Edie Browne’s Cottage by the Sea: A heartwarming, hilarious romance read set in Cornwall!

I follow Aunty Josie beyond the stone-flagged courtyard towards a monumental stone building with huge wooden barn doors with a small door at the centre. As we push through into a vast space I’m pulling my sunnies down off my head.

‘Wow, looking at this you can see why people say barns are like cathedrals. I can see why Harry loved it.’ In spite of the grey day there’s light flooding from windows in the high roof and, with its massive hewn timbers, it’s as big as a village hall. So long as you overlook the monster piles of old planks dumped in random places across the floor, it’s a lot more finished than the stable spaces even though it’s not clear what its use is. I move across to a huge glazed doorway on the other side and take in the next group of buildings beyond a strip of grass. ‘Are they yours too?’

‘No, thankfully, only the field. Those buildings are let out – there’s a caravan factory and a few others.’ She’s about to turn back when she stops. ‘Who’s this?’ There’s a boy hugging himself back against the door frame, staring at us through the glass.

When I push up my shades to get a closer look, the blue jacket is familiar. ‘He was on the lane with a dog the day I came, remember?’ Kicking the mud, just like he is now. Before I can remind her that he hangs out with Mr Nosey-Neighbourhood-Watch she’s turned the key and pushed the door open.

‘Can I help you?’ Her tone is so stern he shrinks so far into his jacket his face almost disappears. ‘Aren’t you too little to be out on your own?’ If she meant to prod him, it’s worked.

‘Actually I’m not small, I’m six.’ As he stands up straighter he ages inch by inch. ‘Have you got any cake at your house?’

‘Cake?’

He’s wrinkling his nose. ‘I’m having some later, but I’m actually hungry now.’

I laugh at how direct he is. ‘Sorry, I ate the last piece for breakfast.’ I’ll pick up more when we finally brave the cold and go down to the harbour later.

His eyebrows shoot up. ‘You can’t have cake for breakfast.’

I find myself back-pedalling under his scorn. ‘It’s not every day. Well, hardly ever. Only because we ran out of oats.’

Aunty Josie clears her throat. ‘Actually we have got cake at the cottage.’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘But you’ll have to wipe your feet before you come in.’

‘You bought cake?’ I didn’t mean to shriek so loud. But what the heck happened to sugar-free? And where the hell’s she hiding it? I might have had some after lunch if I’d known, that’s all.

‘There’s no need to sound so shocked, Edie. It’s Sunday.’

‘So?’

‘It’s a ballerina thing. If you’re careful what you eat every other day of the week, you can eat whatever you like on Sunday.’

‘That’s what you do?’ Apart from it being a million years since she danced, I’m not sure if I’m gobsmacked at the deprivation or relieved she’s breaking out.

‘Of course. I wouldn’t have a figure like this if I didn’t.’

She’s half the width of my mum and me, but we just assumed she had different genes. ‘So what have you got?’

She gives a cough. ‘Carrot cake – it arrived this morning.’ Which explains how it’s escaped my cupboard raids. She turns to the boy. ‘If you’d like some, we’ll be in the cottage next door. You’d better ask your mum first. Or your dad. Or whoever’s looking after you.’ She gives a sniff. ‘Or not looking after you.’

‘That’s Barney.’ He’s already running.

She calls after him, ‘Come around the back. Tell Barney he can come too. We’ll make some tea.’ She turns to me. ‘That must be the window cleaner.’

I clamp my sunnies firmly back on my nose. ‘Barney? Really?’ If that’s the same guy from the lane he’s the last person I’d want to serve tea to. Unless it was green. ‘And, by the way, he doesn’t actually clean windows.’

‘Like you say, it’s good to get to know people.’

‘It is.’ Anyone other than him.

7 (#ulink_ef2b55c2-ba83-571b-921c-22fb8fb36ce2)

Day 137: Sunday, 18

March

At Periwinkle Cottage

Epic Achievement: Discovering a carrot patch in the vegetable rack.

I’m not sure if it’s the thought of guests or the excitement of an all-you-can-eat day, but as soon she’s delivered my new colouring book Aunty Thing rushes off and starts crashing around the kitchen. As she clatters the cups and plates onto a tray and gets out a gigantic teapot, she’s dancing around so fast her gold pumps are leaving light trails.

