Читать книгу Dark Pirate - Angela Devine - Страница 7

FIVE minutes later Rose stood outside the front gate of the cottage and took a long breath of pure delight.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she demanded.

Greg’s eyebrows rose sceptically as he took a long, hard look at the gabled roof, which was encrusted with yellow lichen and had several of its slate tiles missing, at the peeling pink paint on the walls, at a broken pane of glass in one of the front windows, at the weathered grey wooden outhouses that leaned drunkenly away from the sea breezes.

‘I don’t know,’ he said in a troubled voice. ‘It looks as if it needs a fair bit of work done on it to me.’

‘Oh, men!’ retorted Rose scathingly, and pushed open the gate, which promptly broke loose from one of its hinges and dangled askew.

Greg gave an explosive chuckle which he hastily turned into a cough when she glared at him. Rose tossed her head defiantly. All right, maybe the cottage did need a bit of work, but she wasn’t afraid of getting busy with a scrubbing brush and some paint. And nothing could spoil the perfection of the garden even if it did look wild and unkempt. On the sunny side of the garden a variety of shrub roses rioted in colourful profusion, filling the air with their sweet perfume, while in a shady nook between the house and the hawthorn hedge a sea of vivid blue hydrangeas tossed in the breeze. A candy-pink clematis had run riot over the outhouses and was now trying vigorously to climb the drainpipe at the side of the house, while purple buddleia bushes near the front gate provided a haven for swarms of butterflies. Every other available nook and cranny was filled with summer annuals, poppies and columbines and striped petunias. What did it matter if the lawn was now knee-high and rank with weeds, or if the paving on the path was chipped and overgrown with dandelions? These things could all be fixed by someone with plenty of energy and a good set of gardening tools. Yet even Rose’s optimistic spirit sank a little when she saw how the guttering was sagging over the front porch and the steps were broken and leaning to one side. Wouldn’t repairs like that be expensive?

‘Look, the cottage is named after you,’ joked Greg, pointing to the sign over the door. ‘Rose Cottage, 1742.’

‘Actually, it’s the other way round,’ Rose corrected him. ‘I’m named after the cottage. But don’t let’s hang about. I can’t wait to see inside.’

Unfortunately, when she inserted her key into the front door, she found that it would not budge. She looked helplessly at Greg.

‘The wood is probably swollen from the rain,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Or else your aunt Em didn’t use the front door much. I could force it open for you, but why don’t we try the back door first?’

The back door was more co-operative but the results were hardly encouraging. When it finally creaked open they found themselves in a dim back porch with a strong smell of rising damp and the sound of a tap dripping persistently somewhere near by. As Rose’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she saw that the wallpaper was stained and discoloured and that some of the floor-boards were rotting beneath their feet. The first, faint misgivings began to stir inside her. All the same, she wasn’t prepared to give up without a fight.

‘Let’s take a look at the rest of the house,’ she said bracingly. ‘I’m sure it’ll be much better.’

It wasn’t. If anything, it was worse. The discovery of her suitcases in the front bedroom and a few basic food items with a friendly note from her neighbour cheered her up briefly, but her enthusiasm was soon quenched as she explored further. All the four downstairs rooms were spacious and charmingly old-fashioned with carved wooden fireplaces and small paned windows, but there were patches of damp on the walls and the only floor covering was a faded pink carpet square in the front bedroom. Most of the furniture was old and shabby without being antique, and the only indoor plumbing appeared to be a tap in the kitchen sink and a claw-footed bath with rusty legs. The upstairs rooms were no better. The stairs themselves had handsome barley-twist newels, but the treads were narrow and worn almost paper-thin in the centre and, judging by the thick layer of dust that covered everything on the first floor, it was probably years since Aunt Em had ever climbed up them. The attics were in the saddest condition of all, crammed full of boxes of old junk and with a couple of big holes in the plaster where rain had come in through missing tiles on the roof. By now, Rose’s initial euphoria had completely vanished and she could not help heaving a deep sigh as she followed Greg back down the precarious staircase. As they reached the bottom he turned back and raised his eyebrows at the sight of her woebegone face.

