Page 41 of The Little Cottage by the Cornish Sea

‘Surprise!’ came a chorus of voices and I was so startled and ready to flee, I actually jumped before I realised what was going on.

Jack patted me on the back and made a hasty retreat as Faith appeared, all smiles as she beckoned me back in. ‘Don’t tell me we scared you!’ she said, then called back to the occupants of the cottage: ‘I told you it wasn’t a good idea to let ourselves in!’

Rosie appeared at the door as I approached, shaking and near tears. Now that had been a very, very close call. I exhaled to steady my nerves as they led me in.

There, in my tiny little, unrecognisable living room, the Coastal Girls had gathered and worked their magic.

I gawped at them, then looked around again, speechless. The place looked like one of those coastal, beach-themed cottages you see in the magazines all decked out for Christmas. And as my eyes wandered over the room, I began to recognise each and every item I had helped Faith chose for her client.

‘Robert has a spare set of keys. We wanted to surprise you. I hope you’re not mad?’ she asked, but all I could do was stare.

The first thing I noticed was the sea-sky rug both Faith and I had liked lying in the middle of my living room.

‘Do you like it?’ Faith asked. ‘Have we overstepped?’

My hand shot to my mouth. ‘What— Oh! Is that…?’

‘Yes!’ Faith cried out, taking my elbows. ‘Do you like it? Please say you like it!’

‘All this…?’ I croaked. ‘All these beautiful things… for me ?’

‘Yes! It’s our gift to you!’ Nina asked.

‘How… how did you even beat me here?’ I cried.

‘Ah, I know my shortcuts!’ Nina replied with a grin. ‘But with the slippery roads, I only just got here. I really, really wanted to be here to see your face!’

I covered my mouth as my eyes burned with unshed tears.

I nodded and swiped at my face as everything became blurry.

‘But, but…’ I faltered as the words melted away in my tight throat.

And then I got it. Faith had taken me around on purpose to see what I liked.

‘There was no vintage-loving client?’ I asked her.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, yes, there is, but you come first!’

Rosie clapped her hands and let out a soft squeal. ‘Oh, your face! Are you happy? Come and look around; there’s so much more to see. Come, come!’

‘But… but…’ I repeated as they dragged me into the kitchen where there were six white oak chairs around a round table, covered with a floral tablecloth.

‘We know you like floral patterns,’ Rosie said. ‘So do I, so that was my department!’

They led me to sit on a sofa I’d admired and began to laugh and chat as I simply stared at them and around the room again, shaking my head and uttering a thousand thank yous.

‘Oh my God, how can I accept all this kindness? I’m so grateful, and so embarrassed…’

‘You don’t mind, then?’ Rosie asked, visibly relieved. ‘We have no idea what boundaries are sometimes, you know?’

And then I spotted the cream linen curtains with the thin, blue stripes. And the coffee table. And the end tables. It was almost too much to take in at once.

‘Wait ‘til you see upstairs!’ Nina said with a grin and I was swept up the rickety staircase. I wiped my eyes and saw that the brass bed was adorned by the patchwork quilt with the tulips I’d so loved.

‘Oh my word!’ I croaked as Nat pulled me into the second bedroom where I stopped dead in my tracks.

There was a cream armchair and a crib with a changing table and a cot, a pram, a bassinet, a sling to carry her around in, a rocking chair, a chest of drawers and a closet to put her things in.

And the windows were adorned with beautiful linen.

I looked up at the kind, happy faces of the women that had gone to so much trouble for me.

‘You,’ I said, wagging my finger at Nina, ‘pretending there was a work emergency!’

Nina laughed. ‘It was the only way to keep you away from the cottage long enough! I knew you wouldn’t say no if I asked you for help.’

I continued to stare at them as tears continued to well in my eyes and I couldn’t see anymore. They all closed around me and reached out to kiss me and hug me, and I was in a cloud of affection and generosity that I had never in my life experienced before.

‘I can’t thank you enough, but how can I accept all your generosity?’ I whispered. I was never ever going to be able to pay them back for all this. Not in a million years.

‘This is not generosity, Kate,’ Emmie said, wrapping her arms around me and giving me a big hug. ‘This is friends being friends. We wanted to do this for you. Anything you need, sweetie, we’re here for you.’

‘Oh…’ I pushed down a sob. ‘Thank you. Thank you so, so much! And thank you from Baby!’

They laughed and practically swept me back down the stairs where there was a huge cake on the sideboard that I had managed to miss in my shock.

