Years of living with you will do that to someone, Em.’ Jasmine’s face softened. ‘I love you, but it’s your film choices that have got me addicted to the serial killer documentaries that freak Sam out so much. It’s just an antidote to all that saccharine sweetness, but I think he’s starting to worry about what he’s getting himself into.’

‘He just has no idea how lucky he is.’ Emily couldn’t resist giving her friend a hug, and she smiled to herself when Jasmine squeezed her back. It had taken a while for her friend to be able to be that demonstrative. They’d met at university and clicked immediately because of a shared sense of humour, although they’d already had very different reputations by then. Jasmine was the ‘ice queen’ according to those not lucky enough to know what good fun she was just below the surface, and Emily was the daydreamer; when her head wasn’t in a book, it was in the clouds. They’d shared a student house from year two onwards, and then a flat when they’d both moved to London after graduation for work. Six years on, they were still as different as ever, but they knew and understood one another’s quirks.

‘He should know how fortunate he is, because I remind him every day how lucky he is that I swiped right instead of left. It was a close-run thing.’

‘You try to pretend it was all algorithms and technology, but we only set up your profile the night you matched with Sam because the open-air concert we were going to was rained off. The same concert where he was supposed to be meeting up with someone else from the app. Then the two of you matched in the meantime and that was it. He never rearranged a date to see her because he’d found you. See, Jas, even with the apps serendipity plays a part.’

‘Only inside the mind of a hopeless romantic like you.’ Jasmine shook her head again, but she was still smiling. ‘At least I’ll get to watch as many murder documentaries as I like while you’re away.’

‘You know you’ll miss me really.’ Emily nudged her in the side. ‘And just in case it gets too much, I’ve loaded up the planner with a romcom for every mood, fromFifty First DatestoThe Proposal.’

‘I’m not going to watch any of them.’ Jasmine gave her a pointed look.

‘We both know you are.’ Emily stuck out her tongue, and Jasmine mirrored the action.

‘Just get yourself on that train back to Port Agnes and leave me to my Netflix serial killers.’ Jasmine’s face was suddenly serious. ‘Although I do need you to promise me that you won’t fall for a stranger who’s waiting to have a documentary like that made about him.’

‘I promise.’ Emily gave her another hug. She really needed to get going if she was going to make it to Waterloo in time for her train home. She might not have found the love of her life yet, but Port Agnes came pretty damn close.

Emily defied anyone not to find Waterloo station romantic. It had its fair share of stressed commuters, admittedly, as well as crying children and their frazzled parents, who were desperate to be almost anywhere else, but that could never tell the full story. Waterloo also had trains bound for the southwest coast, the most beautiful part of the country in Emily’s opinion. She could have gone from Paddington station and got the train direct to Cornwall, but there were two reasons she always went from Waterloo. The first was that changing at Exeter gave her a chance to meet up with her sister, Charlotte, and the second was the huge station clock. It was something that couldn’t be missed, and it had become the perfect meeting point as a result. Sometimes Emily would get to the station early, just so that she could sit on a bench with a view of the clock to observe some of those ‘meet me under the clock’ moments. She’d seen couples meet for the first time on blind dates, greeting each other with ‘It’s nice to meet you in person at last’ and sometimes even going straight in for a kiss. She’d watched reunions she wasn’t ashamed had brought tears to her eyes, and had even witnessed a couple of proposals.

The clock had been there for over a hundred years, and who knew how many couples had experienced their own life-changing moment beneath it. It was no coincidence that its hands were shaped like Cupid’s arrows. There was no time to hang around today though. She needed to be in Exeter by one o’clock to meet Charlotte, before heading on to Port Agnes to spend a week with her family. A whole week where she wouldn’t have to wonder what the hell she’d done agreeing to take a job at the same firm where Jasmine worked. Spending all day doingthings with data that she still didn’t fully understand and which had never been part of the plan for her life. It paid far better than her previous job had, although she’d never have taken it for that reason alone.

Emily had loved working in the city library where she’d got her first job after university, surrounded by books and kindred spirits who loved them as much as she did. The library had hosted a wide range of regular events too, from book clubs to parenting groups, aimed at encouraging people to read to their children and build a foundation for a lifelong love of books. It had made Emily feel like part of a real community, even in the midst of a city where she sometimes felt lost. When the local authority had announced it needed to make cutbacks in order to fill a ten-million-pound hole in its budget, Emily had feared that the library might close, and sadly she’d been right. It had happened to so many libraries across the city and she’d known that finding another job like that would be hard, but it had proved to be impossible. When Jasmine had urged her to apply for a post at her firm, just as a stop gap, Emily had decided to go for it, not intending to stay more than six months. Now here she was, eighteen months into a job that was slowly sucking the life from her soul, one data entry at a time. She’d thought about moving back to Port Agnes, but she’d been so certain that she’d find her purpose in London, and it would have felt like admitting defeat to move back home, no matter how much she sometimes wanted to.

‘Do you need a hand?’ The woman standing in front of Emily on the station platform looked seriously harassed. She had a baby and a toddler in a two-seater pushchair, with a large suitcase wedged underneath, half of it overhanging at the back and bashing her legs every time she tried to walk.

‘Thank you so much.’ The woman seemed to sag with relief. ‘My husband was supposed to be here, but he’s got the flu and Ipromised I’d go back home with the kids for my dad’s seventieth birthday. I thought it would be okay, but I’ve got no idea how I’m going to get these two and our luggage on the train by myself.’

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