Chapter Seven
Aggie
Before I open up the coffee hut, I always go down to the shore on Porthgwidden Beach and say hello to the sea. I’ve done it every morning since I started my business. It’s my ritual before the day begins. Even on a freezing December morning, when anyone sensible is still tucked up in bed.
I love this beach. It was always the one I headed for as a kid and as soon as the coffee hut lease came up, I knew exactly where I wanted my business to be. The sea sounds different here than it does lapping against Porthmeor, or Bamaluz, or Porthminster. It has its own rhythm, its own peculiar echoes. Porthgwidden is smaller than most of the beaches but that’s what makes it feel like a friend.
I just wasn’t expecting to find another friend by the waves on this morning’s visit.
He just walked out of the water . . .
It could be a strapline from the cheesy movies I watch late at night on Netflix when I can’t sleep. But that’s what happened. And I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Seth Lannaker. Here. Three years after I said it was over.
‘I missed you,’ he said, dropping his surfboard to the sand. It was so dark on the beach but I swear I could see the twinkle in his eyes: the blue of them could cut through anything.
He said he’d been travelling, working a little here and there. Did some pro surfing competitions and made a bit of money. None of it surprised me – one thing I know about Seth Lannaker is that he always lands on his feet. But when he said he’d missed me – that he’d made a mistake not fighting for us when I told him to leave – I almost believed it. Like I was the one thing in his life he hadn’t been able to blag his way out of.
It’s nine thirty now and my assistant Sophie is tiptoeing around me as if any sudden movements might make me explode. I’ve told her I’m okay, but even I wasn’t convinced by that. I feel like someone has found the remote control for me and is throwing my limbs and brain and mouth around at will. I’ve forgotten that feeling since I last saw Seth and I wish he hadn’t chosen this morning to remind me.
‘I missed you, Ag. Ain’t no one fits like you.’
‘So why wait three years if I meant so much?’ I’d asked him.
That smile. It was older, a little beaten by time and weather maybe, but still a weapon. ‘Because you told me hell would freeze before we’d be together again.’
‘And yet, here you are.’
He’d blagged his way into the hut for a coffee – or so he thought. My head was all over the place and I needed to keep him there for long enough to work out my next move. So I’d taken time making his drink, his tales of the beautiful places he’d seen washing over me. Bali, Fiji, Vietnam, Laos, Australia, West Coast USA. And it never once occurred to him as he recounted his stories that before we broke up these were the places he’d promised we’d see together.
I could have told him to stop, but I made myself listen to him as I prepared the coffee hut for the day’s trade. To his arrogance, his swagger. I didn’t want the tiniest bit of nostalgia to sneak in: I wanted to stay angry for the let-downs, the broken promises and the way he’d so easily dropped my heart when it suited him. I kept reminding myself of the bad stuff.
My aunt Miriam used to say we needed to get rid of bad memories but take a snapshot before we ditched them, just to remind us not to make the same mistakes. She had an album full of odd photos – random objects nobody else would see the importance of. When I’d asked her about it as a heartbroken teen, camped out in her kitchen after yet another vicious row with my mother over her latest good-for-nothing boyfriend, Auntie Miriam explained that each one represented a mistake, a bad decision, or a guilty secret.
‘It’s not a photo album. It’s my book of storm warnings. If see a glimpse of one of these approaching, girl, I run for my life.’
I never asked her what each one was. But seeing Seth back in St Ives, I think maybe I should start my own collection.
And now my head is like harbour seawater when the seabed is disturbed beneath it. On the surface, everything’s the same, but underneath it’s muddied by swirling eddies of sand and grit. Seth hadn’t changed, but as I listened to the familiar patter of his voice, I wondered how different I’d become. Three years is a long time to outgrow the memory of someone.
Or so you’d think . . .
The worst thing is, the moment I saw him, all the old battles came back. I’d probably have gone to the ends of this earth for that man, if he’d taken us seriously for one minute. I learned the hard way that his promises were about as valuable as whatever scrap of paper he’d written them down on . . .
Sophie wordlessly hands me a cappuccino. From the strength of its aroma I can tell there are three espresso shots beneath the milk foam. It isn’t enough to solve the riddles in my head, but it’s a start.
If he’d just turned up, done his twinkling, told his tales and gone again, I think I would feel better now. But what he said as he stood to leave shook me:
‘Come back to me, Ag. We were good together. I’ve been all over but there’s no one ever come close to you.’
‘Not this, please. Not now . . .’
‘Why not?’ And he’d strolled up to me, as if everything else had never happened and we were still the two crazy loved-up surfers who met in the waves off Porthmeor. He smelled the same. His arm sneaking around my back was as comfortable as an old armchair you sink into. And when his lips were just a breath from mine, it felt like home. ‘This doesn’t change. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it. I can see it in your eyes.’
‘I can’t do this . . .’ I’d said.
But why can’t I? What other offers do I have? Before he left, he scribbled his number on one of the coffee hut’s cards. I should throw it away, but I don’t seem to be able to. I’ve been searching for something I feel I’ve lost for a while now. Why couldn’t it be him?