A Perfect Cornish Escape by Phillipa Ashley Page 0,10

cousin. Marina was someone she could trust to listen without judging her, while also being unafraid to be honest with her in the purest sense of the word.

Tiff’s memories of Porthmellow were among the happiest of her life, although she’d never imagined she might actually live here. Her mother and Marina’s father were siblings, and both had been brought up in Cornwall.

She and Marina shared a love of words: after leaving university, Tiff had got a place at a newspaper training scheme and worked her way up to features editor of the Herald, and Marina had worked hard to get her PGCE and was now an English lecturer at a local HE college. But that was where the resemblance ended. Although they were cousins, they could hardly have looked more different.

Marina took after their maternal grandmother and wasn’t much above five feet, with blonde curly hair she usually wore in a ponytail, especially when she was ‘on duty’ in her Wave Watchers ‘uniform’ of trousers and sweatshirt.

Tiff’s DNA was dominated by her father’s side of the family. She was five feet seven in her stockinged feet, willowy, if she said so herself, with hair that her mother insisted on calling ‘Titian’ but Tiff regarded as simply ‘ginger’. Sometimes she spiced it up with a vibrant red or aubergine colour, to annoy her mother even more, and she kept it in a sharp bob. Although that would probably change now she was in Cornwall. She certainly couldn’t afford her favourite stylist at her London salon and she wasn’t sure she’d ever be brave enough to set foot in the Harbour Cutz place she’d passed earlier.

As for their personalities, it would be too simplistic to say that Tiff was the savvy, hard-as-nails cousin and that Marina was soft and homely. It was true that Marina was innately kind, always putting other people first – to the detriment of her own wellbeing, in Tiff’s opinion – but Marina was no doormat and was straight talking and firm when she had to be. She’d been the first to offer Tiff a home for the summer while Tiff licked her wounds, and had put her in touch with the editor of the local lifestyle magazine.

Marina was a lovely character but she did care so very much about people. She tended to give them the benefit of the doubt, while Tiff’s first instinct was to naturally suspect and question others’ motives.

Tiff had always thought that Nate had taken advantage of Marina’s good nature, but Marina had been besotted with her handsome husband and wouldn’t hear a word against him. When Tiff visited, try as she might, she hadn’t warmed to him. He’d sneered at Marina’s enthusiasm for her students and community life and made snide remarks about her appearance, which he’d passed off as ‘banter’.

Privately, Tiff had longed to tell him what she really thought of him, though she’d tried to be civil for her cousin’s sake. From the looks Nate had given her when he didn’t think she or Marina were looking, she knew their distrust was mutual. He knew that she’d seen through his larky ‘wit’ and that under the tan, the earring and the whole piratical charm crap was a lying git. He was no Jack Sparrow, that was for sure, and one evening, Tiff had seen him round the back of the pub, kissing another woman.

On the train back to London, she’d agonised over whether to tell Marina. She’d still been wondering whether to reveal it when the news came through that Nate’s kayak had been found washed up on some rocks at the foot of Silver Cove.

Tiff had dropped everything to come down to try and comfort Marina, and had even told her boss to feck off when they’d wanted her to do a story on the tragedy – which had probably done her no favours, though she didn’t care. She’d stayed for a week, helping to support Marina and the family while shielding her from the press as best she could. How ironic …

She couldn’t stay forever though, although she kept in touch, and Nate’s body had never been found. Tiff had moved on, and so had Marina. It was hard to believe that the seven-year anniversary of his death was coming up in the summer, and with it, the time when he could officially be declared dead. At least, that would bring financial and legal closure for her cousin, and perhaps be the final piece of the jigsaw in