The Summerhouse by the Sea: The best selling perfect feel-good summer beach read!

Flora smiled. ‘But it’s OK. How are you doing? Missing Val? She was bloody annoying half the time but it’s not the same without her.’

‘I know.’ Ava nodded. The sherries arrived, the waiter setting them down on little paper coasters, half an eye on the beach, studiously ignoring them. ‘Thanks,’ Ava said. He didn’t reply. Flora rolled her eyes as if there was nothing she could do about him. Ava smiled into her sherry, then waited until they were alone again to say, ‘It’s harder than I thought, being in the house. There are just so many memories.’

Flora took a sip of her drink. ‘And she had a lot of crap.’

Ava, who had been expecting sympathetic words of advice, snorted into her drink. Flora laughed, as if she’d taken herself by surprise.

‘She does have a lot of crap,’ Ava agreed, liberated. She didn’t mention her mother’s room; like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia, it was her precious secret to keep.

Flora smiled. ‘Just go in, ruthless, and chuck it away. I think it’s the only way. Val wouldn’t want you poring over her stuff. She knew it was tat, half of it. I was with her at the boot sales when she bought it. Bag it up, bin it and enjoy the sunshine. That’s what she’d have said. Don’t you do this kind of thing for a living?’

Ava thought about her job. She tried to compare Val’s house, with all its knick-knacks, to the palatial New York townhouses and cliff-top ancestral piles in the Scottish Highlands where she would pitch up for valuations and contents auctions. Places where she was handed plastic shoe covers at the door and white gloves to wear when inspecting the art or browsing the library. While she did think about who had sat in the pair of French Louis XIII armchairs she was bidding ten grand on, or who had lit the £20,000 Italian Baroque candelabras, their lives were more often than not secondary to the wealth. What they left behind was more valuable than their memory. Whereas with Val, every item was a manifestation of her self. Every chipped vase and tacky flea market print seemed to carry her voice. ‘There’s no more room in my house. But I like it. You like it? Not fancy enough for your lot of course. I’m going to have it. Where I’ll put it? But I’m going to have it.’

And then there were her mother’s things. Ava could price a regency giltwood mirror or mid-century Murano chandelier with her eyes shut, but that little room was beyond value.

Flora took another sip of her sherry, flumped her wet hair with her hand and, glancing around said, ‘I’ll tell you who does have some interesting stuff, have you met Tom yet? Bought the vineyard on the hill. He’s poured some money into that house. It was practically derelict when he bought it. You wouldn’t recognise it now.’

Ava shook her head. ‘I’ve never met him,’ she said, but she’d heard all about Tom-On-The-Hill as well. Retired actor. Kept Val up with all the drilling and banging during the renovation, but made up for it with a bottle of expensive brandy when she climbed the steps to complain. They’d smoked cigars on his terrace together apparently, and Ava had always wondered if they were having an affair.

‘He’s over there by the bar,’ Flora said, nodding towards the people drinking inside. ‘Tom!’ she shouted. ‘Come over here, darling.’

Ava sat up in surprise when the guy at the bar turned at the sound of his name.

Oh my God! She tried to act completely natural.

‘He was very famous once,’ Flora said in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘But I’d never seen anything he’d been in.’

Ava couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

This was Tom-On-The-Hill.

Walking towards her was not the eighty-year-old retired actor that Ava had imagined having brandy with her grandmother on his terrace, the two of them perhaps holding hands.

Tom-On-The-Hill was none other than Thomas King. Probably the biggest television star of Ava’s teenage years. The fresh-faced, chocolate-box heart-throb who had shot to fame on Love-Struck High. She could remember the recording of the final episode being passed around their school like gold dust. Everyone impatiently waiting their turn, and secretly praying that their VCR wouldn’t be the one to chew up the tape. She and Louise had queued to see him at the National Television Awards, but Louise had started hyperventilating when he’d walked past and had to be taken off by the St John’s Ambulance crew for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.

