‘You guys coming in?’ Adam asks.
‘Only to get my tent,’ Charlie replies, turning to me. ‘Do you mind waiting here with April? She could do with a bit longer.’
‘Sure.’
She’s still out cold.
Adam comes around to my door, so I wind down the window.
‘If I see Michelle around, I’ll ask her about Beau,’ he tells me.
‘That would be great.’
‘What’s his surname?’
‘Riley,’ I reply. I don’t print surnames on my blog, and in most cases I change first names too. Usually my exes insist on it.
‘See you next weekend.’ He gives me a meaningful look as he walks backwards up the footpath.
Chapter 14
‘Right.’ Charlie restarts the ignition once the tent is safely stored in the back of the pickup. ‘Tintagel.’
‘Thanks for doing this,’ I say as we set off back in the opposite direction. ‘Hermieisn’t the easiest thing to drive.’
‘Hermie?’
‘Herman the German. My dad’s campervan.’
‘Ohhh,’ he says slowly.
‘Do you mind if I turn the radio on?’ I ask after a few moments pass.
‘Go for it.’
‘It won’t wake April?’
‘I doubt it. She needs to wake up in a bit, anyway.’
I feel a twinge of guilt at the memory of her tear-stricken face yesterday. I still want to kick myself for having my music on so loud that I couldn’t hear her wailing. I know it was Pat’s responsibility, but that doesn’t make me feel okay about it. How long had she been awake for her to be crying like that?
I feel like I should confess, but I don’t want to land Charlie’s mum in it.Or me, for that matter...
Tintagel is a cheerful village with colourful bunting stretching across many of the roads, and pubs and cafés lively with punters spilling out onto the pavements. After an overcast morning, the sun has broken through and the town is bustling. We park in the village car park and Charlie clips April into her baby carrier before we set off on the footpath towards the castle.
The Atlantic Ocean, cold and blue, stretches out in the distance as we walk along the dusty, stony path, surrounded by grassy plains on every side. The castle itself is a ruin – built in the thirteenth century by Richard, First Earl of Cornwall, after Cornwall had been subsumed into the kingdom of England. It later fell into disrepair.
What remain are walls – crumbling and ragged, with many lying low beneath shaggy carpets of grass. Parts of the ruins allow the imagination to run wild, conjuring up what might’ve been there before. A jagged wall peppered with tiny lookout holes steps down from the steep cliff face, and, across the path below, an arched stone walkway is formed. As I lift up my camera to take a photo, I can easily imagine Kit and Morris kissing beneath it.
Charlie bids me farewell and sets off down the stone steps to the beach, leaving me to focus on my reason for coming: work. I get out my notepad and pen and decide to walk up to the highest point to take some photos of the view.
The colours all around sing out with vibrancy. The deep blue of the sea fades into aquamarine as it reaches the cove. A streak of rusty-red seaweed bleeds into the water that laps the shoreline, and acid-yellow lichen clings to some of the rocks.
Green grassy hills slide into rocky grey cliffs that jut outwards into points, like spears warding off ancient enemies. Everywhere I turn there are ruined walls, the remnants of a castle that stood long ago.
Down in the cove I can see Charlie with April in the baby carrier. He stoops to pick up the occasional small piece of driftwood and puts it into a white plastic bag he’s carrying. The beach is tiny and I don’t fancy his chances of finding many decent lengths, if any.
I think of Adam muttering ‘guilt trip’ and wonder if he’s right. Did Charlie offer to bring me here solely because he felt sorry for me?
