One Last Summer at Hideaway Bay: A gripping romantic read with an ending you won’t see coming!

Then, inevitably, she reached the glossy photo she’d tried to deny she would find.

Scruffy brown hair swept to one side, in surf shorts and a ripped t-shirt, Tom smiling at her, his blue eyes looking as though he was thinking something naughty, Lucy thought. She remembered standing there, on the beach, taking the picture. She’d thrown the rest away, but she could never bring herself to destroy this one, it was too perfect. It had been taken the summer before she’d left Cornwall, just a normal day on the beach, he’d been surfing all morning and she had taken the mick out of him for his scruffy t-shirt. He’d pulled her into him, ‘You love it, Luce, I know you do,’ kissing her neck and hair playfully. ‘I love you,’ she’d replied, kissing him back, and then she’d asked him to stand for the photo. Wrapped in her duvet, on her sofa in London, she could hear the seagulls circling the beach that day hoping for tourists’ fish and chips. She could feel Tom’s wet, salty skin on her body as he held her waist. She could smell the sun on his hair as she pushed it away from his eyes and kissed him. Lucy put the photo down and tipped her head back to stop the tears. It was a long time ago, she told herself, a different life.

This was why she shouldn’t look at the photos, she remembered, as she put the box down on the floor and used the sleeve of her pyjama top to dab at the tears prickling the corners of her eyes. Why did he have to send her that email? Why did he need to bring it all back up again? She tried to blame the feelings on him reaching out to her about the summer, but of course she knew, really, that she was simply eternally trying to move on from him, from how much she had loved him. She loved him so much it had ruined anyone else for her, because no one was ever going to compare. And he was just a fucking memory, not even a real person in her life any more. He had let her leave; he had been fine with it. He had not spoken to her for five fucking years.

She tried to put him out of her mind and concentrate on her plan of action to make herself a better person. She decided she’d start running again, eat healthily, really focus on her career. She wasn’t going to spend her life in London thinking about summers in Cornwall years ago, and she couldn’t allow herself to think about Tom – it was just the tiredness – and that bloody email, that was all. You can’t be in love with a memory, she told herself.

Even you’re not that bloody stupid.

9 (#ulink_5b7c51cc-c4e1-50c9-aa06-ce1a77ffdac6)

‘Lucy? Lucy! It’s Sophie.’

Lucy blinked slowly, her head throbbing with pain. She suddenly became acutely aware that she had no idea where she was.

‘Sophie?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her own voice trembled and sounded as if it was coming from someone else. Sophie was her next-door neighbour, a couple of years old than her – a primary school teacher who she sometimes had a cup of tea with when they bumped into each other. She outstretched a shaking hand and felt gravel. She tried to lift her head, but Sophie placed her fingers firmly on her chest and told her to rest. She was lying on the ground, she realised now, and the hard, stony surface beneath her felt suddenly uncomfortable.

‘You just fainted, I think’ Sophie said. ‘It’s okay, you’re okay. Just lie down and get your breath back.’

Lucy opened her eyes again and looked down at her muddy running legs and running shorts. She remembered jogging from her house, to the park, feeling good.

‘I was running,’ she told Sophie.

‘I guessed!’ Sophie smiled at her.

‘I’m okay,’ Lucy protested, trying again to sit up.

‘I’m not sure that you are,’ Sophie said, kindly. ‘Lucy, we need to get you home.’

‘Yeah, I need to go to work – ‘ Lucy started.

‘You’re not going to work, Lucy, I called your sister from your phone and she’s coming to look after you. She told me once when you first moved in that I could call her if you ever needed her. I thought she was just being an over-protective sister, but it turns out you did need her after all!’

Lucy was suddenly, fiercely angry with Sophie for calling Claire. It was a ridiculous over-reaction. She began to argue again that she was fine, pulling her weight up with her arms, as she felt her heart pound and her eyes fill with sparkles, her head becoming heavy.

