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Don’t go there, his mind warned. It’s better not to go there.
‘Tom?’
She looked awkward and uncomfortable, and he forced a smile.
‘Of course I don’t want to go back to the hotel,’ he said. ‘Leastways, not until you’ve pointed out Nick’s house and I’ve thrown a brick through his window.’
She gave a small choke of laughter. ‘I thought you said you were a mature man now?’
‘OK, I’ll see if I can capture some greenfly and let them loose on his roses instead,’ he said, and when she laughed out loud he linked his arm with hers, and began walking again. ‘Eve, I know it’s been a long time since we last met,’ he continued, ‘but it simply means we’ve a lot of catching up to do. And speaking of catching up,’ he added when she said nothing, ‘are you quite sure you don’t know why Nick appears to consider me dog meat?’
‘I thought you might know the answer to that,’ she observed, and he shook his head.
‘I knew him at school, and met him a couple of times when I went to med school, but he was a few years older than me, and his friends tended to be the more studious type, whereas mine…’ He grinned down at her. ‘Tended to be a little rowdier.’
‘I bet they were,’ Eve said dryly.
‘How many kids does Nick have?’ Tom asked, and Eve smiled as they reached the end of Harbour Road and turned towards the lighthouse.
‘He and Annabel had three of a family. Lucy and Jack, who are twins, and Edward. They’re all doctors.’
Tom pulled a face. ‘All of them! I don’t think I’d want any kids of mine becoming medics, would you?’
He’d said the wrong thing. He didn’t know why, or how, but her face had suddenly closed up completely, and he longed to hug her, or say something totally outrageous to bring the smile back onto her face, but no words occurred to him, and as for hugging her… In the past he wouldn’t have thought twice, but even thinking about doing it now made him feel ridiculously awkward, as though it would be too forward which was crazy when he remembered what they’d once meant to one another.
‘Odd time of day for a church service,’ he said, deliberately changing the subject as they passed the church and the sound of enthusiastic singing drifted out.
‘It’s not a service,’ Eve replied. ‘Reverend Kenner runs a club for the village youngsters on Sunday afternoons. Daniel’s a nice man. A good one, too.’
‘Single, is he?’ Tom said, feeling a spurt of something that crazily felt almost like jealousy.
‘Daniel’s a widower like Nick, with a seventeen-year-old daughter.’
And she didn’t look any happier, Tom thought as they walked on to the lighthouse. In fact, she looked even more strained and, in desperation, he pointed out to sea to where the wreck of the seventeenth century Spanish galleon, the Corazón del Oro, had lain for the past four hundred years.
‘Remember when we wished we could dive down there, find loads of gold coins, and make our fortune?’
‘Except neither of us could swim, so it was a bit of a nonstarter,’ she replied. ‘Still can’t swim, which is a dreadful admission for somebody who lives by the sea. What about you?’
‘I had to learn for my work so they sent me on a course and, believe me, being in a class of five-year-olds when you’re twenty-four, and five feet ten inches tall, doesn’t do a lot for your ego.’
Her lips twitched. ‘You’re making that up.’
‘Scout’s honour,’ he protested, and she laughed.
‘Tom, you were thrown out of the Scouts for disruptive behaviour when you were thirteen.’
‘OK, so maybe I was,’ he said, relieved to see her smile again, ‘but I honestly was stuck in a kids’ class. My boss reckoned it would concentrate my mind wonderfully, and it did. I always wondered why your dad didn’t teach you to swim, what with him being a sailor.’
‘He was too busy trying to make a living. My mum wanted me to learn, but you had to pay for lessons, and…’ She shrugged. ‘Money was always tight when I was a kid.’
‘Are they still alive—your mum and dad?’ he asked, as they turned and began walking back from the lighthouse.
She shook her head.
‘My dad died of cancer fifteen years ago. Never would give up his cigarettes, though Mum nagged him like crazy about it. My mum died of a heart attack five years ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘I know they were apoplectic that summer when we started dating, but I liked them.’
‘So did I,’ she murmured, and Tom swore under his breath.
Hell, but she had that look on her face again. That bleak, almost haunted look as though he had conjured up memories that would have been better left buried.
‘Look, why don’t we go down to the beach?’ he said quickly. ‘Have a walk along the sand.’
