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Cornwall in January is beautiful. Not the hazy beauty of midsummer, when the sea shines turquoise and the sun blurs distant hillsides into deep green smudges, but a bleak, eerie beauty so strong, crisp and immediate that it turns your cheeks pink and sends a shiver through your bones. Erin Devereux pulled her scarf a little higher around her chin, too wound up to appreciate the chilly splendour around her. My life is going nowhere, she thought grimly, thrusting her hands deeper into her pockets and marching on along the cliff top. Usually, whenever she felt uninspired, there was nothing like the granite rocks, crashing surf and the whiff of smugglers to get her creative juices flowing. But nowadays, more often than not, she found herself wondering what she was doing in the prime of her life – well, at twenty-four – living in a tiny village at the end of the earth, trying to write a book about … well, nothing very much at the moment. Erin felt so hemmed in by all this open space, she couldn’t get off the first page. She kicked at a pebble in frustration, missing by inches and stubbing her toe on a tree root. She howled in pain and irritation. Just then, as if someone had turned on a tap, it began to rain hard. Story of my life, thought Erin, and began to run for home.

‘These boots are going straight in the bin,’ declared Erin, pushing open the back door of Hawthorn Cottage and feeling the blast of warm, sweet air on her face. She flopped down on the nearest chair, pulled off her sheepskin boots and threw them in the corner.

‘Got writer’s block again?’ said the elderly woman standing in front of a scarlet Aga. Jilly Thomas, Erin’s grandmother, was as small as a mouse, with a shock of wiry grey hair and a proud, handsome face. There was a line of flour across her lined cheek and she was wearing a navy apron smeared with something white.

‘Yep, writer’s block, writer’s clog, writer’s jam, the lot,’ said Erin, pressing her cold toes against a lukewarm radiator.

‘Well, don’t you worry, lovey,’ said Jilly, ‘I’ve cooked you a nice chicken pie and some mash, too – just the ticket to warm you up.’

Erin smiled at her grandmother. No wonder she had put on seven pounds since she’d been back in Cornwall. But her tall frame could take a little extra weight, hidden most of the time in jeans and a thick sweater. Erin glanced in the mirror above the fireplace and saw a ruddy, pretty farm girl. Her lips were full and naturally pink and long russet curls fell down her back. She’d always envied redheads who had startling green eyes – the classic Irish colouring that gave them bold, cat-like strikingness, but Erin’s eyes were cognac brown and it softened the look. Although right now her cheeks had been stung pink by the sea air and ribbons of wind-lashed hair were still stuck to her face. The glamorous authoress, she thought. Erin wrapped her cold fingers around a steaming mug that Jilly had placed before her.

‘The problem is that there’s nothing to write about round here,’ she complained.

‘You make it sound like it’s Cornwall’s fault,’ said Jilly with a hint of a smile.

‘Well – it is!’ said Erin. ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m not experiencing anything. What am I supposed to write about? Seagulls?’

Erin saw a look of sadness pass over Jilly’s face and felt an immediate stab of guilt. She hadn’t meant to sound so critical of the warm, welcoming village she had called home for the last twenty years, nor did she want Jilly to feel in any way inadequate. She owed her grandmother everything. Erin’s father Phillip had committed suicide when she was five, and her mother Hillary had disappeared twelve months later. Erin had immediately moved in with Jilly Thomas, her maternal grandmother and had been brought up as her own daughter. And she had had an idyllic childhood in Port Merryn, running along the beaches, playing in the narrow, twisty streets. It had been like one long summer holiday; even the winters were cosy and warm in Jilly’s kitchen. But, like much of Cornwall, Port Merryn was a dying community. The Atlantic was all but fished out, removing the village’s traditional income, so the quaint stone fishermen’s cottages circling the harbour were being snapped up by rich Londoners as holiday homes. With property prices soaring and no prospect of work, the families had moved to the cities, leaving only a retired community and a handful of locals running tourist-trap cafés and fudge shops. It had been five years since you had been able to buy a pint of milk in Port Merryn, and in the dead of winter the village was like a ghost town.

‘I’m sorry, gran, I didn’t mean to make it sound like I wanted to leave …’

‘Now, now, lovey,’ said Jilly, wiping her hands on her apron and reaching over to touch Erin’s hand. ‘You’re only saying the truth. I know you love the village, but it’s no place for a young girl, not when you’ve seen what’s on the other side of the hill.’

Erin nodded with melancholy. It had seemed like a good idea to move back to Port Merryn after she had graduated from university six months ago. She could save on rent, and move to the city when she’d made a proper start on her writing career. At least, that had been the plan, but it hadn’t quite worked out that way. Raised on a diet of Daphne Du Maurier and John Fowles – Jilly had always made sure the house was full of books to enrich and inspire her granddaughter’s mind – Erin’s one ambition had been to write the Great British Novel, and had spent every spare moment of her time at uni crafting her debut book. By the end of the last term it had been ready: 120,000 words, double spaced and printed on one-sided white paper. She sent it to a dozen agencies and waited. She had almost given up hope when she had been summoned by Ed Davies, senior partner in Davies & Sisman Literary Agency, to his office in London. Almost numb with excitement, Erin had spent three days deciding what to wear in order to give the right balance of ‘literary genius’ and ‘commercial winner’ and had spent the whole journey there planning her Man Booker Prize acceptance speech. She had thus been badly deflated when Ed Davies had sat her down in his Holborn office and spent twenty minutes telling her why he thought her novel sucked. However, he had seen enough promise, he said, that he was prepared to represent her.

