One Day in Cornwall. Zoe Cook

through the thin walls. It wasn’t as paranoid a fear as it sounded. When the team had relocated to this huge office from a smaller warehouse building in South London, Emma had enquired about the possibility of installing some kind of ‘listening tube’ that would enable her to hear people at their desks from the comfort of her own office.

      Laura caught Lucy’s eye a few times throughout the afternoon and offered an irritating facial expression that Lucy thought was meant to suggest ‘I’m slightly sorry for upsetting you, but hey, you did it!’ She forced herself to smile back. This is the last time I feel like this, she vowed. I’m not going to do this ever again.

      The office emptied at an impressive pace at 6pm. Lucy walked out of the door after a quick hug with Warren and the tiredness hit her all over again. The thought of getting on a bus felt like an epic mission and the black cabs driving past her with their orange lights on looked irresistibly enticing. Lucy put her arm out and a taxi pulled over. ‘Balham please,’ she said as she heaved her exhausted body through the door and onto the back seat. Her phone vibrated in her pocket; a message from Scott.

      Are you okay? I’m working late, but I want to know if you are alright? it said.

      I’m okay, Lucy typed, I’m so sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to get so drunk. I hope I wasn’t as terrible as I think I might have been x. She was relieved Scott was, firstly, still talking to her, and secondly, that he was working late. She didn’t want to go to his perfect flat tonight; she just wanted to go home, run a bath, put on her comfiest pyjamas and take her duvet to the sofa. As the taxi turned the corner onto her road, a wave of familiar, pathetic, realisation hit her, I want Tom, she thought, I just want Tom.

       8

      Her wardrobe was a mess. Clothes had fallen off their hangers into heaps at the bottom. She reached through fabric until she felt the box. The shoebox was covered in wrapping paper: a garish pink-and-orange print she’d picked when she was thirteen, thinking it was exotic. Lucy carried the box onto the sofa and cocooned herself inside her duvet. Opening the box released the smell of paper and ink she only let herself take in a couple of times a year. She’d thought about throwing the box away as many times as she’d opened it, but always ended up shoving it back in the wardrobe. Amongst the letters, scraps of paper, notes passed back and forth by her and Nina in lessons, postcards from her older sister’s travels, she found the wallet of photos.

      There was Nina, all long limbs and beautiful long hair, running away from the camera towards the beach, being chased by Kristian. Then Lucy’s childhood dog, Spencer, a big, fat Labrador, lying on the sand looking happy as her brother, Richie, crouched next to him, all of two years old, bucket in hand and a mischievous grin on his face. Photo after photo showed the view of Hideaway from various high points across the Bay. From Tom’s palm-treed terrace, it looked almost Mediterranean, the sea a vivid greeny-blue. The photos from Lucy’s garden, with the rugged cliffs in view, looked more traditionally Cornish. Her favourite photos of Hideaway were those she’d taken from the café. In these you could really see how the bay had earned its name. Once you were in the town you felt totally cut off from anywhere else – as if you were in a secret cove, unreachable from anywhere but the sea. The steep, winding road that linked them to the real world seemed to give up towards the beach, and from there it was just cobbled streets of tiny shops and cafés with stripy awnings. The view from the café always reminded Lucy of something from a Famous Five book: Keeper’s Island sitting in front of them enticingly, but otherwise nothing but water and sand and the two cliffs either side closing them off from everywhere else, hiding them away.

      She skipped past photos of Claire, feeling guilty about how long it had been since she’d seen her older sister. She didn’t live all that far away and when Lucy had first moved to London, Claire had tried to hard to help her settle, to be friends. Lucy should have made more of an effort, she knew that, but it felt like it had been too long now, like she’d made an issue out of nothing by her inaction. Claire would be angry with her, anyway, like she always was when Lucy did spend time with her in those first few months in London. Claire was so bloody sensible and collected, and together, and Lucy just wasn’t. The thing was, Lucy knew Claire’s intentions were good and that she cared, but it physically hurt Lucy to be near her. The reason she’d left Cornwall was to escape the memories and seeing Claire brought them all crashing back in. And Claire knew too much. She could always see when Lucy was struggling and could never stop herself from bringing it all up all over again. Sometimes Lucy just wanted to pretend things were fine when they weren’t. She didn’t want to try and work through the fucking pain all the time – she knew it didn’t work anyway. So she quickly shuffled the photos of Claire to the back of the packet of pictures, focusing instead on the hideous shots of her and Nina in some of their first trips into Plymouth, where they’d clearly tried to dress ‘fashionably’ but had fallen seriously bloody short of the mark. Nina was wearing an orange poncho with pom-pom trim and baggy jeans, Lucy didn’t look much better in what looked remarkably like a ski jacket and denim skirt. They looked ridiculous and she laughed to herself at the sight of them.

      Then, inevitably, she reached the glossy photo she’d tried to deny she would find.

      Scruffy brown hair swept to one side, in surf shorts and a ripped t-shirt, Tom smiling at her, his blue eyes looking as though he was thinking something naughty, Lucy thought. She remembered standing there, on the beach, taking the picture. She’d thrown the rest away, but she could never bring herself to destroy this one, it was too perfect. It had been taken the summer before she’d left Cornwall, just a normal day on the beach, he’d been surfing all morning and she had taken the mick out of him for his scruffy t-shirt. He’d pulled her into him, ‘You love it, Luce, I know you do,’ kissing her neck and hair playfully. ‘I love you,’ she’d replied, kissing him back, and then she’d asked him to stand for the photo. Wrapped in her duvet, on her sofa in London, she could hear the seagulls circling the beach that day hoping for tourists’ fish and chips. She could feel Tom’s wet, salty skin on her body as he held her waist. She could smell the sun on his hair as she pushed it away from his eyes and kissed him. Lucy put the photo down and tipped her head back to stop the tears. It was a long time ago, she told herself, a different life.

      This was why she shouldn’t look at the photos, she remembered, as she put the box down on the floor and used the sleeve of her pyjama top to dab at the tears prickling the corners of her eyes. Why did he have to send her that email? Why did he need to bring it all back up again? She tried to blame the feelings on him reaching out to her about the summer, but of course she knew, really, that she was simply eternally trying to move on from him, from how much she had loved him. She loved him so much it had ruined anyone else for her, because no one was ever going to compare. And he was just a fucking memory, not even a real person in her life any more. He had let her leave; he had been fine with it. He had not spoken to her for five fucking years.

      She tried to put him out of her mind and concentrate on her plan of action to make herself a better person. She decided she’d start running again, eat healthily, really focus on her career. She wasn’t going to spend her life in London thinking about summers in Cornwall years ago, and she couldn’t allow herself to think about Tom – it was just the tiredness – and that bloody email, that was all. You can’t be in love with a memory, she told herself.

      Even you’re not that bloody stupid.

       9

      ‘Lucy? Lucy! It’s Sophie.’

      Lucy blinked slowly, her head throbbing with pain. She suddenly became acutely aware that she had no idea where she was.

      ‘Sophie?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her own voice trembled and sounded as if it was coming from someone else. Sophie was her next-door neighbour, a couple of years old than her – a primary school teacher who she sometimes had a cup of tea