Runaway Summer A Polwenna Bay novel by Ruth Saberton Copyright All characters, organisations and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed in this book are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and / or legal right to publish all materials in this book. Copyright © 2015 Ruth Saberton Cover illustration copyright © Carrie May Editor: Jane Griffiths The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher. Chapter 1 Summer Penhalligan was only five years old when she stood on the stage of the Polwenna Bay Village Hall and sang Somewhere over the Rainbow, but even before the final verse was over her mother knew she was destined for fame and fortune, far away from Cornwall and in the bright lights of the West End. Nothing was going to get in the way of Susie Penhalligan’s dreams – least of all her daughter. Summer had spent most of her childhood learning lines, being trundled up and down the country to rehearsals and practising ballet and tap until her feet hurt. While her siblings had spent their time playing on the beach or surfing – or, later on, drinking scrumpy in The Ship – Summer had focused on her acting and tried not to care that she was missing out on what looked like a lot of fun. On the odd occasion when she’d felt like missing a dance class or Saturday rehearsal to spend time with her best friend Morwenna, just the thought of her mother’s disappointment had been enough to stop Summer in her tracks. Susie had lived and breathed Summer’s acting, thinking nothing of driving her daughter hundreds of miles to auditions or classes in their exhausted Ford Fiesta, and she’d saved every penny from her job cleaning holiday cottages to help pay for it all. Even Summer’s father Eddie, a gruff fisherman who spent more time propping up the bar than he ever did at home, would sometimes make it to a show and then boast drunkenly to all and sundry in The Ship that his girl was going to make them proud. Summer had always known that she had to succeed. Letting her parents down hadn’t been an option. Fortunately hard work, dedication and talent had been in Summer’s favour, and so had her striking looks and slim figure. Like all of the Penhalligan family, Summer had been blessed with a combination of inky black hair and olive skin – rumoured to be the legacy of a Spanish Armada survivor who’d been washed ashore in Cornwall and had found comfort in the arms of a local girl – and eyes as sea green as the waves that danced beyond the harbour wall. It had broken Summer’s heart to leave her family and friends behind, especially one friend in particular, whom even now she couldn’t think about without her chest constricting. Nevertheless, she’d left Cornwall shortly after her sixteenth birthday and set off for London, where (to her mother’s immense pride) she’d managed to secure a place at a top drama school. In the twelve years since, Summer had scarcely had time to breathe. She could certainly count on one hand the amount of times she’d been free to return home. Home. When she’d first arrived in London, just the thought of Cornwall had been enough to make her eyes prickle. Whenever she’d allowed herself to dwell too much on everything she’d left behind, from the higgledy-piggledy rooftops to the ceaseless crash of the waves breaking on the rocks below her bedroom window, Summer had started to panic – and she’d had to think very hard indeed about how many sacrifices her family had made to send her all the way up country to drama school. Each time she’d thought about that one person in particular, the person whose hurt and anger had made Summer feel as though her own heart was being clawed out, she’d had to screw her eyes tightly shut and concentrate on how proud everyone at home was and just how much they’d given up so that she could be here. It would have been selfish and ungrateful to turn tail to Paddington Station and hurl herself onto the first train home. Sometimes Summer had resorted to pulling one of her precious Topshop earrings out of her earlobe and digging it into her arm, until the bite of metal managed to blunt the homesickness. Then, when her emotions were back under control, she’d always give herself a stern lecture: about how her mother had toiled for her, clearing the mess left behind by the Range Rover-driving holidaymakers who rented the prettiest cottages down by the harbour, and about how her brothers had chosen to go to sea with Eddie and put money into the family pot rather than take their A levels. She couldn’t let them all down. Ironically, even her friend Morwenna had once sacrificed the money she’d saved for a new saddle so that she could buy Summer a beautiful collector’s edition of Shakespeare’s plays. As it turned out, though, Mo and the rest of the Tremaine family had ended up letting Summer down in just about the worst way possible… In those early, lonely days, thinking about her best friend had often meant another earring jab. The two girls had grown up together and been closer than sisters. Although Morwenna was as fair skinned as Summer was dark, they’d often liked to imagine that they were twins. Back then it was certainly true that wherever one girl was, the other was never far away. Even more than a decade on, Summer often still found herself thinking that she must tell Morwenna about some incident or other, or feeling her heart lift when she caught sight of a curly red head in a crowd. The subsequent realisation that the friendship was long gone was every bit as painful as if the loss had happened yesterday. Mo and Summer no longer spoke – and they probably never would again. In desperation, Summer had thrown herself into her studies, and before long the excitement of her new life in the city had been a balm to the homesickness. The longer she stayed away from Polwenna Bay, the less upsetting the memories became. It was easier not to think about home, Summer had soon learned, to shut the door firmly on the longing to be back and to refuse to dwell on it. Besides, it couldn’t have been made any clearer that she was no longer wanted. There were many advantages to having years of acting classes under her belt; not least of these was discovering that if she played the part of a confident and sassy city chick, she could pretty much convince everyone around her and possibly even herself too. Elocution and acting classes had soon smoothed away the warm Cornish drawl from her voice and with practice Summer had managed to erase Polwenna Bay from her heart as well, or at least lock it away in a very small corner that she was determined to seldom visit. As time slid past in that imperceptible yet alarming way that years do, Summer found that if she did ever miss the calling of the gulls, the tang of salt in the air or the lemon-sharp light of the bay, then she was able to console herself with the knowledge that at least she’d managed to find the fame that her mother had craved for her. Had she made her family proud? Summer wasn’t so sure. Maybe proud wasn’t quite the right word; somehow Summer doubted that her Shakespeare-loving mother approved of the direction Summer’s career path had taken in the end. Her father had been utterly mortified – no more bragging in the pub from him, she imagined – but at least she’d managed to pay off their mortgage and could make sure they were taken care of. Her brothers were less delicate and had readily accepted the down payment on their new trawler, Penhalligan Girl, but Polwenna was a small place and people had long memories, so Summer stayed away. Her face was on billboards and magazines the length and breadth of Britain; she belonged to that small and very select group of celebrities known solely by their first names, and she lived a lifestyle that most people could only dream of. Summer had never intended to disillusion her family by letting them know that the dream was actually more of a nightmare. But now, suddenly, it seemed that she didn’t have much of a choice… After all those years away, it was a shock to find herself returning to Polwenna Bay, the small Cornish fishing town where she’d grown up. Summer hadn’t known that this was where she was heading, or even that she was leaving London. Everything had happened in such a hurry. Her head was still spinning at how an entire life could change in a heartbeat. One minute she’d been sitting at the bottom of the stairs with her head in her hands, an entire galaxy of stars whirling in front of her eyes, and the next she’d been scooping up her car keys from the table and running out of the door, down the scrubbed steps and out into the street.