Page 34 of The Little Cottage by the Cornish Sea

By August, our Cornish summer was already dwindling while we chatted away and soaked up the last summer rays on our skin.

The long evenings on the patio facing the back grounds had been growing unusually cold, our bare feet replaced by wool socks and mocktails turned into hot cocoa drinks.

Such was the peril of the coastal life, I supposed.

Piers and I had grown closer than ever, sharing our most intimate thoughts and feelings: it was as if I knew him inside out.

He insisted on taking care of me personally rather than calling on Justin or Mrs Watts for whatever was needed.

We’d managed to get Trixie and Wolf in the same area, but so far, they were keeping to themselves.

It seemed that they’d inherited their owners’ trust issues.

But we had got over all that. I trusted Piers with my life, which was a huge step for me, and he trusted me with his identity, which was a huge step for him in turn. All in all, we were doing splendidly.

‘It’s a surprise,’ he said, grinning at me as he negotiated the sharp bends in the old country roads enclosed by the hedgerows.

It was a clear night, and the stars stood out like scattered diamonds on a black velvet cloth hovering just over our heads.

‘It’s so beautiful out here,’ I murmured.

‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,’ he drawled as he came to the edge of a cliff and parked. At the push of a button, the soft top of his BMW slowly drew back and he lowered our seats down so we could look up at the sky.

‘If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to seduce me,’ I giggled.

‘Oh, I will, but first I wanted you to see this. Tonight is the night of Saint Lawrence. He was tortured on this very night, in 258 AD, as a shower of stars appeared in the sky. Onlookers said that those were his tears, and you’re supposed to make a wish when you see one.’

And with that, he leaned over for a kiss. ‘It’s about time someone treated you the way you deserve, Kate.’ Having said that, he produced a thermos and poured me a cup of hot cocoa. ‘Be careful, it’s steaming hot.’

‘Okay, now you’re just spoiling me rotten,’ I gushed. I was not used to such kindness from a man. ‘Thank you, Piers, this is just so lovely,’ I whispered and took a tentative sip. ‘Mmm…’

‘Good, isn’t it? I put in a dash of cinnamon.’

I smiled. ‘You are amazing in everything you do.’

He grinned, putting his arm around me. ‘Well, I do try…’

I gasped as a white ball of fire shot across the sky from far left to far right, taking its time and slowly dissolving at the edge of the horizon. ‘Wow!’

He chuckled. ‘It’ll be like this all night. And for the next few days, as long as the skies stay clear.’

‘I could stay here all night!’ I exclaimed.

He kissed my forehead tenderly and whispered, ‘We can stay as long as you want.’

I gasped again as another star, this one green, zapped from the north, disappearing into the sea.

‘Look!’ But before I even managed to say anything else, another one shot from south to north, passing right over our heads.

And soon we fell quiet for several moments, squeezing the other’s hand to signal another one instead of speaking, in fear of ruining the magical moment.

I lay back and sighed, content. How had this worked out so perfectly, despite everything? Piers was right. I did deserve happiness, and I intended to protect it for as long as possible.

*

August came and went, taking me by surprise.

The air had cooled and the leaves were turning yellow, orange and red.

One mid-September morning, as I passed the drawing room on my way to the orangery, I noticed Piers sitting by the window on the arm of a chaise longue, holding a guitar.

I did a double take and slowed down. Piers with a guitar?

Now that was something I never thought I’d see with my own eyes.

He sat on a stool, gently plucking away at his guitar.

Single notes, really, not even chords or a riff yet.

Any of his fans observing him would have never recognised him as Blade, the performer who used to tear up the stadium with his voice and electric guitar.

I’d obviously caught him in the middle of a creative moment.

He looked up. ‘Oh, hi, honey.’

‘Hi. What’s up?’ I asked matter-of-factly as I leaned on the doorframe, and he beckoned me in. ‘Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt you.’

‘Of course I’m sure. I found this old thing under our bed while looking for my other shoe. Remind me to have a word with Mrs Watts,’ he said with a grin. ‘I have this melody in my mind but just can’t seem to put it together. And words… My brain is exploding with words, too.’

I smiled back, thinking that Mrs Watts was a cunning woman indeed. ‘Why that guitar in particular?’

