On the way home, I call into the Whistling Wave for some brash Aussie advice from Kayla. This is a bold move because the art of people-pleasing has passed my friend by. But her forthright opinions are often right, and I’m putting off telling Josh about Toby because he’ll totally go off on one – and he has every right.

He and Toby have forged a fragile peace for the sake of Freya but their old enmity runs deep. It was Josh who picked up the pieces when Toby abandoned pregnant Lucy and left her family to bring up Freya. That’s one reason why he’s so strapped for cash now. And more proof that my cousin is a duplicitous toad will push the Toby Trust Swingometer straight to Total Git.

Kayla’s dislike for my cousin is less entrenched – or so I thought until she launched into a two-minute rant. I switch off after thirty seconds as swear words rain down thick and fast but I get the gist. To paraphrase, Kayla believes Toby is behaving appallingly, Alice would be turning in her grave if she had one, and Toby’s parentage is questionable.

Once she’s spent, Kayla slumps next to me in a window seat, fanning herself furiously with the bar menu. The window’s open and a strong breeze is moving the horse brasses on the bumpy white walls. But the low-ceilinged pub is gloomy even though it’s so bright outside.

‘What are you going to do then?’ Kayla demands, waving at Tom, who’s just come into the bar. ‘You definitely can’t sell Tregavara House to him now, even if the roof blows off and you’re totally destitute. Though’ – she adds, glancing at my ashen face – ‘that is so not going to happen, like ever.’

‘Let’s hope not. But whatever happens, there’s no way I can let him get his hands on Alice’s house.’

‘Your house,’ Kayla reminds me, shaking her head as Tom wanders round the pub like a lost soul. ‘He keeps coming in to check if Emily’s here. That boy has got it bad, poor lovesick loon.’ She turns to me. ‘Anyway, what were you doing at the planning place?’

‘I was checking out maybe bringing in some money by turning Tregavara House into a B&B.’

‘Hhmm, that’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had and you might make enough to keep the house, for longer at least.’ Kayla beckons at Roger, who’s currently propping the pub door open with a huge chunk of grey granite. ‘What do you reckon about Annie’s idea to run Tregavara House as a B&B then, Rog?’

Roger wipes his sweaty hands down his grease-spattered T-shirt before answering. ‘I’ve never fancied taking in paying guests myself – they’re far too much trouble. But it might work if you can be arsed to be on your best behaviour all the time.’

‘What might work?’ Oh, no. Arthur and Fiona have just come through the door with their labradoodle, Pickles, who’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a living teddy bear. Roger sniggers at Pickles, who he reckons is ‘not a dog for a real man’, and grabs three empty glasses from the table next to us in one huge hand.

‘Annie’s setting up a B&B at Tregavara House. Bedrooms overlooking the sea, home-cooked food, excellent pub just up the road…’

‘Um, it’s just an idea at the moment. Nothing’s settled,’ I squeak, but Arthur’s arms are already folded.

‘Well, I don’t know about that. A bed and breakfast establishment isn’t really in keeping with the village.’

‘What, a village that’s full of emmets all summer?’ snorts Kayla, rolling her eyes at me. ‘The place is heaving with them every day and the Whistling Wave would go tits up without them buying loads of beer and chips. No offence, Roger.’

‘None taken. Tourists are damn annoying, but we can’t do without them.’

The young couple bowed down with backpacks, who are waiting to be served at the bar, give Roger a filthy look but he’s too oblivious to notice.

‘Exactly. Having tourists here during the day is fine,’ snorts Arthur. Fiona gives me a sympathetic smile and I smile back. The poor woman has to put up with Arthur being bombastic every single day. ‘But tourists leave Salt Bay when the sun goes down and that’s just how we like it. We don’t want the village overrun with them all evening as well.’

‘It’ll be even worse if Toby—’ Kayla blurts out but stops mid-sentence when she spots my expression. Arthur’s comments on my cousin’s plans are so not needed right now.

‘The village wouldn’t be overrun because we’d only be able to accommodate two couples at most,’ I explain to him, but he shakes his head.

‘No, no, no. It’s a slippery slope, Annie, and what’s next? Muggings on the cliffs, black masses at the church, raves on the beach?’

‘We’re talking about a small B&B in Salt Bay, Arthur mate. Not the fall of the Roman bleedin’ Empire,’ says Roger, puffing out his cheeks and making me grin.