‘I’m not really dressed for it, Tom,’ she replied, pointing down at her shoes. ‘My heels will get stuck.’
‘Then take your shoes off,’ he said. ‘Take off your stockings, too, and you can paddle if you want.’
‘Tom, it’s October,’ she said. ‘It’s too cold to paddle.’
‘Rubbish,’ he said, steering her firmly towards the steps that led down to the beach. ‘It’s a gorgeous day.’
It was, too, Eve thought as she stared up at the sky. Seagulls were wheeling and diving overhead, their white feathers standing out in sharp contrast to the clear blue sky, and there was a deceptive warmth in the air despite the fact that it was October. Soon it would change. Soon it would be winter and the green-blue sea would become grey and stormy, sending breakers crashing onto the white sand, and only the very toughest would walk along the shore, but today there was enough heat in the day to make it pleasant.
‘If you hurry up,’ Tom continued as he sat down on the top step, and began pulling off his shoes and socks, and rolling up his trousers, ‘we’ll have the beach to ourselves—just the way you used to like it.’
How had he remembered that? she thought with surprise, and he’d also remembered she used to sit at the foot of the lighthouse when she wanted to think. They were such little things—such inconsequential things—and yet he’d remembered, and the water did look tempting, so very tempting, but she could just imagine what the gossipmongers would say if somebody saw her.
Eve Dwyer went paddling with that Tom Cornish yesterday. Paddling, and with that Tom Cornish.
‘Tom, maybe we should just go back into the village,’ she began, and his green eyes danced as he looked up at her.
‘Eve, I’m not suggesting we go skinny-dipping. Though I’m game if you are.’
Her lips curved in spite of herself.
‘In your dreams,’ she said.
‘Chicken.’
He was the second person to have called her that in twenty-four hours, and she discovered she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit. OK, so skinny-dipping was completely out of the question but, hell’s bells, even in Penhally she could surely paddle if she wanted to, and she discovered she wanted to.
‘OK, move over,’ she said, and he slid across the step so she could sit down beside him.
‘So, are we paddling, or skinny-dipping?’ he said, and, when she gave him a hard stare, his eyes glinted. ‘Pity. I was kind of looking forward to shocking the good people of Penhally.’
‘I bet you were,’ she said dryly as she unbuckled the straps of her shoes and slipped them off. ‘Right. Turn your back while I take off my stockings,’ she added, and when his mouth fell open, she said, ‘I’m not having you staring at my thighs, and making snarky comments about cellulite, so turn your back.’
‘I don’t even know what cellulite is,’ he protested, but he did as she asked, and when she eventually stuffed her tights into her skirt pocket and stood up, he said, ‘You’re an idiot—you know that, don’t you?’
‘Probably,’ she agreed, picking up her shoes by their straps, and walking down the steps. ‘So, are we walking or not?’
He shook his head at her as he followed her down the steps.
‘You didn’t used to be so shy,’ he observed, and a stain of colour spread across her cheeks.
He was laughing at her, she knew he was, remembering all the times he’d seen her completely naked, and she bit her lip, waiting for him to point that out, but he didn’t.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget you dancing and singing on this beach,’ he said instead, completely surprising her. ‘It was the height of summer—the place was packed with tourists, and families from the village—and suddenly you began singing that Whitney Houston song at the top of your lungs.’
‘“I wanna to dance with somebody”!’ she exclaimed with a choke of laughter. ‘I’d forgotten all about that. I got into such a row with my mother after Audrey Baxter told her I’d made a public spectacle of myself.’
‘Audrey Baxter would say that,’ he replied with feeling as they began walking along the beach.
‘And you told me I had no taste,’ she reminded him. ‘That if I wanted to sing, then I should have sung one of Bruce Springsteen’s songs because he was the only singer worth listening to.’
‘Still is,’ he insisted, and when she rolled her eyes he laughed, and said, ‘Do you still have that dress?’
‘What dress?’ she said in confusion.
‘The red dress you wore that day. It had a big wide skirt, and puffy sleeves, and when I first went to the States I couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing Chris de Burgh singing “The Lady in Red”, and every time I heard it I thought of you, singing on this beach.’
‘Did you?’ she said faintly, and he nodded.
‘You wouldn’t believe how homesick I got whenever they played that song.’
But not homesick enough to write to me, or phone me, she thought, but she didn’t say that.
