A Perfect Cornish Escape by Phillipa Ashley Page 0,1

If they hadn’t argued that morning, if Nate hadn’t set out angry and distracted …

‘I’ll show you!’ he’d shouted, snatching up the keys to the boatshed in the cove. ‘I wish you’d bloody believe in me more!’

At the time, she’d been upset and called after him: ‘Then give me something to believe in, Nate! I’ve had precious little so far.’

Now, she would give everything to snatch back every bitter word, every row they’d had in their two years of marriage. No matter what had passed between them, she loved him and missed his handsome face, his funny jokes, his enthusiasm for life, his touch, his warmth in her bed. She felt as if her heart and soul had been ripped from her body and cast into the sea along with Nate. The torment was unbearable and yet she went on living every day. It seemed wrong that the sun rose in the morning, and the rain fell from the sky, and the world turned – and yet it did.

She so badly longed for answers; she felt she might die if she never found out what had happened to him that summer morning. Yet as each day passed, she began to realise that she might live with the agony of uncertainty forever.

‘Why did you do it, Nate?’ she called out. ‘Why did you have to leave me on my own?’

Her plea was drowned in a rumble of thunder. She hammered her fists against the door of the station in frustration, and, tiring, rested her head against its peeling wood. Its very presence added to her agony. What business had it standing here, abandoned and ramshackle? It would be better if it had never existed because in its present state, it was worse than useless.

Still all she could think was that if someone had been watching the day Nate set out, maybe she wouldn’t have been standing here in the storm, tears mingling with the rain, drawn to the spot where she lost him. She might have some answers, instead of being doomed to look out over the cove forever and never know.

As the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed, she called out to the sea and the storm.

‘Nate. I love you, and I always will,’ she called as the thunder shook the station. ‘Wherever you are and no matter what happens, I swear, I’ll never stop loving you.’

Chapter One

April 2020

‘Marina! Quick. There’s a body washed up in Silver Cove.’

Marina yelped as a droplet of boiling water splashed onto her bare skin. Abandoning the kettle in the staff area at the rear of the lookout station, she strode into the control room, sucking her hand.

‘What? Where?’

Gareth’s eyes were glued to the telescope in the lookout station. He could hardly get his words out. ‘Down there at the western edge, by Cormorant Rock. Look, it’s rolling around in the surf.’

He pulled his face from the scope and swung it towards Marina. ‘Here. Have a look for yourself.’

Marina hesitated. Gareth’s shout had unleashed memories that had swept her off her feet and left her tumbling over and over, powerless to do anything except hope she broke the surface again and could breathe.

He hopped up and down. ‘Go on, look!’

Marina felt sick but Gareth couldn’t have been more excited if a mermaid had been washed up.

‘Shall I call the police?’ He snatched up the radio handset.

Marina composed herself. ‘Hold on, Gareth. Let’s make sure of what we’re seeing, first. And if it is something sinister, remember we’re talking about someone’s loved one.’

‘Yeah. It’s just … I’ve been doing this for four months now and I’ve never seen anything … you know … It’s quite exciting.’

Ignoring him, she pressed her face to the eyepiece of the high-powered binoculars. They were so powerful you could make out the name of the lifeboat in the station at Porthmellow a mile away and see that Craig Illogan, hauling in his lobster pots beneath the lighthouse, was wearing a red beanie hat today.

So she ought to be able to tell if the object rolling to and fro on the shingle was vaguely human or not. From two hundred yards away, she ought to be able to make out its face. If God forbid, it had a face – or once did. Fighting down a flutter of panic, Marina fine-tuned the scope and looked at the object again. It certainly looked like a body: right size and weighty, and it was clothed, but it was being tossed around by the waves,