takes my hand, ‘So. Your first weekend in Carnhallow …’
‘Mmm.’
‘So tell me – I want to know you’re all right! I know it must be challenging – the remoteness, all the work that needs doing. I’ll understand if you have misgivings.’
I lift his hand, and kiss it. ‘Misgivings? Don’t be daft. I love it. I love you and I love the house. I love it all, love the challenge, love Jamie, love the way we’re hidden away, love it love it love it.’ I look into his green-grey eyes, and I do not blink. ‘David, I’ve never been happier. Never in all my life. I feel like I have found the place I was meant to be, and the man I was meant to be with.’
I sound totally gushing. What happened to the feisty feminist Rachel Daly I used to be? Where has she gone? My friends would probably tut at me. Six months ago I would have tutted at me: at the girl who gave up her freedom and her job and her supposedly exciting London life to be the bride of an older, richer, taller widower. One of my best friends, Jessica, laughed with sly delight when I told her my sudden plans. My God, darling, you’re marrying a cliché!
That hurt for a second. But I soon realized it didn’t matter what my friends think, because they are still there, back in London, sardined into Tube trains, filing into dreary offices, barely making the mortgage every month. Clinging on to London life like mountaineers halfway up a rockface.
And I am not holding on for dear life any more. I’m far away, with my new husband and his son and his mother, down here at the very end of England, in far West Cornwall, a place where England, as I am discovering, becomes something stranger and stonier, a land of dreaming hard granite that glistens after rain, aland where rivers run through woods like deep secrets, where terrible cliffs conceal shyly exquisite coves, aland where moorland valleys cradle wonderful houses. Like Carnhallow.
I even love the name of this house. Carnhallow.
My daydreaming head rests on David’s shoulder. Like we are halfway to dancing.
But his mobile rings, breaking the spell. Lifting it from his pocket he checks the screen, then kisses me again – his two fingers up-tilting my chin – and he walks away to take the call.
I might once, I guess, have found this gesture patronizing. Now it makes me want sex. But I always want sex with David. I wanted sex the moment my friend Oliver said, Come and meet someone, I think you’ll get on, at that art gallery, and I turned around and there he was, ten years older than me, ten inches taller than me.
I wanted David on our first date, three days later, I wanted him when he bought me the very first drink, I wanted him when he then told a perfectly judged, obviously flirtatious joke, I wanted him when we talked about the rainy March weather and he sipped his champagne and said, ‘Ah but where Sergeant March is skirmishing, Captain April will headquarter, and General June will follow with his mistresses,’ and I wanted something more than sex when he told me about his house and its history and he showed me the photo of his beautiful boy.
That was one of the moments I fell: when I realized how different David was to any man I had met before, and how different he is to me. Just a girl from the council flats of south-east London. A girl who escaped reality by reading. A girl who dislikes chiller cabinets in supermarkets because they remind her of the times when Mum couldn’t afford to pay for heating.
And then, David.
We were in a Soho bar. We were drunk. Nearly kissing. He showed me the photo of that enchanting boy again. I don’t know why, but I knew, immediately. I wanted a child like that. Those singular blue eyes, the dark hair from his handsome dad.
I asked David to tell me more: more about his house, about little Jamie, the family history.
He smiled.
‘There’s a wood surrounding Carnhallow House, it’s called Ladies Wood. It runs right up Carnhallow Valley, to the moors.’
‘OK. A wood. I love woods.’
‘The trees in Ladies Wood are predominantly rowans, with some ash, hazel and oak. We know that these same rowan woods date back at least to the Norman Conquest, because they are marked on Anglo Saxon charters, and continuously therefrom. That means the rowan trees have been here for a thousand years. In Carnhallow Valley.’
‘I still don’t get it.’
‘Do you know what my surname means? What “Kerthen” means, in Cornish?’
I shook my head, trying not to be distracted by his smile, the champagne, the photos of the boy, the house, the idea of it all.
‘This might amaze you, David, but I didn’t do Cornish at school.’
He chuckled. ‘Kerthen means rowan tree. Which means the Kerthens have lived in Carnhallow for a thousand years, amongst the rowans from which we took our name. Shall we have some more champagne?’
He leaned close to pour; and as he did, he kissed me full on the lips for the first time. We got in a taxi ten minutes later. That’s all it took. Just that.
The memories fall away: I am back in the present, as David finishes his call, and frowns.
‘OK, sorry, but I really do have to go. Can’t miss the one o’clock flight – they’re panicking.’
‘Nice to be indispensable.’
‘I don’t think you could ever call corporate lawyers indispensable. Viola players are more important.’ He smiles. ‘But corporate law is ludicrously overpaid. So what are you going to do today?’
‘Carry on exploring, I guess. Before I touch anything, I need to know the basics. I mean, I don’t even know how many bedrooms there are.’
‘Eighteen,’ he says. Then adds with a frown: ‘I think.’
‘David! Listen to you. Eeek. How can you not know how many bedrooms you have?’
‘We’ll try them all in time. I promise.’ Shirt cuff pulled, he checks his silver watch. ‘If you want to do some real research, Nina’s books are in the Yellow Drawing Room. The ones she was using, for her restorations.’
The name stings a little, though I hide it.
Nina Kerthen, née Valéry. David’s first wife. I don’t know much about her: I’ve seen a couple of photos,I know she was beautiful, Parisienne, young, posh, blonde. I know that she died in an accident at Morvellan Mine, eighteen months ago. I know that her husband and in particular her son – my brand-new, eight-year-old stepson Jamie – must still be grieving, even if they try not to show it.
And I know, very very clearly, that one of my jobs here in Carnhallow is to rescue things: to be the best stepmother in the world to this sad and lovely little boy.
‘I’ll have a look,’ I say brightly. ‘At the books. Maybe get some ideas. Go and catch your plane.’
He turns for a final kiss, I step back.
‘No – go! Kiss me again we’ll end up in the fourteenth bedroom, and then it will be six o’clock.’
I’m not lying. David’s laugh is dark and sexy.
