Czytaj książkę: «The Cornish Café Series»

CHAPTER ONE

‘Oi! Demi, I think they’re coming.’

Polly’s shout reaches me as I’m trying to stuff a king-size duvet into its cover in the bedroom of Kilhallon House. Our PA/resort manager has worked for the Penwiths for decades and lives in a cottage behind the main farmhouse. It’s now almost ten a.m. and I’ve been up since seven, trying to fit in a list of jobs as long as my arm – including the half-hour first thing this morning that didn’t count as work but did involve getting hot, sweaty and pleasantly tired with Cal.

‘Demi! Get in here!’

The latch door bangs against the oak frame, making me jump. Polly has a voice that can shake walls that have stood for three hundred years but I don’t think she caused this particular earthquake. Abandoning the duvet – I’d got it the wrong way round anyway, I’m so wound up – I hurry across the landing and into the spare bedroom. The window is wide open and Polly is leaning out, a pair of binoculars clamped to her eyes. She obviously hasn’t noticed the wind howling around the house and driving sleet onto the window ledge.

Shivering, I join her at the window. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Looking out for them. Like you should be.’

‘Well, they’re not due for ages and it’s freezing in here.’

Lowering the binoculars, Polly turns away from the window, red marks around her eyes. ‘You youths. No hardiness. Generation snowflake.’

‘Give me the binoculars. Please.’ I say, grabbing them from Polly and risking being turned into a slush puppy as I lean out of the window for a better look.

‘Oh sh—’

‘Told you,’ she declares behind me.

A large black 4x4 with darkened windows rattles over the cattle grid at the top of the track that leads from the main road down to Kilhallon Park. At least it’s not a flashy sports car so it shouldn’t get stuck in the giant pothole that opened up during the Christmas floods. Cal still hasn’t had time to fill it in yet … I’ll have to text him to let him know our wedding couple are early.

‘It must be them: Bonnie and Clyde,’ says Polly, using the codenames she coined for Lily and Ben.

My heart sinks. ‘Not yet. I’m not ready.’ Through the binoculars, I spot the personalised number plate and the driver in the front seat. He has a buzz cut, is built like a rugby player and is definitely not Ben. The passenger seat is empty and I can’t make out anything through the blacked-out rear windows but I bet the stars are in there. It’s not one of our half-term guests’ cars and my cafe, Demelza’s, isn’t open to the public today. And while I was expecting a frozen shellfish delivery later, I don’t think the fishmonger has swapped his van for a personalised BMW 4x4 yet.

I lower the binoculars, trying to tame the butterflies – make that the fat, furry moths – beating their wings inside my stomach. ‘I suppose it could be someone on business, or a potential guest wanting to look around, but I don’t recognise the car.’

Polly huffs. ‘Bet you a tenner it’s Bonnie and Clyde.’

‘You don’t have to call them Bonnie and Clyde when it’s just us around. You can use their real names.’

Polly has her hands on her hips. She’s not a big woman and her ash-blonde bob makes her look younger than her fifty-six years but there’s something solid about her that can be very intimidating if you don’t know her. Or even if you do. ‘They’ll always be Bonnie and Clyde to me,’ she declares. ‘I can’t think of them as anyone else – and why they want to hold their wedding here is beyond me. They’ll doubtless take one look at the place in this weather and decide to head straight back to London.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘I speak as I find.’

‘It’s not really a wedding. Lily and Ben are calling it a “handfasting” because we don’t have a civil wedding licence for Kilhallon. They’re going to make things legal at their local register office when all the media fuss has died down.’

‘Hmm. Right funny way of going about things if you ask me.’ Polly carries on muttering as she wrestles with closing the window against the gale. She works hard and genuinely cares about me and Cal, sometimes too much, to the point of interfering. She also has no problem with voicing her opinions, whether we like it or not.

The howls of the wind die down and Polly throws me a grim but encouraging smile, as if I’m off to get my head chopped off. ‘You’d better go and meet them, but I shouldn’t bring them into reception. That stray cat that keeps hanging around decided to use the floor as a litter tray earlier and I haven’t had chance to clean up yet, what with looking out for these actors.’

I wrinkle my nose. ‘Any idea where Cal’s got to?’

Polly drills me with one of her ‘looks’. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since last night. You should know his whereabouts more than I do, anyway …’

I should say now that Polly doesn’t entirely approve of Cal and me living together. Not, I think, because he’s my boss and the owner of Kilhallon. Not for any moral reasons either – Polly’s no churchgoer – but she seems to have some nutty idea that ‘it’ – i.e. us – will end in tears one day. She’s also taken it upon herself to act as Cal’s mum since his own mother passed away years ago. And, in a roundabout way, she’s become a bit of a surrogate mother figure to me as well, though I never asked her to. My mum passed away and I was cut adrift from the rest of my family for a while. I know she’s only being kind and she does have a heart of gold but …

Maybe it will end in tears, and maybe it won’t. Cal and I don’t discuss the long term. We’ve both had things happen in our lives that have taught us to be wary of planning too far ahead and making promises we can’t keep.

