Chapter Fifteen

Present

The conversation Tegan and Ryan had just had about the after-work drinks on that awful day had made Tegan a little uncomfortable.

Of course she remembered the night in the bar — that horrible drunk man trying it on with her was just the icing on a very shitty day.

And of course she had seen Ryan in the bar. How could anyone have missed him, all dressed in black, hunched up glowering at the world like a very grumpy storm cloud? She knew that he was coming over to her, and to be honest he looked totally scary.

She was actually a little terrified that she would run over to him and try to hide behind him, and then he’d think she wasn’t as confident or as feisty as she liked people to think. When her friends had walked in, that had proved the perfect excuse to exit the scene stage right and get out of there.

And of course she’d been too embarrassed to say anything to him the next day. Or the next. Or the day after that. And then it didn’t seem appropriate to say anything at all, because he left and it seemed like a good time to draw a line under it all and forget it had ever happened.

She was pleased she’d left the gallery though — despite the boss being annoying, she knew it was time to move on. She loved new experiences and had learned to channel that philosophy into work and had loved most of her jobs, to be fair.

And then, during one of these great experiences, she had met Angelo. There was no doubt she’d been attracted to him when she’d first met him, as he had been to her. And suddenly, she was happy and felt content. Sicily was amazing, Angelo was amazing and it was good .

Well, she almost felt content, at any rate…

There was, though, just something missing in her amazing life, and she couldn’t put her finger in it.

Before she could second-guess herself, she picked up her phone and texted him again.

Hey, just thinking — why don’t you come over for a visit? I miss you already and would love to see you! How about Christmas? Could you come for Christmas? Xxx

She looked at the phone, half expecting an immediate YES! to come back, but of course it didn’t. People weren’t surgically attached to their phones. Stupid to think otherwise.

Ryan’s voice, however, jolted her right back to that September day in Cornwall. ‘Okay, I’ll be off then,’ he said, standing up and bringing her back to the present. She turned the phone over quickly, hiding the screen, hoping that Ryan hadn’t seen the message. It wouldn’t do to be texting her boyfriend in the middle of a business meeting.

Even though he’d caught her at it earlier, she acknowledged . . . but it was senseless to give him even more ammunition, wasn’t it?

But she feared it was too late, as he was definitely looking at the pink phone and his voice was suddenly businesslike and professional. ‘Sybill will be wanting to head back down to Wheal Mount soon and I think we’ve got enough here between us to keep us going.’

‘I agree.’ Embarrassed, she stood up as well. It made her feel she was more on an even footing with him. Then she sat down again. He would be heading back to the house and she didn’t really want to walk with him. She’d got as close to Ryan as she wanted to, today. ‘I guess this is where we say we’ll be in touch with each other and we email or something when we have more information.’

‘I guess.’ Ryan hitched his bag more securely over his shoulder. ‘Do you need copies of any of these documents?’

‘I think we’ll need them for the exhibitions, yes. Do you think we convinced them about the Halloween thing?’

Ryan almost smiled. ‘Not sure. There’s a link somewhere to the events. I just can’t put my finger on it.’

‘Me neither.’

‘I’m going to have a look at that ballroom when I go back to the house,’ Ryan said. ‘See if it’s suitable for frosted wonderlands and suchlike.’

‘Enjoy,’ she said. ‘I’ll . . . be in touch.’

‘Yes. Me too.’ He hovered a moment longer, as if he wanted to say something else.

Then, it was as if that New York voice was impressing upon her the urgency of saying something to him, of saying that thing .

You might as well tell him , the voice said. I guess you ain’t too proud to thank him? Or are you? There was a hint of amusement there and Tegan could swear she was nudged, not so gently, from behind.

She spun around, just in time to see the bottom of a pink dress disappearing behind a rose bush.

Ugh!

But . . . ‘Ryan!’ she suddenly said as he walked off. ‘Just to say . . .’

He turned and looked at her curiously. ‘Just to say what?’

