Coming Home to Penvennan Cove, page 1
COMING HOME TO PENVENNAN COVE
Linn B. Halton
AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS
www.ariafiction.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Linn B. Halton, 2020
The moral right of Linn B. Halton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781838938000
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Contents
Welcome Page
Copyright
Dedication
April: The Happy Hive offices in London
Chapter 1. This Country Girl is Going Home
Chapter 2. The Future Starts Here
Chapter 3. Friends and Neighbours
Chapter 4. A Helping Hand
Chapter 5. The Old A-Team is Back in Business
Chapter 6. Hiding in the Shadows
Chapter 7. Some Things Never Change
Chapter 8. Really Feeling That Country Vibe
Chapter 9. The Paint Run
Chapter 10. A Different Mindset
May
Chapter 11: The Calm Before the Storm
Chapter 12. Introductions
Chapter 13. The Fun Begins
Chapter 14. Bonding
Chapter 15. Night Terrors
Chapter 16. Waiting for the World to Wake Up
Chapter 17. The Good, the Bad and the Simply Beautiful
Chapter 18. The Garden Party
Chapter 19. Doing What Friends Do Best
Chapter 20. Yo! Ho! Ho! The Treasure Chest
Chapter 21. Big Plans
Chapter 22. The Devil is in the Detail
July
Chapter 23. Revelations
Chapter 24. The Morning After the Night Before
Chapter 25. The Empty Place at the Table
Chapter 26. Night Owls
September
Chapter 27. Autumnal Chills
Chapter 28. TGI Friday
Chapter 29. A Listening Ear
Chapter 30. Do Cats Have a Sixth Sense?
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Become an Aria Addict
To live with hope is truly a blessing because every day is a blank page just waiting to be written. The dream is to fill your blank page with happiness.
April
The Happy Hive offices in London
1. This Country Girl is Going Home
‘I can’t believe you’re really doing this to me, Kerra,’ Sy declares.
In a fit of pique, he raises the roll of packing tape to his mouth, using his teeth to tear off yet another strip. The horrible ripping sound grates on my nerves, sending a shudder through me.
As if today isn’t tough enough as it is, the last thing I need is a petulant assistant who knows my Achilles heel. And he’s giving the performance of his life playing the poor, abandoned me role.
‘For the last time, Simon, please do me a favour and stop doing that. Use these.’ I thrust the scissors in his direction. ‘If you break a veneer, I’ll feel obliged to hang around and sort you out.’
He hates being called Simon, because it reminds him of his mother, who refuses to shorten it. It pulls him up rather sharply when he isn’t playing nice; it’s our little code to remind him he’s overstepping the mark.
‘That’s the general idea. Anyway, who’s the assistant here? I’m supposed to be packing up this lot, not you.’ He flashes a withering look in my direction. ‘The Happy Hive offices just won’t be the same without you… and my life won’t be the same without you.’
Letting out an exasperated sigh, I’m struggling to face the fact that in less than an hour my things will be all boxed up and ready to go. It signals the end of an era, one that ruled my entire life and that’s why it’s time to move on.
Sy has been my right-hand man for the last five years and he’s acting like I’m divorcing him. Which is ridiculous, although one look at my face and Sy can pre-empt my every need. He’s the only person who ever makes my coffee to perfection and he instinctively knows when I’m pushing myself too hard. The number of times he’s appeared in front of me with my coat in his hands and given me that stare of his, well—he was the one who kept me sane.
But I’m leaving him in capable hands, with a shiny new job title and a rather nice pay rise. It’s time for me to teeter forward and begin the next stage of my life. So, I can’t find it in my heart to be angry with Sy, even though the way he’s tugging on my heart strings is stretching them to breaking point. We both know there is no going back, but knowledge of a fact is one thing, accepting it—for my darling Sy—is another.
‘I know and I’ll miss it. And you, too—that goes without saying—and the team. But I’m not the boss anymore, Sy, and the handover is complete. My baby is all grown up and it’s time for me to accept my job here is done. The Happy Hive is now a part of a much bigger concern and it’s about to grow exponentially.’ I try my best to brighten my voice, enthusiastically.
The Happy Hive is all about connecting people with a need, to people who have the skills to fulfil that need. Members pay a fee to join the community and interact via geographically based groups at regional and local levels. It’s a simple idea that works beautifully, because the website only puts people in touch. It’s then down to the parties concerned to decide whether money will change hands, or whether there will be an exchange of services. Simple. Effective. Personal. And scalable. It’s also a convenient bolt-on for social media phenomenon, Keeping in Touch.
When one of the biggest social media outfits going, comes knocking on your door because your little business excites them, it isn’t just about seeing pound-signs. It’s about realising what you’ve created is morphing into this… monster that you never envisaged. My life had become tunnel-visioned and I can now admit that the stress was almost overwhelming at times.