‘I think it’s time we had that cup of tea,’ he said.

Trying to prepare the cup of tea was the final straw for Rose, since the kitchen seemed to be circa 1742 just like the rest of the house. The only cooking equipment was a malevolent-looking rusty black wood stove set into the fireplace and an array of smoke-blackened old teapots and frying-pans. All very well if you wanted to be picturesque, but not much use if you were hungry and thirsty! And the cold tap that was still trickling dis- mally had left a trail of rusty stains on the enamel sink. Rose sat down at the scrubbed pine table, buried her head in her hands and groaned.

‘It’s hopeless,’ she said despairingly. ‘I’ll never be able to get it all repaired.’

‘Don’t talk so foolish,’ urged Greg. He grabbed one of the old kitchen chairs and sat astride it, facing the wrong way with his chin resting on his folded arms and a stern look in his eyes. ‘You’re not going to give up at the first minor difficulty, are you? You don’t have the look of a coward, my dear.’

A hot surge of rage flooded through Rose’s entire body at this criticism. A moment before she had felt like bursting into tears. Now she felt like hitting Greg, which was a definite improvement, but still rather startling. She had always thought she was a peace-loving person.

‘Minor difficulty?’ she snorted, gesturing at the chaos around them. ‘I wouldn’t call this mess exactly minor.’

Greg shrugged dismissively and his jaw set in an obstinate line. ‘It all looks structurally sound to me and there b’ain’t much wrong with it that fifteen thousand pounds or so wouldn’t fix.’

Rose gave a gasp of bitter laughter. ‘Fifteen thousand pounds! You just don’t understand! I haven’t got nearly that much money to spare. There was a small legacy that came with the house, but nothing like that amount. Oh, Greg! I’ve come all this way just for an impractical dream. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to afford to stay here.’

Greg’s dark eyes took on a keen, brooding expression as if he was giving the problem his full attention.

‘You could take out a bank loan,’ he suggested. ‘All you have to do is decide you want this cottage badly enough and you’ll find a way of keeping it.’

‘No bank manager in his right mind would lend money to me now,’ retorted Rose coldly. ‘I’m officially unemployed.’

‘Well, don’t give up too soon. Let’s make a cup of tea.’

‘How?’ demanded Rose. ‘There isn’t even any way of boiling water, as far as I can see, unless we fire up that wood stove.’

‘Yes, there is,’ said Greg. ‘There’s a gas ring over in that far corner.’

Rose was too disheartened to do anything at first, but when Greg produced coffee, teabags, tinned milk and a box of matches from his knapsack, she roused herself sufficiently to go and find some cups in the old wooden dresser against the wall. Once she had a steaming mug of hot, sweet tea and a digestive biscuit inside her, she found that she felt much better, but all their discussion produced no useful solutions. When they had washed the cups under the dripping tap, Greg moved purpose-fully towards the door.

‘Are you leaving now?’ asked Rose, her heart sinking. Greg’s glib certainty that she could find a way of restoring the cottage infuriated her. And yet she knew with a sudden twinge of dismay that she did not want him to go.

‘Not unless you want me to. I thought I’d try and find some gardening tools out in the shed and cut back a bit of that creeper over the sitting-room window. This place would look much more cheerful with a bit of sunlight in it.’

‘There’s no need—’ began Rose, but he had already gone.

She caught him up in one of the dilapidated old sheds, busily engaged in dusting cobwebs off some rusty garden tools. He handed her a pair of threadbare gloves and an old set of clippers.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to work.’

Rose looked at her watch and was surprised to find that it was now after nine o’clock, but although the sun had set, a pure apple-green twilight still lingered around the hills so that it was perfectly possible to go on working. Back home in tropical Brisbane it would have been dark by six o’clock even in the summer. As they worked it began to grow cooler. An occasional quite strong gust of wind came in from the sea. Rose took out her disappointment about the cottage and her antagonism towards Greg on the Virginia creeper and hacked viciously at the encroaching strands. At last, when the sitting-room window was quite clear and there was a large pile of green creeper clippings underneath it, Greg called a halt. Another sharp gust of wind blew in from the sea and Rose shivered involuntarily.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked. ‘I can light a fire, if you like.’

