LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘WHAT HAVE YOU done with the helipad? And didn’t the ninth hole start over there? I’m not sure your father ever recovered from that lesson. Or your mother...although I did offer to pay for the window.’

      Lawrie would have bet everything she owned that a country house hotel catering for the rich was not Jonas’s style. But now she was here it was hard to pinpoint the changes she instinctively knew he must have made. Coombe End looked the same—a tranquil Queen Anne manor house set in stunning acres of managed woodland at the back, green meadows at the front, running into the vivid blue blur of sea on the horizon—and yet something was different. Something other than the change in owner and the apparent loss of a golf course and helipad.

      Maybe it was the car park? There were a few high-end cars dotted here and there, but they were joined by plenty of others: people carriers, old bangers, small town cars and a whole fleet worth of camper vans, their bright paintwork shining brightly in the sun. Last time she had been here the car park had been filled with BMWs and Mercedes and other, less obviously identifiable makes—discreet and expensive, just like the hotel.

      Lawrie hadn’t seen many camper vans in London, and the sight of their cheery squat box shape, their rounded curves and white tops, filled her with a sudden inexplicable sense of happiness. Which was absurd. Camper vans were for man-boys who refused to grow up. Ridiculous, gas-guzzling, unreliable eyesores.

      So why did they make her feel as if she was home?

      As Jonas led Lawrie along the white gravelled path that clung to the side of the graceful old building her sense of discombobulation increased. The formal gardens were in full flower, displaying all their early summer gaudy glory—giant beds filled with gigantic hydrangea bushes, full flowered and opulent—but the gardens as a whole were a lot less manicured, the grass on the front lawns longer than she remembered, with wildflowers daring to peek out amongst the velvety green blades of grass.

      And what was that? The rose garden was gone, replaced by a herb garden with small winding paths and six wooden beehives.

      ‘You’ve replaced your mother’s pride and joy?’ she said, only half in mock horror.

      ‘Doesn’t it all look terribly untidy?’ Jonas said, his voice prim and faintly scandalised, a perfect parody of his mother.

      Lawrie shook her head, too busy looking around to answer him, as they walked up the sandstone steps that led to the large double doors.

      The old heavy oak doors were still there, but stripped, varnished—somehow more inviting. The discreet brass plaque had gone. Instead a driftwood sign set onto the wall was engraved with ‘Boat House Hotel’.

      ‘Come on,’ Jonas said, nudging her forward. ‘I’ll show you around.’

      He stood aside and ushered her through the open door. With one last, lingering look at the sun-drenched lawn Lawrie went through into the hotel.

      She hadn’t spent much time here before. Jonas had left home the day he turned sixteen—by mutual agreement, he had claimed—and had slept above the bar or in the camper van before they were married. He’d converted the room over the bar into a cosy studio apartment once they were. It had always felt like a royal summons on the few occasions when they were invited over for dinner—the even fewer occasions she had persuaded Jonas to accept.

      They had always been formal, faux-intimate family dinners, held on the public stage of the hotel dining room. Jonas’s parents’ priority had clearly been their guests, not their son and his wife. Long, torturous courses of beautifully put together rich food, hours full of polite small talk, filled with a multitude of poisoned, well targeted barbs.

      Her memories made the reality even more of a shock as Lawrie walked into the bright, welcoming foyer. The changes outside had been definite, but subtle; the inside, however, was completely, obviously, defiantly different. Inside the large hallway the dark wood panelling, the brocade and velvet, had been stripped away, allowing the graceful lines of the old house to shine through in colours reflecting Jonas’s love of the sea: deep blues and marine greens accentuating the cream décor.

      ‘It’s all reclaimed local materials—driftwood, recycled glass, re-covered sofas,’ Jonas explained. ‘And everything is Cornish-made—from the pictures on the walls to the glasses behind the bar.’

      ‘It’s amazing,’ Lawrie said, looking about her at the room at once so familiar and yet so new, feeling a little like Alice falling into Wonderland. ‘I love it. It’s really elegant, isn’t it? But not cold. It feels homely, somehow, despite its size.’

      ‘That’s the effect I wanted.’ His voice was casual but his eyes blazed blue as he looked at her. ‘You always did get it.’

      Lawrie held his gaze for a long moment, the room fading away. That look in his eyes. That approval. Once she’d craved it, looked for it, yearned for it. Like the perfect cup of tea at the perfect temperature. A slab of chocolate exactly the right mixture of bitter and sweet. A chip,

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