June ended with a heatwave, so Tiff had resorted to a floaty dress from one of the local boutiques. She’d almost considered flip-flops but checked herself in time. Instead, she purchased a pair of strappy low-heeled sandals that were cool but smart enough for work.
The car was sizzling every time she got into it after one of her client visits and she’d bought a fan for her desk in the eaves of the office. Every time she caught herself longing for the air-conditioned tower that housed the Herald, she glanced out of the window and saw the harbour bustling with masts, and the sea sparkling in the distance.
In the time it used to take to reach the coffee area at the London newspaper office, she could skip outside and buy an ice-cream from the quayside kiosk. Come to think of it … Tiff picked up her bag and trotted out onto the harbourside.
The lure of an ice-cold treat was too much to resist, and she joined the queue at the kiosk. When her turn came, she felt very virtuous when she refused the clotted cream and chocolate flake and took a lick of the vanilla cone. The ice-cream was made at a local farm and, on this red-hot day, it tasted like nectar. Murmuring hello to a couple of people she recognised, Tiff started to walk slowly back to the office, savouring her single scoop.
Suddenly, she felt a rush of wind and wings brushed her face.
She let out a scream as her cone was snatched from her hand by a seagull the size of a pterodactyl. It flew off to a rooftop and swallowed the ice-cream whole, while other birds dived in to pick at the scraps of broken cone at her feet.
‘You little—!’ Tiff shook her fist at the thieving gull but cut off the expletive because the quayside was busy with visitors, several of whom were staring and laughing.
Tiff wasn’t so amused. Her dress was now splattered with melted ice-cream and the sticky mess oozed down her legs and onto her sandals.
A familiar figure jogged up. It was Lachlan.
‘Don’t you dare laugh!’ she warned, seeing the grin on his face.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ He set his mouth in a solemn line and Tiff finally grinned. ‘Sorry about your ice-cream.’
‘I should have been more careful. We don’t have vicious gulls in London. A few vultures, maybe …’
He smiled again. His face, even damaged, was very handsome and he’d caught the sun since he’d been here, which made him look much healthier. Tiff hadn’t spoken to him much herself but she could see why Marina liked him so much. She was also aware of how frustrated her cousin was at the lack of any progress beyond friendship. She’d related some of what had gone on at the Pie on the Beach event over dinner a few nights ago.
He held out a handkerchief.
‘Thanks,’ Tiff said, wiping herself down with it. ‘I’m afraid you won’t want it back.’
‘It’s fine. Can I get you another ice-cream?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure me and that cone are meant to be.’
‘Go on. I need cooling down myself. I’m not used to the heat, you know, coming from the Highlands,’ he added.
She laughed, and a thought occurred to her. They hadn’t chatted much, so it would be nice to have the opportunity – as well as suss out why he was holding back from Marina. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘As long as you act as seagull bouncer.’
They queued again, chatting about how busy the town had become in the past few weeks. Once they had the ice-creams, Lachlan suggested they stand under the porch of the Institute to eat them.
‘If you stand with your back to a wall, they can’t attack from behind,’ he said. ‘Although there’s always the possibility of a frontal assault.’
She laughed. ‘Thank you for the security tip. How’s business, by the way?’
‘Not bad. We’re building up bookings. In fact, we signed a contract at a big visitor attraction only this morning and we’re recruiting more freelance staff. That should keep us busy for the next year.’
‘You’re planning on staying in Porthmellow, then?’ she said, before licking her ice-cream innocently.
‘I’d like to give it a go, yes. What about you?’ he said.
His directness reminded Tiff that he’d been a military policeman. ‘My plans aren’t as fixed as that. The honest answer is I don’t know …’
He nodded and she took the plunge. ‘I can think of at least one person who’ll be pleased you’re staying longer,’ she said, hoping she hadn’t gone too far. Marina would probably kill her but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Lachlan didn’t pretend not to know that she meant Marina. He didn’t look at her, but said quietly, ‘You think so?’
‘I do. She’s had a very tough time, but I think you know that already.’
He nodded. ‘We have spoken of it. It’s hard to lose someone you care about … someone you loved. It must be even harder when you’ve been left in limbo as Marina has. We had a guy go missing from the base once, for weeks. We found his body eventually, on a remote part of Ben Daurrig. I was part of the mountain rescue team who recovered the body. Seems as if he fell, but we’ll never know the full story. Marina hasn’t even had a body to bury, no closure of any kind.’