Now as he stood in front of her, all faded shorts and crisp white shirt, his hand held out for her to shake, looking pretty damn perfect and far too pleased with himself, Ava could barely get the words together to say, ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Ava’. She didn’t want to shake his hand, her palm suddenly a little clammy from the proximity to fame, his rough and cool in comparison.

‘Tom,’ he said.

And Ava filled the silence by saying, ‘Thomas King,’ as if he might need reminding of his own name, and immediately regretted it.

‘I am indeed.’

Flora put her hand on Tom’s arm and said, ‘Val was Ava’s grandmother. She’s here to pack up the house.’

Ava nodded, mute. Wishing she’d been able to play it cooler. Her brain chastising her for even admitting that she knew who he was. How cool would it have been to have had no idea who he was, or at least manage to carry out a pretence as such.

Tom was talking, saying how sorry he was about Val and that he’d been away for the funeral. ‘It’s all done so quickly in Spain,’ he said, and Ava nodded, shamefully distracted from his respectful sympathy, trying to work out whether he was wearing tortoiseshell glasses and had grown his hair a bit long to try and hide the heart-throb jaw and eyes.

He seemed to be able to sense her distraction and paused, his mouth twitching into a smile. His whole demeanour switched to predatory with just a roll of his shoulders and a lean against one of the awning pillars. ‘So how long are you staying?’ he asked.

Flora cut in, saying, ‘I should go.’ A couple of tourists were inspecting the menu on one of the far tables. She stood up, but as she did she leant forwards and added in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘The problem is I’ve started to hope they don’t sit down at all. I want them to just leave me alone.’

Tom raised a brow. ‘Not a good thing for a café owner.’

‘I know! It’s no win,’ Flora said, hoisting her sarong up where it had slipped down over her boobs and making her way through the network of chairs to chat up her potential customers with a lacklustre smile.

Ava wasn’t sure whether to answer Tom’s question or if too much time had now passed. She hated that she was agonising over such trivia, so readily trying to impress him.

‘May I?’ he asked, pointing to the seat Flora had vacated.

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘So,’ he said, reclining, hands in his pockets, all cool and relaxed like he owned the place, his beer bottle half-drunk on the table in front of him. ‘How are you enjoying it?’

‘Good thanks,’ Ava said quickly.

He nodded.

She started to say more – pleasantries about her trip into town – but realised his attention had been diverted by a woman in a skin-tight red dress and glossy brown hair heading into Nino’s.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ he asked, glancing back.

Ava shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

The silence gnawed.

Tom looked out towards the beach. Ava looked too, at the long shadows of the palm tree leaves on the sand, at the dangerously lilting fig tree and the potted orange trees, their perfume intensifying with the evening.

Unable to bear the silence any longer, she said, ‘So, Love-Struck High . . .’, not really sure where she was going with the comment.

Tom took a swig of beer. ‘You were a fan?’ he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, smug half-grin on his face.

‘I watched it,’ she said, a little dismissive. ‘If I was home and it was on.’ Given his expression she was hardly going to admit to the Love-Struck High parties at Louise’s house, where they watched their favourite episodes back to back, his face emblazoned on Louise’s spare bed duvet set. Or the countless school trip games of Shag, Marry or Dump that had seen the whole minibus shacked up with Thomas King.

The two other guys at the bar finished their drinks and stood up. One of them shouted over to Tom that they were leaving.

He waved a hand in acknowledgement, downed the rest of his beer and said, ‘Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Ava.’

Ava nodded. ‘You too.’ Although she wasn’t quite sure that she meant it.

He stood up, then paused, hands resting on the back of his chair. ‘You staying at the house?’ he asked, nodding towards her grandmother’s place across the little square.

‘Yes.’

He shuddered slightly. ‘Spooky.’

Ava glanced over at the dark windows of the house that seemed to loom in the twilight. ‘I’m trying not to think about it too much,’ she said, once again feeling the tendrils of fear that had been itching all afternoon at the prospect of going to bed alone in the house.