Page 1 of A Cornish Love Story
Prologue
March 2012
Dear Connor,
Being apart from you is harder than I dreamed it could be, and I’ve done a lot of dreaming since I met you. Mostly, it’s been about a future together, how we can navigate the differences between our families, which matter to them more than they do to us. From the moment I saw you, I believed that love was the strongest thing of all – that with it, we could survive anything.Love conquers all.It’s a schmaltzy phrase that I used to roll my eyes at, but with us it felt true. Now you’re thousands of miles away, in New York, and neither of us are stupid enough to misunderstand your father: he wants you there, focusing on the business. My faithin us is like the stars that shine over Tyller Klos at night, sometimes obscured by the clouds that roll in, damp and doom-laden, and sometimes burning with a fierce intensity. But it’s always there. I don’t know aboutconqueringanything, but we can hold strong together, can’t we? I need you in my future.
I love you and I miss you.
Yours always, Amelie xx
I let out a deep, satisfied sigh. I had known Ethan Sparks for only a month, and here I was, facing him cross-legged on my bed, reading him passages from my favourite book series, out loud. I flicked my eyes up to his face, then down to the book I held open in my lap.
‘It’s …’ I had been about to dismiss it, which was pointless considering I’d justread it out loud to him, so it was obvious I cared about it,but Ethan spoke over me, as if he had known what I was about to do.
‘It’s very romantic,’ he said. ‘Amelie and Connor, they’re your favourite love story?’ He gestured behind me, to where the entire Cornish Sandsseries by S. E. Artemis was lined up in a neat row of tatty, well-read paperbacks – ten altogether – on the bookshelf above my white MDF desk. My carefully laid-out revision book and highlighters whispered at me – I had arranged the highlighters in rainbow order, because I needed a lot of small wins in my exam prep – but I turned away from them: I was allowed to take a break.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a love story, but not a romance.’
He frowned, idly playing with the frayed hem of his jeans. His socks were wide stripes of blue, green and gold. It was March, and the coastal wind was raw and biting; we were still rugged up in hoodies after our walk on the beach. Ethan’s was forest green, and highlighted the red tinge in his mess of auburn hair. ‘What’s the difference between a love story and a romance?’ he asked.
I narrowed my eyes, pondering. Would he be grateful to have this valuable knowledge? Did eighteen-year-old boys need to know the difference? Would it help him at university? My stomach tightened with unease. We’d had one month and a few stolen kisses, but I didn’t know exactly what we were, or whether I could start thinking about what would happen after the summer, when we went our separate ways. But already, I knew I wanted him in my life. Could he tell that, so quickly, I felt the same way about him as Amelie felt about Connor?
‘A love story doesn’t have to have a happy ending,’ I told him, ‘but a romance does. You read a book that’s been sold as a romance and the characters don’t end up together, it’s basically literary treason.’
‘I can’t believe Amelie and Connor don’t get their happy-ever-after.’ He shook his head. I looked for traces of mockery, and found none. But then Ethan hadn’t once mocked me. We teased each other, and it was like the sun breaking through clouds when he did, because he was serious and focused so much of the time.
I placed the book reverently on the duvet between us and folded my arms. ‘All the other books in the series have happy endings, and then this – the last one, themostromantic one, it just … it doesn’t.’ I was still indignant about it.The Whispers of the Sandshad come out a couple of years after I was born, so it wasn’t as if a sequel was imminent, and a part of me felt silly for caring so deeply about something that was already over a decade old when I discovered it.
S. E. Artemis was a local author, but she hadn’t published anything since Amelie and Connor’s dramatic finale, and I often wondered if her move from Alperwick House on top of the cliffs to somewhere smaller in the village had tied in with her putting away her typewriter. Could she no longer bear to live in the place that had inspired the grand house in her series?
‘Connordoesgo off to America,’ I told Ethan. ‘They write all these wonderful letters to each other – they’re sprinkled throughout the book, because they keep getting torn apart – and the story leads you towards this breathtakingly romantic reconciliation, but then he chooses his dad’s business over Amelie.’
Ethan frowned. ‘That is a pretty bleak ending.’
‘It’s the worst.’ There must have been something in my tone – some of my heartbreak over abook– because Ethan’s chuckle was a low, warming rumble, then he was on his knees on my bed, drawing me into his arms and kissing the top of my head. The gentle brush of his lips sent a tingle right through me.
‘Maybe one day you’ll write the right one,’ he said into my hair, and I leaned back to look at him.
‘I don’t mean for Amelie and Connor,’ he explained. ‘You’re a great writer, Georgie. I can’t wait until you publish your own book. When you’re in control, you can writeyour ownstories with the endingsyouwant.’
I hoped my smile was nonchalant, but thought I was probably a long way off. Ethan and I were still so new, but he already believed in my writing, and the way he spoke – about looking forward to me publishing a book one day – suggested he wanted to be in my future, too. I buried my head in his neck, hugged him tightly and hoped that, unlike Amelie and Connor, our story would have the ending I always wanted; the one that, for me – in books and in life – was non-negotiable. A happy one.
Chapter One
Now
‘Where the flip is my flipping …?’ I scrabbled around on the too-small table, looking for the notebook I was sure I’d had a moment ago.
‘Georgie,’ Spence chided from her armchair, the scratches of her fountain pen rhythmic across the writing paper, her head bent towards the leather laptop writing desk she used when she was replying to her fan mail. Her steel-grey hair was cut in an elegant bob, the plum armchair sagging in a way that Spence, even at eighty-two, was not. Afternoon sun flooded into the room, glaringly intense. June was turning out to be warmer than predicted, and Spence’s west-facing window caught it all and turned her lounge into a fiery spotlit stage as the hours ticked on towards sunset. ‘Do youhaveto?’
‘What? I saidflip. Flipping.Not fu— aha!’ I found the notepad under a pile of other papers that were spreading themselves liberally across the table. ‘You’re not bothered by swearing, anyway.’
‘Swearing is beside the point.’ Spence looked up. ‘Some of us are trying to concentrate, and are you my PA, or are you a journalist for theNorth Cornwall Star?’
‘Right this moment I’m a journalist for theNorth Cornwall Star,screeching towards my deadline, and I’m trying to find my notes from the interview I did with Alperwick’s most successful fisherman, Geraint Trevellan, who brought in a record haul last week. A good news story, at last.’
Spence scoffed. ‘Not for the fish.’