Lucy woke this time on her own sofa, wrapped in her duvet as she had been the night before. From the kitchen she could hear the sounds of cupboards being opened and closed, someone boiling a kettle, fetching mugs. Claire appeared in the room with two cups of steaming tea and Lucy felt tears running down her cheeks at the sight of her older sister.

‘Hey you! It’s okay,’ Claire said, handing her a warm mug and sitting next to Lucy on the sofa. She smelled of expensive perfume. ‘Before you start panicking, I’ve called work, they’re fine. They know where you are and no one’s cross, okay?’ Claire blew over her tea to cool it. ‘Lucy, I’m worried about you, fainting like that. And you’re so thin. Is this why you’ve been ignoring my calls?’

Lucy knew she’d lost weight recently; her clothes were hanging from her collarbones and hipbones slightly, but, if she was honest, she liked it. She saw it as an achievement; she got a boost from feeling hungry and thin.

‘I can go in this afternoon,’ Lucy began.

‘It’s 4pm, Luce,’ Claire set her tea down on the stained wooden coffee table Lucy had picked up from a flea market in East London. ‘You’re not well. You need to rest now and later we’ll talk about everything else.’ Lucy didn’t know what Claire was referring to by ‘everything else’; she sipped her tea, closing her eyes as she drank.

‘Scott,’ she said, ‘I need to call Scott.’

‘Sophie, called him first,’ Claire replied. ‘After she saw you faint on the street, she came and helped you. You’re lucky she was there, that she saw you. Anyway, Scott couldn’t come, he’s too busy at work, so she called me.’

Lucy saw Claire look away as she finished her sentence and sensed there was more to this story. It felt, suddenly, acutely clear in her mind. Scott didn’t want to come. Scott had had enough of her dramas and wanted out. Her mind ran through the last few weeks and how badly she’d treated him. When she thought of his nice face and his sensible apartment, and his Jo Malone diffusers, she realised again that she didn’t truly want any of it.

‘He’s coming over to see you this evening,’ Claire said, and Lucy knew instinctively that it would be their goodbye. She thought about what things of his she’d need to pack up for him, ready for him to take away. Not much: a toothbrush, some clothes, a toy she’d bought him as a gift from her girls’ holiday to France in the summer. She felt a pang of guilt at the thought of that holiday and the night she had spent with the handsome Frenchman after too many champagne cocktails. How she’d bought the silly toy the next day with a raging hangover and a familiar sense of shame at what she’d done. She’d not been a very nice girlfriend to Scott; it was time to let him go.

When Lucy opened her eyes again, it was dark outside her heavy cream curtains, and Claire had turned on a lamp by her sofa, sending a warm orange glow through the room. Scott was on his way over. Claire had spoken to him and told him Lucy would be ready for him at 8pm. Lucy looked at her phone. It was 7:45pm and she had four text messages, which she couldn’t face reading. She got up from the sofa, her legs weak and her body aching slightly in a way she found strangely comforting, like proof of her own existence. In her bedroom she found a dress to pull over her underwear – Claire must have undressed her – and she felt momentarily embarrassed by the picture in her head of the scene. She pulled on thick black tights under the short, loose-fitting grey dress and pulled her hair up into a messy bun. She could see why Claire was worried: her face was drawn and gaunt and the hollows in her cheek, which looked pretty good with the right make-up, looked sickly now they were bare. Her eyes, she could see herself, looked sad, too big and grey. She swept foundation over her skin, then bronzer and applied mascara. The doorbell went and she heard Claire answer, greeting Scott as the stranger he was to her – they‘d been together for almost a year and her older sister had never met him, Lucy realised.

‘I can’t keep doing this,’ Scott said, after he’d checked she was alright.

‘I know,’ she said, plumping a cushion to avoid eye contact.

‘I’m really sorry, Luce,’ he reached out to put a hand on her leg. It felt unexpectedly patronising.

‘You really don’t owe me an apology,’ she said, meeting his eye now. ‘I just don’t think we’re quite right for each other.’

‘Yeah, well, I tried,’ Scott sounded bitter suddenly. ‘Nothing I did was ever enough.’

He stood to leave. Had he expected me to fight to keep him? Lucy wondered, too tired to really care. The relief she felt at the sight of him making his way to leave was proof that this was the right thing.

