Read Chapter 9: The Accent of Youth

The quiet came as a shock, the way silence does after days of noise. The last of the festival stragglers had checked out that morning, leaving behind damp towels and a tip jar that smelled of vinegar. Imogen stood at the kitchen window, watching the tide slide out over the mudflats, and let herself breathe for the first time in a week.

Toby was at the counter behind her, scraping the grill with a devotion that bordered on religious. He’d stayed. She hadn’t asked him to, not exactly, but he’d been there every morning at six, sleeves rolled, coffee already brewed, and she’d stopped questioning it. It was easier than acknowledging what his presence meant.

“You know,” he said, not looking up from his work, “I used to practice my grandmother’s Cornish accent in the mirror when I was twelve. Thought it would make me more real.”

Imogen turned. “Real?”

“Real enough to belong here.” He shrugged, still scraping. “My mum had this friend from Penzance who sounded like she’d swallowed the sea. I wanted to sound like that. Like I’d been dipped in salt and left to dry.”

She laughed—a real laugh, surprising her. “That’s the worst metaphor I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re not wrong.” He set the scraper down and finally looked at her. His face had lines now that hadn’t been there at nineteen, but his eyes were the same. “What about you? Did you ever practice anything?”

“I practiced leaving.”

“That’s not an accent.”

“It is, in London.” She crossed her arms, leaning against the doorframe. “You learn to say ‘I’m fine’ like you mean it. You learn to walk fast enough that no one asks where you’re from.”

He nodded slowly. “And did it work?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I knew about the accent, Toby.”

His eyebrows lifted. “What accent?”

“The posh one. The one you did whenever my London cousins visited. That summer—the last one.” She felt the words settle between them like stones dropped into still water. “You’d go all clipped and proper. ‘Jolly good,’ you’d say. ‘Rather splendid weather we’re having.’ You sounded like you’d swallowed a thesaurus.”

He groaned, covering his face with one hand. “Oh God. You remember that.”

“I remember everything.” She said it before she could stop herself, and the air in the kitchen thickened. “I remember thinking it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen. You, who could gut a fish and rewire a boat engine, talking about the ‘delightful maritime breeze’ because you thought it would impress my cousin Charlotte.”

“She was so sophisticated,” he said, his voice muffled by his palm. “She had a phone with a camera that could record video. I’d never seen anything like it.”

“She had braces and a lisp.”

“She had a *laptop*.”

Imogen laughed again, harder this time, and something in her chest cracked open. “You were so desperate to sound like you belonged with us.”

“I wasn’t desperate to sound like you,” he said quietly. He lowered his hand, and his gaze was steady on hers. “I was desperate to sound like I was worth your time.”

The words hit her somewhere soft, somewhere she’d spent fifteen years building walls around. She opened her mouth to respond—to say something sharp, or dismissive, or safe—but nothing came.

“I hated those summers,” he continued, his voice lower now, rougher. “Not because of you. Because of who I was next to you. The scrappy kid from the boatyard with the rough hands and the wrong clothes. Your grandmother would make us tea and you’d tell me about the places you’d been, the museums, the theatres, and I’d think—she’s going to leave. She’s going to leave and I’ll still be here, and she’ll forget my name by Christmas.”

“I never forgot your name.”

“No,” he said. “But you left anyway.”

The silence that followed was different. Heavier. Imogen felt the weight of it pressing on her ribs, and she searched for something to say—something that would explain the eighteen-year-old girl who’d packed her bags and never looked back.

Before she could find the words, a voice echoed from the hallway.

“Hello? Miss? There’s no towels in my room.”

Imogen blinked, pulled back to the present like a swimmer breaking the surface. A middle-aged man in a fleece stood at the kitchen door, holding a damp washcloth like evidence.

“You checked out,” she said.

“I’m aware,” he said, with the particular pompousness of a man who had never once been told he was wrong. “But I paid for two nights and left a watch behind. I came back for it and thought—since I’m here—I might freshen up.”

“The room’s already cleaned. Housekeeping turned it over this morning.”

“Then there should be towels in it.” He held up the washcloth. “This is all I could find. It’s damp.”

Toby made a sound that might have been a laugh disguised as a cough. Imogen shot him a look.

“I’ll get you a towel,” she said, her voice flat. “Wait in the lobby.”

The man huffed but retreated, his footsteps clicking on the worn floorboards. When he was out of earshot, Toby let out a low whistle.

“The hospitality industry’s a real joy, isn’t it?”

“It’s a punishment,” she said, already moving toward the linen cupboard. “I’m fairly certain this is purgatory, and the man in the fleece is my personal demon.”

She grabbed a towel from the shelf—clean, folded, smelling faintly of the lavender sachets her grandmother had always kept between the linens—and turned to deliver it. But Toby had followed her into the hallway.

“Imogen.” His voice was soft. “What I said before. About those summers—I didn’t tell you to make you feel guilty. I told you because I never said it then. And I’ve spent a lot of years wishing I’d said more.”

She clutched the towel to her chest like a shield. “Toby, I can’t—”

“I know.” He held up his hands. “I know. You’re leaving at the end of summer. You hate this place. You hate that your grandmother left it to you. I know all of it.”

“Then why are you still here?” The words came out sharper than she intended. “Why did you stay? The festival’s over. I can’t pay you. There’s no reason for you to keep showing up at six in the morning.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she watched something flicker across his face—the same look he’d worn when he was nineteen, standing at the end of the pier, watching her board the train that would take her away from him.

“Because for the first time in fifteen years,” he said, “I know exactly where you are.” He paused. “And I’m not ready to let you disappear again.”

The towel slipped from Imogen’s grip. She caught it midair, fumbling, and the moment shattered. From the lobby came the sound of the man in the fleece clearing his throat loudly.

“Miss? I don’t mean to rush, but my watch is in the safe and I have a dinner reservation in Padstow.”

Imogen stared at Toby for one long second. Then she pressed the towel into his chest and stepped around him.

“I’ll handle it,” she said, not looking back. But as she walked toward the lobby, she could feel his gaze on her, warm and constant, like the tide she’d grown up swimming against.

The man took his towel with a grunt of satisfaction and made his way toward the bathroom. Imogen stood in the center of the lobby, surrounded by peeling wallpaper and salt-warped windows, and felt the strangest sensation she’d had since arriving in Cornwall.

She felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

Which was terrifying. Because she had a plan. She had a will to honor, a property to sell, a life to rebuild in London. She didn’t have room for the boy from the boatyard and his careful, patient words.

But as she turned back toward the kitchen, she saw Toby through the doorway, already pulling fresh eggs from the fridge, humming a tune she half-remembered from summers long gone. And she knew, with a certainty that settled deep in her bones, that the plan she’d been clinging to was already beginning to crack.