And for now, everything’s going fine.

Or will be, if I can track him down.

‘I haven’t seen him since he went off to the waste site after breakfast. He promised he’d be back at Kilhallon to meet Bonnie and Clyde – gah, I mean Lily and Ben, you’ve got me at it now.’

Polly smirks in satisfaction at my slip-up.

‘Do you mind making sure Mitch stays in the farmhouse while I meet Lily and Ben?’ I say, feeling annoyed with myself and with Cal. ‘He’s had his walk and breakfast so he should be happy to stay in the warm until they’ve gone.’

Not everyone likes dogs and I don’t want Mitch greeting our guests too ‘enthusiastically’ or going AWOL like he did in a fog last autumn. That was terrifying and both Mitch and I ended up falling down one of the old mine working holes on the cliffs. Luckily, we both escaped with nothing more than sore legs, although it could have been much worse.

‘I suppose I could keep an eye on the hound alongside my other jobs,’ Polly grumbles.

‘Thanks!’

Leaving Polly muttering about ‘pampered pooches and celebrities’, I skip downstairs and grab an old waxed jacket from the vestibule. I whizz out to the car park via the reception area at the front of Kilhallon House, ready to greet the VIPs. The wind whistles around the farmhouse and cuts through me. Tiny pools of slush lie in hollows in the gravel and hailstones pile up against the former farm buildings that we now use for storage. I wouldn’t be surprised if Polly’s chickens are wearing thermal undies. Lily and Ben could hardly have picked a worse time to visit. I only hope they have good imaginations.

While I wait for them to roll into the car park, I have a quick glance around the yard outside our reception. Cal must be around somewhere because his battered old Land Rover is parked in its usual place in front of the barn that serves as our storage and maintenance shed. Then again, I suspect he might be trying to avoid this meeting. Celebrities and their lives hold about as much interest for him as a tractor engine does for me. I mean, can you believe he hadn’t even heard of Lily Craig and Ben Trevone?

Then again, Cal hasn’t seen a lot of TV or films over the past few years. He was involved in his own real-life drama in Syria, one that had a tragic ending for his friend Soraya and her daughter, Esme. At Christmas, Cal finally opened up to me about the terrible events that led to Soraya’s death and the disappearance of Esme in the conflict. I was shocked but I think sharing the burden has brought us closer.

In fact, everyone at Kilhallon and in the local area had to pull together over the Christmas and New Year period after a tidal surge destroyed many homes in the nearby village of St Trenyan. We provided temporary accommodation for some of the homeless families, including my dad, his partner, Rachel, and their brand-new baby, Freya. They’re living in a rented flat in St Trenyan at the moment while their own home is repaired after the floods.

That disaster was such an awful business but the silver lining was that it put me back in contact with my estranged father. Freya has given us all the chance to meet up since then and rebuild some bridges. She’s just adorable and it’s strange – in a good way – to see my dad so besotted with her. I keep wondering if he was like that with me once, before everything went downhill for us all. I’ve also made contact again with my older brother, Kyle. He’s in the army and I hadn’t seen him for ages, but we’ve now exchanged emails so the ice is broken.

We’ve moved on in other ways over the winter. Cal has completed the renovation of our final set of cottages so now we have eight in total, plus eight yurts which we’ll pitch again in our glamping field ready for Easter. Our main camping field has another thirty pitches and will also open again at Easter. It’s strange to see the cottage I used to live in redecorated in a simple but contemporary style. The flowery 1970s decor has been painted over with neutral tones and the creaking furniture replaced with inky blue sofas and functional wood. Cal’s done a great job on a budget but I can’t help feeling he’s removed a little too much of the quirky personality of what was my first real home for years. Moving out of it and into the farmhouse with Cal was a big step for me as it meant losing some of my hard-won independence.

The BMW rolls into the car park and there’s still no sign of Cal and no answers to my frantic texts. Luckily, I know that Nina, one of my staff, has arrived early at the cafe to help with the refreshments so Cal and I can focus on looking after Ben and Lily. I’ve texted her to warn her they’re early so at least we’ll have a cosy welcome ready for them in Demelza’s.

There’s still not a whiff of Cal so it looks like I’m on my own – again. Breathe.

The gleaming BMW comes to a halt next to Cal’s dilapidated Defender. Fixing on my cheeriest, sunniest smile, I march over as a man mountain with a shaved head eases out of the driver’s seat.

He opens the rear passenger door wide and stands back.

Two long, slim legs encased in black skinny jeans emerge from the door and a guy a few years older than me drops neatly down to the gravel. He wears a black leather jacket over a black sweater, with Stan Smiths on his feet that are almost as white as his teeth. He glances around him. I can’t see his eyes because of his Aviators but I can see myself reflected in them: my hair’s a wild tangle, my face as pale as the moon framed by the furry trim of my hood.

