Beach Combing (4 page)

Chapter Nine

Ed ambled across the beach, relishing the warmth on his back and the sand between his toes. This stretch of coastline was his favourite place on earth and he never tired of the view across the bay. The St Grace lighthouse had been out of action for years but he’d always been fascinated by it. As a child he’d been captivated by the thought that it guided ships away from the rocks and into safe waters. Like a lucky talisman.

The
minute Ed had finished his teacher training course in Plymouth four years earlier he’d set his heart on returning home to Cornwall. He’d had to put up with supply posts for more than a year but finally a job had come up at Grace Community School and he’d beaten his rivals to it. His mum had cried buckets when he announced he was moving back and he’d shed a tear as well.

Now,
of course, he had his own house, a tiny two-up, two-down cottage at the far end of town. Paying the mortgage on a teacher’s salary was a stretch though, which was why he took on casual jobs over the long summer holidays. Sometimes he worked behind the bar at the Turtle, at other times he helped Ollie out with his surfing business.

And
boy did Ollie need help, thought Ed. The pair of them had grown up together but they were like chalk and cheese. Always had been and always would be. Ollie’s problem was that while he could talk the hind leg off a donkey he was far too laid back for his own good. And while Ed was a grafter he didn’t have Ollie’s megawatt charm.

Ed
stowed his surfboard in the rack next to the surf shack and pushed the door open. Ollie was supposed to be holding the fort while he was surfing but in typical Ollie fashion he was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t even bothered to lock up either. Or switch off the radio, which was still belting out Daft Punk’s
Get
Lucky
at top volume. Ed slumped wearily at the makeshift desk and flicked through the diary. There was just one lesson booked in for the day – a beginners’ session for four teenagers at five pm. Ollie was supposed to be taking it but he had crossed his own name out and scrawled Ed’s instead.

Ed
groaned with exasperation. What was Ollie playing at? This was July for goodness sake. The height of the summer season. The diary should be chock-a-block with bookings. If Ollie carried on like this he wasn’t going to have a business at all by this time next year.

Even
though the beach was crowded with holidaymakers and anyone could have wandered in, Ollie hadn’t bothered to hide the office laptop. Ed started working his way through the emails, the majority of them from surfing suppliers demanding payment. The most recent email was marked
For
the
Attention
of
Mr
Oliver
Baker
but Ed clicked on it anyway. It couldn’t be from anyone who knew Ollie, thought Ed. No one ever called him Oliver.

Dear Mr Baker

Mr Jago Dunlop cordially invites you to a drinks party at The Captain’s House, St Grace, on Saturday 20th July at 8pm.

Dress: Smart

Please RSVP by email.

Yours sincerely

Marcia Daly

Personal assistant to Jago Dunlop

Ed whistled under his breath. Why the hell had Jago Dunlop invited Ollie to a party? He’d bet his bottom dollar that the actor didn’t know Ollie from Adam. And there was no way Ollie had ever met Jago. Ollie wouldn’t have shut up about it if he had.

At
that moment the door of the shack burst open and Ollie ambled in looking pleased with himself. He was a little unsteady on his feet and appeared to have lost a flip-flop.

‘Wotcha
Ed,’ said Ollie. ‘How’s tricks?’

Ed
knew full well that there was no point in asking Ollie what the hell he thought he was doing. Grace’s Surf Shack was Ollie’s business and Ollie was a grown man, so if he wanted to behave like an idiot it was up to him. And maybe it was better that Ollie didn’t have any lessons this afternoon. He was in no fit state to teach anyone anything.

‘Just
did the perfect three-sixty on the water,’ said Ed. ‘The best I’ve done all season. I was wondering where you were…’

Ollie
swept a pile of papers off the battered armchair he’d nicked from the local tip and collapsed into it. ‘I was hungry and we were quiet here,’ he said. ‘So I just popped over to the Turtle for a pint and a pasty. Have I missed anything?’

‘Not
really, no,’ said Ed. ‘Except you’ve got this weird email. A party invite from Jago Dunlop. For Saturday night.’

Ollie’s
face was a picture. ‘What? Jago Dunlop the movie star? What’s he inviting me for?’

Ed
shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your gorgeous looks? Your sunny nature? You tell me, mate. Are you gonna go?’

‘Are
you joking? Of course I am. You never know, I might get talented-spotted for his next movie.’

‘Yeah,
right,’ laughed Ed. ‘In your dreams.’

‘Pass
the laptop, will you,’ demanded Ollie. ‘I need to reply straight away. This is too frigging good a chance to miss.’