She waves at the next room, snaps out another order. ‘Get the cake, Edie, it’s in the vegetable rack.’

That’s not a place I’ve visited yet, but moments later I’m back in the kitchen sliding a square cake out of the box, eyes popping at the creamy topping and bright orange knobs of icing carrots sprouting green sugar leaves.

She’s tutting critically as she watches me unwrap it. ‘It’s an M&S carrot patch cake – the milkman picked it up for me from Penzance.’

‘It’s pretty fab.’ Even though I’m reeling from being bossed about, I have to hand it to her. In my other life with Marcus I might even have tucked the idea for that away in my mental recipe file and pulled it out later as a cute sweet to take round to his friends’ for a weekend barbie. My desserts were the sole trick I had to impress them with. Marcus’s mates in creative media – and he had a lot – took male bonding to a whole new level. The kind where, if they weren’t away on some kind of wacky adventure, they were incapable of making it through a weekend without meeting up on someone’s patio. Mostly they swilled back craft beers with odd names and incinerated choice lumps of cow from the craft burger shops while they tried to channel their younger selves. Even though they’d graduated from flats to houses, due to soaring Bristol property prices and the burst of the dot com bubble, no one had yet made it to the stage of owning a full-blown flower-filled garden. So we chewed on our chargrills in back yards, sitting on stacked-up railway sleepers listening to Wonderwall against backdrops of reclaimed brickwork.

At the time it felt like we’d be twenty-something all our life, and be doing that for ever. Then the inevitable happens, someone forgets to take their Pill, someone else thinks ‘Why not us?’ And, before you know it, baby bumps aren’t just trending, they’re exploding under every Nicole Farhi silk T-shirt. And whatever people say about not letting kids change their lives, they’re kidding themselves. I had an aunt’s-eye view when Tash had Tiddlywink and Wilf. It was like a hurricane upended their home and then came back through for seconds. Put it this way, once you shell out more on a Bugaboo Cameleon pushchair combo than a Vera Wang wedding dress – and there were plenty of both among Marcus’s friends – nothing’s ever the same again.

But, getting back to Aunty Jo’s carrot patch, even for a cake-face like me, it’s huge. I’m also impressed at how obliging the door-to-door people are around these parts. I’m counting the sprouting carrots in my head and I get all the way to eleven before I falter. It could be the sea air, or Aunty Jo making me count along with her when she does her before lunch Stay Young stretches. But that’s the most I’ve reached for a long time, so in my head I’m giving a silent cheer.

‘We could have tea in the conservatory? As we have company.’

‘Great plan,’ I say. It’s warm in the garden room, even on cloudy days, and this way we sidestep the visitors seeing we live in what looks like a rainforest theme park.

By the time the boy is kicking his way across the courtyard we’re settled onto basket chairs, marvelling at how the gunmetal paint on the window frames matches the shine of the distant sea. Aunty Jo pushes the door open, points at the mat and, after a frenzied foot wipe, the boy wanders over to where my pens are spread out on the low table next to me.

He’s giving my felt tips a hard stare. ‘Aren’t you too old for colouring in?’

I smile. ‘You think so?’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t like colouring. I go over the lines.’

I get that. ‘Same here.’

His hands are deep in his pockets. ‘Making up your own pictures is better for your imagination.’

Why didn’t I think about that? He could be right. ‘Anyway, I’m Edie Browne with an ‘e’, and this is Aunty—’

She’s straight in there, filling the gap. ‘Jo. Aunty Jo. Jo like ‘joker’, because I laugh a lot. Let’s see how that one works?’ From the look she gives me she knows I’m liable to forget.

I turn to the boy. ‘So do you have a name?’

‘Cam. Except at school I’m Cameron Michael Arnold, but that’s so long to write.’ He sounds despondent. ‘I’m really slow at writing.’

‘Me too.’ I’m not actually getting how Aunty Jo is any fun at all, but I can sympathise with the slow part. Even so, I bet if we had a race he’d win. If he’s here because he’s a sponge fan too we could have a lot in common. ‘But I’m fast at eating cake.’