‘It’s not a laughing matter,’ huffs Arthur, pulling himself up straight. ‘What experience do you have in the hospitality trade, anyway? You can’t just sling people in your spare room and get them to muck in with the rest of you. There are rules and regulations to be followed and you’d need to observe other businesses and see how they do it.’

‘Absolutely, Arthur. I’m thinking of staying in a B&B somewhere to get a feeling for it. Somewhere different but still by the sea. Maybe Southwold or Morecambe. Or Rhyl.’

Oh, I know I shouldn’t and Kayla is looking at me as though I’ve lost my mind. But Arthur is seriously getting on my nerves with his litany of complaints before my B&B idea even gets off the ground. If people round here don’t like the thought of a B&B in Salt Bay, heaven help Toby’s holiday flats.

Arthur’s eyes narrow when they meet mine, then he grabs hold of his long-suffering wife’s hand. ‘Come along, Fiona. Let’s get a drink and sit outside so Pickles can have a run around.’

‘Silly old fool can’t bear change,’ mutters Roger loudly as Arthur drags Pickles towards the bar. ‘If he had his way, we’d still be sending kids up chimneys and using leeches to treat infections.’

‘I guess he’s got a point. Not about the leeches or the village being the wrong place for a B&B. But about me having no experience of this sort of thing. Josh and I might jump through all the hoops but still be awful at it.’

‘Or you might hate having strangers in your home,’ Kayla butts in. ‘You wouldn’t be able to walk about with your bits out after a bath. Though some guests might appreciate that kind of service.’

‘We have to cover up anyway with Emily and Storm about.’

‘Ooh, ooh, I know!’ says Roger, his belly bouncing up and down when he does a little jig. ‘What you need is a dry run and I might know just the thing. Hold on.’ He lumbers behind the bar while I sip my lemonade and Kayla aims a surreptitious V-sign at Arthur’s back.

‘Here it is!’ Roger has arrived back at our table, clutching a scrap of paper. ‘I had a call from some French bloke a couple of days ago asking if I did B&B. When I said no, he insisted I take down his details and get back to him if I could think of anywhere nearby. He seemed very keen on staying in the village if possible. So why don’t you put him up for a few days?’ He waves the scrap of paper in my face. ‘His name is Jack Boo-something. He spelled it out for me. He was quite a forceful bloke.’

The till receipt has ‘Jacques Bouton’ written in Roger’s scrawl across the back, along with a phone number.

‘But we’re not a registered B&B yet.’

‘Whatever,’ says Kayla, with a dismissive wave of the hand. She leans forward, her green eyes bright with excitement. ‘That is a surprisingly good idea from Roger. You can tell that Jackie bloke he can stay with you as long as he contributes towards the food which is, like, £50 per day.’

‘Blimey, I’m not planning on feeding him foie gras.’

‘Nah, you can just serve up your usual slop – oops, sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude about your cooking. But it’ll get around the whole charging him to stay thing.’

‘I don’t know. Having a stranger to stay would be a bit weird.’

Running a B&B seemed like a good idea – a helping hand out of our financial problems – but the nitty-gritty is suddenly hitting home. I’ll need to share my beloved Tregavara House. With some random French bloke called Jacques. But it’s better than selling up to treacherous Toby.

‘Sunshine.’ Kayla grabs my hands and swings me round to face her. ‘The very nature of a B&B is that loads of strangers come to stay. It’s really no different from when you took in Barry and Storm last year. You’d never met them before and they were freaking awful back then.’

Eek! I can’t cope with guests like my father and half-sister, who caused chaos when they turned up announced just before last Christmas. I’d never met Barry until he arrived on my doorstep and I was clueless about Storm’s existence. Getting rid of them was my sole aim, but now… now, I love having them in my life.

‘What was this Jack bloke like?’ Kayla asks Roger.

‘I dunno. French. Good English. Bit bossy. Said he ran a bakery business.’

‘There you go then,’ says Kayla. ‘He sounds just right to be your first guest so, Rog, you can ring Frenchie Jack back and, Annie, you can launch into your new career as a B&B-er. Simples.’

‘OK. Let’s give it a go.’ I give a thumbs up and smile to show that I’m up for this latest adventure which is my last hope.

Kayla starts getting to her feet when Roger heads for the bar but I pull her back onto the window seat.

‘You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what the Lake District was like. We haven’t had a chance to chat since you and Ollie got back and I want all the gossip.’