‘I’m afraid I threw the dress out years ago,’ she said instead.
‘Pity,’ he murmured, picking up a pebble and sending it skimming across the water in front of them. ‘I always liked that dress, and the little red boots you used to wear.’
‘My pixie boots!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’d forgotten all about them, too. I loved those boots. Couldn’t wear them now, of course.’
‘Yes, you could. You’ve still got great legs. Great figure, too,’ he added.
‘Not that good,’ she said, feeling the wash of colour on her cheeks return as his gaze swept over her. ‘Years ago I could eat whatever I wanted and never put on a kilo. Now I just have to look at a cream cake, and, pouf, on goes the weight.’
He grinned. ‘Well, you’re looking good from where I’m standing.’
So was he, she thought. With the sun on his face, and the wind ruffling his hair, he looked exactly like the town bad boy he’d been all those years ago, whereas she…
What had she been back then?
Naïve, yes. Trusting, most definitely, but mostly so full of dreams, and hopes, and plans. Tom had been the same, but her dreams hadn’t been the same as his. He’d wanted to get as far away from Penhally as he could, to live a life of adventure and excitement, and she… She’d simply wanted him.
‘Let’s have some fun,’ he’d said when he’d come back to Penhally as a fully qualified doctor that summer, and she’d been so happy because he’d finally asked her out that she’d chosen not to believe him when he’d told her he would be heading for the States at the end of September.
He’ll change his mind, she’d told herself, and for four wonderful, glorious months they’d walked, and talked—lord, how they’d talked—and they’d made love. She’d been a virgin when they’d first started going out and he’d teased her about it, said a woman could have just as much fun as a man without fear of the consequences, and she’d gone on the Pill to be safe, and then after four far too short months he had left.
‘What are you thinking about?’
She looked up to see him gazing at her quizzically, and managed a smile.
‘I was just wondering where the last twenty years had gone,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it seems like a lifetime, doesn’t it, and sometimes just a few months.’
‘And I can’t believe you’re still single,’ he observed. ‘The men in Penhally must be either blind, or stupid, or both.’
‘I almost got married once,’ she replied, kicking the sand in front of her so it sprayed out as they walked, ‘but…’
‘It didn’t feel right?’
‘Something like that. What about you?’ she asked. ‘Were you never tempted to take the plunge?’
‘I’ve had a couple of semi-serious relationships, but…’ He shrugged. ‘My work makes it difficult because I never know where I’m going to be from one day to the next.’
‘Maybe you’re just not the marrying kind,’ she said. ‘Some people aren’t.’
He stared out to sea, then back at her, and to her surprise he looked suddenly wistful, almost sad.
‘And maybe I simply got my priorities all wrong.’
His eyes were fixed on hers, refusing to allow her to look away, and her heart gave an uncomfortable thump. This conversation was getting too personal, way too personal, and she had to change it. Now.
‘Last one to reach the end of the beach is a wimp,’ she said, and, before he could reply, she was off and running, her bare feet flying over the sand, her skirt billowing above her knees, her shoes swinging from her hand.
From behind her she heard him shout a spluttered protest, but she didn’t stop. She just kept on running and when she heard his footsteps begin to thud behind her she suddenly, and inexplicably, began to laugh.
To laugh like the girl she’d once been. The carefree young girl who had once sung on a beach, feeling nothing but the joy of being alive, and she knew she probably looked like a demented lunatic, but she didn’t care. For this moment—for just this one moment—with her hair streaming in the breeze, and the taste of the sun and the sea on her lips, she felt like that girl again, and it was wonderful.
‘You cheated!’ he exclaimed when he caught up with her, and grasped her by the waist, spinning her round so fast she had to catch hold of his shirt to prevent herself from toppling over.
‘Sore loser,’ she threw back at him, laughing breathlessly as she pushed her hair away from her face. ‘You’ve been spending far too much time behind a desk.’
‘Too much time…?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I’ll make you pay for that remark, Eve Dwyer.’
‘Oh, no, you won’t,’ she said, turning to run again, and he made a grab for her, and she jumped back to escape him, only to let out a yell as she ended up ankle deep in the sea. ‘Oh, my God, it’s freezing.’