‘Yes, it’s been very hard for her, although she did accept Nate was dead a long time ago,’ Tiff said.
‘She must still miss him keenly.’
‘She did – does – but … I don’t want to be disloyal to her or Nate but he wasn’t a saint. Far from it,’ Tiff ventured, hoping she hadn’t crossed a line.
‘I gathered that and yet … he was her first love, her husband, and to have him so cruelly taken from her …’
‘Of course, she grieved for him but … it was a long time ago.’
Lachlan turned to her. ‘Even so the memories must be raw, especially at this time.’
Tiff thought he was almost daring her to contradict him and play Devil’s advocate, which must mean he’d been holding back because he thought Marina was still in love with Nate. ‘Marina’s strong and even stronger after what she’s been through,’ she said, before adding, ‘She deserves a new shot at life, at every aspect of it.’
Lachlan’s lips twisted as if he was framing a reply.
‘Aye …’ he murmured. The clock tower struck three. ‘I’d best be on my way to the office again. I told Aaron I’d only popped out for a breath of air.’
‘Me too,’ said Tiff. ‘Thanks for the ice-cream and the seagull security advice.’
‘Thanks for your advice too,’ Lachlan said.
‘I hadn’t realised I’d dished any out,’ she said lightly.
He gave a wry smile. ‘Either way, you’ve helped me.’
‘I hope so. I only want Marina to be happy and step into the light again. She’s lived in Nate’s shadow, in so many ways, for far too long.’
Lachlan answered with a brief incline of the head before stepping from under the porch into the sunshine.
As she headed back to the office by way of the cottage to change her dress, Tiff hoped she hadn’t gone too far with her comments, although she doubted Marina would ever hear about their conversation because Lachlan struck her as nothing if not discreet. She was self-aware enough to realise that she might also take some of her own advice. She’d implied to Lachlan that he should waste no time in letting Marina know how he really felt.
Did the same apply to her? Should she admit that she was falling for Dirk far more than she’d ever expected?
She pulled out her phone to text him, and realised he’d beaten her to it.
Can you call me asap?
She could do better than that, she thought, making a detour to the lifeboat station. He was sitting at the desk in the crew room, a tabloid newspaper spread in front of him.
‘You’ve seen this, of course,’ he said, the moment she got through the door.
‘Seen what?’ She put her bag on the table and closed the door behind her.
He tapped the paper. ‘This.’ He passed it to her and frowned at her. ‘What happened to your dress?’ he said.
‘Seagull versus ice-cream,’ she muttered, realising she still hadn’t changed, though it was now hardly the main focus of her attention. ‘I haven’t seen this,’ she said, glancing at the newspaper with a prickle of foreboding. ‘Why?’
He folded his arms. ‘Read it.’
Tiff picked up the paper, and read the piece with an increasing sense of horror.
Amira had given a feature to the Herald about her new relationship with another actor from the medical soap she was starring in.
She scanned the copy, rolling her eyes and muttering to herself.
RESCUED BY LOVE
My heart has finally healed, says Amira
A Herald exclusive by Esther Francois
Soap superstar, Amira Choudhury, has finally broken her silence about her ‘agonising journey back to love’ after her split with partner, Dirk Meadows.
After enduring ‘months of misery’, she’s found love again.
And it’s her hunky Medics co-star Marc Rayburn who’s helping to heal the wounds.
Amira says she was left ‘in pieces’ after the end of her marriage to lifeboat mechanic Dirk, adding that while devoted to his job, he suffered from mood swings and ‘jealous sulks’ that strained their relationship to breaking point.
‘Things between Dirk and me had been going downhill for a long time. He said he supported my career but he wasn’t willing to compromise. In the end I made the terrible choice: Dirk or my future. I chose to be free.’
Amira claims that Dirk became ‘consumed’ by his job as a mechanic at a Thames lifeboat station.
‘Obviously I was proud of the good work he did there, but it affected him badly. He made it clear that our lives came second. When I landed the role in Medics and started to be recognised in the street, he’d try to hurry us away and then retreat into his shell.’
Amira struggles to hold back tears when she talks about those painful times.
‘It was clear Dirk didn’t like people wanting to talk to me,’ she said. ‘We were spending more time apart and things came to a head when I offered to support him so he could give up his job. He walked out and that was the night I decided to make a clean break.
