was going to buy his own trawler, or have a betting shop, or … He and I were very different, but opposites attract, I suppose. When we met, I’d not long come out of uni and I was doing my adult teaching certificate while I worked part-time in the Co-Op in Porthmellow.
‘By the time we were married, I’d managed to get my first job teaching English at Mount’s Bay College. I loved it and we managed to buy a flat in Penzance. Then my grandma passed away and she left me enough extra to put down a deposit on the cottage. It was rundown and ramshackle but we did it up together and made plans, the way you do …’ She paused.
‘Aye.’ He didn’t elaborate.
Marina wondered if she should stop … but it was too late. ‘We were young, and I bought into Nate’s optimism and the excitement of not knowing where life was heading … but as the years went by, I began to realise that that was Nate.’ The bees buzzed on the thrift near her feet. ‘He was a bit like these bees, flitting from one gaudy flower to the next. That’s why I fell for him in the first place I suppose: he seemed fun and ready to take a risk. It was romantic at the start, and so I guess later on I just felt I should stick it out and that things might get better. Something would come up, as Mr Micawber would say.’ She laughed.
‘Whit’s fir ye’ll no go by ye,’ he said. ‘In other words, if things are meant to happen, they will.’
‘Do you believe that? I think you can change your fate.’
‘I’m not sure. Before the accident, I thought I was master of my fate, but since then, I’m not so certain.’
His smile was deep and reflected in his eyes. What kind of a man was he before he had the scars? The same as she was? Naive, trusting, never believing anything bad could happen to him? She’d no inkling that there was a cliff edge waiting to collapse beneath her.
‘Even when we think we’ve put the past behind us, some things – some people – stay lodged in our hearts,’ he added.
She wasn’t sure if he meant Nate, or that someone was still lodged in his own heart. Had he realised how much that person meant to him while he was back in Scotland?
‘Let’s go home,’ she said. ‘You’ve just got back from your trip, and I’ve had a day and a half.’
He made no mention of the text he’d sent with the dinner invitation and she wasn’t in the mood to remind him.
It was frustrating. She wanted to make a fresh start. She was attracted to Lachlan and she thought he liked her. There should be nothing stopping them from taking things beyond friendship, but it felt as if the ghosts of the past were determined to haunt them both.
Chapter Eighteen
Tiff had seen a lot of Dirk in the week or so since their café conversation had been left hanging.
Saw being the operative word, because on none of those occasions had she actually spoken to him. Instead, she’d actively tried to avoid Dirk, attempting to cure herself of her craving for him. But every sighting left her more frustrated at her weakness, and more in lust than ever.
The previous day, however, she’d seen him three times: outside the lifeboat station (that was hardly unprecedented), in the post office again, and then, bizarrely, he’d entered a boutique next to the Harbour Café when she was in there taking some details from the owner for an ad feature. Dirk didn’t even seem to have noticed her, heading straight to the rear of the shop, where there was a display of what Tiff considered to be vastly overpriced swimwear. What he was doing in the smart ladieswear boutique was anyone’s guess. Still, you never know, maybe he really did need some ladies’ swimwear. Dirk was full of surprises.
On the Friday evening, almost two weeks after their ‘chat’ at the café had ended so abruptly, she walked into the Chough Gallery. It was a damp evening and drizzling, so she was grateful to scuttle inside the building, which was tucked away in a warren of streets behind the harbour. She’d been invited to attend an exclusive exhibition by a local artist, and report on it for Cream of Cornish. By the time she’d arrived, the room was buzzing with the artist’s friends and