Rose gave him a shamefaced smile.

‘It’s just my thin, tropical blood,’ she explained. ‘I’m not used to a place where it gets cool in the evenings.’

‘Well, I’ll just get the fire going for you before I go,’ he offered.

She followed him back towards the woodpile that was stacked neatly at the rear of the house. A sudden unwelcome thought flashed through her mind.

‘Don’t you have a wife or a girlfriend you have to get back to?’ she asked.

He picked up an axe and began to split some kindling, producing half a dozen neat, dry sticks before he answered. Then he wiped the sweat off the back of his forehead with his hand.

‘No,’ he replied in a mocking voice. ‘I’m a completely unloved man.’

I find that hard to believe, thought Rose as she followed him inside. With those devastating good looks, the sensual, throaty voice and his aura of lazy, animal magnetism, Greg must have women swarming around him all the time. With a sudden miserable sense of self-doubt, she wondered why he was wasting time on her when she was so unmistakably ordinary. She was startled when he suddenly stretched out his hand to her.

‘Matches,’ he ordered.

She blushed in sudden comprehension as she saw the neat pile of kindling and crumpled newspaper which he had arranged in the fireplace. Hurrying into the kitchen, she retrieved the box of matches and Greg soon had a bright orange blaze crackling in the fireplace.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked abruptly. ‘I’m starving.’

‘There were some tins in the kitchen cupboard—’ she began, but he overrode her.

‘I can do better than that. I brought a few supplies ashore from the boat. Do you fancy some fried lemon sole?’

He did not wait for the fire to burn down but cooked the fish in an old frying-pan over the gas ring. Half an hour later, replete with delicious fish and a butterscotch pudding from one of the tins in the kitchen followed by a fresh pot of tea, they were both sitting on the lumpy sofa in front of a roaring blaze in the sitting-room. Rose’s feelings were in turmoil about Greg’s willingness to linger. She had grave suspicions about his motives and she was still smarting from his earlier comments on her cowardice, yet she was sneakingly grateful for his company. At eleven o’clock, when Greg still showed no signs of heading for home, she was just beginning to wonder whether she should raise the subject delicately when a sudden spatter of raindrops hit the window outside.

‘Looks as though we’re in for some dirty weather,’ said Greg, his brows drawing together. ‘It’ll be a chancy business sailing home in this.’

Rose got to her feet and walked across to the window. Outside it was almost dark and a strong wind was be-ginning to moan through the trees in the garden. Another spatter of raindrops hit the glass, bringing with them a rush of cool, scented air. It would certainly be a difficult task to get into the dinghy and row out to the yacht in total darkness. But if Greg was a fisherman, surely he was used to that sort of thing?

‘These be very dangerous coasts,’ he said gravely, as if he had read her thoughts. ‘I don’t mind going now if you want me to, but I reckon there’ll be some powerful bad weather tonight and there’s rocks out there that would tear the bottom out of the boat in the darkness.’ Rose shivered and looked at him uneasily. How would she feel if he really was shipwrecked all because she had sent him out into the darkness after doing a favour for her?

‘I suppose you could stay here,’ she said uncertainly.

‘That’s very kind of you, my love,’ said Greg, a shade too quickly. ‘Very neighbourly. Thanks very much, I’ll be glad to.’

Rose shot him a suspicious look. ‘I hope you don’t think…’ she began. ‘What I mean is…I don’t…’

Greg looked shocked. ‘Of course not,’ he replied in a voice full of injured innocence. ‘I never thought of such a thing.’

Rose retreated to the sitting-room door. ‘Would you like some coffee or something?’ she asked to cover her embarrassment.

‘That’d be nice,’ he agreed. ‘And there’s a packet of chocolate fudge in my knapsack.’

