Page 43 of The Cornish Cream Tea Holiday
Thea wondered if Charlie, Daniel and their friends had also looked up photos, just like she had, and had imagined – again like her – that they might be able to get somewhere close to those designs. But, she was both disappointed and heartened to see, she couldn’t work out what they were trying to create, either.
Their offering was supposed to be a place nearby called Charmed Cove. Meredith had said she would take Thea there one day, so they could go swimming. Finn had suggested a layout that included the cliffs and the sea, a house halfway up the hill that he said was his aunt’s place, a large, flat rock on the beach, and people swimming. It had sounded ambitious from the start and, now that they were halfway through their two-hour timeframe, it was proving impossible.
‘Our swimmers look like Morph fromHartbeatgot too close to the open fire,’ Thea said. She was the one who had tried to make them, so she was allowed to criticise them.
‘My house could be a house, or a caravan, or a shed, or maybe just a box.’ Ben shrugged, appraising the lump of sand he was working on.
‘We need to get the main shapes and placement right, then we can focus on the detail.’ Finn wasn’t deterred in the slightest. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, and his blond curls were tight in the heat.
They were all covered in sand, and Thea was glad she’d worn her shabbiest vest top and shorts over her swimming costume. She’d tied her hair away from her face, but her neck felt hot below the bun that had slipped down over the course of the afternoon, and was now hanging at her nape. Ben was somehow remaining unflustered in a T-shirt with a San Francisco motif on the front and navy cargo shorts, though his hairline was dark with sweat.
It was too hot to be doing this, Thea decided, so she allowed herself to be distracted. ‘What are you making?’ she called to their neighbours. Daniel had given up completely, sitting on the sand and typing on his phone, while the others kept going.
‘It’s a scene fromEstelle,’ the dark-haired woman explained. ‘With the big spooky mansion, and the clifftops, and the ghost.’
‘I loveEstelle,’Meredith said. ‘Finn’s aunt Laurie has got a small role in the next series. I think she’s due to start filming in August.’
‘Really?’ The sandy-haired man, who Thea sort-of recognised, looked up. ‘Laurie Becker? She’s your aunt?’
Before Finn had a chance to reply, Meredith’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my God, you’re Sam Magee! And you’re – you’re Delilah Forest! They’re actors inEstelle,’she said to Thea.
Both sand sculptures were temporarily forgotten – Thea thought with quite a lot of relief – as everyone introduced themselves, they discussedEstelle, and Finn and Sam talkedabout Laurie’s upcoming role in the series. Thea tried not to fangirl over the actors who, now she knew what they did, seemed to have a slightly unreal glow about them, even though they came across as down-to-earth, no airs or graces in sight.
‘This is shit isn’t it?’ Delilah – Lila – said to Thea. ‘Not the best way to spend a summer afternoon.’
‘I don’t mind the beach part,’ Thea admitted, ‘but this feels like too much hard work for something we’re definitely going to fail at.’
‘Exactly,’ Lila said. ‘Sam’s intent on finishing ours, but the rest of us would be happy to give up – except I suppose I have to be alittlebit loyal to my beloved boyfriend.’ She blew Sam a kiss and he returned it with a smile.
‘How about we get Finn and Sam to do both our sculptures,’ Ben suggested, ‘while the rest of us melt into the background and go for a cream tea instead?’
‘I like your man’s thinking,’ Lila said to Thea.
‘Oh no,’ Thea rushed, ‘he’s not my—’
‘High five!’ Lila held up her hand, and Ben, rather than join in with Thea’s protestations, hit it with his own.
‘Right,’ Daniel said, standing up and dusting down his legs, ‘cream teas all round, then? Maybe that’ll fuel us through to the finish line.’ He headed in the direction of the bus, and Charlie watched him for a moment, before scrambling up and racing after him.
‘This was the right pitch to have,’ Meredith said, sighing happily.
Thea returned to her pitiful sand people, though she was at a loss as to how to improve them, while Sam kept working industriously away and Lila lay on her back and stared up at the sky, humming a tune that Thea couldn’t recognise.
Charlie and Daniel returned with trays laden with cream teas in gingham-patterned cardboard boxes, and English Breakfast tea in takeaway cups, and by the time everyone had gone to wash the sand from their fingers, then dug into the delicious, warm scones – the jam sweet and sticky, the clotted cream decadently thick – the time on the clock had almost run out.
‘Thank you so much,’ Thea said to Charlie and Daniel, wiping the jam from her fingers with a napkin. Everyone agreed that it was just what they needed, and both teams turned back to their sculptures, even though it was clear that whatever visions they’d had at the beginning, the outcomes would fail to get anywhere close.
‘It’s like an episode ofBake Off,’ Thea suggested, her mind now firmly on superior baking. ‘One of those ones where it’s thirty degrees inside the tent and they have to make something with ice cream or tempered chocolate.’
‘Sand doesn’t melt,’ Finn said.
‘But it’s not doing what we want, is it?’ Meredith replied. ‘We should have got one of those really extravagant sand castle buckets and made a settlement of little castles.’
‘Not sure the judges would have gone for that,’ Finn murmured, moving over to where he’d started to create a sunbathing figure, partly hidden by a parasol. It was currently an indistinguishable lump, and Thea was tempted to ask him how he was going to mould a parasol when they were struggling with something as abstract as a cliff.
They soldiered on, but even Finn’s enthusiasm seemed to wane, slipping through his fingers like all those grains of sand.
‘I can’t get this to work,’ he announced, after a long time fiddling with his parasol person.
