The Pickled Egg had once been a traditional Cornish pub, and fifty years or so ago it had been at the heart of the tiny hamlet that had once thrived around it, but gradually out-of-towners had snapped up the beautiful whitewashed stone-built cottages that surrounded it, and the little dwelling place had dwindled away, blossoming only once or twice a year when its part-time residents returned. That was until chef Jack Hawkes had taken the place over and made it a destination dining event, which had exploded in popularity after he’d been awarded two coveted Michelin stars last year. Perched on the cliff edge, it had an air of romanticism about it, and it was easy to imagine smugglers climbing up the secret and treacherous steps that had been carved into the cliff face, in the dead of night, looking for a place to hide their booty. Now, though, it was surrounded by a gorgeously designed cottage garden, planted with seasonal vegetables, and even in the heart of winter it looked pretty, filled with grey and green leaves, which seemed silver under the abundance of the lanterns that lit the way to entrance.
‘Mr Fletcher.’ Jack Hawkes himself was there to greet them, and Sue had to do her best not to feel doubly star-struck. In the rare moments that she had time to herself she liked to cook, often from celeb chef Jack Hawkes’s books. Once upon a time, she’d regularly cooked something special once a week for her and Rory, but for the last year or so she’d eaten her creations on her own. Her runaway husband had been increasingly absent, the children were fussy eaters and Cordelia couldn’t be persuaded to eat anything that wasn’t a cheese sandwich.
‘Call me Blake, please,’ Blake said, shaking his hand. ‘This is my friend Sue.’
‘Sue Montaigne, yes, you are rather a legend around these parts,’ Jack said.
‘Oh dear, am I?’ Sue could just imagine the things that were said about her behind her back, something along the lines of ‘the interfering old battleaxe’, she was sure.
‘Of course! You’re a local hero! Everyone knows how you ended up putting up all those people during the floods. I have to admit, I was rather worried that we were going to end up going in the sea, when the wind was at its worse. Our garden is now a foot shorter at the back.’
‘Wow, and I thought we were the ones that had all the hurricanes over in the States,’ Blake said.
‘It’s so pretty,’ Sue gasped in delight, her eyes shining as she looked around the tiny dining room, which had been filled with candles, casting amber pools of light in the darkness. A tree decorated with handmade wooden ornaments stood in the corner, and a real fire crackled merrily in the grate. At the centre of the room stood a table for two, laid with simple white tablecloth and silver cutlery.
‘Please take a seat,’ Jack said. ‘Your first course will be with you directly.’
‘I hope you don’t mind.’ Blake smiled, and Sue did her best not to notice how his blue eyes were fringed with the thickest of lashes. ‘But I took the liberty of asking Jack to prepare a Christmas special menu just for us. He cooked for my last birthday, and it was sublime.’
‘Oh, you had your birthday here, that’s nice,’ Sue said.
‘Actually, I flew him out to LA.’ Blake looked rather charmingly embarrassed by his celebrity, riches and fame.
‘What must life be like for you?’ Sue asked him. ‘Isn’t it strange that you can just buy anything you want in the world? I mean if you don’t have anything to wish for don’t you ever get bored? Your Christmas list must be very short.’
‘Bored?’ Blake laughed ‘No, I don’t get bored. I suppose I would if I just flew chefs around the world to make me razor clam spaghetti, but I try to use my … influence for good. I do a lot of charity work, try to make good movies that people will think about …’ He caught Sue’s sceptical expression. ‘You’re laughing at me,’ he said, but without offence.
‘It’s just the way that you’re talking,’ Sue said. ‘Anyone would think you were Mother Teresa, not an actor.’
Blake chuckled. ‘You’re good for me, Sue, I should keep you around all of the time.’
‘Well, you’d have to move to Poldore for good.’ Sue relaxed as a young man poured wine into her glass. ‘I’d never leave this place.’
‘Really, even if I gave it my best shot to sweep you off your feet, and take you away to a life of glamour and pampering in Beverly Hills, you wouldn’t be tempted?’
‘What would you want me hanging around your mansion for, I’d just get in the way of Elena.’
Blake looked blank.
‘Elena, your girlfriend? Or perhaps you give them numbers to make life easier.’
‘Oh Elena, oh no.’ Blake shook his head. ‘Elena is nothing.’
