One Day in Cornwall. Zoe Cook

awful, Charlie,’ she said, seriously. ‘What do I say to the poor girl? It’s vile. I can’t bear it.’ Lucy could feel her pitch rising with frustration. ‘Lawrence is lovely. He wouldn’t mind at all,’ she went on. ‘Just because Emma is a nasty bitch, why shouldn’t Helen have a picture with him? Because she’s fat? Because she’s not ‘got the Spectrum look’?’ Lucy couldn’t contain the anger in her words. ‘Woah! Calm down,’ Charlie had picked up Lucy’s martini and was holding it out for her.

      ‘I don’t want a fucking drink,’ Lucy stood up, ‘I want to work somewhere where this shit doesn’t happen.’ She walked back into the party, slipping though groups of drunk staff and found Helen still at the main bar.

      ‘Lawrence,’ Lucy tapped him on the shoulder and he spun around with a huge grin on his face towards her, his nose stud glinting in the disco lights. ‘Juicy Lucy!’ he beamed and put an arm around her – he had clearly been making the most of the champagne top-ups. Emma shot Lucy a puzzled look, a nervous smile on her face. A mixture, Lucy imagined, of being impressed by her rapport with the celebrity, and jealousy that she was getting his attention. Then Lucy saw Emma spot Helen standing behind her before her face dropped to a thunderous look of disbelief.

      ‘This is my colleague,’ Lucy used her spare arm to pull Helen into the circle next to Lawrence. ‘She’s a massive fan, a ‘Teamer’, no less, and she’d love a photo,’ Lucy continued, pulling her iPhone from her pocket, waiting for Helen to speak. Lawrence took his arm off Lucy’s shoulder and turned to his super-fan. Helen was still looking at the floor and was now bright red and sweating slightly under the lights, her heavy black eye make-up smudged under her lower eyelashes.

      ‘Absolute pleasure to meet you, um–’

      ‘– Helen,’ she finally spoke in a tremble, ‘I’m Helen.’

      ‘Well, the pleasure is all mine, Helen,’ Lawrence took her hand and kissed it. Helen looked as though she might faint.

      ‘Right, let’s get that picture,’ Lucy stood back and Helen and Lawrence looked at her iPhone as she counted down and hit the button.

      ‘Beautiful, a keeper!’ she exclaimed, as Lawrence removed his arm from Helen and promptly turned back to the group, duty done. Lucy purposefully avoided Emma’s gaze, which she could feel burning into her skin, and walked away, heart thumping, with a giddy Helen.

      Upstairs at her desk Lucy sat in her chair, her heart still pounding and her throat dry with realisation. She looked at her things on her desk and tried to work out how big a box she’d need for all her stuff. She couldn’t allow herself to think about what she’d just done, how she had defied and undermined Emma. She knew her career at Spectrum was over. Tears ran down her cheeks as she opened drawers and removed notebooks, make-up, flip-flops and piled them on her desk. What the hell have I done, she thought, and held her head in her hands, alone in the production office, as the party boomed and cheered through the floor beneath her.

       13

      Hideaway Bay, 2003

      Lucy sat in her garden drinking a glass of her mum’s white wine; a crisp, cool chardonnay that helped immediately to take the edge off her anger. She glanced at the expanse of water on the horizon, glittering in the sunlight, and wondered if Tom had gone surfing after all. He probably had, she figured. Almost nothing could keep Tom out of the water, certainly not an argument with her. He’d surf right up until a minute or two before he was due at work in the café. It drove his mum crazy – though Sarah never really got angry with anyone and she would just tell Tom off affectionately. The issue of their future plans had been simmering for a while, really, Lucy knew that. She had always suspected he intended to stay in Cornwall for the rest of his life, but she’d never expected him to be so stupid as to write off any other prospects at all by not even getting his A levels. She tried to push the thought of it all from her mind as she felt her anger rise again, her heartbeat quickening. She took another mouthful of wine and reached for her phone to see the time. It was 3pm and she had an empty afternoon ahead of her now, with no Tom to entertain her. She wondered if she should call Nina, but remembered she was back together with Kristian, fully loved-up and therefore wholly unavailable to anyone else for at least the next few days – until their next argument. She put her phone down on the cushioned sun lounger and lay back, closing her eyes and feeling the sun on her eyelids. She wondered when her parents and Richie would be home. She remembered her mum telling her about having people over for dinner this evening and needing to cook. Lucy worried momentarily whether the wine she’d opened was meant for this evening’s guests, but sat up just enough to take another sip anyway.

      The wine had calmed Lucy, as she’d hoped it would. A bead of sweat ran down her face from her hairline and she put her hand to her arm to check she wasn’t burning. The sun on her skin felt good, healing somehow. The campsite at the bottom of the valley was already starting to fill up, more and more colourful tents popping up each day. Lucy could see a corner of the site from the bottom of her garden. She remembered the nights the four of them had spent camping there, the fun they’d had lighting a fire and drinking cheap wine into the night. Her parents had never caught her out on those secret nights away, when she’d told them she was staying at Nina’s house. There was no way they’d have allowed her to stay with Tom in a tent when she was sixteen, and for good reason, as it turned out. Lucy remembered her argument with Tom all over again, but this time the wine fuzzed the anger and she felt something more like sadness. She picked up her phone to text him.

       Sorry, shouldn’t have said some of what I said. I was upset. I love you x

      A car pulled up in the driveway at the front of the house. Lucy heard the gravel crunch and the car engine switch off. Her parents must be back, she thought, hoping her mum wouldn’t try and rope her into helping with dinner preparations. She hated how her mum used her like a kitchen porter, only delegating the worst jobs and getting all shouty like a professional chef from TV cookery shows. She would make an excuse, she thought, say she had plans with Tom. In fact, she would go and see Tom. She’d apologise. She was more likely to convince him to stay on at college by being nice to him about it. She should have thought of that earlier. He was so stubborn once he’d made a decision; the more she fought it the more he’d stand firm. She was going to have to be cleverer than that.

      ‘Lucy?’ an unfamiliar female voice sounded from a few feet away, walking towards her.

      Lucy sat up and turned around to see a man and woman in smartish office clothes walking towards her. She’d never seen them before.

      ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Can I help you?’

      She felt suddenly self-conscious in her shorts and bikini top and reached for her t-shirt to pull across her stomach.

      ‘Lucy, is your sister here with you? Claire?’ they asked, faces unsmiling. Lucy began to feel uneasy.

      ‘No, she’s in Thailand. Why?’ she asked, her own voice sounding strange.

      ‘We need to talk to you, Lucy,’ the woman said, standing close to her now, looking like she might sit down on the lounger next to her. ‘But we need to talk to you with an adult present.’

      ‘Well my parents aren’t home,’ Lucy explained. ‘They’ll be back any minute, I guess, but I haven’t heard from them.’

      The woman glanced across at the man next to her, with an expression Lucy couldn’t place.

      ‘What is it?’ Lucy said. ‘I’m sixteen. What is it? You’re scaring me now.’

      The woman sat on the lounger next to Lucy and up close Lucy realised she was younger than she’d first thought. She could only be a few years older than Claire. Lucy studied her as she tucked a chunk of her short blonde crop behind her ear. Then the man, too, sat down awkwardly on the lounger.

      ‘I’m Geraldine Slade,’ the lady said, quietly but firmly,