There’s Something About Cornwall

The DJ Alice had been dancing with swept her into his arms and Matt directed them to the Surf Academy’s wooden hut. He grabbed the first aid kit, expertly applied an ice pack and secured it with a bandage, but even Emilie could see Alice’s ankle had ballooned to almost double its usual size. Tears streaked down her pale cheeks and she winced with every unintentional jolt.

‘I think you’ll need to have your ankle X-rayed,’ said Matt, casting his eyes around the gathering. ‘Anyone here fit to drive?’

Everyone shook their heads. The Cornish Mine Punch had been a lethal brew and the beer had also flowed in abundance so no one dared risk driving.

‘I’ll call a taxi then.’

‘Oh, Emilie, I’m so, so sorry,’ bubbled Alice. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Let’s get you patched up first before we think about that.’

The taxi pulled up next to the camper van and they bundled Alice into the back seat. Matt loitered at the passenger door, clearly wanting to say something to Emilie before they left. He whipped out his mobile phone from the back pocket of his denim shorts and asked for her number.

‘Will you ring me? Let me know how you get on at the hospital?’

Emilie smiled and nodded, fighting back tears of her own. She turned to climb into the taxi and a wave of disappointment washed over her. She felt like a slab of concrete had taken up residence in her chest where her heart should be, squeezing out the air from her lungs and making breathing difficult.

She hooked her arm through Alice’s and gave her clammy hand a squeeze, before turning her head to watch Matt’s solitary figure recede from the rear window until he became a dark dot on the horizon. Yet his image remained in vivid Technicolor in her mind’s eye and she knew it would be a long time before her brief encounter with Matt Ashby faded to tinted rose.

Chapter Five (#ulink_dbf56946-af6d-53f8-af2a-60a099bc6549)

The A&E was neon-bright and efficient, but the diagnosis wasn’t good. Alice had broken her ankle in two places and needed to have it pinned. They couldn’t operate straight away because of the swelling, which meant she had to spend the night in the hospital and probably the next few days as well.

‘You have to go back to Padstow and collect the camper van,’ urged Alice, her words strained with a concoction of anxiety and the dose of morphine she’d been given to ease her pain. ‘You have to carry on with the trip. It’s been organised for months and there’s no way it can be cancelled. It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have gone to a beach party the night before a shoot. My professional reputation will be in tatters – Lucinda will make sure of that. The contract even states that I can be asked to pay for any lost time due to my actions or negligence, or words to that effect. I have insurance but it’s not the money, it’s the damage to my reputation. Ours is a close-knit community, Emilie. You know that.

‘It’ll take a few days if not more to find a replacement stylist and they won’t have any idea of Lucinda’s quirks. I’ve spent hours planning this culinary road trip with military precision. Every venue is on high alert for Lucinda’s arrival at a precise time so they can prepare their kitchen for her requirements. The only solution is for you to do it.’

‘Oh God! You’ve got to be joking, Alice! I can’t style and photograph a shoot by myself.’

‘You can! You are a fabulous food stylist. I’ve seen what you can do, or what you could do before Brad got his claws into your self-esteem.’ Alice winced as she tried to push herself up on the trolley she was lying on until a bed became available on a ward. It was one o’clock in the morning and she had been informed that she was not likely to be going anywhere until eight a.m. at the earliest.

‘But what if I mess up? What if Brad’s right and I make a total disaster of showcasing Lucinda’s desserts?’ A coil of panic wound its tentacles around her chest and pulled tight. ‘And now that I’ve seen what she’s like to work with…’

‘Em, you are a seasoned professional…’

‘And another thing – you know how much I hate driving. I haven’t been behind a wheel since I crashed Brad’s beloved Roadster. I’m not even sure I can remember how to drive!’

Tears began to trickle down Alice’s ivory cheeks. ‘Oh God! Oh God! My career is finished. I’ll never get another job. I’ve worked so hard to get every last detail organised, to co-ordinate the perfect schedule. I really thought I could pull this off…’

Emilie watched Alice inhale a ragged gulp of air and begin shredding a damp tissue she’d been clutching in her fist. She remembered how Alice had staunchly come to her rescue the previous day when Lucinda had threatened to fire her. Emilie made a decision. Even though she had preferred to travel by two wheels instead of four since the accident, arguing her environmentally friendly credentials, she had to do this for her friend. She shoved her doubts into the far crevices of her mind, took Alice’s clammy hand in hers and pinned on her most confident smile.

‘Don’t worry, Al. I can do this. Driving a car is probably just like riding a bike. Once I get back behind the wheel it’ll all come flooding back.’ Although she wasn’t too sure she could put an ancient camper van in the same category as Brad’s sleek, top-of-the-range BMW with power-assisted steering and anti-lock brakes.

‘Thank you,’ muttered Alice, the relief written clearly across her face as she lay back against the over-plump pillows and closed her eyes briefly. Emilie could almost hear the cogs clanking in her friend’s brain, albeit under the influence of the morphine. She didn’t have to wait long for the instructions to start flowing. ‘Now, remember, every stop on the tour has its own designated laminated instruction card with the itinerary, the recipe and photographs of the background layout. The props are filed and labelled in accordance with their usage in my trunk. It’s all self-explanatory.’