The evening was taking on a decidedly domestic quality, Rose decided a few minutes later as they sat drinking coffee and chewing delicious chocolate fudge. The sofa had proved too uncomfortable to endure any longer and Greg had suggested that they should sit on the sheepskin rug which he had found bundled in one of the cupboards under the stairs and brought into the sitting-room. Lounging back in its tickly warmth with the flames crackling in the fireplace and the rain drumming at the uncurtained window felt remarkably cosy, so why did she have this sense of mounting tension? She darted a swift sideways look at Greg, but he simply smiled blandly at her and took another gulp of his coffee.

‘You said earlier that you were named after the cottage,’ he reminded her. ‘What did you mean?’

‘Exactly that,’ she replied. ‘My mother grew up here, you see, and she was always terribly fond of the place. Her parents died in the bombing of Plymouth when she was only two years old during World War Two, and Aunt Em, who was her mother’s older sister, brought her up. Mum always used to talk about Rose Cottage as if it were heaven and I think calling me Rose was the highest compliment she could possibly pay me.’

Greg nodded thoughtfully. ‘You say she loved this place and yet she went to Australia. Why was that?’ he asked.

Rose sighed. ‘Well, my father was an Australian who was over here on a working holiday. She met him when she was only twenty, fell in love, ran off and married him.’

‘And the marriage wasn’t happy?’ guessed Greg shrewdly.

‘How did you know?’ demanded Rose. ‘Are you clairvoyant or something?’

Greg shook his head, but in the firelight his dark eyes seemed so piercing that she had the uncanny feeling that they could look right into her soul.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But you have a very expressive face and the way you sighed told me a lot. So what happened?’

Rose shrugged. ‘Other women. A drinking problem. She divorced him when I was eight years old.’

‘But she didn’t ever think of coming back to Britain?’

‘No. It was sad really. I think she would have given her eye-teeth to come back, but she’d quarrelled with Aunt Em about it in the first place because Em didn’t approve of my father and Mum didn’t want to admit that she’d been in the wrong. The other thing was that she didn’t want to be a burden to Aunt Em. After all, she had three kids and no real training for a job. Be-sides, Daniel was in high school and didn’t want to move and Jane was eleven and perfectly happy in Australia.’

‘So what did your mother do? How did she support you? Or did your father do that?’

‘No, he didn’t,’ said Rose bitterly. ‘He paid maintenance irregularly for about two years and then vanished. Later we heard that he was working in a mining camp in Western Australia, but I haven’t seen him since I was ten years old and I don’t want to. Mum went out to work as a cleaning lady for other people. So there you are, then, the story of my life.’

‘Not quite,’ replied Greg, rising to his feet to put another log on the fire. It went in with a crash, sending a hissing cloud of orange sparks up the chimney. ‘You haven’t told me much about yourself. What sort of job you had before you came here, what things you enjoy, who you first fell in love with and why.’

‘I’d rather not remember who I first fell in love with and why,’ said Rose in a hard voice. ‘But the rest is easy. My hobbies are reading, gardening and cooking and I have a degree in computer programming. That was my mother’s influence, I suppose. She thought it would be a steady, well-paid job, which it was. But I didn’t realise that it would also be pretty soul-destroying or that I’d come into contact with some quite nasty people.’

There was no mistaking the vehemence in her tone. All the same, Rose was startled when Greg squatted down beside her, took her hands and pulled her to her feet.

‘Who was he, Rose?’ he asked bluntly.

‘Who was who?’ faltered Rose.

‘Don’t play games with me. The man who hurt you.’

A convulsive spasm passed over her face. ‘How did you know?’ she asked hoarsely.

His warm hands gripped her shoulders, moving, caressing, stroking away the pain. ‘People don’t get as upset as that just because they hate jobs,’ he said. ‘They only look that way if they’ve been in love and been betrayed. Who was he?’

‘My boss,’ muttered Rose. ‘Martin Inglis.’

‘Were you lovers?’

Rose hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she admitted at last.

‘What was he like?’ asked Greg with a frown. ‘What kind of person?’

She let out her breath in a long sigh. ‘I hardly know how to describe him. I was only twenty-two when I first met him and didn’t like him much at first. Oh, he was certainly good-looking, in an outdoor sort of way. Big, blond, muscular, rather brash. And very masculine, but the kind of man who doesn’t really think much of women except in bed or in the kitchen. He liked horse-racing and flashy sports cars and all-night parties.’

