Page 9 of A Letter to the Last House Before the Sea

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Lettie wasn’t sure how long she slept. Losing Iris, followed by the shock of losing her job, seemed to have wiped her out, and she fell asleep at the drop of a hat these days. But she woke with a start when ice-cold water splashed over her.

‘Hey.’ She pushed herself up onto one elbow, feeling groggy and disorientated. ‘Watch out. You’re getting water everywhere.’

‘It’s a beach,’ said a low, sardonic voice. ‘And you’re very close to my towel when there’s a whole lot of beach to choose from.’

She peered up at the man, glistening wet, who was standing over her. He was the swimmer she’d watched earlier. When he picked up his towel that was lying flat, sand flew into her face.

‘Urgh.’ She wiped gritty sand from her lips with the back of her hand.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, redeeming himself slightly, before ruining it by adding: ‘You’re going to get more sand in your face unless you move back a bit.’

He was good-looking in a tall, dark and scowling way, noticed Lettie. She averted her eyes from his abs.

‘Perhaps you could move to the side a little while you dry off?’

‘Only if I want to stand in the rockpool, which I don’t.’

The man scowled some more while Lettie shuffled back slightly. He might be craggily handsome, but he had zero manners.

‘Are you on holiday?’ she asked, trying to improve the atmosphere between them.

The man rubbed at his hair with the towel before answering. ‘I live here. You’re a tourist, I presume.’

The way he said ‘tourist’, as though they were lower-class citizens, made Lettie cringe. Here was another local, like Claude, who didn’t like outsiders.

‘I’m visiting Heaven’s Cove for a few days to research my family tree. My family used to live here.’

Why had she said that? She was almost offering excuses for daring to set foot in the village.

‘Anyone I might know?’ he asked, pulling a white T-shirt from a small backpack.

‘I doubt it. It was a long time ago. Also,’ added Lettie, still stung by the man’s tone and remembering Belinda’s words, ‘I dare say Heaven’s Cove would be in a sorry state economically without the tourists it attracts every year.’

The man regarded Lettie coolly, water dripping from his body onto the sand. ‘I dare say, though I fish for a living so tourism doesn’t much affect me.’

Lettie could imagine him on a fishing boat in a storm, doing whatever people do in boats in a storm, and building up his muscles. Maybe that was how he’d got the thin, silver scar that trailed from his side to under his rib cage. Lettie looked away, aware that she was staring.

‘Where are you staying?’ asked the man.

‘At Driftwood House, up on the cliff.’

The man nodded. ‘One of Rosie’s first guests, are you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You can look down on the village from up there.’

Was he implying that she was a snob, or was his bristly attitude simply making her second-guess everything he said? Lettie got to her feet and shook off the sand, carefully. ‘Much as I’d love to chat, I’d better leave you to dry off.’ She draped her jumper around her shoulders, feeling bits of the beach trickle down her back. ‘Enjoy the rest of your day.’

Then she walked off, as quickly as she could over the soft sand that squished between her toes with every step.

Rosie was weedingin the small garden behind the conservatory when Lettie got back to the guesthouse. She looked up from a pot bursting with lavender that she was tending and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead.

‘Hello, there. Did you enjoy looking around the village?’

‘I did, thanks. It’s very old and quaint, and the beach is fantastic.’