‘Umm. Thank you. For that night in the bar with the drunk guy.’ She paused. ‘I — um — saw you — coming over to me. But, well, I was too embarrassed, I guess, to say anything before now.’ Ugh — how to show someone your vulnerable side! But it was too late, and she found she had to continue. ‘I’m usually pretty good at looking after myself, and he just wouldn’t go away. If my friends hadn’t come in, well, I don’t know what I would have done. Maybe I would have acknowledged you. Pretended you were my boyfriend or something.’ She tried to make a joke of it. ‘And that would have been horrific for us both!’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Ryan after a moment, his cheeks and ears turning pink. ‘Not sure what I would have done had I actually reached your table, to be frank. I was kind of winging it. Wouldn’t have wanted people to think I was your boyfriend, that’s for sure — you were so not my type. You were too . . . cheerful.’ He smiled. He was joking as well, so that was a relief.

Tegan relaxed a little. It actually felt good to be acknowledging that evening now. ‘I just didn’t want to seem like I was helpless,’ she said, ‘but, like I say. Thank you. It’s, um, long overdue.’

‘No problem. I’m — um — glad I could help.’ Ryan flushed bright red, cleared his throat and nodded smartly. He turned away properly, striding out across the grounds in the direction of Pencradoc.

Tegan watched him go, then dashed behind the rose bush to see who was wearing that pink skirt.

But there was nothing and nobody there.

* * *

Ryan kept heading towards the house, not sure what to think. Certainly, he’d been a bit thrown after catching sight of that text message she’d just tapped out — in his head, he was lost in Glasgow, six years ago, still thinking of Tegan as the girl who enjoyed time with her friends, and didn’t take life too seriously. To see her asking her boyfriend a fairly normal question had disconcerted him.

Maybe it was the fact that he’d never envisaged her in anything long term and serious and it was a bit of a culture shock to find out that she had potentially now done that — when he hadn’t had a relationship that had lasted longer than six months, let’s be honest.

Also, he kind of hadn’t expected any thanks about saving her from Drunk Guy after so long, and the fact she had actually noticed him that night was news to him. He knew though, that if he could go back to that moment, he would have done the same again and, had her friends not come in, he would have just kept walking towards her and did whatever he had to do.

He had left the gallery a few days after that night and had never expected to see Tegan again. They’d certainly not hugged or anything on his last day. He’d logged out of the computer, the manager had done some sort of banal speech wishing him well and Tegan had kept working away on her own computer, not looking at him.

Now, he wondered if she had genuinely been struggling to show him her softer, more vulnerable side, and the speech she had just made seemed to suggest that. Perhaps that had stopped her from even taking the slightest interest in his farewells. Cringing, he remembered that he’d picked up his coat and glanced at her, feeling like he maybe should say goodbye; say something to her, anyway. But she just kept tapping away and not looking at him, so he turned and just walked out of the office; and they went their separate ways, never to meet up again.

Or so he thought at the time.

What on earth were you thinking of? he asked himself crossly. Was it so important to maintain that prickly, angry, loner persona, that you couldn’t even say a polite goodbye to a co-worker?

Quite. Absolutely not the smartest move, old fellow , said a voice nearby.

Ryan stopped in his tracks and stared around him.

He must be imagining it.

Or the legendary ghosts were deciding to throw their opinions in.

Just in case, he hurried up. The grounds felt weird and he felt kind of alone, as if there was a silence that had dropped all around him and the world had become too still for his liking.

Nope. There was the house, and if he hurried he’d get there before his imagination played any more tricks on him.

He took the outside steps two at a time, his long legs making easy work of it, and was soon in the hallway looking at the Grand Staircase.

But even in there, in Pencradoc itself, there was an odd feeling, He blinked and looked around. There was Little Elsie, her marble figure cheerily greeting everyone who visited, but on the wall was a painting of a man. A man with fair hair and grey eyes, where Rose, the duchess, should be.

He stared at the picture, wondering how they had managed to take Rose down and hang this man up — Ellory, that was it, Elsie’s father — in the short time he’d been in the garden with Tegan. At Wheal Mount, it took a whole team of people to do things like that and it wasn’t a five-minute task.