‘Alice, I’ve told you, I’ve got this. You just concentrate on mending that ankle.’

‘But it’s such a lot for one person to take on. I have complete trust in you handling the photography and the styling, but adding in all the driving you’ll be exhausted and that’s when mistakes are made. You could do with someone who is willing to help you with the driving. Anyone! What about the taxi driver who brought us here? I saw him give you his card in case we needed a lift back to the van.’ Desperation twisted Alice’s expression and fresh tears began to form on her lower lashes.

Poor Alice, thought Emilie as her heart performed a backflip of sympathy. And yet she had to concede that Alice had every reason to be terrified of the impending backlash from Lucinda when the news of her accident filtered through. She would be made to feel that she had done this on purpose as a personal assault on Lucinda’s timetable. It had been Alice’s idea to go to the party, not hers, and whilst she would never divulge that fact to Lucinda, she knew Alice wouldn’t allow her to shoulder the blame for something that had been entirely her own fault.

‘Alice, I don’t think the taxi driver, or anyone else for that matter, will be up for driving a camper van around Cornwall stopping off at eight pit stops on the way. Do you? Two whole weeks away from home? And are you truly suggesting I share the back of a camper van with a stranger? Alice? Alice?’

But Alice had succumbed to a chemically induced slumber and the creases of pain across her forehead and over the bridge of her nose had disappeared, leaving an angelic expression on her pretty face. Emilie was amazed to see that despite the trauma of the last three hours Alice’s make-up remained intact. There was no way she would be seeking out a mirror to check her own reflection any time soon.

She slumped back onto the brown plastic chair next to Alice’s trolley bed, her brain frazzled with trepidation as she contemplated the approaching nightmare, not only of kangarooing around the narrow lanes of Cornwall, but of explaining what had happened to Lucinda. For she knew she had to be the one to speak to her directly and the sooner the better. As she reached into her bag for her phone, dislodging a boiled sweet from its screen, it leapt into life with an insistent buzz. Her finger hovered over the green answer button as the caller ID was unidentified. Who would be calling her at one-thirty in the morning?

She stooped to drop a kiss on Alice’s forehead and give her limp hand a final squeeze. Alice’s mother was due to arrive on the first train in the morning so she knew she would be well cared for. Emilie made her way to the exit and, in a fit of ‘what the hell’, she answered her phone. Surely they couldn’t be ringing to see if she had PPI at that time of the night?

‘Hello?’ Her voice croaked as her tongue detached from the roof of her mouth.

‘Emilie? Is that you?’

‘Yes. Hello, Matt.’

‘How’s Alice?’

‘Broken her ankle in two places. Needs a couple of pins. Her mum is on her way down from Bath. She’s sleeping at the moment and they’ll operate when the swelling goes down.’

‘So that drink is definitely off?’

‘Drink?’

Emilie dragged her hair behind her ears as she watched a man help his heavily pregnant partner from their car, with a mixture of panic and excitement on their faces. Her initial confusion was immediately replaced with an instant light bulb moment. ‘Matt, can you drive?’

‘What do you mean? Of course I can drive. I don’t always travel around on a surfboard you know. Why?’

She paused for a split second to ask herself if what she intended to propose was crazy, but then threw caution to the wind. Needs must and all that.

‘And did you say you have nothing lined up for the winter season in Northumberland yet?’

‘Ye…es.’

‘And that you intend to hitch-hike the whole way home?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘This might sound like a crazy request, but can I ask you a huge favour? Would you be up for driving the camper van around Cornwall? I can probably make a stab at Alice’s food stylist job – not as proficiently as Alice granted – but I’ve lots of previous experience and she tells me she’s mapped out every shoot down to the last detail. I just can’t do the driving as well. Call it a sort of foodie road trip from Padstow in the north to St Ives in the south and a few points in between, for a famous TV chef. There’ll be plenty of cake – I can promise you that! I can’t offer you…’

‘Emilie…’

‘I can’t offer you accommodation, but you have your tent and I promise I’ll cook you breakfast every morning.’

There was a long stretch of silence. Emilie felt goose pimples ripple over her whole body, which was doused in a clammy sweat. Her heartbeat hammered out a disconsolate symphony of anxiety and a sudden wave of nausea caused her to collapse onto the stone steps at the hospital entrance.

Was she really contemplating taking on the task of styling the whole Lucinda Loves…Desserts shoot without the calming presence of Alice to guide her through the labyrinth of potential pitfalls – any one of which could be the catalyst to ending her career? Wasn’t it better to risk Lucinda’s wrath whilst it was directed at Alice? On the other hand, was she prepared to don the dubious badges of ‘coward’ and ‘fair-weather friend’ and allow Alice to shoulder the blame so she could ditch the assignment she hadn’t wanted to be part of in the first place before it even got started?

She knew the answer to the conundrum. Her usual enthusiasm for life had morphed from exuberant to non-existent over the last six months and she had to acknowledge a recent propensity for choosing the easy route instead of the right one. She knew that her uncharacteristic reticence against striding ahead without a glimpse in the rear-view mirror was born from the evaporation of her self-confidence, which had coincided with the constant jibes and criticism Brad had issued about not only her photography but her driving too.