Chapter Ten

By Friday afternoon the atmosphere at The Captain’s House was as tense as a trapeze wire. Lara and Alfie couldn’t go anywhere without tripping over crates of champagne or bumping into worried-looking party planners whispering into their mobile phones. The final straw came when Alfie rode his scooter into the drawing room’s
pièce
de
resistance
– a glorious display of longiflorum lilies and white roses that reached as high as the ceiling. Lara watched in horror as the intricate arrangement crashed to the floor, sending water, flowers and fragments of china everywhere. The young florist, who’d travelled overnight from London, was so distraught that she burst into floods of tears. So did Alfie.

‘S…sorry,’
he sobbed. ‘I didn’t mean to. My scooter wouldn’t stop.’

Lara
gathered Alfie into her arms and tried to console him.

‘Ssssh,
Alfie. It’s fine. Everyone knows it was an accident. No one’s cross with you.’

Actually,
thought Lara, that was an out and out lie. One person
was
very cross with both of them – and she was heading straight towards them.

‘Lara,
I’ve told you before,’ snapped Marcia. ‘Surely it’s not beyond you to take Alfie out for the day? You’re getting under everyone’s feet…’

Lara and Alfie wandered aimlessly along the beach. They’d bought ice creams at Antonio’s Café but Alfie promptly dropped his on the sand and burst into tears all over again.

‘Come
on,’ said Lara. ‘We’ll go back and I’ll buy you another one.’

‘I
want the old one,’ wailed Alfie with the confused logic of a five-year-old.

Lara
willed herself to stay calm. She wasn’t sure why Alfie was in such a state today. It probably hadn’t helped that he’d woken up in the middle of night, crying for his mum. Amazingly, for the first time since they’d arrived in Cornwall, Jago had heard Alfie’s distress and came to comfort him. Even when he was befuddled with sleep Jago looked as devastating as ever, in an elegant navy silk dressing gown and bare feet.

‘You
go back to bed,’ he told Lara. ‘I’ll look after him.’

Lara
had been speechless. What on earth had come over Jago? He was usually perfectly happy to hand over responsibility for Alfie to someone else.

As
Lara tried to coax Alfie into returning to Antonio’s Café, she heard someone shouting her name. Alfie’s too.

She
looked around. It was chillier today but the beach was still packed and she couldn’t see anyone she recognised. Before she knew it Alfie had shaken his hand out of hers and was running towards a man carrying a surfboard over his shoulder. Lara felt a frisson of panic then realised who the surfer was. When Alfie reached him, he put down his board and lifted the giggling little boy high in the air.

‘Hi
Ed. I thought you’d be at the surf shack today.’

Ed
smiled at her. ‘I should be, but the surf was so fantastic that I couldn’t resist it. I told Ollie it was his turn to man the phone for a change. He didn’t like it but there wasn’t much he could do. He’ll like it even less when I tell him I’m going back out there in a minute.’

Lara
stared at him, perplexed by what he was wearing. His wetsuit was aquamarine, the exact colour of the sky, and she’d definitely seen it before. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.
Apart from how much I earn and what I think about Ollie…’

‘Oh
it’s nothing like that – I wouldn’t dream of asking you something so personal,’ she said quickly.

Ed
threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘I was joking, Lara. Ask me anything you want.’

Lara
went quiet for a few seconds.

‘Is
that your wetsuit?’ she said finally.

‘Oh
my God, Lara, is that the best question you can come up with? I thought you were going to ask me something profound, like my views on the Euro or the offside rule. But seeing as you’ve asked, then yes, this is my very own wetsuit. Oh, and don’t worry, I wash it every night. But why do you want to know?’

Lara’s
brain had gone into overdrive. Ed was the surfer she’d watching the other afternoon. She’d had no idea that he was so talented.

‘I
saw you out surfing the other day. You were amazing.’

‘Well
I try my best,’ said Ed. ‘But there are loads of other guys who are much better than me.’

Alfie
was getting restless again and began to kick sand at a group of children playing beach volleyball nearby. It was so annoying when grown-ups talked about boring stuff and didn’t include him.

‘Ed,
Ed, can you teach
me
how to surf,’ he said, jumping up and down with excitement. ‘Please, please, please…’

Lara
gave him a warning look, as if to say ‘no way, Alfie, you are far too little.’ But before she could get the words out Ed had crouched down to Alfie’s level and was looking the little boy straight in the eye.

‘I’m
sorry, Alfie. You have to be at least eight before I can take you. It’s against the rules to go when you’re younger.’

Alfie’s
face fell. ‘It’s not fair,’ he wailed, stamping his feet hard on the sand. ‘Why can’t I?’

Lara
could tell that Alfie was on the verge of working himself up into a mega-strop. She opened her mouth to speak, but Ed was faster than her.