‘Wow, you really do have contempt for your conquests, don’t you?’ Sue said. ‘She is a person, you know, with feelings and a heart.’
Sue hadn’t meant to let the emotion seep into her voice quite as much as it had, and she lowered her gaze, embarrassed at revealing a little too much of herself.
‘Oh no.’ Blake reached out and briefly touched the back of her hand. ‘No, I mean, she isn’t really my girlfriend, she’s my cover. My PRs hate the speculation about my bachelorhood, so sometimes they hook me up with someone beautiful and we hang out for a week or two. It helps me maintain my privacy. She gets to raise her profile. Elena wants to break into acting and I don’t want my private life splashed all over the papers. So we help each other. She’s a nice girl, but there’s nothing going on between us. We watch a lot of movies and she watches me eat – she can drink me under the table, though.’
Before Sue could ask any more, two waiters appeared, each with a covered dish.
‘To begin, we have the essence of Christmas,’ one of the waiters told her, lifting the covers with a flourish. All at once Sue was breathing in pine trees, cinnamon, somehow snow on a frosty morning, even a fireside cup of tea. When the mist had drifted into the rafters, she was left with a tiny Christmas dinner, with perhaps a quail as its centrepiece, surrounded by micro vegetables, and a few drops of what she was sure Jack Hawkes would call ‘jus’. It look like dinner fit for a doll, and Sue couldn’t help laughing in delight.
‘You like it?’ Blake asked her.
‘I think it’s extremely silly, and rather wonderful.’ Sue nodded.
‘It’s nice to see you smile, Sue,’ Blake told her. ‘You know you don’t smile enough.’
‘How do you know?’ Sue asked him. ‘You’ve spent a total of about forty minutes with me.’
‘Call it a guess,’ Blake said. ‘I don’t smile enough either, I recognise the signs.’
‘Are you secretly gay?’ Sue asked Blake, the question coming out of nowhere. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask, but it’s just with the platonic stand-in girlfriend and the sadness …’
‘No.’ Blake sat back in his chair, and sipped his wine. ‘If I was gay I wouldn’t try to hide it, what would be the point? I’m just … waiting, I guess. For the right woman. And I’ve been waiting a long time, so maybe that makes me a little sad.’
‘But you’re in your forties already,’ Sue said. ‘Haven’t you met the right woman yet?’
‘Have you met the right man?’ Blake asked her.
‘Well, I’m married,’ Sue said, ‘I have three children and several dogs.’
‘That doesn’t exactly answer the question,’ Blake pushed her.
‘Why do you care, Blake?’ Sue asked him. ‘What is it about a fusty middle-aged mother of many like me that interests you?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ Blake said, leaning forward just a little. ‘You interest me. I see you, and you’re so very purposeful, full of intent. And you aren’t fazed by all of this nonsense. You take it all in your stride and talk to me like I’m a regular guy, which I am, under all the money and fame. And talent and good looks.’
Sue couldn’t help but laugh.
‘Besides, I liked that you came up to my door and asked me to help you out with the whole Santa thing. I felt like a normal human being.’
‘You are a human being,’ Sue said. ‘But I don’t suppose you are normal. You might have been once, but now … Now you are as far away from the rest of us as if you were living on the moon.’
‘Sure.’ Blake picked up his glass of wine. ‘And sometimes it’s lonely living on the moon. Plus there’s no atmosphere.’
He looked up at Sue through his lashes and she laughed again.
‘You have a pretty laugh,’ Blake said.
‘A pretty laugh? What’s a pretty laugh?’
‘One that sounds like music.’
‘Anyway.’ Sue put down her cutlery carefully, her tiny Christmas dinner gone in a couple of perfect mouthfuls. ‘If you would excuse me just a moment. I have to make a call. I left my nanny in charge of the kids and the grotto and she’s a well-known psychopath.’
It was cold outside, as Sue made her way down to the wire fence that was all that separated her from the abyss beyond the cliff edge. With one bar of signal on her phone left she called Tamsyn.
‘What the hell are you phoning me for?’ Tamsyn greeted her.
‘How’s the grotto coming?’
‘Fine, there are no undead, the Christmas tree forest looks amazing, but why are you phoning me, are you really that controlling?’
