Lucy's throat was dry. "I've got things to do, places to go..."

He turned and she snapped her eyes away from his impressive assets and on to his face.

"People to meet?" he offered. "Maybe one person in particular?"

"No. No one person in particular. Not now."

"Mortgage to pay on the loft apartment in Canary Wharf?"

She thought of her rented ex-council flat in Kentish Town and bit her lip. "Slightly farther north. And... um... a little farther west."

"Ah, but what about the Ferrari in the underground garage?"

"Think smaller and you'd be warm... oh, there's no point keeping a flashy car in London, as you know, if you're from the Big Smoke," she said, desperately trying to switch the conversation round to him.

"Yes, but it's been a long time since I lived in London."

"How long?"

"Twenty years, give or take."

"So that makes you?"

"Thirty-two."

Lucy laughed. "Really? I'd have put you at all of thirty-three."

The few tiny lines he did have crinkled his eyes at the corners. "I've had a hard life and spent a lot of it outside."

"I've had an easy life and spent most of it in Starbucks."

"I can think of worse places to spend your time, but not much," laughed Josh, then stopped and frowned.

Lucy held her breath. "What's the matter?" she asked.

His face slid from puzzlement to mild amusement again. "Nothing. Just for a moment there, you reminded me of someone, but I must be imagining things."

She clamped her legs together and hugged her knees, feeling the chill of the night air. "Tell me more about when you used to live in London," she said quickly.

"Well, there's not that much to tell, really, and most of it is stuff I'm not proud of."

"It can't be that bad. I've done things that I'm not proud of too."

He gave a wry smile and shook his head. "Like what? Fiddling your income tax? Parking on a double yellow line? Lucy, I don't think you understand."

"I could try," said Lucy softly.

Chapter 20.

As they sat on the beach, a firework exploded above the clubhouse, arcing upwards in a shower of magnesium-white sparks.

"What have you done? Confess," said Lucy, looking at Josh intently, relieved that the focus of the conversation was back on him again.

"Enough," he said. A rocket crackling above made her flinch. "Enough to have a record. Petty theft, a bit of criminal damage, assorted bad stuff with cars that weren't mine."

"Oh. I see. Well..."

"So it's a bit more serious than parking on a double yellow, but it was a long time ago. My mother couldn't look after us and we never had a dad, so we ended up in kids' homes until I was eleven and Luke was thirteen. We tried a couple of foster homes but didn't get on with the people."

"So how did you end up down here in Cornwall?"

"Marnie saw us in a fostering newspaper-one of those papers where kids in care are advertised to people wanting families. We must have represented the worst proposition in the whole of social services, but for some reason, she was insane enough to take us on."

"Had she got her own family?"

He shook his head. "No. She was already widowed by then. Her husband died in a trawler accident. She was on her own but they'd fostered teenagers before. I guess social services probably couldn't believe their luck when she brought us down here to Tresco."

"That must have been a culture shock after London."

"I don't think either of us would know what culture was if we'd been hit over the head with it, but Marnie must have hoped we'd change our ways once we were out of the reach of bad influences."

"But it didn't work?"

"For a while, it did. Until Luke found his feet with the locals and decided to make a name for himself. I tagged along a few times, so I can't blame him; I knew what I was doing. We got caught a few times-got away with a lot more. Petty vandalism, graffiti, shoplifting, that kind of stuff. I got into a couple of fights with local lads. God knows what we put Marnie through."

"Drugs?"

He shook his head. "A bit of weed, once or twice."

She raised her eyebrows and he smiled wryly.

"OK, maybe slightly more than once or twice but it usually made me puke and I looked a right twat so I didn't bother after that. I don't know whether Luke did stuff. No, that's wrong. I guess I know he did, but I just don't want to admit it."

"So how come you ended up as a fully paid-up member of the community? Youth clubs, bird-watching, sailing club... you seem to be a good boy now."

"Then you don't know me, Lucy. And as for the bird-watching, I'll admit it. I don't really do any. Remember that morning when you chucked me out of the cottage because you thought I was a pervert?"

"Well, you might have been. I was only being careful being from London and all that."

He shot her a stern look then shrugged his shoulders. "Fair enough. Let's agree to disagree that you're paranoid."

"You were saying about the birds..." hinted Lucy, before they started another argument.

"Oh. Right. I'd been having a quiet word with some blokes trying to steal chough eggs from the cliffs. They're endangered, you see."

"What, the guys trying to steal the eggs or the birds?"

He smiled, drained his beer. "Maybe both for a while but after a little gentle persuasion, the humans were persuaded to see the error of their ways."

Lucy dreaded to think what Josh had done-or threatened to do-to the egg stealers. "But I thought you said you'd reformed from your days as a bad boy."

"I have, largely, but it took a shock. After a few too many cautions, and a couple of fines which Marnie paid, of course, we finally took it into our heads to take a couple of the local farmer's quad bikes for a test drive round the village. We ended up in the local magistrate's front garden, having demolished his wishing well and crushed his gnomes."

Lucy was glad it was dark. She was trying not to smile at the idea of a teenage Josh and his brother, lying amidst a gaggle of gnomes, the irate magistrate shaking his fist over them. Yet it wasn't funny because it had earned Josh a record that must have made his tough life even harder.