‘Doesn’t sound much like your type,’ observed Greg.

‘No, that’s right,’ agreed Rose unhappily. ‘And he always used to tease me about being prim and proper and joke about how I was probably dynamite underneath. Then, after I’d been with the company for a couple of years, we happened to be at a conference at Magnetic Island. I bumped into him on the beach in the moonlight one night and he came straight out and told me that he’d always thought I was gorgeous. I was stunned, but I began to think I’d misjudged him. He didn’t kiss me or anything, just looked at me…After we got back to Brisbane, he asked me to have dinner with him. We went out together for a year or so, then he told me he loved me and we…started sleeping together. I always thought marriage would follow but we went on like that for over two years. Then a couple of months ago he suddenly announced his engagement to someone else. I didn’t even know about it until I saw it in the newspaper.’

If she had hoped for some sign of outrage or sympathy from Greg, Rose was disappointed. His face was an inscrutable mask, as impartial as that of a judge interested only in the facts.

‘Did you have a quarrel or something?’

‘No.’ Rose’s throat hurt as she answered. ‘It came completely out of the blue. Of course, I went to his office and demanded an explanation. He said…he said…that he thought I’d understand his position. He was wealthy and successful and people like that couldn’t afford to marry beneath them. His fiancée, Delia, came from an important family, but he said I shouldn’t be hurt because he wasn’t in love with her and there was no need for anything to change in our relationship.’

‘So what did you say to that?’ demanded Greg.

Rose gave a brief, bitter laugh. ‘I told him to drop dead, then I handed in my resignation. As it happened, Aunt Em had just died and left this cottage with a life interest to my mother and the remainder to me. I could see my mother couldn’t wait to return to England, but she tried hard to persuade me to get another job in Australia. Except that for once I was fed up with being sensible, so I decided to burn my bridges and come with her. And here I am.’

‘Good for you,’ said Greg. ‘You did the right thing.’ ‘Did I?’ demanded Rose, gesturing at the shabby room that surrounded them. ‘Now I’m not so sure. I almost wish I’d stayed in Brisbane.’

‘You’re not still in love with him, are you?’ demanded Greg in a hard voice.

‘I don’t know!’ Rose burst out. ‘Love isn’t reasonable, is it? Sometimes I think I am, but other times I hate him. Mostly I just feel humiliated and angry to think what a credulous fool I was. How could I have been so easily deceived? And it makes me feel a lot of pain and anxiety too. I don’t feel as if I can ever trust another man again. Especially a rich one.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ said Greg sharply. ‘Just because one man disappointed you, that’s no reason to think you can never get involved with another one.’

To her astonishment, he suddenly hauled her hard against him, tilted her chin and planted a long, thrilling kiss on her lips. Rose felt shaken and exhilarated and for one crazy, impetuous moment she kissed him back with equal fervour. The firelight flared orange through her closed eyelids, yet its heat seemed to blaze not only on her skin, but also in the innermost depths of her body. As Greg’s powerful arms tightened about her, she felt an urgent, pulsating need that made her sway dizzily against him. Her lips parted, trembling, and she offered herself to him with a wanton intensity that both thrilled and shocked her. She heard him utter a low groan deep in his throat and that brought her back to her senses. Aghast at what she had done, she broke away and retreated to the door.

‘Look, let’s forget that that ever happened,’ she said in a strained voice. ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’

And in case there should be any misunderstandings, once she had gained the sanctuary of her bedroom, she turned the lock firmly in the door.