‘But
Alfie, before you get your knickers in a twist…’

The
word ‘knickers’ made Alfie giggle, just as Ed had known it would.

‘I
don’t wear knickers,’ he said, his voice indignant. ‘Girls wear knickers. I wear underpants.’

‘Quite,’
said Ed. ‘But what I was going to say was that you’re too young to go surfing but I can teach you to skimboard if you like.’

‘What’s
that?’ asked Lara and Alfie in unison.

‘I’ll
show you. If you wait here I’ll drop my board at the shack and pick up a couple of skimboards. It’ll be fun, I promise.’

‘This is cool,’ shrieked Alfie as he whizzed along the shore on the small oval board Ed had given him. Ed had shown him how to drop the board, then jump on to it and slide along the wet sand. The five-year-old had got the hang of it surprisingly quickly and was as pleased as punch.

Lara
sat on the sand a few feet away, watching the pair of them. She loved seeing Alfie so happy and it was no hardship to watch Ed in action either. He was kind, she thought, and fun to be with. And even though he wasn’t quite in Jago’s league, he was pretty good-looking. He was an awful lot more fun than Jago too.

After
thirty minutes of skimming up and down the beach Alfie began to run out of energy. Ed spotted it too, and yelling to Alfie to ‘hang on a minute,’ he ran back to the surf shack. He emerged two minutes later with a motley selection of buckets and spades.

‘We
collect them up at the end of the season,’ he grinned, handing a bucket and spade each to Lara and Alfie and keeping a set for himself. ‘I knew they would come in handy sometime.’

The
trio set about building a huge sandcastle with castellated turrets at all four corners and walls linking them. Alfie threw himself into the enterprise with alacrity, determined to make the best castle ever.

‘Thanks
Ed,’ said Lara quietly. ‘He was really upset earlier and now you’ve completely made his day.’

Ed
stared at her. Lara was wearing a dress covered in pink roses and looked as ravishing as ever. She’d caught the sun over the last few days and had tiny freckles on her cheeks. He yearned to lean over and touch her but forced himself not to.

‘Tell
me more about yourself,’ he murmured. ‘I mean, I know you’re at uni in London, but where do your family live?’

Lara
swallowed hard. She hated talking about her parents as a rule but there was something about Ed that made her feel safe.

‘My
dad was head of a boarding school,’ she said. ‘You might have heard of it. It’s called Downthorpe and it’s in the Cotswolds. Me and my brother were pupils there, which wasn’t much fun. No one wanted to be friends with the head’s children so we… well, we were a bit ostracised really.’

Lara
looked so upset that Ed leaned over and took her hand in his. ‘And how about your mum?’ he said, stroking her hand reassuringly.

‘She
couldn’t cope either,’ said Lara, all too aware of Ed’s closeness. ‘She was an actress, you see, and she gave everything up for my father and his big ambitions. But she always resented it and then… well, she fell in love with one of the other teachers. And our whole family fell apart.’

Ed
was still holding her hand but now he leaned towards her. She could have sworn he was about to kiss her when Alfie looked up and glared at them.

‘You’re
not helping,’ he complained. ‘I’m having to do all the work by myself.’

Ed
dropped Lara’s hand like a hot coal and jumped to his feet. ‘You’re doing a grand job there, Alfie. All we need now are some shells to decorate the turrets and it’s good to go.’

The
three of them decorated the castle in silence, then stood back to admire their creation.

‘What
are you going to call it?’ smiled Ed.

‘Alfie’s
Castle of course,’ shouted Alfie and flung his arms round Ed. ‘Please can we do some more skimboarding now?’

‘In
a while,’ said Ed. ‘Why don’t you build a moat round the castle while I talk to Lara for a bit. You don’t mind, do you Alfie?’

It
struck Lara that Alfie liked Ed so much that he’d go along with pretty much anything he suggested. And if she was honest with herself, she was starting to feel the same way.

‘He’s
a sweet kid, isn’t he?’ murmured Ed underneath his breath.

‘Really
sweet. I don’t understand why his mum and dad don’t spend more time with him though. But other people’s families are always a mystery, aren’t they?’

It
was obvious she was thinking about her own family and in a bid to lighten the atmosphere he took both her hands in his and gently kissed her. Lara was so taken aback by his tenderness that she couldn’t think of anything to say. And before she knew it the moment had passed and Ed was leaping to his feet like nothing had happened.

Later
on, after Ed had left for his surfing lesson and Alfie was busy filling the moat with seawater he’d collected in his bucket, Lara had time to sit on the sand and reflect. It had been one of those golden afternoons at the seaside. One of the happiest she’d spent in a very long time.