‘I don’t like it here.’ Sue huddled against the chill of the wind whipping off the sea. ‘He’s far too nice to be with. I don’t know what he wants from me. He keeps talking to me. And making me laugh.’
‘Well, that is generally considered to be polite during a dinner date,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Sue, go inside and eat food and look at the nice man. He’s probably just lonely. Think about it, he spends his whole life hanging around with pert beauties, I bet he misses the conversation of a normal mature woman.’
‘Thank you,’ Sue said, dryly.
‘You know what I mean! Come on, it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow, just enjoy tonight as a treat. It doesn’t have to mean something It’s a story you can tell everyone at the next WI meeting. Just relax, don’t read too much into it. Enjoy the moment, Sue.’
Trouble was that was exactly the very thing that Sue was worst at.
‘Your next course,’ the waiter told her as he pulled Sue’s chair out for her. ‘Gold, frankincense and myrrh ham hock pie, finished with gold leaf.’
‘Are you sure that’s edible?’ Sue asked him.
‘Quite sure.’ The waiter smiled. ‘And also it’s an aphrodisiac.’
‘Oh well, we don’t need one of those,’ Sue said, taking a long draught from her glass of wine, which was immediately replenished.
‘No, we’re naturally passionate people,’ Blake assured the waiter.
‘You shouldn’t have said that, tomorrow there’ll be a story in the papers that you are having an affair with a dowdy, middle-aged woman,’ Sue laughed.
‘Hardly dowdy,’ Blake corrected her. ‘And there won’t be any stories in the press. Everyone here has signed binding confidentiality agreements.’
‘I haven’t,’ Sue said.
‘You didn’t need to,’ Blake told her. ‘Look, I know you think I’m the man on the moon, someone who doesn’t know anything about real life, but in my business the only way to survive is to be a good judge of character. I know that you’re a good person, I know I can trust you.’
‘Do you now.’ Sue shook her head, as she looked closely at Blake. Once she saw through his charisma and charm, once she stopped looking at him as the face she had only ever seen up close on a big screen, she could see that he really was just an ordinary man, greying around the temples, wrinkles around his eyes, slightly jowly under his famous jawline. He wasn’t perfect, which somehow made him all the more beautiful to look at.
‘So, tell me about your husband,’ Blake said.
‘He’s left me,’ Sue replied, too tired to come up with lies or excuses. And oddly, the more she said the truth out loud, the less awful it seemed. ‘I haven’t told the children yet. And I don’t know what I’m going to tell them when he isn’t there on Christmas Day.’
‘He hasn’t called to make arrangements?’ Blake took her revelation in his stride, with quiet concern, and Sue supposed that in the world he lived in the end of a marriage was as commonplace as a … Sue realised she had no idea what was commonplace in Hollywood. A face lift perhaps? A round of Botox?
‘Not so far,’ Sue said. ‘I’ve tried to call him a few times, but he’s hiding from me. He does that, sticks his head in the sand so that he doesn’t have to face reality. Although I suppose we have both been doing that for a year or so. Pretending that we can go on, when really we hardly know each other any more.’
‘You seem very … Zen about it,’ Blake said.
‘Just accepting, I think,’ Sue said. ‘My friends want me to get drunk and have revenge sex with strangers, as if!’
‘I don’t advise it,’ Blake said. ‘Sex with strangers is always so soulless. No, when the time is right you should find a lover who will make you laugh, that’s the best cure for a broken heart that I know.’
‘Has your heart been broken?’ Sue asked him.
‘Not yet,’ Blake said. ‘But I’ve got a feeling it’s about to be.’
Sue blushed as their dishes were cleared away, and replaced with a perfectly round, steaming Christmas pudding. As Sue dug into it with her spoon, little orbs of coloured lights floated out into the room, like tiny little fairies, floating around their heads.
‘How has he done that!’ Sue exclaimed, delighted, as she tried to catch an orb in her hand.
‘No idea, but it’s wonderful. Do you love it?’ Blake asked her.
‘Oh, Blake, I love it. It’s magical!’ Sue’s eyes met his across the table and before she knew what she was doing she had reached out and taken his hand in hers. ‘Thank you so much for this, you just don’t know how much I needed a little magic in my life this Christmas.’
