Cornish Clouds and Silver Lining Skies

by Ali McNamara

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Meteorologist Sky Matthews does not like surprises.

Sky monitors her life like she does the weather, carefully and with a scientific eye. So, when she misses out on her dream job abroad and finds herself with no choice but to take a position on a tidal island off the Cornish harbour town of St Felix instead, she feels completely at sea. Worse still, she has to work alongside TV weatherman Sonny Samuels, who barely knows his storms from his tsunamis.

It doesn't take long for Sky to become enchanted by the strange weather patterns over St Felix. Sonny is convinced they link to local folklore, but Sky knows her science too well to fall for that. Until she meets Walter, a local weather watcher with no qualifications beyond a lifetime of experience and Sky is forced to question everything she thought she knew about the weather, herself... and Sonny.

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Praise for Ali McNamara:
An enchanting escape. Pure magic!' Heidi Swain
'A perfect, sparkling, summer read.' Cathy Bramley
'Fun and endearing' Katie Fforde
'Perfect easy reading' Sun
An irresistible, feel-good story infused with infectious humour' Miranda Dickinson
'Funny and light-hearted' Heat

Release date: January 10, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

‘But how do I get over there?’ I ask, staring across the sea at my new home.

The island I’m gazing at appears to float on the water like a tall ship stationary in its port. Currently, it’s cossetted by a calm and inviting sea. The waves are barely gentle ripples on the surface as they caress the island on this clear, sunny day. But I can easily imagine on a day when the wind is gusting fiercely, the waves might look a little less friendly as they batter the grey craggy rocks that surround the island.

The young man who is my designated guide for today looks at me with a bemused expression.

‘By boat, of course,’ he says in his broad Cornish accent. ‘You do right now, anyway. When the tide is out, you can use the causeway.’

‘I was under the impression there was a permanent path over to the island. I’m sure that’s what it said in my email.’ I reach into my bag for my phone, but my guide shakes his head.

‘No, Aurora is a tidal island. When the tide is out there’s a stone causeway, but when the tide is in,’ he gestures down the side of the harbour wall towards a white and purple motorboat moored there, ‘you take Doris here.’

‘But … Fisher, isn’t it?’ I ask, double-checking I’ve got his name right.

The young man nods.

‘Fisher, I don’t know how to drive a boat.’ I look in horror at the small motorboat bobbing about on the water.

Fisher grins at me.

‘Sorry, I mean sail,’ I apologise.

‘No, you were right the first time – it’s drive.’

‘Then why are you smiling?’ I’m becoming more anxious about this new job by the second. I so need everything to go well this time. It’s my chance to prove that I can cope with minor assignments. Otherwise, I’ll never be given the big ones again.

Earlier – when everything was going smoothly and to plan – I’d felt a little more comfortable. Fisher had met me and my little dog, Fitz, off the train after our long journey down from London to the most southerly tip of Cornwall. He’d proceeded to load all my luggage into a Land Rover without a single complaint. As we’d driven towards my temporary new home, Fisher had told me all about the busy little harbour town of St Felix. And for the first time since I accepted it, I’d begun to feel that this new assignment might actually be a good thing. It was once we’d arrived at the harbour to cross over to the island that things began to go downhill.

‘Look,’ I say now, trying to pull an email up on my phone with one hand, while holding Fitz’s lead with the other, ‘it says here the weather station is on an island a few hundred metres out to sea, but you can easily walk across from the town of St Felix using the causeway.’

‘And your message there would be right,’ Fisher says cheerily. ‘At low tide you can indeed walk or drive across to the island, but it’s not low tide right now, is it?’

‘Clearly not,’ I mutter, staring at my email as my heart sinks further.

The offer to come to Cornwall had come completely out of the blue. Due to ill health I’d been on an extended leave of absence from my position as a senior meteorologist at Met Central in London. Now I was feeling much better I’d assumed I’d be returning to my old job. But my boss had phoned and suggested this opportunity might be just what I needed to get back into the swing of things – ‘a little more gently’ had been her exact words.

As she’d gone on to explain what this new job entailed, I’d had a gut feeling it might be trouble, but I had little choice in the matter. Either I took this temporary position and proved I was capable again, or the career I’d worked so hard for over the years was just going to slip away from me, like so much else in my life had recently. At least this way I was still clinging on to some sort of career. Much like the barnacles on the harbour below me, it might be easier to let go, but there was no way either I or they intended to release our grip just yet.