‘We all have something else for you,’ Emmie informed me as she produced a gift bag. ‘These are all mementos of our own breakthroughs which we want to give to you now.’

‘What? But you’ve already given me so much. Your friendship alone—’

‘Hush, Kate. You are a kindred spirit. We want you to have these gifts as a sign that things will get better for you. So here’s mine.’ And with that, she handed me a pretty box with a ribbon atop. ‘Open it.’

When I removed the lid, I found a first edition of Jane Eyre .

‘Like it? It was the first book I bought when I opened Books On The Barge. Because I felt that we had so much in common. When I bought it, I knew I was going to be okay.’

‘But Emmie, it’s much too meaningful for you; I can’t accept this.’

She put her hand on mine. ‘It’s important that you do, Kate. It’s for good luck and courage. It’s a sign that you can and you will be happier very soon.’

‘Oh my gosh. Thank you. I’ll treasure it forever.’

‘And this,’ Rosie said, handing me a gorgeous turquoise fruit vase, ‘is the first vase I ever made in Cornwall. The first vase I made without bawling. The others were all black and crooked, but when I made this one, I smiled the whole time. I knew I was going to be okay. And so are you.’

‘Rosie, it’s beautiful. You’re sure you want me to have it?’ I ventured, looking back and forth between her and the vase. No one had ever given me anything so precious before.

‘Of course!’ she said. ‘We have all been where you are now, and I can only tell you that you’ll be okay.’

‘My turn,’ said Faith as she pulled out a large object wrapped in tissue paper. ‘This is what I made when I was a teenager in and out of foster families with my sister, Hope,’ she said. ‘Open it.’

I slowly unwrapped a gorgeous, oversized cushion with a colourful cottage printed on it, with two arm-sized holes in the sides.

‘Oh, my God, this is a Home Hug!’

‘Yes.’

‘Faith,’ I croaked. ‘It’s so heart-warming, thank you…’

‘Me now.’ Nina grinned, handing me a pretty gift bag.

Inside, there was a book. ‘This is a special edition of the first book I wrote. I had never been poorer or lonelier. But I knew I’d had a story in me.

’ It was gorgeous, with a dark-blue cover full of stars shining in relief.

The title was Written in the Stars . ‘It was the moment my luck turned because it eventually became a movie and changed my family’s life. Now I want to give it to you, Kate.’

‘How can I accept something so important?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s all about believing that things will get better. They will. You just have to be patient and hang in there.’

‘Thank you, Nina. I love it. I love all of this. You have been so, so kind to me…’

‘Wait, don’t forget me,’ Nat said, leaning over to heft a bag containing a large, white frame.

‘This is the first article I wrote after I quit my old job. It’s about girl power and I wrote it the moment I knew I shouldn’t be afraid to really speak my mind.

No woman should ever be afraid of anything, Kate, am I right? ’ she asked.

I nodded in silence as my eyes blurred again. No woman should ever be afraid.

‘Oh, Kate,’ Emmie cooed. ‘Don’t cry. We’ve overwhelmed you; we’re so sorry…’

I shook my head and dashed my knuckles over my eyes. ‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I don’t deserve any of this, or any of you.’

‘Stop it. Of course you do,’ Nina said, taking my hand.

‘I don’t,’ I insisted, sniffling and blowing my nose.

‘Hush,’ Nina said as she leaned in and in a moment, I was enveloped in a group hug, arms around me, hands holding mine, kisses on my cheeks and soft words of love and encouragement buzzing around my head.

‘We’ve all been there. We’ve all been afraid.

We’ve all been hopeless, with children to raise and not a hope in sight.

But with a little bit of luck and some friends, we made it.

And so will you, sweetie. You’ve got to believe it. ’

I dried my eyes again and nodded. ‘I want to. I really want to.’

Emmie patted my arm. ‘You were so, so brave to do what you did, Kate.’

I snorted. ‘Brave? I ran.’

‘You did what was right for you and your baby. No one can blame you.’

‘Please, don’t… What ugliness I brought into your beautiful little village!’ I moaned in anguish.

‘You have brought so much joy to our lives. You’re one of us, now. And if some other woman ends up in Starry Cove looking for an escape, we know you’d do the same things for her as we’ve done for you.’

‘I think at one time or another, we were all on the brink of despair,’ Nat said. ‘We’ve all been there, and without a shred of hope. But look at us now!’

‘That’s for sure! Were you ever so poor you ate your leftover breakfast toast for lunch and felt it was a gourmet meal?

