Rik and I got a taxi into Penzance. I’d never done that before – had never begun to imagine it as an option – but it was nothing to him. We sat side by side on the back seat, our fingers interlinked.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ I said.
‘Me too.’ He paused, then spoke fast.
I looked at his cheekbones, at his shiny hair, and I pushed down the word love. You couldn’t love someone this fast. I did, though.
‘Come to London,’ he said. ‘Will you come? Not now, but maybe at half-term? Come and stay with us. I’ll show you everything. We can have so much fun.’
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t even afford the train fare. Me, staying at his Chelsea townhouse.
‘I don’t want to –’ I tried to work out what I meant. ‘I mean, I don’t want to feel like some kind of clueless country girl. I don’t want people to laugh at me.’
‘They won’t laugh.’
‘Promise?’
He held my hand tightly. ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘I absolutely do. And also, are you kidding? A girlfriend in Cornwall – you make me look good. You really do.’
I held my breath, and waited for him to retract the word, but he didn’t.
‘Girlfriend?’
‘If you want?’
The taxi stopped outside the Jubilee Pool, and Rik paid the fare without appearing to notice how much it cost, which was over five hours’ work for me. I took his hand and led him along the wide pavement in front of the outdoor pool, to the rocks behind it. The tide was out so there was plenty of room to climb from the path down on to the rocks, which were huge and warm. There we’d be screened from view, and in front of the ocean.
The water was so still that it looked like a lake rather than an ocean. I stared at the surface, the shape of a jellyfish below it, a clump of seaweed drifting by.
‘Different,’ Rik said, ‘from the last time we sat on the beach together in Penzance.’
‘This isn’t the beach,’ I said. ‘This is Battery Rocks.’
I looked over to our left, at St Michael’s Mount. I’d never been there. You could walk over at low tide; maybe we should do it. I wanted to do everything with Rik. I wanted to see everything. I felt that with him at my side I could do anything.
‘I keep thinking,’ I said. ‘About those bones.’
Why? Why had I said that when we’d come to Penzance on a date? When I’d wanted to sit on the rocks and kiss. And talk about our plans.
Rik didn’t look surprised or pissed off.
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘It’s a hard image to shake, isn’t it? Josie holding that skull. Aubrey, and an intruder, right?’
I wondered whether to say it. To tell Rik the way I was imagining it all tying up. It was too flimsy. I was imagining it, like Josie had. It was no more real than the story she’d constructed.
‘I wonder if Martha’s story is true,’ I said. ‘About that intruder.’
I wanted to say, You know my mum and the others have a huge secret. I wanted to say, I think it’s … But I knew I couldn’t continue. I couldn’t follow the hypothesis through to its end, even in my head.
‘We can’t ever know,’ he said. ‘You know that. It’s something that happened years before we were born. It’s nothing to do with us.’
I inhaled. I breathed in the salty air, the smell of a barbecue somewhere down the beach. I listened to the birds shrieking overhead, a child behind us doing that sudden crying they do when they fall over. I reached for Rik’s hand, and I told myself to forget about it. I was spinning away from logic, freaking out. I needed to ground myself.
I made an effort and pulled myself together.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Your other question. The girlfriend one. Yes.’
He put a hand on the back of my neck, and I shifted up so I was almost on his lap.
He whispered into my ear, and it made all the hairs on my arms stand up.
‘Do I get to be your boyfriend?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, you do.’
I turned my face and kissed him. He kissed me back. Fireworks went off inside me. It was everything I’d ever wanted. I wanted to do everything with Rik. Everything.