Edie Browne’s Cottage by the Sea: A heartwarming, hilarious romance read set in Cornwall!
of wacky adventure, they were incapable of making it through a weekend without meeting up on someone’s patio. Mostly they swilled back craft beers with odd names and incinerated choice lumps of cow from the craft burger shops while they tried to channel their younger selves. Even though they’d graduated from flats to houses, due to soaring Bristol property prices and the burst of the dot com bubble, no one had yet made it to the stage of owning a full-blown flower-filled garden. So we chewed on our chargrills in back yards, sitting on stacked-up railway sleepers listening to Wonderwall against backdrops of reclaimed brickwork.
At the time it felt like we’d be twenty-something all our life, and be doing that for ever. Then the inevitable happens, someone forgets to take their Pill, someone else thinks ‘Why not us?’ And, before you know it, baby bumps aren’t just trending, they’re exploding under every Nicole Farhi silk T-shirt. And whatever people say about not letting kids change their lives, they’re kidding themselves. I had an aunt’s-eye view when Tash had Tiddlywink and Wilf. It was like a hurricane upended their home and then came back through for seconds. Put it this way, once you shell out more on a Bugaboo Cameleon pushchair combo than a Vera Wang wedding dress – and there were plenty of both among Marcus’s friends – nothing’s ever the same again.
But, getting back to Aunty Jo’s carrot patch, even for a cake-face like me, it’s huge. I’m also impressed at how obliging the door-to-door people are around these parts. I’m counting the sprouting carrots in my head and I get all the way to eleven before I falter. It could be the sea air, or Aunty Jo making me count along with her when she does her before lunch Stay Young stretches. But that’s the most I’ve reached for a long time, so in my head I’m giving a silent cheer.
‘We could have tea in the conservatory? As we have company.’
‘Great plan,’ I say. It’s warm in the garden room, even on cloudy days, and this way we sidestep the visitors seeing we live in what looks like a rainforest theme park.
By the time the boy is kicking his way across the courtyard we’re settled onto basket chairs, marvelling at how the gunmetal paint on the window frames matches the shine of the distant sea. Aunty Jo pushes the door open, points at the mat and, after a frenzied foot wipe, the boy wanders over to where my pens are spread out on the low table next to me.
He’s giving my felt tips a hard stare. ‘Aren’t you too old for colouring in?’
I smile. ‘You think so?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t like colouring. I go over the lines.’
I get that. ‘Same here.’
His hands are deep in his pockets. ‘Making up your own pictures is better for your imagination.’
Why didn’t I think about that? He could be right. ‘Anyway, I’m Edie Browne with an ‘e’, and this is Aunty—’
She’s straight in there, filling the gap. ‘Jo. Aunty Jo. Jo like ‘joker’, because I laugh a lot. Let’s see how that one works?’ From the look she gives me she knows I’m liable to forget.
I turn to the boy. ‘So do you have a name?’
‘Cam. Except at school I’m Cameron Michael Arnold, but that’s so long to write.’ He sounds despondent. ‘I’m really slow at writing.’
‘Me too.’ I’m not actually getting how Aunty Jo is any fun at all, but I can sympathise with the slow part. Even so, I bet if we had a race he’d win. If he’s here because he’s a sponge fan too we could have a lot in common. ‘But I’m fast at eating cake.’
His eyes pull back into focus. ‘Barney said to hurry, we’re going to see a customer.’
Aunty Joke’s tone hardens. ‘He will still have time for tea?’
‘Nope.’ Cam’s shaking his head.
‘That’s a shame.’ Not. I’m mentally punching the air with relief as I reach for the knife. ‘I’d better go fast then.’
His brow furrows. ‘What are those orange things?’
Do six-year-olds understand irony? ‘They’re icing carrots because it’s carrot cake. They’re meant to be funny.’
He wrinkles his nose. ‘I don’t like vegetables.’
That’s another thing we have in common. I prise off a carrot top and pass it to him. ‘Try one, they’re delish.’ Not that I could taste them myself, but if they’re M&S they have to be. As I watch him chew, his frown melts. ‘Good?’
‘Yep.’
Aunty Joke isn’t giving up on her teapot. ‘Well, you can always have tea another time. Next weekend, maybe?’
I slice through the buttercream. ‘One for now and one for later?’ I pass Cam the first chunk in kitchen roll, then wrap up the second.
Aunty Jo prompts me, ‘Don’t forget – do some for Barney too, he’s here now. I just hope he doesn’t look at how dirty our windows are.’
Damn. People like him don’t deserve cake. And I’m giving up on the window cleaner thing.
When Barney finally slides his shoulder up against the frame, he fills the doorway. Then my worst nightmare happens and his eyes lock with mine. I clutch at my stomach as it lurches into some kind of cartwheel, spectacularly fail to stop it as it slips into freefall and somehow lose my grip on the cake knife, which arcs through the air and clatters onto the tiles next to Barney’s feet.
He stoops to pick up the knife and as he stands up his lips twitch. ‘Hey there, butterfingers.’
I roll my eyes. ‘You again? So soon.’
Then, as his eyes slide down to the cake, they widen. ‘Nice carrots. Is that homemade?’
Why the hell would I even care he’s noticed? As for the pang of disappointment that I can’t claim the cake as mine, that’s bonkers too because he’s the last person I’d want to impress. That little pool of wide-eyed awe of his isn’t one I’d want to bask in. Honestly.
I feel my nose wrinkle. ‘I guess someone with a home made it.’ I have no ideas where that bollocks came from, but I have to come clean. ‘It wasn’t me.’
He looks half amused. ‘In that case I won’t say great cooking. Or make any mention of baking and entering.’
I’m groaning inwardly at that, but I don’t flinch. ‘And I won’t say thanks a lot for the compliments, although I might risk an “enjoy”.’ But that’s only for Cam’s sake, obviously. Okay, someone please tell my mouth it’s time to stop. ‘And in case you’re thinking of sending the special constables round to interrogate us, it isn’t stolen – the person who brings that white stuff in bottles brought it.’
His nostrils flare slightly. ‘Any cake is good cake as far as we’re concerned. Not that we’re desperate or anything.’
‘I’ll take your word on that.’ I swear that’s my last word too.
‘Ready, Cam?’ He cocks his head at the boy, then turns to Aunty Jo. ‘I hope it’s okay he gate-crashed your afternoon tea?’ He’s raising an eyebrow at Cam. ‘C’mon then, big man, fast as you can, we’re already late. What do you say?’
‘Thanks.’ Cam’s clutching his stack of cake parcels, dropping crumbs as he hurries out onto the stone-flagged path.
‘You will come again?’ There’s no time for Aunty Jo to say more because they’ve almost reached the lane.
So there’s ‘in a hurry’. And there’s ‘bad mannered’. And I know where my money is.
As she pulls the door closed behind them her voice has lightened. ‘He was nice.’
‘He was, I don’t see many kids that age.’
Her eyes narrow. ‘Not the child, I was talking about