‘Look … Sky, isn’t it?’ Fisher asks, imitating me.

I glance at him to see if he’s trying to be clever, but I just see a kind, tanned, handsome face looking back at me. His dark chocolate eyes are wide, and his expression completely innocent. It’s hard to imagine Fisher ever deliberately ridiculing anyone. ‘Do you mind if I call you Sky?’

‘No, of course not,’ I say, still peering down apprehensively at the boat.

‘If you want to, we can wait until later and head across to the island when the tide turns,’ he suggests. ‘Then I can drive you over in the Land Rover, no worries. But you seemed so keen to get over there and get cracking when you arrived. I thought you’d want to go immediately.’

At least I appeared keen, that’s something. ‘Yes, you’re right, we should go now. I suppose Fitz and I are going to have to get used to travelling by boat if I’m going to be living and working over there.’

I glance back at the island. The sun is now shining directly above it, and fluffy white clouds are providing the perfect backdrop to show the island at its very best.

Cumulus congestus and cumulus mediocris, I think automatically as I watch the white clouds float across the sky. Formed by the upward convection of columns of warm moist air on sunny days such as this.

‘You could only travel back and forth at low tide, if you wanted to?’ Fisher suggests, breaking into my cloud spotting. ‘But as someone who has spent a fair amount of time on Aurora, I have to say that would be very restrictive.’

‘No, you’re completely right, we should get going as soon as possible. You can teach me how to drive this boat, I assume?’

‘Of course. I’ve been sailing across to Aurora since I was a nipper.’

‘I thought you said it wasn’t sailing just now,’ I reply, allowing myself to break into a smile.

Fisher winks at me. ‘Call it what you like, it’s still the same thing. Right then, Miss Sky, let’s see if we can make a sailor out of you and your little dog!’

Once we’ve got me, Fitz and my luggage on board the little boat, there’s just enough room for Fisher to clamber aboard. After a quick lesson in boat safety, Fisher unties the mooring and we set off. I have to admit Fisher is a very good teacher; he makes everything about driving the little boat seem very straightforward. Basically, once you start the engine there are only three options – forward, neutral and reverse, and I soon have my hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel as I guide Doris, our surprisingly zippy little boat, across the sea towards the island under Fisher’s watchful gaze, and Fitz’s excited barking.

I’m surprised at how incredibly free I feel as I cross the waves. The fresh breeze blows not only my hair temporarily away from my face, but my misgivings too.

‘This feels amazing!’ I tell Fisher as we speed across the waves. ‘I had no idea it would be so much fun!’

Fisher grins. ‘I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Now, follow the route I told you a few minutes ago. Remember, that’s the best way across to Aurora. You avoid hidden rocks and swells in the ocean that way.’

‘It’s a good job you’re here,’ I tell him. ‘I would have simply driven across in a straight line.’

‘And you’d have damaged the boat and possibly yourselves as well if you did that. This is your safest route by far, any other way can be very dangerous – like I said, there’s rocks around the island that you can’t see until the tide is out. Only an expert or someone very familiar with the area would attempt to cross any other way.’

‘How do you know the island so well?’ I ask him, watching the waves in front of me through the windscreen of the boat.

‘My grandad used to be a part of the Wave Watch team here. He’d often bring me across when I was small and he was on duty.’

‘Wave Watch – that’s like a sort of Coastguard, isn’t it?’

‘Kind of, except they’re all volunteers and they don’t do any rescuing, only observing. They keep a watch over the sea in the area. They look out for craft and people swimming, and keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t get into any trouble. They monitor the weather, too – a bit like you’re going to – and report back to the fishermen, so they’re aware of any severe weather that might prevent them going out in their boats. The island was the Wave Watch headquarters until recently, when it was decided you should move in.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry about that, I didn’t know. It wasn’t my decision to come here, my company just asked me to take the job. They didn’t say anything about moving anyone off the island.’

‘No need to worry, the Wave Watch have been moved to Tregarlan Castle. It’s not really a castle, just a really big house up on the hill, it’s been here for centuries, but it looks out over the same bay as the house on Aurora, so they still get a good viewpoint. You might have noticed it as we drove in?’

‘Yes, I did, it’s very impressive. I read about the house when I was looking up St Felix before I came here. Isn’t it owned by National Heritage?’

‘It’s run by them, but it’s owned by a couple of locals – Poppy and Jake Asher. She also owns the local flower shop, and he has the nursery up on Primrose Hill. It’s down to them that the Wave Watch got permission to move into Tregarlan temporarily.’