‘I was devastated, but I had to do it for both our sakes. I felt like I’d cut off a limb, but it was essential to my recovery. It’s taken months to get over the split from Dirk, but Marc has made me see that there’s love out there for me.’
Judging by the happiness radiating from Amira when she talks about Marc, Amira clearly thinks she might finally have turned a corner … Has she found the best cure for her heartbreak?
‘God, give me strength!’ Tiff said, with a snort of contempt. ‘I can’t take much more. This is even worse than I expected.’
‘You could say that,’ Dirk murmured darkly.
She read on, groaning in derision and muttering. It was typical of Esther’s style, loaded with cheesy clichés, and littered with typos that the sub hadn’t picked up on – which suggested the story had been slotted into the first edition with indecent haste. Tiff might have done a happy dance of glee at the terrible writing and errors, if she hadn’t been annoyed on Dirk’s behalf.
She threw down the tabloid. ‘You do know that Amira might not even have said any of this? It could have been cooked up by her publicist or her words were taken out of context. There’s even a possibility Esther paraphrased them or made them up herself. She’s done it before.’
Dirk sighed. ‘Thanks for trying to soften the blow but we both know she did say this – or something like it.’
‘I’m sorry it’s upset you. It’s a shitty piece of journalism. The Herald is going further downhill.’
‘Is that all you care about? The quality of the prose?’
‘Are you implying I don’t care about the effect on you?’
‘I think you should read to the end,’ he said.
‘I don’t know if I can bear to. It’s such rubbish.’
He folded his arms. ‘Read the rest.’
There was something in his tone, a downbeat edge almost of defeat, that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She picked up the paper again and read the next few paragraphs to herself.
‘Dirk and I went our separate ways and I can accept that but I must admit I was heartbroken when I heard he was seeing someone else in Cornwall.
‘I cried for a whole night, but then I thought: this is the wake-up call I need. I deserved love too. I realised I’d been holding back from opening up to Marc because I was clinging to the past. Finding out my ex had moved on so quickly made my decision and I phoned Marc there and then and poured out my heart. We started dating a week later and I know it sounds like such a cliché, but now we’re blissfully happy.’
Tiff swallowed hard. Oh God, no …
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘I – I am a little lost for words. The woman they mention you’re with—’
‘Who do you think they mean?’ he murmured.
‘I’ve only been here a couple of months. How can they know we’re—’
‘Yes. How? Did you tell Esther we were seeing each other?’ he said ominously.
She gasped. ‘What? No, I bloody didn’t! How could you think that?’
‘I can think anything lately. Anything at all, where the press is concerned.’
‘Well, I didn’t tell her. She could have found out from anyone in Porthmellow with a few calls. I don’t want to be in vile Esther’s tawdry pieces of crap. I’d never reveal anything to her – least of all about someone I cared about.’
‘Cared about?’
Tiff bit back an angry reply. ‘Yes. Cared about.’
He gawped. ‘I thought you only wanted to sleep with me until you got a better offer in London.’
Stinging from his comment, she unleashed both barrels. It was so unjust. She cared about him more than he ever imagined. ‘That is so far beneath you, Dirk. So far below the man I thought I was getting to know.’ She dropped the newspaper on the desk table. ‘If that’s what you really believe then there’s no point in me staying here or seeing you again.’
He shook his head. ‘You know how well we get on. You know how much I liked – like – you but I can’t take that leap of faith. Not after what happened to Amira, not with someone – someone I …’
‘Someone you what?’ Her eyes blazed at him.
Rachel popped her head around the door. ‘Tiff? Dirk? Everything OK?’
‘Yes, thanks, Rachel. Everything’s perfect! I was just going.’
Without a backward glance, Tiff marched onto the quayside and along the harbour, not quite sure where she was going. For the first time since she’d left London, she was on the verge of tears. Dirk was hurt and upset, she knew that – she didn’t blame him – but there was no reason to take it out on her, or assume she’d betrayed his trust by telling Esther about their private life.
She was angry at the injustice of his comments, but that wasn’t what had made her want to cry. It was the way he’d lashed out so strongly. Despite saying he was over Amira he was clearly still raw at losing her and that had cut Tiff to the bone. She’d let herself be vulnerable again in a way she’d vowed she never would. Her and Dirk were never going to work – it was an impossible romantic fantasy and she had to crush it and face reality. People like her weren’t cut out for ‘true love’ – if it existed at all.