‘Serves you right.’ Tom laughed but, when she scooped up some water and threw it at him, he splashed into the water after her. ‘Play rough, would you? OK, you deserve a complete ducking for that.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ she cried, trying to evade him, but he caught her round the waist again and swept her up into his arms.
‘You think?’ he said, deliberately lowering her towards the water, and she shrieked and threw her arms round his neck.
‘Tom, no!’
He grinned. ‘OK, if you don’t want to be ducked, you’ll need to pay a forfeit, and I think you know what that forfeit is, don’t you?’
A kiss. The forfeit had always been a kiss when they’d dated and, as Eve stared up into his, oh, so familiar face, she realised with a stab of pain that even after all that had happened, even after all the heartache and desolation, she wanted to kiss him, and the thought appalled her.
‘Tom, let me go,’ she said, but he didn’t hear the strain in her voice.
‘Nope, not a chance,’ he said. ‘The forfeit, or the sea. Your choice.’
‘Tom, please.’
‘Make a decision—make a decision,’ he insisted as he whirled her round in his arms, but she didn’t have to.
She had suddenly seen what he hadn’t, and she tugged desperately on his sleeve.
‘Tom, we have company.’
‘Company?’ he repeated, then swore under his breath as he followed her gaze. ‘Oh, wonderful. Bloody wonderful. Is that who I think it is?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Eve said, through gritted teeth, and when Tom quickly put her down she splashed out of the sea, feeling completely ridiculous and stupid, as Audrey Baxter walked towards them.
‘Tom Cornish,’ Audrey declared the minute she drew level with them, her faded brown eyes alive with curiosity and speculation. ‘My heavens, but I never thought to see you in Penhally again.’
‘Us bad pennies have a nasty habit of turning up again, don’t we, Mrs Baxter?’ he replied dryly.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t call you a bad penny, Tom,’ Audrey declared. ‘You were a little wild, to be sure—’
‘I think the words you used to shout after me when I was a teenager were, “You’re heading straight to hell in a handcart, Tom Cornish”.’
Audrey patted her steel-grey curls and shook her head at him reprovingly.
‘That was a long time ago, Tom.’ She shifted her gaze to Eve, making her all too aware that her hair must be sticking out all over the place, and the hem of her skirt was wet. ‘I see you and Nurse Dwyer are getting reacquainted.’
Tom moved up the beach a step. ‘We are, but now I’m afraid we have to be going.’
‘I thought you might have come back to Penhally two years ago, Tom, when your father died,’ Audrey continued. ‘I know you didn’t always get on—’
‘And I think your dog’s looking for you,’ Tom interrupted, pointing to the brindle and white greyhound which was splashing in the water further up the beach.
‘Looking for crabs, more like,’ Audrey replied. ‘He loves them.’
‘Indeed,’ Tom declared, ‘and now if you’ll excuse us…’
But Audrey wasn’t about to let him leave so easily.
‘I hear your father left you his house in Trelissa Road?’ she called after him, and Tom turned slowly to face her, his expression tight.
‘What a very knowledgeable little community Penhally is,’ he said, the sarcasm in his voice so plain that even Audrey couldn’t miss it, and Eve grabbed his hand quickly, not caring that Audrey’s eyes followed her action.
‘Tom, we really do have to be going,’ she insisted, and determinedly she urged him back up the beach, but it wasn’t over as far as he was concerned.
‘Nothing changes, does it?’ he spat out when they reached the steps leading off the beach, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Audrey was watching them. ‘Twenty damn years, and nothing changes. I could be the Prime Minister of Britain, and in Penhally I’d still be Tom Cornish, that drunkard, Frank Cornish’s, son who no decent family ever wanted their daughter dating.’
‘Tom—’
‘If you’re going to say Audrey meant no harm, you can save your breath,’ he interrupted, sitting down on the step and beginning to drag on his socks, heedless of the fact that his feet were still covered in sand. ‘And if you were going to ask me why I didn’t come back for my father’s funeral, you can save your breath on that one, too.’
‘I know why you didn’t come back, Tom,’ she said gently, ‘and Audrey… There’s no question she can be an interfering busybody, but your father’s dead and gone. Don’t let him keep hurting you.’
‘He left me his house, Eve,’ he said furiously. ‘After years of battering me from pillar to post until I was big enough to hit him back and make it count, he had the gall to leave me his house.’