Pushing the hood off my hair, I come face to face with Ben Trevone, the ludicrously handsome action-hero lead of Knife Edge, heart-throb star of Desperate Poets and voice of a heroic sea otter in the Oscar-nominated animation Ocean Furries. Unlike Cal, I do go to the cinema with my mates, although I admit I borrowed Ocean Furries from one of the kids who was evacuated here after the Christmas floods so I could swot up on Ben Trevone’s latest film.

With a smile that makes my jaw ache, I hold out my hand. ‘Welcome to Kilhallon!’

Ignoring my hand, Ben looks around him. His dazzling teeth gleam against a tan he definitely didn’t get on a Cornish beach. He is very handsome in a smooth, ‘boy band’ way, though not as hunky as he looked in Knife Edge. On the other hand, I’m glad he isn’t armed to the teeth with an AK-47 and a selection of knives.

‘So this is, like, it?’ he asks in an accent that’s a mix of his native Cornish and an American twang – which you don’t hear every day, especially not in St Trenyan.

Panicking inside, I shove my hands in my pockets. ‘Well, er … like, yes.’

He switches his focus from me to the farmhouse and the barn and Cal’s Land Rover. We’ve done a lot of work on Kilhallon but suddenly every slightly wonky plank, moss-covered roof and rusty bumper pops out at me.

‘Uh huh,’ he says.

‘Are we there yet, Ben?’ a thin, small voice pipes up from the far rear passenger seat. Oh, so maybe Lily Craig isn’t with him after all and he’s decided to bring his little sister.

‘Seems like it,’ he says, without turning around as their minder toes a puddle with his biker boot.

‘Can I come out now, then?’ the little voice trills from the depths of the car.

‘If you want, babe, but it’s enough to freeze your bollocks off,’ Ben calls back, craning his neck to look beyond me towards the sea.

‘It is very cold today. There’s been a storm, you see, but in summer, it’s gorgeous up here and I’m sure the weather will be fantastic for your wedding.’

‘Handfasting.’ Ben spits out the word in his Knife Edge voice. Given that he played a robotic ex-soldier primed to wreak revenge on his enemies, I find this slightly disturbing.

‘Handfasting. Of course. As it’s a bit … um … chilly, why don’t we go straight to Demelza’s, our onsite catering centre?’ I babble, making it up as I go along. ‘My team will have hot chocolate and cakes waiting.’

‘Tell her I don’t do dairy,’ the voice pipes up.

Oh God, it must be Lily.

‘Lily doesn’t do dairy,’ says Ben solemnly.

‘I know and I’ve planned for that. There are plenty of dairy-free alternatives at the cafe and we can also discuss the menus and decorations for your celebration. We’ll be much cosier there. You don’t even have to get out of the car, I can show you the way,’ I call above a fresh gust of wind so that the little voice can hear me.

Ben glances over my head towards the track that leads down to Demelza’s, then at his minder.

‘That OK, Harry?’

Harry, the minder, nods slowly. His head is shaven like Jake Gyllenhaal’s in Jarhead but he’s at least a head taller and three stone heavier than Jake must be. The material of his long-sleeved grey T-shirt strains over his huge biceps as if he has a grapefruit stuffed down there. He makes Ben look like a Munchkin.

‘OK, guys, let’s do this,’ says Ben as if he’s about to confront the forces of darkness rather than a hot chocolate and one of my scones.

Ben climbs back inside the BMW and Harry shuts the door, leaving me shivering on the gravel. Harry then opens the passenger side door. He says nothing but nods at me through his own black shades, which must surely be illegal for driving in our dark Cornish winters. Mind you, for all I know he could be wearing eyeliner and false lashes under them, which would be very, very funny.

Squashing down a giggle, which is definitely from nerves not excitement, I take the hint and climb inside the BMW. I sink into the leather seats and Harry points a single finger at the track that leads from the side of the car park down to the cafe. Why doesn’t he speak? Maybe he can’t speak? Feeling slightly guilty in case he really is a mute, I nod vigorously and point in the same direction.

And we’re off, bumping gently down the short track to the cafe. No one says a word but I’m thinking plenty of them. One, Cal had better turn up pretty soon or I will kill him, and two, when he does turn up I will kill him anyway for getting us into this totally weird wedding situation.

Crossing my fingers, toes and any other bits, I tell myself that the only way is up from this beginning. Demelza’s has been closed for a few days as it’s our quietest time of year. Thank goodness I laid out the wedding presentation last night and didn’t leave it until today. Beyond that, I’m praying that Nina and Shamia have had time to get the food on as I promised our guests.

Lights glow in the windows of the cafe, which was converted from an old storage barn last summer. Its stone walls look strong and welcoming against the backdrop of crashing waves and the wild Atlantic swell. Harry stops the car and jumps out. He holds a huge umbrella over Ben and Lily as they make the dash from the car to the cafe in the driving sleet. I hope Demelza’s can work its magic on our frosty couple, as it has on so many people, but I have a feeling these two will be much tougher nuts to crack.