Kayla sniffs. ‘It was all right, I s’pose. Lots of lakes and tea shops and appalling weather. I didn’t know rain could hit you horizontally and it’s hard to appreciate a view when you can’t see further than your nose. And that’s in the summer! If people up there have got any sense, they hibernate through the winter.’

‘It can’t have rained all the time so what did you do when it stopped?’

‘Ollie made me climb up what the locals call a “fell” which turned out to be a freaking mountain. Halfway up, I thought I was gonna die. But the view from the top was pretty awesome. Do you want to see my photos?’

She shoves her phone in front of my face and starts scrolling through pictures. There are jagged peaks fading to grey in the distance, huge lakes surrounded by trees, and selfies of Kayla looking sweaty, puce and close to death.

‘And this is Keswick, pronounced “Kezzick”, where Ollie was looking at flats to rent.’ She scrolls through multiple pics at high speed. ‘It was quite a nice town actually and it has an actual pencil museum. Like, a proper museum that’s all about pencils!’

‘Hang on, backtrack a bit. Ollie was looking at flats to rent?’

‘Yeah,’ says Kayla, wrinkling her nose. ‘But it’s all part of his ruse to make me think he’s adventurous and about to leave his beloved Cornwall.’

‘Or it’s not a ruse, he really is moving to the Lake District in October and you’re in denial.’

Kayla shakes her head but starts scratching her neck which is what she does when she’s anxious.

‘So let’s say for the sake of argument that Ollie definitely is leaving’ – I hold up my hand when Kayla goes to speak – ‘and he’s going to be five hundred miles away. Are you going with him or staying here?’

Kayla keeps on scratching at her reddening skin. ‘I don’t know, Annie. Tell me what to do. Would you miss me?’

And suddenly it hits me just how much I will miss Kayla if she leaves Salt Bay. She took me under her wing and made the village bearable when I first arrived from London, feeling angry and lost. And though we’re different in lots of ways, she still helps make life bearable when people like Toby disappoint me – or I disappoint myself.

‘Of course I’d miss you horribly.’ I take a deep breath. ‘But this isn’t about me and you’ve been talking about moving on somewhere else ever since I’ve known you. So why are you holding back?’

‘Because if I follow Ollie up North it’ll send all the wrong signals, like I’m totally committed to him and then he’ll start talking about getting married again and, before I know it, I’ll be just like the Smug Marrieds – hitched, pregnant and terminally boring.’

‘Is this what all the angst is about? You’re worried you’ll end up like your sisters?’

Kayla nods, red curls tumbling around her face. ‘They say I’m missing out ’cos I’m not married to some tedious accountant with two-point-four children and a pointless career. But they’re so scared of life they’ve never been outside Australia yet they still look down on me and think I’m weird ’cos I want to travel and be free. They’re just narrow-minded and provincial and… and…’

‘Smug?’

‘Yeah, hideously smug. And I’m never going to be like them,’ she declares, folding her arms and pulling her mouth into a pout.

Oh, where do I start? I rest my head in my hands for a few moments, not sure how best to unpick the tangle Kayla’s got herself into. It seems we’re not so different after all – I can’t wait to marry Josh and she can’t bear the thought of matrimony but we’re both great at getting ourselves into a muddle.

‘You’re so different from your sisters, Kayla, that you’ll never be like them whatever you do. So if you don’t want to leave Cornwall with Ollie, that’s fine – plenty of people have long-distance relationships and some of them even work. Look at Prince Harry and Meghan.’

‘Who have loads of cash to spend on transatlantic travel and don’t work for a slave driver like Roger.’

‘True. But I’m sure you could both make it work if you wanted to. Just make sure if you stay in Salt Bay that it’s for the right reasons and not because you’re a wuss when it comes to commitment. Ollie’s a lovely bloke and moving to the Lake District would be an adventure.’

‘Not so much an adventure as a cold and rainy challenge,’ mutters Kayla. ‘And I don’t appreciate Ollie putting me under pressure.’

‘All he’s doing is taking up the chance of promotion in the Lake District and he’d like you to go with him. The only person piling on the pressure and making it any more than that is you, you eejit.’

‘Kayla!’ bellows Roger across the packed pub. ‘There’s people here who need serving if you’ve finished your little chinwag.’

‘Duty calls,’ she sighs, getting to her feet. ‘Thanks for the chat, Annie.’

Kayla wanders off towards the bar, deep in thought, as I realise I’m a prat. Kayla’s the woman who keeps me sane when Storm’s kicking off and Barry is being… Barry-like, and here I am persuading her to move away.

