Page 7 of Christmas at the Little Cornish Bakery

Catching the looks Angelo and Freya were casting each other, eyes sparkling and edges blurred with desire, Lola made her excuses about needing to get her beauty sleep and having an early start and headed upstairs to bed.

Even though the night air was nippy, Lola pushed the bedroom window open to let some fresh air in.

Her bedroom was at the front of the cottage and she loved nothing more than being lulled to sleep by the gentle whoosh of the waves.

When it was stormy she loved knowing she was safe and warm while the elements battled it out.

She sat on her bed and regarded the package sitting in the middle of her favourite lilac-sprigged duvet cover.

Leaning forward, Lola lifted out the objects.

Carefully, she unwrapped each one, taking her time to discover what was stowed away in the box.

In the first was an ornate cross pendant Ruby had been given on her confirmation then never worn, a story Lola had heard when she’d found the beautiful cross as a child whilst searching through Ruby’s jewellery box.

Ruby had never gone to church either, much to her parents’ dismay, citing that God could see you everywhere, that there was no point just being good on a Sunday morning.

Tangled up with the cross was a tarnished ring set with a slightly dulled red stone.

She lifted it to the light. A ruby? Lola slipped it onto her finger.

She had never seen it before. Lola gave it a polish.

Holding her hand out so it caught the lamplight, she wondered who had given it to her grandmother.

Why had it been kept hidden? Ruby’s engagement ring had sparkled with a trinity of diamonds but that had been passed to Lola’s mother.

After pulling the ring off, she nestled it back against the black velvet and moved on to the next, bulkier package and found another set of tarot cards.

These ones were smaller, fitting neatly in Lola’s palm, the illustrations printed in primary colours, more basic looking than the deck Lola had inherited from Ruby.

Giving the cards a shuffle, Lola began to deal out a spread, amazed to see the same cards coming out in the same order from this deck as every other one she dealt from for herself.

The priest, the priestess, the lovers, new beginnings.

Lola considered them, her thoughts flitting briefly to Tristan.

It seemed preposterous to think they had been led to this tiny village at the same time to . . . well, to what? Fall in love?

Face flushing, Lola tidied the cards away.

It was too fanciful a thought. She was almost forty, not fourteen.

Whatever she’d been led to Polcarrow for was surely something greater than her own love life.

Love was a risk, one Lola wasn’t sure she was willing to take again.

Jared had gone from charming to toerag at record-breaking speed and had left deep scars.

It still amazed Lola how long she’d stayed with him, how much she’d wanted to believe his empty promises.

Especially as she would’ve advised anyone else in the same situation to dump him and move on.

She picked the cards up, restacked them and slipped them back into their case then set them aside.

The next few bundles turned up a small box that contained theatre tickets, a pair of pearl earrings, and rather strangely, a single white satin glove.

Why had Ruby kept one glove? Lola tried it on but Ruby had had slimmer fingers than her and a bit of a wrestle ensued to get it back off.

Lola reached into the box but there were no bubble wrapped packages left.

Instead, sitting at the bottom, nestled in brown paper, was a small stack of white envelopes tied together with a red ribbon.

Picking them up, Lola lifted them to her face and breathed in the scent of the past: old paper, slightly damp, love tied together and banished away.

Holding them, Lola’s heart rate picked up.

Here was a secret, the writing on the front was not the neat slant of her grandfather, Ernest, it was looser, as if penned by a dreamer.

Lola’s fingers toyed with the bow before deciding to come back to the letters, for they weighed heavy in her hands with whatever secrets they would spill.

The final item left behind was a small cloth-bound notebook, red in colour. Lola picked it up and opened it. ‘No way,’ she exclaimed as she flicked through the pages. Written in neat, girlish writing on the front page was Ruby’s name and address. Lola turned the first page and read:

1st January, 1950

It’s a brand-new year and I have a lot of hope for the future.

Things have to start getting better and I think they will.

Out dancing with Ida and Joan last night, feet a bit sore today but it was fun.

Think Ernest might be sweet on me, but I’m only eighteen, too young to get married.

I want some adventures first. I have therefore decided that 1950 is going to be my year of adventure.

Lola gasped with delight. She had no idea Ruby had ever kept a diary.

She certainly hadn’t as an adult. Lola skipped through the first few entries, hungry for glimpses of a young Ruby.

They were mostly complaining about the cold weather, her job as a typist, which was dull but gave her money for lipsticks and the dances she’d been to.

There were notes about some of the tarot readings she had done as she set out on her life path of advice giving, although Lola wondered what advice an eighteen-year-old could truly impart, but Ruby had always had the air of someone who knew more than this life had shown her.

As she flicked through descriptions of the spring, of galleries she’d been to, theatre shows she’d seen (and rated) a cream envelope fell out where it had been tucked in safely further along in the book.

It was unsealed. Untucking the flap, Lola pulled out an old black and white photo and studied it for a few moments as she tried to figure it out.

It showed a group of young people sitting on a beach.

Lola’s eye honed in on Ruby, standing in the middle of the shot looking glamorous in a floral summer dress, her head thrown back laughing.

She was flanked by two young men who were lifting her off the ground, whilst one of her friends looked on in amusement.

Peering closely at the people, the hairs on the back of Lola’s neck stood up and her mouth went dry.

Did one of the men look familiar? No, it couldn’t be, could it?

Turning the photo over she gasped to see written in Ruby’s neat handwriting: Polcarrow, September 1950. The same as next to the scone recipe.

‘Yes!’ Lola whooped to herself as she held proof in her hands that her hunch had been right. Ruby had been in Polcarrow. It had meant something!

Lola turned the photo back over. She never remembered seeing that sheer joy in any of the photos of Ruby and Ernest. Lola flicked through the book hoping for more photographs, but there was nothing.

Suddenly the paintings her grandmother had had hanging in the hallway of her house depicting cavernous coves and fishing boats took on a whole new meaning, as did the wistful look Ruby got every time she spoke of her youth, her love for Cornwall but her fear of going in the sea.

Lola didn’t need to tap into her sixth sense to know there was something more behind the laughter in that photo, behind the treasured postcard.

Something carefree that spoke of summer abandonment and hopeful, young love.

Lifting up the letters, Lola squinted at the front of one of the envelopes.

A Cornwall postmark was stamped in bold black.

Lola glanced from the letters to the photo to the diary, as everything she had known about Ruby rearranged itself.

Someone had written to Ruby, who had then tied the letters up with a red ribbon.

Were they love letters? Lola wondered, but if they were, why had Ruby ended up back in London with sweet but slightly dull Ernest, with his smart suits and job in a bank and settled down far, far away from the sea?