A Perfect Cornish Escape by Phillipa Ashley Page 0,50

astonished – and horrified – but I didn’t want to hold her back. I went to some of the parties, but it was difficult. She wanted me to give up being a mechanic at the Thames Lifeboat Station and she said she’d support me so I could attend more events with her and travel abroad when she had to for other roles.’

‘That must have been a tough decision,’ she offered.

‘I thought about it very carefully. I lost sleep over it, but I needed something in my own life too. I couldn’t bear the idea of just following her around, even though I loved her. We were struggling to maintain the relationship by then. I thought about doing it. I almost gave in my notice but then that story broke – about the problems we were having. I got home, we had a huge row and I walked out.’

Tiff knew what happened next but waited for him to tell his own side of things.

‘Amira went to the papers. She said stuff about us, about me. She later told me her publicist had made her talk to them. He’d told her it would keep her in the public eye and that she could convince me that the journalist had made it all up.’

Tiff pressed her lips together, picturing the conversation between the journalist and Amira’s publicist. She winced inwardly. Hearing Dirk’s point of view, she felt she was hearing a new perspective – or perhaps, a perspective she’d lost sight of and dismissed over the years.

‘The story blew over in days and our lives were fit for the recycling bins before the week was out, but the damage was done. I tried to talk to her and see a way forward but we both knew we’d grown too far apart. She’s living with one of the cast members now.’ He paused for a second, and Tiff could see the pain in his eyes. ‘The worst moment was when Amira was pictured with that actor for the first time. The press hunted me down to get my reaction. They were on the riverbank the night we pulled a young guy from the Thames. He’d been drunk, jumped in and drowned. It made the papers because it happened during the Cricket World Cup and he was in a New Zealand shirt. They used a photo of me after we’d got the poor lad ashore. It had nothing to do with Amira, and there were other pictures of me on the web they could have used.’ His voice rose in anger. ‘Yet they chose to use the photo at the scene after I’d dragged a dead person from the water! It was obscene.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Tiff meant it, horrified at the use of such an emotional photo to sell a tabloid break-up story.

‘I decided then that my private life was affecting my mates on the crew, and the casualties. Amira made it clear we were over so when I saw a vacancy here, I jumped at the chance to get away.’

Dirk’s voice faded. Perhaps he was embarrassed about revealing too much.

‘Porthmellow’s a long way from London …’ she prompted, eager to keep the words flowing, dreading that they’d dry up.

‘I was born in Cornwall,’ he said, frowning as if she should have known that already. ‘Up on the north coast. My parents still live up there so when I decided to move away, it was a no-brainer to come back here … Closer to them, and as far as possible from the city, as you say.’ He looked at Tiff. ‘More importantly, as far as possible from Amira and all the crap that surrounded her. It was your newspaper that ran the final story on her – on us. It was garbage, most of it, and they called me a tragic lifeboat hero.’

Tiff sucked in a small breath. Now the layers were peeling back. No wonder he’d shown her such animosity. ‘I didn’t write it, Dirk.’

‘Your mate did. Esther Francois.’

‘Esther was a colleague, definitely not a mate,’ she said, sharply. It was an understatement if anything: Esther Francois was so far from being a ‘mate’ that she’d urged the editor to sack Tiff.

‘You’d have done the story too, if you’d dug it up,’ Dirk said. ‘Not that there was much truth in the stuff that ended up in print. It was a pack of lies.’

She hesitated. ‘Without knowing the circumstances, I don’t know what I’d have done presented with the information. Tragic hero is a cliché.