A Perfect Cornish Summer. Phillipa Ashley
Читать онлайн книгу.
dbce69">
A PERFECT CORNISH SUMMER
Phillipa Ashley
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Phillipa Ashley
Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2019
Cover illustration © Hannah George 2019
Phillipa Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008316129
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008316136
Version: 2019-03-28
In memory of Mike Fosbrook, my inspirational English teacher
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Phillipa Ashley
About the Publisher
September 2008
Porthmellow.co.uk Town Blog Forum
MoaningOldMinnie: Another shop closed? That’s three in the past six months. This town’s going to the dogs! Why doesn’t somebody from the council or chamber of trade do something before we have tumbleweeds rolling round the harbour?
‘I swear someone’s going to drown one of these days,’ the old man said in his thick Cornish burr. ‘And guess who’ll be the one to have to fish the little buggers out.’
It was all Sam Lovell could do to hide a smile at her neighbour Troy Carman’s expression as he watched the teenagers in wetsuits opposite the Smuggler’s Tavern. They were laughing and jeering as they egged each other on to leap off the harbour wall into the inky waters. Every Sunday evening in Porthmellow, from spring through to autumn, it was the same: the town band playing outside the pub and teenagers tombstoning into the harbour. A last hurrah of the weekend before everyone had to go back to work and school the next morning.
Sam rested her half of lager on the peeling table. Like a lot of things in Porthmellow, the tavern was in dire need of a spruce up. ‘Didn’t you do a bit of tombstoning when you were a lad?’ she asked.
Troy shook his head at the kids shrieking as they climbed onto the top wall above the harbour. ‘Back in the day I might have, and we didn’t have these fancy wetsuits, then. I used to do it in my cotton underpants. Our mum went mad. I only had three pairs. One to wash, one to wear and one for Sunday best. Full of holes, they were too, by the time they’d been through her mangle a hundred times.’
‘Troy. I love you to bits, but that is way too much information,’ said Sam, trying to purge from her mind the image of her elderly neighbour leaping into the harbour in a pair of pants as murky as the water.
Although the sun was shining on the