The frown on Sy’s face tells me that my attempt to reassure him has fallen on deaf ears.
‘Traitor. I never thought you were the type of woman to take the money and run.’
Staring at him, I raise a disapproving eyebrow and Sy hangs his rather handsome head in shame.
We both know he doesn’t mean that, but as a creature of habit he hates change. And he hates goodbyes even more. He’s like the younger brother I always longed to have when I was growing up. My best friend had one and he adored his big sister, despite the fact that having a little shadow following her every move annoyed her intensely. Sy latched on to me in much the same fashion from day one. He was a godsend and he isn’t just an employee, but a dear and valued friend. I trust his opinion because he always has my back and I have his.
‘Cornwall is where I grew up and it’s time to go back, Sy, to reconnect with my roots. You can come and visit anytime you want, so think of it as a free holiday whenever you need a break.’
The look I get in return makes me stifle a laugh. Sy looks like a startled rabbit.
‘What—you expect me to head down to the land that time forgot?’
That would have been funny if he wasn’t being serious. Cue the commercial—I need to be painting a picture here. In my smoothest tones, I imagine I’m doing a voiceover.
‘Cornwall is a beautiful area, with stunning scenery, Sy. It’s a place made for romance, steeped in history and with wonderful walks that make the heart want to leap out of one’s chest.’
He gives me a sour look. ‘Sounds wonderful if you like that sort of thing, but I’m not fooled; you’re just trying to appease your guilt at abandoning me. Wellies have never been fashionable in my book, or remotely of interest to me.’
‘From lush green pastureland,’ I continue painting the picture, ‘to sandy beaches washed by fingers of foaming, salty water, to cresting waves and spray that stings your face, making you feel truly alive. Nature is a gentle reminder of the wonders all around us: the things that ground us and remind us what really matters. What’s not to like?’
Sy takes one step back, crossing his arms in front of him and resting his chin on one hand.
‘Hmm. Let me think. Would it be the narrow, winding lanes without a motorway in sight? And there are probably more bright lights in one square mile in London, than there are along the whole of the southwest coast. Not forgetting the fact that there’s either a camper van, or a herd of cows around every bend. It’s a hazardous place to live and the parking is abysmal. The Wi-Fi is rubbish, too, I hear!’
I give up. He’s being purposefully antagonistic now.
‘It’s the countryside, Sy. It’s all about community—but the real thing, not the online variety. This is life in the raw, versus…’ How can I put this into context? ‘As opposed to virtual reality—wh
‘I like work, and wine bars, and theatres, and crowds of people I don’t know—and don’t care to know up close and personal. I hate the thought of strangers being privy to my business and I have no desire whatsoever to be on more than nodding terms with either of my neighbours. They could be serial killers, for all I know.’
I, too, have loved the sense of anonymity that living in a metropolis brings with it. No one has time to notice you, unless you want to be noticed. The truth is that the day I signed on the dotted line I did waver, there’s no denying it. I watched my hand shake as I focused on forming each of the letters of my name. My head was telling me that it was the right thing to do for the survival of the company and to ensure the livelihoods of my loyal staff. But my heart felt it was at breaking point—I was being pulled in two directions. Work on the one hand and family on the other.
When Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I travelled home every weekend so we could all be together during those final few months. We laughed, we cried and we reminisced. But it’s a mean beast and although she was ready to go when the time came, we weren’t ready to let go of her. What it did for me, was put everything into perspective.
Going back is never easy; going forward was all I knew, until now.
It eased my conscience a little to see my team through the transition, giving them time to adjust to the new regime. It was meant to be a period in which we’d all feel proud of what we’d achieved and I’d leave them with a sense of excitement about their future. But the last few months have been a blur of activity and, naturally, upheaval.
And now, Sy is right—I feel like a deserter, walking away as if I can’t already see the problems beginning to stack up on the horizon. Big business is fierce and while it was all smiles and handshakes at the start, it’s now deadpan faces and long emails detailing the new procedures. Did they really want the business, or just the ready-made audience to add to their already huge database? Equally as soul-destroying is the fact that I’m beginning to feel I’ve been disloyal to our customers, too. The press release put a very positive spin on it, of course, but some of the benefits seem one-sided to me. I’m hoping I’m proved wrong.
This little website I set up, working every evening and weekend while I was at uni studying for my computer sciences degree, began as a tiny seed of an idea. The experience I gained as a database administrator after I qualified, spurred me on. It became my sole focus in life to the exclusion of everything.