‘You know what—’ Blake brought her fingers to his mouth ‘—I think I have some idea.’
‘Wow.’ Blake looked up at the turrets and ramparts of Castle House as they soared into the starry sky. ‘This place is amazing.’
‘Yes.’ Sue nodded, pressing the flat of her palm against a stone pillar. ‘Yes, it is. Well, Blake, thank you so much for dinner, it really was wonderful.’ She offered her hand, but Blake didn’t take it.
‘My pleasure,’ Blake said. ‘Can I come in? Coffee? Maybe a tour?’
Sue took a backwards step up the stairs. ‘Oh, it’s rather late and … um …’
‘Of course.’ Blake shook his head. ‘Another time.’
Sue waited, watching as Blake headed across the courtyard to the portcullis.
‘Wait!’ she called softly after him. He turned, his hands in his pockets. ‘Well, it’s just why, why do you want to come in? Is it really for coffee and a tour?’
‘Is that what you want it to be?’ Blake took two or three steps back towards her.
‘I want to know what you are thinking,’ Sue said. ‘What this is really all about.’
‘Well.’ Blake took another two steps. ‘It started out being about wanting to take a really good, kind, generous-hearted woman out for a special evening, because I have heard about all the good things you have done, and how much people think of you round here.’
‘Really?’ Sue was surprised. ‘I always thought they all thought I was quite annoying.’
‘Oh they do,’ Blake said. ‘They love you too, though.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘And then—’ Blake took another step closer ‘—I wanted to take away some of the pain you are feeling now, just for a little while. Take your mind off of all the things that are happening, because I liked you the minute you marched right up to my door, and I don’t want you to feel sad.’
‘Thank you,’ Sue said. ‘You are very kind.’
‘And then …’ Blake was now standing back just one step below her. ‘Then you laughed, and your eyes sparkled and your cheeks flushed, and the tops of your breast quivered, and you reached out and took my hand, and I thought …’ He sighed deeply. ‘I thought I’d very much like to kiss you.’
Sue shook her head. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said. ‘It’s too much.’
‘Kissing you?’ Blake nodded. ‘Maybe we should have a couple more dates, first. How about we go see a movie, in Monaco? I’ll fly us out to my next premiere.’
‘No, I mean this, flirting. Firstly, I am still a married woman, even if the husband in question is AWOL. Secondly, please don’t pretend that you think I am attractive and kissable, because you feel sorry for me. I know that I am not, well, at least not by your standards.’
‘How do you know that?’ Blake moved up a step, so that Sue had to look up at him, her back pressed against the stone pillar. ‘How can you possibly know who I find kissable and who I don’t?’
‘Because you are you, and everyone is perfect where you come from, not short, and a bit dumpy with frizzy ginger hair and a pointy nose! Please, Blake, don’t mock me. Be my friend. I can believe that you want to be my friend, but I can’t believe that you want to kiss me. You can understand that, can’t you?’
Blake looked into Sue’s eyes for what seemed like the longest time, and she thought to herself that when the sun rose in the morning, they would find a pool of liquid where she was standing now, because if she held his gaze for a moment longer she would surely melt like so much chocolate.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Sure, I’ll be your friend, for now. But in the meantime …’
Sue drew a sharp breath in as Blake’s head bent towards her, and his firm full lips met hers. He didn’t touch her, or hold her anywhere else, they were simply joined in a kiss, a wonderful sensuous, soft kiss, and it was a second or two after she heard a deep low moan of desire that Sue realised it was coming from her. Flustered, she broke away.
‘Blimey,’ she said, composing herself.
Blake laughed. ‘No woman has ever had that reaction before.’
‘You are a very good kisser,’ Sue complimented him. ‘Now, I really must go to bed, so much to do. Big day tomorrow! Cheerio!’
She didn’t make any further attempts to shake his hand or say goodnight, or indeed engage in any form of polite conversation. Instead, she scuttled inside, and slammed the huge door behind her, then locked and bolted it as if it were Count Dracula himself outside, on the point of ravishing her. Once the door was secured, she leant her back against it and took a long deep breath.
The trill of her phone in her bag made her jump and Sue scrambled for it, certain that it was Blake, but when she saw the name on the screen, her heart sank. It was Rory.