Cassie sat in the back seat, watching The Tale of Peter Rabbit on Velvet’s DVD monitor as Suzy swore at the slow drivers in front and Archie passed round the sandwiches. They had decided on the scenic route, hoping to point out Stonehenge to Velvet as they passed, but she was already asleep by then and Cassie was too engrossed in the film to look up.
By the time she did, they had passed through the small, winding valleys of Somerset, over the cow-dotted fields of Devon and were coming into the vast, domed moorlands of Cornwall, which sloped down to the sea in the distance. Everywhere she looked, ancient dry-stone walls ran ahead and around them like lines of mice, the now-familiar sight of white wind turbines revolving slowly in the breeze. Some tumbledown ruins were all that remained of the historic tin mines Cornwall had been so famed for in centuries past, and they drove through tiny villages where old-fashioned petrol pumps had long since been boarded up. In spite of the big sky above them, Cassie had a feeling of the walls of the world closing in.
‘I can’t believe you’ve never been down here before,’ Suzy said, catching Cassie’s eye in the rear-view mirror.
Cassie shrugged. ‘I guess you don’t know what you don’t know. I was always back in Hong Kong for the summer holidays.’
‘Henry and I used to spend our entire summers down here. We’d be as wild as weasels by the time we had to go back to school. Mum never saw us from sunup to sundown.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t begin to imagine being that relaxed with Velvy now.’
‘Different times,’ Archie murmured, trying to retune the radio to anything other than static. ‘God, are we by the coast or actually in the middle of the Atlantic?’
‘Get used to it, babe. There’s practically no mobile signal down here either, and I’ve left all the laptops and iPads at home. Cass has too, so don’t think you can steal hers,’ she said quickly as she saw Archie’s look of absolute horror. ‘The office won’t be able to get hold of you even if they want to. Ha!’ Suzy chuckled triumphantly. ‘You. Shall. Not. Work.’
‘Dear God, woman, what if they need to—’
‘They won’t! I’ve told your boss that if he even thinks about contacting you in the next month, I will have him tried for attempted manslaughter.’
Archie dropped his head in his hands.
They had turned off the A303 now and the roads were becoming significantly narrower, bosky hedgerows looming overhead at seven, even eight feet high, with multicoloured and scented profusions of wild garlic, giant daisies, elderflower and honeysuckle.
They drove through Delabole – home to the world-famous black slate – a smile spreading on Cassie’s lips as she saw a group of white-clad morris dancers sitting in the garden of a pub and enjoying a beer, their batons on the grass by their feet, the bells at their knees hanging silent for the moment.
‘So when’s Gem coming down?’ Cassie asked, catching a glimpse of the sea as they passed the signs for Port Isaac.
‘Germ? She’s already there,’ Suzy said in a sulky voice. ‘They went the morning after the party, would you believe it? Lord’s been pining for saltwater apparently, poor dolphin.’
‘Gem. And Laird,’ Archie said in mild rebuke. ‘Behave.’
Suzy’s eyes met Cassie’s again in the mirror. ‘Honestly, me and my big mouth,’ she muttered. ‘Why did I even mention we were coming down here? She never would have thought about it if I hadn’t said. She hasn’t been down here since I don’t know when.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re so stressed about it. Gem’s not so bad, just a little wired,’ Archie said calmly. ‘And Laird’s really very interesting.’
‘I’m stressed because Mum’s stressed,’ Suzy replied hotly. ‘She thinks Gem’s making a huge mistake, and now I’ve got to help her organize a wedding for a marriage that none of us believes in, as well as look after you.’
‘I am fine,’ Archie said, leaning over to squeeze Suzy’s knee. ‘Just chill. Otherwise you’ll be the one who needs looking after.’
Suzy harrumphed. ‘Oh great. So I need looking after, and you do, Cass too. At this rate, Velvet’s going to be in charge.’
Cassie looked across at the sleeping toddler, her rosebud mouth parted, her eyelids flickering lightly as she dreamed. She resisted the urge to stroke her cheek and risk waking her.
‘Pah. Don’t include me in your mass collapse. I am officially A-OK,’ Cassie declared, giving a thumbs-up gesture in the mirror that fooled no one. If she’d been left reeling by the manner of Henry’s departure, she had been flattened by Gil’s news, and her puffy, deadened eyes and white skin told an entirely different story of sleepless nights and lack of appetite, which had seen Suzy commandeer the situation once and for all and ring Zara herself to clear Cassie’s work diary for the next fortnight.
