One Day in Cornwall. Zoe Cook

off work as holiday and moved in with Lucy, cooking her massive carb-laden meals and watching her eat them. They drank sugary tea from Lucy’s vintage harlequin-coloured, gold-rimmed teacups and watched their favourite rom-coms in the evening. In the daytime, with Lucy at work, Claire cleaned her flat from head to toe, polishing the bathroom bin, dusting skirting boards – the works. Lucy protested that she didn’t need to do all this, that she should go home to her own flat, which she shared with her lovely boyfriend Tim in Harrow. Claire insisted, of course, that she wanted to stay. It was clear how worried she was, but she didn’t ask any probing questions, and instead left it to Lucy to get back to strength, hoping she’d start talking at some point.

      As Claire packed the few things she’d turned up with after Sophie’s phone call on Wednesday morning, Lucy watched her and her meticulous ways with admiration. She was the most practical and careful person Lucy had ever known. She looked after everything properly, had bags that matched shoes and gave an impression of togetherness that Lucy envied but which made her feel chaotic by comparison.

      At the front door, with Tim’s car engine running, Claire pulled Lucy in for a hug and checked for the fortieth time that she was going to be alright.

      ‘You are in charge of your life,’ she said to Lucy, seriously, ‘And it can be whatever you want it to be.’

      Lucy smiled at her sister’s sentimental ideas and nodded in faux agreement. ‘Lucy,’ Claire implored, more seriously than before, forcing Lucy to hold her eye contact. ‘I really mean it. And there’s something I need to tell you,’ she continued, with an expression now that Lucy couldn’t quite place. Was it worry? ‘I called Tom,’ she said, matter-of-factly, but too quickly. ‘I know what’s happening this summer. I know he’s asked you to be there. And I think you should go.’

      With that, Claire disappeared into the darkness. The passenger door shut and the horn beeped a goodbye. Lucy stood on her front step, heart racing, tears threatening yet again, and a surge of anger, fear and something that felt like excitement trembling through her body.

       11

      Hideaway Bay, 2003

      ‘Do you fancy a surf?’ Tom asked from his seat in the sun on Lucy’s decking.

      ‘Could do,’ Lucy said, considering whether she could be bothered with the walk back into town and trying to remember if she’d washed her wetsuit.

      ‘It looks like there are some great waves,’ Tom said, pointing to the sea as if Lucy needed the visual clue. She sat herself on his lap and kissed his hair.

      ‘We can go if you like, or I might just sit and watch you. I don’t think I want to get wet again and I need to write to Claire.’

      ‘How is she?’ Tom asked, slipping his hand around Lucy’s waist and taking a sip of orange juice. ‘Or where is she, more to the point?’

      ‘Thailand now,’ Lucy said, ‘then she’s off to New Zealand, though I’m not sure exactly when.’

      ‘I don’t really know why you’d need to go to Thailand when you’ve got this on your doorstep,’ Tom said. It was an attitude that grated with Lucy; his lack of desire to leave Cornwall, seemingly ever.

      ‘I think it’s pretty important to see the world, Tom,’ Lucy said, more sternly than she’d intended. ‘I don’t want to sit around here for the rest of my life.’

      ‘I didn’t mean that,’ Tom said, rolling his eyes. ‘I meant why would you go now, in the summer? You want to get away from this place in the winter, when it’s bleak, when everything closes and everyone’s miserable and there’s nothing to do.’

      ‘Oh, yeah, well, I guess,’ Lucy said, standing up and stretching her arms up to the sun. ‘It is pretty nice here at the moment.’

      Tom and Lucy walked back down into town hand in hand, talking from time to time about the café and the season ahead. Bookings were looking good according to the hotel owners and the campsite was set to be busy. Lucy knew the café struggled over the early months of the season to cover its costs. It was a difficult call deciding when to open after the winter and plenty of days saw them make a loss. Lucy worked a shift there from time to time for a bit of cash and she felt guilty taking her wages at the end of a day when they’d only served half a dozen cups of tea and a handful of toasted teacakes. The summer itself was a different ballgame, of course. The whole town exploded into life from late June, especially when the weather was good. The campsite at the very edge of the beach brought in a university crowd, which spent plenty of money in the pubs and on surf-hire, while the upmarket hotels dotted along the cliffs, with their sweeping sea views and elegant furnishings, attracted the kind of guests that the town really needed, the guests that spent a small fortune on food and drink, souvenirs and clothes, hair and beauty appointments, and, well, just about anything. One of the most contentious issues in the town was that of development, with frequent proposals from huge corporations wanting to build super-resorts and massive hotel complexes in the green spaces that still existed around Hideaway’s cliff tops. The divide of opinion was pretty simply split between the businesses who would profit hugely from the increase in footfall year-round and the business owners who feared their own hotels, B&Bs and apartments simply wouldn’t match up to the new wave of developments. The latter tried to scare residents into believing that holidaymakers who came for the big resorts being proposed would simply sit in their complexes and spend all their money right there, that very little would trickle into the town. Lucy could see both sides. Tom was adamantly against the whole idea. His issues were more philosophical than the majority of the objectors’ issues. He simply didn’t want Hideaway Bay sold to the highest bidder. He didn’t want the feel of the place changed. Lucy was coming round to his way of thinking more and more this year. The spring they’d just had in Hideaway had felt so blissful and easy, the town was in good spirits, the weather was amazing and the whole place had just felt positive since the New Year. It would be a shame for anything to compromise that.

      ‘So has Claire met anyone?’ Tom asked. He was nosey about people’s love lives; it was a trait that always surprised Lucy.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said, ‘I doubt she’d tell me. Anyway, I’m sure she’s far too busy using her time more productively. You know what she’s like, she’s already done a yoga course and some kind of meditation retreat. She’s hardly living the gap-year dream, is she!’

      Tom laughed. It was true that Claire was the more straightforwardly sensible of the two sisters. Even their mum wondered where her eldest daughter had inherited such a level head. Lucy’s family were go-getters. Her dad could seem like a straight-laced finance-type, but that was just how he made his money. And boy, did Steven make his money. When he was in Hideaway he was always on the go – surfing, sailing, windsurfing, kayaking. And their family holidays were legendary. They never seemed to do anything anyone might consider normal. They’d be hiking some mountain with Richie strapped to Steven’s back, or combining a safari trip with aid work in South Africa. Lucy, of course, considered this pretty normal – it was what she’d always known.

      ‘I wish she would meet someone,’ Lucy said, after thinking about it. ‘It might lighten her up a bit. Even her emails are written like A-level essays. It sounds like she needs to drink a few cocktails and let her hair down.’ She smiled to herself at the unlikely image.

      ‘Maybe she’ll surprise you,’ Tom said, as they reached the beach. ‘Talking of A levels, are you still sticking with your subjects?’

      ‘Yeah, I think so,’ Lucy replied, not wanting to talk about it. Thinking about going back to school in September did not fill her with joy.

      ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it all, actually,’ Tom said, looking down at the floor. Lucy could sense his nerves.

      ‘About what? A levels?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were set on sciences in case you want to do marine biology.’

      ‘Yeah,’