* * *

Rose woke early the following morning, roused by the flood of sunlight spilling in through the uncurtained window. For a moment she lay baffled, trying to work out where she was. Then comprehension came jolting back and with it the memory of the previous night. Uttering a low groan, Rose burrowed into the feather pillows and pulled the quilt over her head. Her cheeks went hot with embarrassment as she wondered how she could have been such a fool. She hardly even knew Greg Trelawney, so how could she possibly have kissed him with such abandon? The whole incident was completely unlike her! She had always been calm, sensible, reserved, so how on earth had it happened? She felt angry with herself and angry with Greg too, but here there was a strange confusion in her feelings. He shouldn’t have kissed her and yet…if she was honest with herself, she had to admit that she had enjoyed it. And, even if he hadn’t condemned Martin’s behaviour, she couldn’t believe that Greg himself would ever do anything so cruel. He was too direct, too primitive, too natural for the sort of calculation and subterfuge that came so readily to men like Martin. And was it really so dreadful if Greg had felt powerfully attracted to Rose and simply seized her and kissed her? It wasn’t as though he had a wife or girlfriend; he had told her that himself. Deep down she felt certain he was the kind of man she could trust completely. Of course, it mustn’t happen again, she must make that quite clear to him, but perhaps there was no need to end their budding friendship…

Five minutes later, dressed in furry slippers and a full-length towelling dressing-gown that covered her cotton nightdress, Rose padded warily into the kitchen. Greg was already dressed and busy boiling the kettle on the gas ring, but he turned to smile at her.

Although he was wearing the same faded jeans and checked red flannel shirt as on the previous day, there was something subtly different about his appearance. Something that nagged at the back of Rose’s mind that she could not quite identify…His dark eyes glinted at the sight of her and he seemed completely unperturbed by what had happened the previous night. In spite of his rather mocking smile, he made no attempt to touch her, so why did she feel as uneasy as if she had just stepped into a cage with a drowsing panther?

‘Good morning,’ said Rose coolly, retreating a pace or two.

‘Good morning,’ replied Greg with an undertone of amusement in his voice. ‘I’ve got the water-heater going, so once you’ve been out the back you can have a bath, if you like.’

‘Thanks,’ said Rose.

After braving the outside loo, which was dark, full of spiders and definitely leaned to one side, Rose was relieved to find the old claw-footed bath brimming with hot water.

‘Take your time,’ advised Greg. ‘I’ll make some coffee and toast when you’ve finished. Pity we haven’t got any eggs and bacon.’

But that was a deficiency which was soon to be remedied. Rose had just finished dressing in her severest office suit, which was navy blue with a white pinstripe and made her feel more in control of the situation, when she heard the unmistakable sound of voices from the kitchen. Surprised and curious, she hurried out and found herself warmly embraced by a grey-haired woman of about sixty.

‘You must be Rose Ashley,’ said the newcomer. ‘I’m your neighbour, Joan Penwithick. I was expecting you on the bus yesterday afternoon but you didn’t arrive, so when I saw the smoke from the chimney this morning I thought I’d pop down and investigate.’

Joan’s brown eyes darted piercingly sideways at Greg as she said this. Rose flushed and launched into a hasty explanation about her lost pocketbook, the missed bus and the sailing trip back from Polperro.

‘And, of course, the weather was so bad last night that Greg didn’t think it was safe to sail back home, so he stayed here,’ she finished lamely.

Joan snorted. ‘Didn’t seem that bad to me,’ she pronounced. ‘I’ve seen you out in far worse gales than that, Greg Trelawney. Anyway, why couldn’t you just sleep aboard your yacht in the bay?’

For once Greg looked completely disconcerted, but instead of answering, he strode forward and grabbed the string bag that was dangling from Joan’s right hand.

‘Well, what have you got here?’ he asked. ‘Bacon and eggs? Oh, you’re a fine woman, Joan, my love. Why don’t you sit down and ask Rose all about her mother while I fry these up?’

Successfully diverted, Joan took her place at the kitchen table opposite Rose and fired an eager volley of questions about Fay Ashley, who was only five years her junior and whom she had known in their schooldays. A complicated recital of the Ashley family history ensued, followed by an equally complicated account of the Penwithick saga, complete with the news that Joan’s second grandchild was due any day now. When she paused for breath, Greg set sizzling plates of bacon and eggs and mugs of hot coffee in front of both of them. Then he sat down to tackle his own hearty breakfast, but he had scarcely swallowed his first forkful of bacon when Joan went on the attack again.

‘Why aren’t you at the shipyard in Plymouth, Greg?’ she demanded. ‘Surely things are too busy for you to have a holiday on a Tuesday?’