They turned off towards Rock, noticing a marked upturn in the smartness of the houses as they drew nearer. Even 1960s bungalows – the kiss of death anywhere else in the country – had been revamped with New England-style clapboarding in cool greens and Scandinavian greys, smart teak gates blocking off Chelsea tractors and only the wild flowers growing out of the old stone walls giving any indication of the bucolic wildness that surrounded them.
Cassie pressed her nose almost to the glass as they passed a small ribbon of shops – a butcher’s, deli, fish shop, bakery and some boutiques. Slightly further on, there was the post office, newsagent, hairdresser’s and an estate agent’s, lots of signs for local galleries and a turn-off to a small cove.
They took a right turn at the top of a hill and swept out of the village again, driving beside fields banked high above them with long grasses that bent low as the wind danced on their heads. The lane was impossibly narrow here, single-vehicle access only, with just a few passing places, and they had to wait several minutes as a decorator’s van coming in the opposite direction led a charge of cars and camper vans making their way back from the beach, surfboards strapped to the roofs.
‘Come on, come on,’ Suzy said impatiently under her breath, her fingers tapping on the steering wheel, pulling out quickly before a Land Rover she could see at the back decided to tack on to the end. Which it did.
‘Uh, Suze,’ Cassie said as the two vehicles headed towards each other, the other driver – a blonde in designer shades – looking every bit as determined as Suzy that she wouldn’t be the one reversing all the way back.
‘No problemo,’ Suzy said, just as they were practically within kissing distance of the other car’s bumper. Suzy gave a triumphant smile – and the bird – to the blonde, swinging the car left into a sweeping driveway that led to the only two properties, seemingly, on the entire lane. ‘Home sweet home.’
Cassie blinked as they passed two signs for ‘Butterbox Farm’ and ‘Snapdragons’.
‘Is this it?’ she asked, peering at a modest whitewashed 1950s house, situated just inside the gates to the right. There was a large tarmacked driveway and two cars parked outside – a dented metallic-blue Renault Clio and a sleek black Jeep.
‘Nope. That’s Snapdragons. That’s where Gem and Laird are staying.’
‘Why are they in there and not Butterbox?’ Archie frowned, before taking a look at Suzy’s too-innocent expression as they continued up the drive. ‘Oh God, what did you say to her?’
‘Nothing! I simply pointed out that we have a very young child with us and . . . you know, if they value sleep . . .’
‘Suzy! Velvet’s been sleeping through the night since she was three months!’
‘I know, but she’s a child – there are never any guarantees, are there? And Gem and Laird are still practically teenagers themselves. I bet they sleep till noon and go to bed at dawn. It just wasn’t practical to think that we could all sleep under the same roof for a summer.’
‘You are a nightmare,’ Archie sighed, as Cassie tried to suppress a smile.
‘Plus I pointed out to her you could keel over at any moment. This isn’t just a whimsical holiday by the sea for us, you know. We are here for the very serious business of convalescence. You need your rest.’
Archie twisted back in his seat to face Cassie. ‘Are you going to deal with her or shall I?’
Cassie laughed as they drove through a second, grander set of gates with carved stone pineapples sitting atop the pillars. ‘Oh, cool,’ she breathed, taking stock of a much larger white house with more windows than she could count. It wasn’t that old – maybe 1930s – or even that pretty, but it sat diagonally in its plot, the rear aspect facing west over fields where dairy herds grazed and down to the sea – Cassie guessed it would be a ten-minute walk, tops, to the beach. Nestled in a nook, between the fields and the beach, she could just make out the tip of a small church steeple.
‘Oh, Suze, it’s gorgeous,’ Cassie said admiringly, undoing her seat belt and hopping out of the car to get a better look. The breeze lifted her hair off her neck immediately and she turned her face to the sky, instinctively wondering if Henry could feel it too – but no, she realized, in the next breath. He was in the southern hemisphere on the southern oceans. His sky was black right now.
‘Leave the bags, Arch,’ Suzy said, as he wandered round to the boot. ‘I’ll get them. You take Velvet in and open up.’
‘You’ll be peeing standing up next,’ he grumbled, taking the keys off her and hoisting their drowsy daughter into his arms.