‘Maybe…’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Maybe he was trying to make amends, at the end?’
‘If I believed that for one second,’ he retorted, ‘I’d go round and torch the bloody place myself. No guilt gift can ever make up for the fact he hated me from the day I was born. Time and time again, he’d tell me of all the things he could have done—would have done—if my mother hadn’t become pregnant, and her family hadn’t forced him into marrying her, and when she died he hated me even more.’
‘I know,’ she said, sitting down beside him, aching at the pain she saw in his face, feeling a different kind of pain in herself, but he rounded on her furiously.
‘No, you don’t. You have no idea of what it’s like to live with a man whose dreams you’ve shattered. No idea to feel, even as a seven-year-old child, that it would have been better if you’d never been born.’
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘You’re right. I don’t know.’
Silently she brushed the sand from her feet, then pushed her feet into her shoes, but when she made to stand up he put out his hand to stop her.
‘You’ve forgotten your stockings.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she replied, and, for a second he said nothing, then he thrust his fingers through his hair, and she saw his hands were shaking.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice so strained it almost broke. ‘So sorry for yelling at you.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said.
‘It’s not,’ he declared. ‘I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, and I’m sorry, too, that Audrey saw you in my arms. I know what this place is like—the gossip, the innuendo…’
‘It’s all right, Tom,’ she insisted, and saw a small smile creep onto his lips.
‘I’ve always created trouble for you, haven’t I?’ he said.
‘Of course you haven’t,’ she lied. ‘And now, come on,’ she added, ‘or we’ll be completing this tour of Penhally by moonlight.’
‘Which would really set the local tongues wagging, wouldn’t it?’ he declared as he fell into step beside her. ‘Audrey—’
‘Forget her,’ Eve ordered as they began walking back down Harbour Road, and he shook his head.
‘This is a professional observation, not a personal one,’ he replied. ‘Her colour’s very high.’
‘She has angina, and she’s hopeless about remembering to use her glyceryl trinitrate spray. “I keep forgetting, Nurse Dwyer”,’ Eve continued in a perfect imitation of Audrey’s voice. ‘I don’t think she realises, or will accept, how serious her condition is.’
‘Denial can be a form of self-protection when people are scared,’ Tom observed, kicking a pebble at his feet so that it ricocheted down the street in front of them. ‘If they don’t think about it, it hasn’t happened.’
It was true, Eve thought, but denial had never worked for her. All the denying, and pretending in the world, had never made it go away for her, and when they reached Harbour Bridge she came to a halt.
‘Tom, why did you come back?’ she asked. ‘You always said you wouldn’t, so why are you here?’
For a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer, then he shrugged.
‘My dad’s solicitor has been bending my ear about the house, wanting to know whether I want to sell it, or rent it out.’
‘You didn’t have to come back to Penhally for that,’ she pointed out. ‘You could just have told him over the phone.’
‘I suppose,’ he murmured as he stared down at the river Lanson flowing gently under the bridge beneath them, then he grinned. ‘OK, you’ve rumbled me. I thought it might be interesting to see Penhally again.’
He wasn’t telling her the truth. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did.
‘Tom—’
‘What happened to the cinema?’ he interrupted. ‘It used to be up there, in Gull Close, didn’t it, on the right-hand side of the river?’
‘It was on the left-hand side of the river, in Bridge Street, but it closed down years ago,’ she replied, all too aware that he was changing the subject, but she had secrets so she supposed he was entitled to secrets, too. ‘People gradually stopped wanting to go so much once they had television in their own homes.’
‘I took you to see RoboCop.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I did, too,’ he insisted as they began walking again. ‘I remember us kissing in the back row.’
‘Must have been someone else. Come to think of it,’ she added wryly, ‘it undoubtedly was someone else considering you were Penhally’s answer to Casanova.’
‘I was not,’ he replied, the grin reappearing on his face.
‘Yes, you were!’ she exclaimed. ‘Even when we were at school, every girl fancied you like mad despite you having the most dreadful reputation.’
‘You didn’t.’
Oh, but I did, I did, she thought, but you never noticed me. It was only when you came back from med school that summer that you realised I was alive.
‘That’s the Penhally Bay Surgery,’ she continued, deliberately changing the conversation, and Tom let out a low whistle as his gaze took in the large building to the left of the Serpentine Steps.