’ Nina countered with a snicker. ‘Because I have. I had three jobs at one point and I could never make ends meet. The ATM practically froze every time I went near it. You, my dear Nat, had a huge house.’

‘That I hated because it was miserable and friendless. I pined after Lavender Cottage for years. Just a simple home where I could be happy.’

‘And I got kicked out of the home I’d renovated and built for my old partner,’ Faith added. ‘Never love a rockstar with a gorgeous mansion. Oops, sorry. But trust me, Piers is nothing like Gabe.’

Rosie and Emmie looked at each other and snorted. ‘Guess we’re the lucky ones,’ Rosie said. ‘I had an airing cupboard for a home back in London and I couldn’t even afford that.’

‘And I had a real shitehole of a place with damp stains that the landlord refused to sort out and a cold, cold fiancé that hardly knew I existed,’ Emmie said.

‘But you were about to marry into a very rich family,’ Rosie pointed out. ‘So as far as being between a rock and a hard place, I win!’

‘You make it sound like a competition,’ I mused.

‘Aw, Kate, things are better here in Cornwall. It’s like a magic spell or something. The minute you get here, your luck starts to turn.’

‘If you need an expert on a broken heart, I can help you,’ Faith said. ‘And he was a rockstar, too, like I said. He was – well, still is – a piece of work. Not as bad as he used to be, though. He said he was nothing without me, that he adored me, but he always treated me otherwise.’

I nodded. I knew that women like myself were aplenty, unfortunately. To think that a man like Will, or Gabe, could actually treat us the way they did. That they actually thought it was okay to do so made my blood boil.

‘I know,’ I whispered. ‘There are so many forms of abuse. Physical, psychological…’

‘And lying. He cheated on me. He got someone else pregnant. He left me. So I moved out of our home. But then he wanted me back, like I was his plaything. Luckily, I got myself out of it.’

‘That must have been hard,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘More than hard. It was soul-destroying. But, you know, you get through it. My friends were there for me. You don’t have to heal on your own, Kate.’ She reached out and put her hand over mine. ‘You’re here now. Among friends who’ve been there. Let us help you the way we were helped.’

‘Thank you. I am grateful. I guess it just takes a long time to heal.’

‘Then you take your time. Just remember that as long as you have your health, you’re home free. That’s what Henry always says, anyway.’

‘How did you meet Henry, then?’

She smiled to herself. ‘The funniest story. Well, not at the time. Actually, it was dead embarrassing. I was floating in our pool. In the raw…’

‘Noooo!’ I giggled.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said with a huge grin. ‘He had the keys and let himself in with an elderly couple to see the house. As you can imagine, our relationship didn’t start off on the right foot.’

‘Oh, my! How did you become close, then?’

Faith shrugged, her face soft with the memory. ‘I stopped trying to be miserable and gave into happiness.’

Give into happiness. Could I do that? Find happiness? It wasn’t for the want of trying, but lately, everything I did just seemed to lead to more unhappiness.

I thought that coming down here and disappearing would make things easier. Living a simple life. And yet, the moment I met Piers, things became complicated in a completely different way.

‘And as far as Piers goes,’ Nat said, reading my mind, ‘he’ll change his mind. He would never do anything to hurt you. Even if he believed that you brought the press here.’

‘Which I didn’t. Why would I do something to jeopardize him? And me, for that matter? I came here to hide, so I know all too well how important anonymity is.’

‘Of course, we believe you,’ Faith said, rubbing my shoulder. ‘And deep down, Piers must know that you didn’t do it.’

‘You guys… thank you for believing in me. Thank you for all your support. I only wish I’d met you years ago. You’re all so sweet!’

Nina smirked. ‘Not so sweet when one of us gets hurt!’

At about midnight, they decided to leave en masse. It had been a lovely evening where food was eaten, wine was downed (except for me, of course) and friendships were strengthened.

‘See you tomorrow at Faith’s, but don’t forget you’re at ours on Christmas Eve,’ Nina said as she put her coat on. ‘And don’t forget your overnight bag; you’re sleeping over!’

‘Okay,’ I laughed. Driving back through the snow would not have been a good idea anyway.

‘All right, everyone, see you soon!’ we all chimed in unison, and the feeling of belonging filled my heart with joy. I had made the right decision to return to Starry Cove: it had brought me friends who were the salt of the earth.

Once they were gone, I looked around the cottage. It was so me , with a touch of all the girls, too. It was absolutely perfect!