‘This one was my very first. It holds a lot of good memories for me. Probably the only one, as it is.’

As he said this, he stood up and went to the bureau where he started rifling through the bottom drawer. ‘Where the hell are they? Ah, here we go.’

I leaned on the edge of the sofa opposite him as he produced a small packet and a pair of pliers.

‘Let’s re-string this baby,’ he said, almost to himself.

I watched as he set the old guitar on the coffee table and began to snap the strings in two with a dead clang, then lovingly replac all six of them like a mother with her baby.

When he got to the fourth string, he lifted it so I could see.

‘This is the G -string,’ he said. ‘Okay, terrible joke, I know, but we used to say it a lot when we were kids.’

I laughed, not because it was funny but because it was heartening to see the pure happiness on his face at the fond memories that must have been going through his mind.

‘My father bought this guitar for me,’ he said as he continued. ‘And he taught me my first chords. Eddie ate dynamite. Goodbye Eddie!’

At the confused look on my face, he laughed.

‘Oh, it’s just a sentence to remember the names of the strings.

E, A, D, G, B, E. Eat a dead grasshopper before everything.

There’s a million of them.’ And with that, he plucked each and every string several times, twisting the dials at the top of the neck until they pleased his trained ear.

That was the thing with being a good musician.

You didn’t need an app to do the work for you.

‘Cool. We have those for the piano too.’ As if he didn’t know. I’d seen the footage of him playing his ballads with a single spotlight on him and entire stadiums in hushed awe as his hands literally flew over the piano keys as skilfully as on the guitar. Some people just had the gift.

‘So, Kate. Question for you. Why did you stop playing the piano?’ he asked.

‘Oh. I did it for years but I wasn’t going anywhere and then I started working for Will. I didn’t really have time for it after that.’

‘Well, thankfully that’s over. I’d like you to consider playing the piano again, if you like. Who knows, maybe we can do a duet one day.’

‘Me?’ I said. ‘I’d rather listen to you, Piers. Can you play for me now?’

He smiled at me, then dropped his head and began to pluck away again. His face was like a changeling, now so far removed, more than ever, from the looks he wore on stage. I was becoming an expert on all the nuances of his expressions.

But there was no make-up that had been able to hide the lack of light in his eyes back then. Today, even if the skies outside the floor-to-ceiling window were grey, there was a light in them that probably hadn’t been there in years.

‘I don’t know what this song is yet, but I’ve already got a title.’ He looked down at his guitar, then back at me with a wry grin. ‘“Stripped”. Which was basically what I’ve done a thousand times. But that’s not the kind of stripped I mean this time. This time, it’s more of an emotional stripping.’

‘It really gives the idea of who Blade really was, under all the make-up,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Exactly, bare and blunt. The Blade who is no longer, thank God.’

‘What has brought you to… uh…?’ I asked, fearing I’d break the spell if I made him think too deeply about what he was doing.

He shrugged. ‘For years, I’ve been trying to forget everything.

To suppress it down in the bottom of my heart.

But it keeps on surfacing: the pain, the fear, the sense of guilt.

Even if I didn’t kill Jenna, I will always feel accountable for the fact that I couldn’t save her.

That our life, our relationship, our songs, the whole life we were building together just wasn’t enough for her.

That she needed an artificial paradise to be happy. ’

‘Piers, she had an addiction. It wasn’t your fault, you have to know that.’ Just like it wasn’t my fault that Will was abusive.

‘Yeah, that’s what my therapist told me. She once said I should try and write a new song. Writing a new song is like starting a new life. It’s a form of catharsis. God knows how many times I’ve tried, but I just don’t think I can do it anymore.’

‘But you’d like to…?’

He nodded. ‘I think so. I’m in such a better place than I ever was, thanks to you.’

‘Do you think you’ll ever change your mind about playing publicly again?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Probably not. I am more interested in living my life here, being part of a community instead of parading myself around for a bunch of strangers.’

In the past few weeks, he had, indeed, come out of his shell and integrated back into the community.

He attended the village hall meetings, spoke out against drug abuse and donated more and more to his favourite charities, including one that housed pets as quickly and lovingly as possible. But he still had a long way to go.

‘Maybe you just need to give yourself time, Piers.’