Glittering Fortunes

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_ccfb11ee-e4f6-5e5e-a6ad-d28ff813353c)

SAFFRON ON THE SEA was the only restaurant in the British Isles to boast three coveted Gastronomy Stars. Despite this accolade it was entirely unpretentious, a simply festooned yacht moored in a quiet creek between two cliffs. In the summer it caught the moonlight perfectly as patrons feasted on its bulb-strewn deck, and in winter its cosy wooden interior was intimate and seductive.

Ex-model Serendipity Swain, a ravishing six-foot brunette, owned the restaurant with her husband Finn Avalon, a rock musician who had enjoyed modest fame in the nineties. The couple had started coming to Cornwall as a bolthole from their London lives, before the cove slipped under their skin and they decided to set up here permanently. A mixture of brilliantly selected chefs and star-sprinkled clientele ensured the business had grown from a pet project to a goliath in haute cuisine.

Serendipity greeted them at the bow, cinnamon hair teased by the breeze and her elegant trouser suit rippling against the ocean backdrop. The sea was as still as silk, bubbles of conversation streaming from the deck and the waves lapping gently.

‘Cato, this is an absolute pleasure.’

‘Serendipity, hi.’ He kissed her elaborately on both cheeks.

As Finn led the group to their table, a mercifully secluded spot roped off at the stern, heads turned to discreetly assess the newcomers, by nature of the restaurant too moneyed or too proud to surrender themselves fully to a blatant examination.

Susanna was beside herself, settling at the table and fingering the arrangement of wild flowers at its centre. In a moment, she would describe it as charming.

‘Isn’t this charming?’ she enthused. Charlie was learning she would happily apply the adjective to anything so long as she was surrounded by English accents.

‘Indeed it is, Mole.’

‘Cato, please—’ she objected, before he pulled her close and planted a very public kiss on her cheek, which made her start simpering all over again.

Charlie flipped open the menu. Saffron on the Sea was strictly fruits de mer. When Serendipity returned he ordered local Lustell oysters, enough for everyone, followed by hot shellfish with chilli and lemon, and a great deal of wine.

Next to him, Olivia looked as if she was moments away from tossing herself into the water and swimming for the shore. Cato had invited her, and despite her objections she’d been all but manhandled into the car. Saying no to Cato was like trying to reason with a shark.

‘It must be extra special for you, Olivia,’ commented Susanna, as she twirled the stem of a glass between two fingers. When their waiter arrived with a bottle she covered the flute with a dainty palm. ‘I can’t imagine you get out to places like this very much. You must be quite overwhelmed!’

Olivia spread her napkin on her lap, seemed to change her mind about it, and replaced it in a bundle on the table. ‘Yes,’ she replied, taking a swig of Chablis before Charlie had a chance to taste it. ‘It’s a far cry from KFC.’

Susanna frowned.

‘How are you finding work on the estate?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I love it.’ Olivia’s voice warmed to the theme. ‘I studied landscaping as part of my design course and I’ve missed being outside all day so it suits me well. It’s pretty cool to plant something and watch it grow—good for the soul, I think.’

Susanna wasn’t listening. ‘I haven’t seen much improvement to those shabby lawns,’ she commented, ‘but I suppose these things take time, don’t they?’

‘Right now it’s a salvage operation,’ said Charlie, indicating to the sommelier to pour. ‘Once the ground’s recovered we should start seeing results. At this rate, we’ll be able to open to the public quicker than I thought.’

‘The public?’ Susanna cringed, as if he had suggested unveiling a sewage tank in the rose garden. Cato placated her with an imperceptible shake of the head: no, that wouldn’t be happening, not on his watch.

‘Well,’ Susanna shredded a seeded plait with her fingertips and declined the offer of butter, ‘it wouldn’t be for me. I can only stand an hour in the heat before my skin comes out in the most outrageous rash. Isn’t that right, Cato, darling?’

‘You’re a delicate flower, my dear.’

‘I can’t imagine it,’ said Olivia, tucking into a bread roll. ‘Me, I couldn’t be cooped up for any length of time. When I was in London it did my head in being trapped indoors all day … I surf, so I’m used to the fresh air.’

‘You surf?’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Well, nothing, I suppose.’ Susanna considered it. ‘Only it’s not very ladylike.’

Cato’s eyes were flashing. ‘I think it’s rather sexy. I say, perhaps we should get you out on a surfboard, Mole.’

‘Over my dead body!’

‘You should try sometime,’ offered Olivia. ‘I’ll teach you, if you like.’

Susanna went to pour scorn on the suggestion before Cato supplied wolfishly:

‘You can teach me.’

‘I think she offered to teach me,’ Susanna huffed, snapping a grissini in two.

The oysters arrived, a majestic array of rocky shells, bolstered by wedges of sunshine lemon, their flesh pearlescent in the candlelight and doused in sweet shallot.

Cato seized a mollusc and threw it back. ‘Go on, girl,’ he encouraged Susanna, who took a suspicious sniff. ‘Down the hatch!’

‘These look awfully slimy,’ she observed. ‘Are they alive?’

Olivia lifted hers and it vanished down her throat. ‘Not any more.’

Susanna was horrified. Olivia laughed, and put her elbows on the table.

Charlie stole a glance at her. She was unembellished in a plain dress, her auburn hair loose, and she wore no make-up. In the shimmering light her cheeks were soft as apricots, and her eyes were the colour of the sea. Around her neck was a delicate gold locket.

He had kept the picture. He didn’t know where it was now—gathering dust in a box with all his old school stuff, probably. Remembering it felt strange, deceitful somehow, as she sat beside him.

The summer before he left for Harrow, Adrian and his gang had been in the common room, scrapping over a piece of paper, pointing at it and laughing. There had been some disagreement over its contents, a round of jostling and teasing, before the pretty boy capitulated and tossed it in the bin. Charlie had retrieved it after they’d gone, flattening it and smoothing down the creases. Straight away he had recognised the OL initials in the bottom right-hand corner.

It had been the most wonderful drawing. A map of Lustell Cove done in sharp, determined pencil, incorporating the beach and the Steep, the moors and the cliffs, with three big fat Xs scratched in red crayon at the foot of the bluff, where a sailboat was coming in to land, armed with treasure-seeking pirates. What had struck him wasn’t just how good it was, how talented the artist, but with what care it had been done. She had done it for Adrian, and he had thrown it away.

Susanna was attempting to sip her oyster from its shell. She looked like a mother bird returning to the nest, a regurgitated worm dangling from her mouth.

‘Suck it up, Mole, come on now!’

In a slurp it vanished. Susanna shuddered.

‘She’s trying to like them,’ explained Cato. ‘There’s the most terrific pressure to serve them at dinner parties.’

Susanna smacked the table with her hand. ‘That’s it!’ she cried.

‘What in heaven’s—?’

‘We’ll have a party,’ she announced. ‘At Usherwood! We’ll invite everybody! Get the gang down from London, I’ll do the place up, get designers in—caterers too; it’ll be the society event of the decade! Oh, can we, Cato, can we?’

Cato stroked his chin. ‘I don’t know about that, Mole …’