Page 22 of A Cornish Love Story
If you got this letter, and you were replying to me, what stories would you tell me?
I love you and I miss you
Yours always, Amelie xx
Chapter Ten
March 2012
‘We could stay in and watch a film.HalloweenorScream, a cheesy romcom, whatever you wanted.’
Mum was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through a Tupperware box full of packets of herbs and spices, most of them probably out of date.
‘It’s Kira’s birthday, so I can’t stay in tonight.’ I pulled my mascara wand through my eyelashes, peering at myself in the hall mirror.
‘It’s already dark out. Where are you going?’
‘Just around the village.’ I couldn’t look at her, and knew I should have come up with a more solid lie, but if I said I was going to Kira’s, there was a chance she would call Kira’s mum and we’d get busted. ‘But there’s five of us. Freddy will be there, and Orwell and Ethan. We’ll be fine, Mum.’
‘You’ve been talking about this Ethan a lot, lately.’ She sipped her tea, and I saw the tremor as she lowered her mug to the table. But she was fine, she’d had three good days, and her friend Helen might be coming over later.
‘Ethan’s been hanging out with us,’ I said, not for the first time. I didn’t add that since our kiss on the beach, we’d tried to get as much time together as we could, just the two of us – which wasn’t actually that much. ‘He’s nice, and he’s new at school, so he needed some friends.’
‘I don’t know him,’ Mum said. ‘You should bring him round.’
‘Maybe. Not tonight though.’ I put on my black jacket and arranged my ponytail artfully over one shoulder. I tried to picture what was waiting for us, the spooky house on top of the cliffs and what it might be like inside.
‘Right.’ My rucksack was heavier than usual because I had my copy ofThe Whispers of the Sands. I wanted to take one of S. E. Artemis’s books, and this was the last one she’d written in that house. ‘I’m off.’
‘Last chance.’ Mum held up a tub of sweet and salty popcorn, her smile wide, as if she was on QVC and trying to sell it to me. ‘I bought this from the farm shop. Thought we deserved a treat.’
I winced, because we could barely ever afford anything from the farm shop. ‘We could have a film night tomorrow?’ I kissed her on the cheek. ‘I can’t abandon Kira on her birthday.’
‘You need to be careful, Georgie.’
‘Of course we’ll be careful,’ I said as the doorbell rang.
Kira was wearing a tiara, her dark hair straightened so it hung in glossy curtains, Freddy had on more eyeliner than I’d ever worn, Orwell was peering past me into our hallway and then there was Ethan, standing at the back, taller than everyone else. His eyes were already on me when I looked at him and smiled.
‘Birthday, baby!’ Kira shouted. ‘Let’s go!’ She pulled me outside and, laughing, I closed my front door, refusing to glance behind me to confirm that Mum was watching us out of the window.
‘Fuck this hill’s steep,’ Freddy panted as we trudged up the road out of the village, towards the dark hulk I would always think of as Tyller Klos. The sea was the midnight blue of fortune-teller curtains, the white froth of every wave luminous below a star-pricked sky. The moon was high, giving the landscape a frosted glow, and a chill wind slunk around us, cooling the sweat on my palms.
‘Are you all right?’ Ethan slipped his hand into mine. ‘You seem tense.’
I laughed. ‘We’re about to go into an abandoned house.Breakin, in fact.’
‘That’s all it is?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
He didn’t reply, and my shoulders sagged. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s Mum stuff.’
‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s good at the moment, health-wise, but she didn’t want me to come tonight.’
‘Because she knows you’re breaking into a dangerous clifftop property that’s been left to the elements for over a decade?’