Greg hastily swallowed a mouthful of bacon and scowled at Joan. ‘I reckon they can do without me once in a while,’ he replied, his Cornish accent suddenly stronger than ever.

‘Shipyard?’ echoed Rose. ‘What shipyard? Oh, Greg, you haven’t missed a day’s work just so that you could help me? What if you get fired?’

It was Joan’s turn to choke on a mouthful of bacon, and Greg slapped her vigorously on the back.

‘Well, I don’t want to rush you, Joan,’ he said. ‘But if you’ve finished your breakfast, I think you’ll have to excuse Rose and me. We’ve got an appointment with the bank manager in Looe this morning.’

‘Have we?’ asked Rose incredulously, after Greg had seen Joan off the premises.

‘We soon will have,’ promised Greg. ‘Hugh’s an old friend of mine and I know he’ll help us out. I’ll just go up to the phone box at the corner and give him a ring.’

Feeling as helpless as if she were being swept along by some roaring river in full flood, Rose soon found herself shepherded out of the door and on to a bus for Looe.

‘What about your boat?’ she objected as they bowled away between the leafy hawthorn hedges.

‘I’ll come back and fetch it later,’ said Greg. ‘First we’ve got to get you a loan to fix up the cottage.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ protested Rose. ‘Look, Greg, I’m unemployed, except for a bit of freelance programming which I’m finishing off for Inglis’s—I was part-way through it when I left and the systems manager begged me to complete it on a contract basis. He’d always been helpful to me, so I agreed. But once that’s finished, I’ll have no income at all. I’ll never get a loan for the cottage. Never, never!’

But she was wrong. Greg might be only a simple fisherman, but he seemed to have remarkably good contacts. When they entered the bank building in East Looe, there was an unmistakable deference in the manner of the staff as they spoke to him. What was more, the manager Hugh Thomas, a short, grey-haired man of about sixty with a cautious expression, treated both of them as if they were royalty.

‘I’ll come back for you in half an hour,’ promised Greg. ‘You should have everything arranged by then, shouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ agreed Hugh, glancing down at Rose and sighing. ‘Now, Miss Ashley, if you could just step into my office and give me a few details…’

Rose had a dreamlike sense of unreality throughout the interview that followed. After all, she didn’t even have a passport as proof of her identity, let alone a proper job or any sign of financial stability apart from the title deeds of Aunt Em’s cottage, which were lodged with a local solicitor. And yet Hugh Thomas seemed extraordinarily unfazed by all of this and very soon produced a document for her to sign with terms of interest that seemed to her inexperienced eye remarkably favourable. When Greg arrived after the prescribed half-hour she stumbled out, looking dazed.

‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘How did it go?’

‘He’s agreed,’ she said in disbelief. ‘A fifteen-thousand-pound personal loan and another five-thousand-pound overdraft facility. And he’s supplied me with some cash for immediate expenses. I can’t believe it!’

‘Oh, Hugh’s a pretty shrewd man,’ said Greg. ‘He knows a good business proposition when he sees one. And a trustworthy client. Come on, let’s go and have a cream tea to celebrate.’

He took her to an unpretentious tea-shop down by the waterfront and they sat outside on a balcony gay with red geraniums and striped blue and white umbrellas.

‘It’s going to be quite a long time before that cottage is fit to take in paying guests,’ worried Rose aloud. ‘I’ll have to buy a PC with an eighty-megabyte hard disk so I can finish this stock-control program. Oh, dear! How am I going to cope?’

‘That’s easily organised,’ said Greg, reaching into his pocket for a battered notebook and Biro. ‘Tell me what kind you need and I’ll try and get you a suitable ma-chine in Plymouth. Now, the next thing is to organise your renovations. I can put you on to some good tradesmen who’ll save you a packet, but there’s another suggestion I’d like to make to you.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Rose warily.

‘You know what it’s like when you’re renovating a house. There’s always a terrible mess, no electric power, no proper plumbing, dust everywhere. Well, my suggestion is this: while they’re fixing up your house, why don’t you move into my cottage?’