Suzy watched him walk off, her face tense. ‘He’s going to be a terrible patient,’ she said in an uncharacteristically small voice and seemingly to herself, before remembering Cassie standing beside her. ‘And Henry buggering off to God knows where hasn’t helped,’ she said more loudly. ‘Arch has been in a bad mood since he left. My brother’s sense of timing is just classic. Classic.’
‘Mmmm,’ Cassie said, leaning into the boot and hauling out the heaviest bag as a distraction. There had still been no contact between them since he’d gone: no texts when he’d been in Sydney, and mobiles wouldn’t work, of course, on the open seas. ‘Well, we’re four days down already. Only eighty-two to go,’ Cassie said lightly.
‘That’s the spirit,’ Suzy said, slapping her heartily on the back, so that Cassie almost fell head first into the car boot.
They trooped into the house together, Cassie’s eyes wide as she took in the winding staircase, which covered three walls, the old stripped pine floors that needed to be re-oiled. The furniture was modest – armchairs and sofas with loose bleached linen covers in the sitting room, spoke-wheel wooden chairs and a refectory table in the kitchen – and the linings of the backs of the royal-blue velvet curtains in the sitting room were practically decayed from decades of enduring the blaze of the setting sun.
‘How long has this house been in the family, did you say?’ Cassie asked.
Suzy dropped the cool bags in the doorway and inhaled deeply, a smile on her face and her hands on her hips as she took in the familiar scene. ‘Nana and Grumpy retired here in the 1960s. Me and Henry were baptized in the local church and spent every summer down here.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, the tension in her shoulders slackening momentarily. ‘Damn, it’s good to be back. I always forget just how much I love it here until I step back in again and then – wham! Never want to leave.’
‘Well, you have to. I need you in London. It wouldn’t be the same without you,’ Cassie said firmly, worried that her best friend might be getting ideas.
‘Or we could all move down here together,’ Suzy said, scooping up the bags again and walking through to the kitchen. Velvet was eating a spider web – hopefully minus the spider – as Arch went around opening all the doors and windows.
‘Oh yes, I can just see it. You’d have me and Henry in Snapdragons as your gatekeepers while you and Arch played lord and lady of the manor.’
‘Well, I just figured you’d have had enough of playing the chatelaine for one lifetime,’ Suzy winked, hoisting the bags of Ocado groceries, which she’d had delivered at home an hour before they left, onto the worktop.
‘That’s true,’ Cassie agreed, walking over to the glazed back doors and stepping out onto the terrace. She could almost taste the salt in the air; a herd of black-and-white cows munched at the grass not fifty feet away. ‘So how far is it to the beach from here?’ she called back into the house.
Suzy looked up from stocking the fridge. ‘If you’re running – which we always were, when we were little – six minutes. As a grown-up with all the bags, more like ten. That’s Daymer Bay you can see from here.’
‘Oh, I’ve heard of that,’ Cassie murmured, stretching lightly and turning back to the room. It was low-ceilinged but with enormous square footage, though it clearly hadn’t been touched in thirty years. Old 1980s pine cabinets had been fitted against three of the walls in a U-shape, and a small island unit with cream melamine-topped work surfaces stood in the middle. A wipe-clean lino floor – good for sweeping up sand, no doubt – covered what presumably were the lovely boards she’d seen in the hall, and the fridge was white, unbelievably without an ice dispenser. How old school! What next? Cassie wondered – a TV that still stood on the floor? ‘Suze, I just love it here.’
Suzy flashed her a beaming grin. ‘Yeah? Me too. I know it needs loads doing. It’s basically an interior designer’s wet dream, but I don’t need it to be spangly and perfect. Not like Kelly and Nooks would – can you just imagine?’ she asked, one eyebrow arched and shaking her head. ‘It’s all about that, for me,’ she said, pointing to the view.
‘Agreed.’
‘Come on, I’ll show you the bedrooms.’ Suzy, abandoning the vegetables, scooped Velvet into her arms and they sauntered up the long and winding staircase, Suzy pointing out the numerous bedrooms – all of them chintzy, with swags at the windows, sofas at the end of the beds and kidney-shaped dressing tables.
The place was so enormous there was no chance of Velvet ever having been able to disturb Gem and Laird, but the damage was done now, and she supposed they probably preferred having their own private space. She didn’t imagine Gem was ever going to make a fortune from yoga, and Laird looked like he’d grown up in a coconut shy – or at least would have wanted to – so maybe even the little house was exciting to them.