‘I’m taking a chance on you,’ the agent had told her, ‘and this book certainly isn’t going to be your debut novel. But if you can come up with the right premise and execute it as well as I think you can, then I want to be the one negotiating your first deal.’

Erin looked across at her battered old laptop sitting at the desk by the window, almost buried under a mound of papers and notebooks. The screen blinked at her, an open document white and empty. The novel, her great escape route from the village, just wouldn’t come, however hard she tried.

‘Someone called for you while you were out,’ said Jilly, waving an oven glove towards the phone. She was removing a thick crusted pie from the oven, which she placed on the gingham tablecloth.

‘Who was it?’ asked Erin, picking up a Post-it note scrawled with illegible writing. ‘Richard?’ Her relationship with her boyfriend at university was still limping along, even though Erin was now back in Cornwall and Richard was based in London.

‘No, lovey,’ smiled Jilly sympathetically. ‘Katherine someone from an agency, I think?’

Erin felt a rush of excitement. ‘The Deskhop Agency?’

‘That’s the one,’ nodded Jilly. ‘Who are they, then?’

‘It’s a secretarial agency in London,’ said Erin slowly.

‘Secretarial work?’ said Jilly, raising one eyebrow. ‘What about the book?’

‘Gran …’ she replied, hoping not to sound too exasperated, ‘the Deskhop Agency acts for all sorts of media and publishing companies. I thought I might be able to get in through the back door. But don’t worry, it probably won’t come to anything.’

Her grandmother smiled kindly and put her oven gloves down. ‘Erin, don’t you dare go worrying about me. You have a talent, and a talent should take you places, not leave you stranded in a cold little backwater with a pensioner and her stodgy cooking.’

‘But I love the village and I love your cooking!’ protested Erin.

‘I know you do, love,’ said Jilly, running her hand up and down Erin’s arm, ‘but you’re climbing the walls. It’s about time you got out and had some fun while you’re young.’

‘I don’t have enough money to move to London.’

‘You know you do,’ said Jilly.

‘But I can’t use that …’

Erin thought about the nest egg sitting in the bank. Her father had died almost bankrupt, but over the years he had squirrelled away money for his daughter, which had added up to a tidy sum. Erin had never touched it, keeping it for ‘something important’.

‘Maybe it’s time to use it, lovey. Your mum would have wanted you to.’

Erin looked at her grandmother’s deep blue eyes and knew she loved her more than ever. But she also knew she was right.

‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ said Erin, wondering how much of Jilly’s rice pudding she would have to eat before she could slip off and make the phone call.

‘Ah, Erin Devereux. Good of you to call back. I tried your mobile but I’m not sure it’s working.’ Catherine Weiner’s voice was brash and over-friendly. It had been so long since Erin had been up to London for her agency interview, but she remembered how scarily efficient the woman was.

‘Then I tried this number on your CV. Didn’t recognize the dialling code. Where are you? Surrey?’

‘Er, Cornwall,’ said Erin, putting on her best telephone manner.

‘Cornwall,’ replied Catherine, surprised. ‘You’ve not moved down there, have you?’

‘Just staying with friends while my new London flat completes,’ Erin quickly lied. ‘Solicitor tells me it’ll be Friday. Then I’m on the first train back to London.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ said Catherine, briskly. ‘Because Cornwall is hardly commutable and I think I’ve got a job for you.’

Erin’s interest was piqued. ‘Oh yes?’

‘I see from the notes I took at your interview that you were looking for secretarial cover at a publishing company. Well, this is not that, but it should be lively work for a girl your age.’

‘So what is it?’

‘Events management. It’s a three-week job. The client, a very glamorous lady-about-town needs help staging a benefit dinner. Sending out tickets, lots of admin, lots of running around. She wanted someone bright, organized, presentable. Doesn’t need particularly sharp typing skills, which is why I thought of you. Starts ASAP, mind you. She wants to interview tomorrow. Lots of my girls are committed to long-term contracts, but I thought you might be free …’

Charming, thought Erin.

‘So I have to come up to London for an interview?’ said Erin, thinking about the cost of a train ticket.

‘Erin,’ said Catherine, her voice sharp and reprimanding. ‘This is what’s known as a very sexy gig. Now, are you in or out?’

Erin looked out of the window at the grey emptiness There was no denying it was beautiful here; it even smelt wonderful, with the tang of the sea air mingling with the scent of the wild flowers on the cliffs and the oily trawlers in the harbour. She knew that when she was her grandmother’s age there would be no better place in the world in which to live, but, right now, aged twenty-four, life seemed to be on pause. Cornwall was so cut-off, so disconnected from the rest of the world, she had to get to London to wake herself up. To connect with society. To connect with people.

‘Count me in. I’ll be on the first train tomorrow.’