But friendship is wanting each other to be happy – and Ollie makes her happy, even if she’s too pigheaded to recognise it. Salt Bay won’t be the same without her but nothing stays the same forever. However much we might want it to.

---

Josh is surprised by the news that we’re having a Frenchman to stay but remarkably unfazed by my bombshell about Toby.

‘Lying to us and planning on carving the house up into flats is typical Toby. I knew his proposal was too good to be true,’ he says, hitting his stapler extra hard with the heel of his hand. He’s photocopied some musical scores for the choir and is fixing the sheets together.

‘But I feel so stupid for believing him.’

‘Did you really believe him, though, deep down? You must have had some niggles to come up with the idea of running a B&B.’

‘Maybe I wasn’t sure about him letting us stay on in the house but I never thought he’d start ripping out walls and changing the whole character of the place. You’re right. I am horribly gullible.’

Josh stops stapling and pushes the music scores to one side. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Annie. It’s Toby who’s at fault here, not you.’

I sigh, unwilling to let myself off the hook because disappointment is coursing through me. Disappointment in my cousin for turning out to be the weasel Josh said he was. And disappointment in myself for letting Alice down. How could I have ever considered letting the house fall into Toby’s avaricious clutches?

‘What upsets me the most is that he’d like to knock this place down.’

‘You’re kidding me.’ Josh’s composure is starting to slip. ‘He wants to knock it down? Converting into flats is one thing but wanting to bulldoze this house when he knows what it meant to Alice and how much it means to you is downright cruel.’

‘He wouldn’t get permission to knock it down, but he made enquiries about it.’

‘Unbelievable! Just when you think Toby Trebarwith has scraped the bottom of the barrel, he sinks even lower.’

The muscles in Josh’s jaw have tightened and I see a flash of the man I first met early last year. Back when he was angry and resentful and stressed out by the demands of looking after his family. Before we fell in love and brought out the best in each other.

‘I’m going to ring him,’ he announces, standing up so quickly that pieces of photocopied paper flutter to the kitchen floor. He marches into the sitting room with me scurrying after him and starts flicking through Alice’s address book, which gives me my chance.

I position myself between him and the landline because, though the situation is bad now, it could become catastrophic if Josh rings Toby in a temper. The two have made peace for the sake of Freya and she’ll suffer if their whole hating-each-other thing kicks off again.

‘Please don’t ring him.’

Spreading my arms wide, I shuffle backwards towards the phone feeling faintly ridiculous. I’m not on a protest march or protecting royalty. I’m simply asking my fiancé not to call my awful cousin. So quite why I’m adopting this position is beyond me.

However, it does the trick. Josh frowns – or it might be a suppressed smile; I’m not sure. But he puts the book down on top of the bookcase and folds his arms.

‘Why shouldn’t I ring him?’

‘Because it wouldn’t make anything better.’

‘It’d make me feel better,’ says Josh, dark eyes flashing.

‘Which is exactly why you shouldn’t call him. But we won’t ever sell the house to him.’

‘Hang on. Are you saying that you’d sell to someone else instead?’

‘No, I’m definitely not saying that.’

‘So you won’t sell to Toby and you won’t sell to anyone else and the roof needs a thirty grand makeover that we haven’t got.’ Josh sighs and rubs his eyebrows with the heels of his hands. ‘Can you see that’s not going to work, Annie?’

I want to yell: Of course I can because I’m not an idiot but selling this house wouldn’t work for Alice and it doesn’t work for me. And then fall into Josh’s arms and snivel into his polo shirt while he rocks me like a baby.

But I don’t because that won’t help in the long run and there’s one last hope for the Trebarwith ancestral home – a Frenchman who sells croissants for a living.

‘Will it be all right if Monsieur Bouton comes to stay and we see how that goes?’

Josh shrugs. ‘And if it doesn’t work, will you give serious consideration to selling to Toby? He’s got the money to replace the roof and, if the house is split into flats, at least it’ll still be standing – now he knows he can’t knock it down. Honestly’ – he scrunches up his nose as if he’s just sniffed a dead rat – ‘what a moron.’

When I nod, Josh says: ‘We’ll push ahead with the B&B option and hope it works, seeing as Toby’s living up to my expectations.’

Then he picks up the scattered music on the kitchen floor and staples the sheets with such force, I’m worried he’s going to punch a hole through the table.