Cassie’s room was one of the best, situated at the back beside the master suite, with a long balcony that faced west. It was easier up here to see down to the beach and she stood for a long time looking out to the water, her mind constantly drifting back to her fiancé, who was, at this very minute, drifting too.
The tide was out and she could make out the dots of people still enjoying the last of the afternoon. A field on the far side had been given over to parking – the windscreens glistening in the sun – and several families were playing a game of rounders.
She helped Suzy draw a bath for Velvet in a bathroom so huge the bath sat in the middle of the room with at least seven feet of space around it on all sides, and Suzy didn’t seem to care whether or not the geranium-pink deep-pile carpet got wet.
Archie called up that he was going to bike over to the store in the nearest village, Trebetherick, to buy some chicken and milk – which Suzy had deliberately left off her shopping list in case of traffic and high temperatures – scooting out before Suzy could remind him (as if he needed it) not to move up past third gear or come out of the saddle. ‘Gentle exercise, the doctor said, Arch!’ Suzy barked after him as he shot down the drive like he’d been catapulted.
The girls sat on the terrace, sneakily drinking a glass of rosé before he came back. Suzy was adamant that they should all abstain from drinking in front of him when he wasn’t allowed alcohol, but that wasn’t the same thing as abstaining entirely and Cassie wouldn’t have been remotely surprised if Suzy had drawn up a list of things for Archie to do every evening at seven o’clock.
‘I’d have thought Germ would have raced up the drive to see us the second she heard the car,’ Suzy sniffed, slightly put out.
‘She’s probably at the beach, isn’t she?’
‘I suppose. Saying goodbye to the sun by plaiting her arms and legs.’
Cassie chuckled. ‘You’re just jealous because you have all the suppleness of that telegraph pole.’
‘If only it was the girth,’ Suzy smiled, patting her gently padded hips, which still carried traces of Velvet’s baby weight.
‘There’s nothing wrong with your girth.’
‘Oh no? Listen, if I went and stood next to that cow over there, you can bet your bottom dollar it would suddenly feel like it was having a thin day and want to put on its skinniest jeans.’
Cassie laughed, stretching out on the white plastic sunlounger and determinedly ignoring the slightly musty smell coming from the green striped cushions.
‘So . . .’
Cassie looked over to find Suzy watching her closely. ‘So, what?’
‘You seem brighter today.’
‘I feel great. Who wouldn’t?’ Cassie asked rhetorically, motioning to the setting and deliberately avoiding the subject.
‘Have you heard from him yet?’
Cassie shook her head as she felt the pressure rush to her head again. It was the ‘yet’ that upset her, as though there was anything optional about it. He was out of contact, almost as uncontactable as if he were on the moon, or in Ikea. ‘I told you, he’s got no mobile coverage.’ Her index finger tapped the lounger arm metronomically. ‘All the radar equipment on the boat creates too much electromagnetic interference. If he even wants to listen to his iPod, he’s got to wrap tin foil round the headphones. This is it now till he gets back, or at least till they get to San Francisco, anyway.’
‘Huh. I thought there was that telecommunications company keeping us in contact with them.’
‘There is, in terms of informing us of their geographical positioning and any SOS messages, but they’re hardly there to pass love letters between us.’ Cassie knew she sounded defensive.
‘Oh bummer.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, I still can’t believe he went without saying goodbye. I mean, a text wouldn’t have killed him.’
Cassie bit her lip and looked away, focusing on a particularly contented cow, its tail sluicing at flies as it grazed. She didn’t reply, mainly because she couldn’t believe it either.
‘Having said that, I guess you can’t blame him for being hacked off that you’re suddenly having second thoughts about things,’ Suzy carried on. ‘You did pull the rug out from under him.’
Cassie shot her a look, wondering whose side Suzy was supposedly on. ‘Excuse me! It’s because of you that this has happened at all. If you hadn’t got me entangled in your half-arsed schemes with your bloody cousin, everything would be fine.’
‘Ha! Fat lot of good it did me. You’ve messed things up for you and Henry, and I’ve still got to single-handedly sabotage the wedding.’ She frowned. ‘And anyway, how exactly would it be fine? Henry asked you to marry him and you said yes. You’ve been engaged for the past year and a half. How can you come out now saying you don’t believe in marriage? At some point, you were going to have to fess up.’
‘I love him and want to be with him, and when he asked, I thought . . . I just assumed we could take our time with it all. I didn’t count on there being so much pressure to get on with it. It’s the institution I have a problem with, not him. I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand.’