I vividly remember the day I handed in my notice at the day job, much to the horror of my parents and everyone I knew. All I had was a team of one to take my ideas forward. But every time I shut my eyes at night it took over my dreams. There wasn’t room for anything else in my life because I became obsessive. As it grew, and more and more subscribers signed up to pay their monthly fee, each member of staff I recruited knew their input made a difference; they counted for something. I lovingly nurtured it for nine years as it grew into a sapling and then into a little tree. But the handover has only served to make us all feel like pawns in a game of chess, overshadowed by the mighty castles and the knights who came sweeping in with solutions to problems we didn’t even know we had. So now I feel like I sold out and that’s my Achilles heel—for me it was always about the people, regardless of whether they were employees or customers.
Being faced with technical wizardry far beyond even my—not inconsequential—IT abilities was a sharp and timely reminder that I was doing the right thing. Of course, a multi-million-pound company can afford to pay for the brightest of whizz kids. And some are young, very young—making me feel old at the age of twenty-nine. The saving grace for my team is that I hand-picked the best.
It was a great idea that worked at a micro-level, as well as for much bigger things—everything from exchanging babysitting duties, to finding a local tradesman and being able to choose someone with a degree of confidence. Scanning through the feedback shows that it reflects a true sense of community, not least because of the launch of Help-a-neighbour, a free service. There are a lot of lonely, isolated people out there and a call to action by a member to rescue an elderly person’s overgrown garden, for example, can achieve a staggering influx of offers to help.
And more and more we began to see an increase in the number of people offering a simple exchange of skills. That alone saw one of the biggest jumps in enrolment and word spread quickly. Keeping the subscription fee low was key to making it accessible for as many people as possible.
None of my family and friends really understood what I’d built. It’s my own fault, as I was too busy to realise I had distanced myself from them all. No one outside of the business wants to have a conversation about websites, bugs and download speeds, though. As soon as you mention you work in IT, people’s eyes tend to glaze over and they change the subject very quickly. And there was always an emergency at work—a reason to cancel a trip home to visit the parents, or bow out of a dinner date. But now I no longer have a business to run and technically I no longer have a job, so there are no more excuses—just an obscene amount of money in the bank and a whole raft of contacts offering me consultancy work. And that holds no interest for me whatsoever, as I don’t see myself as an entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word. It was all about the challenge of building and running a website that fulfilled a genuine need. I should be feeling ecstatic and I would be, if it wasn’t for this monster of a guilty conscience weighing me down for jumping ship.
‘I have responsibilities to take care of, Sy,’ I say, my voice sounding a tad more emotional than I’d hoped. ‘Since Mum died, Dad’s been struggling and it’s time for me to be there for him, as he was for me when I was growing up.’
Sy, being Sy, throws his hands in the air, but he knows that I’m speaking from the heart. Now is probably not the time to remind him of the bonus I gave each of my team when the electronic transfer hit my account. It was a nice little nest egg in case corporate life and the perks on offer turn out not to be quite right for them. I know it’s a whole new world and it won’t be the same, but nothing stands still forever and that’s life, I’m afraid. If it does, in this day and age, then it signals the beginning of the end. It means people have run out of ideas and that’s a red flag.
‘That’s what weekends and holidays are for,’ Sy retorts, still needing to vent. The desperation in his eyes is hard to witness.
‘After years of being a neglectful daughter, it’s time to head home and get him back on track. My parents asked nothing of me and gave me their support every step of the way. Mum would expect me to do the right thing now and don’t pretend you don’t understand, Sy, because I know that’s not the case.’
‘It doesn’t mean you have to move back to a little village in the depths of Cornwall and leave behind the delights of London. You’ll stagnate! You’re used to spending your days in meetings talking about server speeds and demographics… and…’ He pauses, casting around for the right words, which are clearly eluding him as he teeters on the edge of a meltdown. ‘…software updates.’
I shake my head, walking over to give him a big hug.
‘And that’s precisely why I’m done, Sy. I’m overwhelmed and tired. I put my life on hold for the last nine years and became almost a stranger to the people I love. The regrets I have weigh heavily upon me and it’s time for me to step up. Mum’s passing made me realise that it’s foolish to take anything for granted.’
My words have the required effect and he begins to relax. Wrapping his arms around me in a resigned gesture, we hug, acknowledging the moment has finally arrived.
‘I know, but it’s so hard to let you go. I want you to be happy—we all do. But this is personal. You’re the sister I never had, Kerra. Who is going to stop me getting myself into trouble when you’re gone?’
I push back a little, so I can give him a purposeful look.
‘Just keep your head down at work and keep doing what you’re doing. Our customer services team has an enviable track record for speed of resolution and you are a good organiser and motivator, Sy. Their success is entirely down to you. Your new boss is going to see that and you will learn a lot from him. When it comes to the ladies… well…’ I heave a sigh. ‘I wish I had the answer to that one. You’re a lost cause, Sy, and I don’t quite know what to say.’