‘You’ll be okay,’ she said, hugging Scott at the door. She handed him the bag of his things.

‘I’ll drop your stuff off soon,’ he said, pulling away from her. ‘Look after yourself. Oh. And Lucy –’ his face changed. ‘It’s really time you grew up and quit all this drama and nonsense.’

He didn’t look back as he walked to his car.

Lucy knew that in time she’d miss him, miss the familiarity of his niceness, his solidness and his physical company – the guarantee of human contact when she needed it. Claire hadn’t asked questions after Scott left. She’d run Lucy a bath and tidied the flat. She had obviously taken time off her own work as a barrister to look after Lucy and hadn’t thought twice about coming to help her at a moment’s notice. She was so kind, Lucy thought. Kinder than me; I don’t think I would have done it for her. She found Claire in the kitchen, wiping the walls with kitchen roll and cleaner, a wisp of mousey brown hair fallen from her ponytail sticking to the back of her neck with the exertion.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for all of this, for everything…’

‘It’s nothing,’ Claire smiled at her, ‘You’re my little sister, it’s my job!’

Lucy tried, again, to convince her sister that she was fine now, that she didn’t need her to stay. But Claire wouldn’t agree and told her she’d sleep on the sofa and see how she was in the morning. Too tired to argue, Lucy made her way to her bedroom. Claire had clearly tidied it while she was with Scott in the lounge. The bed was made, her clothes folded away, and sitting on the chair at her dressing table was the box she’d been looking through the night before. On top of it there was an overturned photograph, which Lucy picked up. It was the image of Tom from the beach. Lucy thought back to the evening before and realised with plunging horror that she must have fallen asleep with the picture left out. Claire would have found it when she was clearing up and Lucy could imagine what conclusions she’d have drawn from that. She must think I’m pathetic, Lucy thought.

10 (#ulink_c34ef904-e088-5115-b8ee-7be3d40ae952)

Claire stayed almost a week in the end. She took time off work as holiday and moved in with Lucy, cooking her massive carb-laden meals and watching her eat them. They drank sugary tea from Lucy’s vintage harlequin-coloured, gold-rimmed teacups and watched their favourite rom-coms in the evening. In the daytime, with Lucy at work, Claire cleaned her flat from head to toe, polishing the bathroom bin, dusting skirting boards – the works. Lucy protested that she didn’t need to do all this, that she should go home to her own flat, which she shared with her lovely boyfriend Tim in Harrow. Claire insisted, of course, that she wanted to stay. It was clear how worried she was, but she didn’t ask any probing questions, and instead left it to Lucy to get back to strength, hoping she’d start talking at some point.

As Claire packed the few things she’d turned up with after Sophie’s phone call on Wednesday morning, Lucy watched her and her meticulous ways with admiration. She was the most practical and careful person Lucy had ever known. She looked after everything properly, had bags that matched shoes and gave an impression of togetherness that Lucy envied but which made her feel chaotic by comparison.

At the front door, with Tim’s car engine running, Claire pulled Lucy in for a hug and checked for the fortieth time that she was going to be alright.

‘You are in charge of your life,’ she said to Lucy, seriously, ‘And it can be whatever you want it to be.’

Lucy smiled at her sister’s sentimental ideas and nodded in faux agreement. ‘Lucy,’ Claire implored, more seriously than before, forcing Lucy to hold her eye contact. ‘I really mean it. And there’s something I need to tell you,’ she continued, with an expression now that Lucy couldn’t quite place. Was it worry? ‘I called Tom,’ she said, matter-of-factly, but too quickly. ‘I know what’s happening this summer. I know he’s asked you to be there. And I think you should go.’

With that, Claire disappeared into the darkness. The passenger door shut and the horn beeped a goodbye. Lucy stood on her front step, heart racing, tears threatening yet again, and a surge of anger, fear and something that felt like excitement trembling through her body.

11 (#ulink_de24ddb2-4697-56b3-83db-cb64312da234)

Hideaway Bay, 2003