Suzy sighed. ‘Look, I get why you don’t want to rush into marriage again, I do. But you have to bear in mind that he’s never been married. He waited for you all that time, and what’s seemingly dead for you is still alive with possibility for him. Are you really going to ask him to give up on his ideals because yours failed?’
‘I’m not asking him to give up on anything. I want him. I want us to have a family. Plenty of people are happily unmarried.’
‘You mean like Hugh Grant in Four Weddings?’ Suzy asked.
‘Exactly. Or Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell – they’re happily unmarried.’
‘Madonna and her backing dancers,’ Suzy suggested.
Cassie laughed. ‘Richard Curtis and Emma Freud.’
‘Kermit and Miss Piggy.’
Cassie laughed even harder. ‘See? Lots of people have Happy Ever Afters without the ring.’
‘Ha! As if you’re going to give up that ring. Tiffany’s finest! Poor Henry practically mortgaged Mum to buy it.’
‘OK, not without the ring. Her fingers automatically reached for it; it had become something of a soother for her and she would often fiddle with it when she was nervous or upset. ‘But without the “I do”.’
‘You need to talk this through with him properly.’
‘Well, he’s made that a bit bloody hard now that he’s done a disappearing act to the middle of the Pacific Ocean for three months.’
Suzy sighed. ‘I know, but he’s never been level-headed where you’re concerned. I mean, when you married Gil . . . Most blokes would just go on a massive bender. He went to northern Norway and trained as an Arctic survival instructor! In fact, it’s your bloody fault he’s an explorer at all. He had a job all lined up in the City, but seemingly trekking the Arctic and biking across Siberia were the only ways for him to try to get over you.’
Cassie didn’t say anything.
‘He loves you, but he won’t beg, Cass.’ Suzy’s tone had changed, the joking gone. ‘And it would break my heart to see you two split up over a piece of paper.’
‘We are not going to split up!’ Cassie said, aghast. ‘Look, this is all a storm in a teacup. It was bad timing that it came to a head just before he went’ – and when she was excluded from the hospital ward, she didn’t add – ‘but he’ll have forgotten all about it by the time he gets back.’
‘Forgotten he wants to marry you?’ Suzy guffawed, her eyebrows almost shooting to the other side of her head, but Cassie just took another sip of her drink and stared determinedly out to sea.
The front door slammed and they both looked back towards the kitchen, smiling as Archie sauntered through a moment later, two brown paper bags scrunched in his hands and an envelope.
‘Bugger, drink up,’ Suzy whispered, getting up from her lounger. ‘I’ll buy us some time.’
Cassie – who couldn’t bolt a drink to save her life – took rapid sips of her wine as Suzy went into the kitchen to check on Archie’s colour. There was only one sip left when Archie came out, looking very pleased with himself, a minute later.
‘Ooh, what’s that you’ve got there?’ he asked.
‘Huh?’ Cassie asked, wide-eyed, as she hurriedly drained it out of sight before he could ask for some. ‘Oh, you mean this? Ribena.’
‘It didn’t look like Ribena,’ Archie frowned.
‘I prefer it weak.’
‘What’s that you’ve got in your hands?’ Suzy asked, quickly following him with a tray of glasses and a jug of sparkling elderflower.
‘It’s for Cassie, actually,’ he replied, holding out the envelope.
‘For me?’ she asked in surprise.
‘Yes,’ he shrugged. ‘It turns out they’ve got Wi-Fi at the cafe at the back of the store—’ This time it was Archie’s turn to look triumphant as Suzy gasped in horror, her great plan foiled. ‘So I checked emails. Personal ones only,’ he added, ever the pacifist. ‘This was waiting for Cass in my inbox, so I printed it out.’
There was only one person who would know to write to her using Archie’s email address. Suzy knew it too. ‘Well, what did he do that for? I told him before we left that we wouldn’t have reliable internet access down here,’ Suzy said huffily.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve replied telling him we’re here now. I’m sure the incessant mailing will stop.’ Archie rolled his eyes as he handed the envelope to Cassie.
She forced herself not to tear it open in a rush, even though the sight of the Inmarsat logo at the top of the email – the expedition’s satellite communications supplier and the crew’s only point of contact with land except for the coastguard – made the words swim before her eyes. He’d written. Even with ten pairs of eyes seeing this highly personal letter between it leaving him and reaching her, he’d written! She was forgiven . . .