"Sounds funny now, eh? I suppose we thought it was at the time. I was fifteen by then and threatened with detention myself if I did anything again. I kidded myself I didn't give a toss and I certainly told everyone I didn't give a toss. Underneath I was scared shitless. When Marnie took me back again, I didn't exactly turn into a model student but I sorted myself out, and eventually went away to college. When she fell ill I came back to help with the business."

"What about Luke?"

"He chose his own way. He was already growing out of me by then and ready to move into the big league. He got into trouble a few more times, ended up inside, and then he disappeared to London. I haven't seen him since."

"So he didn't know about Marnie dying?"

"He might, but if he does, he didn't bother showing for the funeral. And yes, I've tried to find him, God knows. The police, the Salvation Army, Missing People. I've been up to London a dozen times over the years. I don't even know if he's alive or dead."

"If he were still alive," she said gently, "wouldn't he want his share of the cottages if nothing else?"

"Marnie left them to me, she didn't trust him even though she said she loved him, but I want to help him out. He's my brother. What can you do? I often wonder if I should have tried harder to stop him but what could I have done? Sometimes you just have to walk away from people. You have to cut the ties or they'll drag your whole life away sure as a riptide." He said it with such passion but without bitterness. Lucy stared over the water at a distant light that blinked then faded on and off.

"I walked away from someone too."

"Who?"

Her heart thudded and she wished it unsaid immediately. She scribbled frantically in the sand.

"Lucy? Who did you walk away from?"

It was hard to look at Josh and lie, so she pushed herself to her feet and picked up her shoes. High above a firework burst apart, leaving a screaming trail across the sky above the clubhouse.

"Forget I said anything. It doesn't matter anymore."

Chapter 21.

The week after the party whizzed by and it was almost time to go home. Fiona had got writer's block and decided to cure herself by interviewing the lifeguards at Perranporth beach for "research" into near-death experiences.

Lucy decided to make one last farewell trip to look at the sailing club. "Look at" being the key words; she wasn't going inside, not even to accidentally on purpose bump into Josh. In fact, she'd done her best to avoid him after their conversation on the beach. She felt she'd opened up far too much for comfort.

Spotting the flags flying, she found a sheltered spot in the dunes and stretched out, staring up at the clouds scudding across the sky. She'd phoned Charlie and her mum weekly since she'd "run away" to Cornwall; a couple of reporters had hung about for the first week or so but no one had bothered her mum again. Even Nick was out of the papers now, so it seemed safe to go home.

Funny how safe didn't sound as appealing as it once had.

"Yuk!" Lucy's eyes flew open. Someone was licking her toe. "Hello, Tally." The dog circled round her, making snuffling noises. "Your boyfriend's not here, I'm afraid. I had to leave him behind today."

Tally stared up at her out of soulful eyes, as if Lucy held all the power in the world to make her happy. She reached out a hand and stroked her muzzle. "I'm sure Fiona will bring him to see you when she's down here again."

A few seconds later, Josh emerged from dunes, doing a double take to find her there. Lucy did a double take too. He was barefoot, bare chested, and wearing dark blue board shorts that showed his six-pack off to perfection.

"Hi there."

"Hello. Tally gave me a fright. I think I'd dozed off and she woke me up by licking my toe."

"I know, she's a real tart. She does it to me too."

Tally started nuzzling Josh's bare leg and panting with excitement and Lucy didn't blame her.

"Hengist not here?"

"No. Fiona had to take him to the vet's in Porthstow. Well, dragged him is more accurate. He has a sixth sense about medical matters. It took two of us and a bowl of tripe to load him into the Land Rover."

"The vet's? Is he OK?"

"Oh, he's absolutely fine and that's the trouble. She wanted to get something to calm him down on the way home. He gets a bit agitated and it's liable to be a long, hot journey."

"Probably a good idea. It's getting toward high season. This weather will bring out a lot of weekenders and the roads will be hell on earth." Bending down, he tugged a piece of driftwood from the sand. As he raised it above his head, Tally skittered to her feet, pink tongue lolling in excitement.

"When are you planning on leaving?" he said, hurling the stick high into the air which was Tally's cue to shoot off over the sand like a furry black cannonball.

"Tomorrow. We thought we'd get up at dawn and try and get a head start."

Tally hurtled back, stick in mouth, bounding up the short slope to the dune, sand spraying behind her. Crouching down, Josh patted his thighs and she stopped, the stick clamped between her teeth. Her eyes flickered from Josh to Lucy and back again. She edged forward and raised a paw, seemingly about to drop the stick at Lucy's feet. Just as she was about to relinquish the driftwood, she changed her mind, trotted over to Josh and deposited her prize at his feet.

"There, you see. You are special," said Lucy, smiling.

His eyes crinkled in a smile. "I'm afraid it's just cupboard love, not my magnetic personality."

Pushing herself to her feet, Lucy brushed sand off her legs. "I'd better be going," she said, tearing her eyes away from Josh's hand caressing Tally's silky head. "I'm having a bugger of a job, getting all my stuff back in the same suitcase. No idea how it all fitted before and I was in a hell of a hurry. Now I have all the time in the world and it won't go back inside."

"Why the big rush?"

"Oh! I don't know. I guess I just needed to get away as fast as possible at the time. The pressure and all that."

His face was puzzled. "No, I meant why the hurry now?"