His eyes travelled up the staircase and he felt as if it would be the most natural thing in the world to walk up those stairs and check something was . . . yes. Was where he’d left it.

Because he couldn’t let anyone see what was written there and he couldn’t take the chance of Medora getting her hands on it . . .

He hurried up the stairs, still energised from his race across the moors earlier, and strode along the corridor to his bedroom. He could hear Enyon and Arthur arguing about something in Enyon’s room, a game or a story, or one of the many things they agreed or disagreed on at regular intervals.

He pushed the door open to his room and went over to the desk by the window. He opened the drawer and riffled through the papers. Yes, there it was. Under that picture of her Elsie had given him a while ago. He scanned it again and half smiled. Words on a page. He was better off just burning the damned thing — in fact he thought he might. It was probably the safest option. It wasn’t going to change the outcome of anything.

He carried it over to the fireplace, fully intending to crumple it and toss it among the ashes, but a commotion in the hallway stopped him in his tracks.

‘Let’s ask Laurie for his opinion!’ Enyon was shouting. ‘I’m sure he’ll agree with me!’

‘I think he will not!’ said Arthur. ‘I think he will agree with me !’

Laurie looked around quickly and stuffed the papers into a hole in the chimney breast. He’d deal with them later — he couldn’t take the chance that the boys’ sharp eyes would see the papers unfolding tauntingly in the fireplace. It had happened before and they’d teased him mercilessly about a poem he’d been trying to write . . .

Just as he withdrew his hand, his door burst open and the boys tumbled in.

‘Laurie! Laurie! Can we just ask . . .’

Ryan caught his breath and woke up from some sort of daydream he’d been experiencing. Good grief! What the hell was he doing in this room? The last thing he remembered was standing in the hallway and thinking there was something up here he needed to retrieve . . .

He looked around him and half recognised the room. It certainly wasn’t the ballroom he’d intended to visit when he’d returned after his chat with Tegan — it was definitely a bedroom. But, in his memories, there was a desk by the window, a four-poster bed against the wall and a large wardrobe there, and the dressing room was right through that door there — which was shortly, it seemed, to become an ensuite. Because he was actually in a room that was, seemingly, getting turned into a guest room. He knew that Pencradoc Arts Centre ran artists’ retreats and he could only assume this was one of the soon-to-be-released new phase of retreat rooms.

He turned and looked at the fireplace. That was, as yet, untouched by renovation. But looking at the tools next to it, it was next on the list to be refurbished. Sympathetically, he was sure — but there was a bucket and a bag of ready-mix concrete there, and he knew that any loose bricks or holes in the chimney breast would be well and truly sealed up very soon . . .

It was almost as if someone was urging him to look, to check the place he thought he’d seen in that weird daydream.

He wondered if there was, by some incredible chance, something there . . .

‘Okay. I might be crazy, but I’m going to look,’ he muttered. One of his favourite Mission tracks was knocking at the back of his mind, the one where they sang about other days and times and places.

If it was good enough for the Mission, it was good enough for him.

He took a deep breath and, his heart thumping, leaned into the fireplace. He closed his eyes and reached in, feeling around as if he knew exactly where his fingertips needed to search.

He opened his eyes in surprise as he found the opening and he reached deep inside. Whatever was there would have been pretty safe from over a century of leaping flames, especially if it was pushed right to the back.

A thought came into his head. I didn’t care if it went up in flames. In fact, I wanted it to! Sorry it hasn’t, really.

Ryan tried to ignore the voice and pushed his fingertips further into the rectangular gap. Sure enough, they touched the corner of a piece of paper, and he closed his fingers around it, gently easing it out of its hiding place.

As he brought the piece of paper into the daylight, he saw that it was actually two or three sheets, folded up. Carefully, he unfolded them, hoping at the same time that nobody would burst into the room when he was here.

As he cast his eyes over the neat, cursive writing, he could hardly believe what he was reading. It was an account of a ball in Mayfair, but it had several different endings and was written as a piece of fiction.

But all the endings had one thing in common: the author made sure that, each time, he kissed the heroine and declared how much he loved her.

The heroine’s name was Viola.

The author’s name, however, was unknown.