But her mouth dropped open as she began to take in what was written in the email. Not an apology, not a reconciliation . . . ‘Oh!’
‘Oh crap, what? What is it?’ Suzy asked, hating being out of the loop even for a moment. ‘What’s he gone and done now?’
‘It’s a list.’
‘Huh?’
Cassie looked up at her. ‘He’s written me a list for down here.’
‘Oh, you’ve got to be joking. Another one?’ Suzy looked at her husband for answers, though the expression on his face told her he had none; he was as oblivious as the rest of them.
Cassie clutched the paper tighter in her hands. It was Henry’s lists for her in Paris, New York and London – devised to get her ‘under the covers’ of each city – that had brought them together in the first place. In spite of her friends’ best efforts to spell out new identities for her, it was Henry’s lists that had been the tools that had really set her on the path to self-awareness after she had lost such confidence in herself following the breakdown of her marriage that she couldn’t put an outfit together, much less a new life. And now there was another list, just as she faced another crisis of confidence.
‘He really can’t help himself, can he? It’s like some sort of compulsion. God forbid Cass should be allowed to just sit on the beach.’ Suzy looked back at her. ‘So what’s he got you doing, then?’
Cassie smoothed a blonde tendril of hair back from her eyes. ‘Well, I’ve got to catch a wave.’ She bit her lip; she could barely balance on a yoga mat, much less a surfboard. ‘Can we cheat and make it a Mexican one?’
‘Actually, I think that’s rather fun,’ Archie said cheerfully, while grimacing at the sugary taste of his drink and staring at it suspiciously. ‘You can’t come down here and not get in the sea. I’ll join you. I’ve always wanted to learn how to surf.’
‘Arch—’ Suzy began.
‘Gentle exercise, the docs said. What could be more gentle than standing on top of a board in the sea, darling?’
Suzy rolled her eyes, biting back the roll call of potential disaster scenarios – being swallowed by a basking shark, going into anaphylactic shock after a jellyfish sting, being carried out on a rip tide . . .
‘What else?’ Archie continued, before his wife could.
‘Oh Lord, he says I’ve got to race a gig.’ She pulled a face. ‘What’s a gig? It sounds like a long-legged bird. If so, I don’t fancy my chances.’
Archie chuckled. ‘It’s a boat. A very big rowing boat. You’d better start eating lots of spinach and grow some muscles.’
‘Ha, ha. And how exactly am I supposed to do this? Where would I even find a gig? Who would I race against?’
‘Oooh, where there’s a will . . .’ Archie winked, looking over at Suzy. ‘Gig racing’s famous down here in the summer. I don’t think it’ll be too much of a problem to get you put in a crew.’
‘“Give a Cornish gift.”’ Cassie looked up blankly. ‘What the devil’s that?’
‘That’s a local saying – it means if you’ve got something you don’t want or need, then give it to someone else,’ Suzy explained.
‘You mean like my present-recycling drawer?’
‘Yeah, sort of.’
‘Were you in on this?’ Cassie asked Suzy, eyes narrowed as she waved the list around. ‘Be honest.’
‘Categorically not. Henry doesn’t tell me anything he doesn’t have to.’
‘Hmmm.’ Cassie went back to reading again. ‘“Eat a pasty on the sand.” Well, now that I can do . . .’ She frowned. ‘It says I’ve got to jump from the bridge into the Hidden Lagoon.’
Suzy’s eyes brightened. ‘Oh my God!’ she gasped. ‘The bridge.’
‘Should I be worried? How big is this bridge? Are we talking suspension?’ Cassie demanded nervously.
‘I’d completely forgotten all about that place.’
‘Where is it?’ Archie asked, a little hurt. ‘We’ve never gone there together. You’ve never even mentioned it.’
‘Because I’d completely forgotten all about it, you daft nana! What did I just say? It’s down on the Lizard, about an hour away. It’s at the far end of a cove where you can only get to the beach at low tide. Bit of a tricky path down to it, as I recall, but so, so worth it. The water is turquoise. You’d never believe it was the Atlantic.’
‘Well, that sounds good too,’ Archie said, mollified, looking back at Cassie. ‘This is a kind list. He’s obviously going soft in his old age – there’s nothing too scary on there at all so far. Is there anything else?’
‘Just one,’ Cassie mumbled.
Suzy’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Cassie’s expression and she stepped round to read over her shoulder.
‘“Choose.”’
He’d left the scariest for last.