‘I’m glad I don’t have the added worry of watching out for boats in danger as well as watching the weather,’ I say, narrowly avoiding a collision with a seagull bobbing about on the waves. Luckily the seagull decides at the last minute to fly away, giving me a disdainful look as it soars up away from the boat’s path. ‘That’s quite a lot of responsibility.’

Fisher nods. ‘It is. But they do a great job, and they’ve saved a lot of lives as a result. My grandad was sad when he had to leave.’

‘Why did he have to leave?’

‘Long story,’ Fisher says, quickly. ‘Look, we’re nearly there.’ He suddenly stands up from where he’s been squeezed in-between my pieces of luggage and comes over to the controls at the bow of the boat. ‘Let me show you how to guide Doris into Aurora’s own little harbour.’

Once we’ve navigated our way into a small natural harbour created by the nearby grey and black rocks that jut out of the sea, Fisher shows me how to moor the boat to a worn wooden jetty.

He helps first Fitz and then me on to dry land, then he glances at my luggage still piled high in the boat. ‘Now, we just need to get all that up to the house.’

‘I probably should have packed a little lighter,’ I say apologetically, ‘but I wasn’t really sure what to bring.’

‘Don’t be worrying about it,’ Fisher says with a shrug. ‘You need what you need. Just give me a minute, I’ll be right back.’

He probably assumes this is all my clothes or things for Fitz, I think as I watch Fisher head up a narrow path and disappear around a bend. What he doesn’t know is that a lot of what’s concealed in my cases are things that make my life easier – items most people wouldn’t ever need to think about bringing with them to a Cornish island. But things I need in case this trip doesn’t go as well as I hope.

While I wait, and Fitz is having a good sniff of everything close by, I take a look around at the island. Now I’m here I can see that Aurora’s terrain is actually quite lush – there are leafy plants, soft areas of moss and grass, and little pink flowers scattered in between the rocks and stones. The gravel path that Fisher has just walked along carries on up towards a tall, whitewashed house at the top of the island. From here I can just make out half of the curved bay window that is going to act as my watch station.

It’s not until I hear the growl of an engine that I suddenly realise how quiet the island is, too. The tranquillity is only broken by the occasional call of seabirds swooping across the sky and diving down into the waves to look for fish, and by the lapping of the waves themselves, as they wash against the shoreline.

But all that is interrupted now by the growling noise that’s gradually getting louder. Fitz stands to attention and begins his own version of the growling, but he soon realises he has nothing to fear when a bright red, open-top Jeep rounds the bend of the hill, with Fisher in the driving seat.

‘Your carriage awaits, madam,’ he says as he pulls up next to my luggage and switches off the engine. ‘It’s a bit noisy, but it goes well. I think they chose quite wisely, all things considered.’

I look at the vehicle in front of me. ‘How did this get here?’

‘It turned up when all your equipment came. Actually, a lot of your equipment was ferried over in this. It goes much better on the cobbled causeway than the delivery van that brought the rest of the boxes.’

‘My company provided it?’ I ask in surprise.

‘You need something to get you back and forth, don’t you? Like I said, when the tide is out you can use the causeway, but when it’s in, you use Doris.’

‘Yes, sorry, of course you did. I just didn’t expect Met Central – that’s who I work for – to be this generous.’ I look at the Jeep again; it looks sporty and fun to drive. ‘I don’t know why, but I assumed we’d have to walk across the causeway to get back and forth from the mainland. This is a much better idea.’

‘You can walk, but it’ll take you a while. Take it from me, use this or the boat. It’ll be a lot easier and quicker. On some tides the causeway isn’t clear for very long. If you’re going to be any time away from the island, you need to make sure you can get back all right, otherwise you’ll be stranded until the tide turns.’

I nod. It’s actually quite a relief to know I won’t have to walk every time. Island living is already a lot more daunting than I’d anticipated, and the Jeep is a welcome addition.

‘Right then,’ Fisher says, ‘let’s get your stuff up to the house.’

We manage to move my luggage in two trips. The first Fisher drives, while Fitz watches eagerly from my lap; on the second, it’s my turn to get used to navigating the winding path and the steep incline up the hill, while Fisher looks after Fitz.

Then we move all my bags and cases into the hallway of the house. Now we’re level with it, the house seems a lot bigger than it did when I was standing at the bottom of the island.

‘Do you want me to show you around?’ Fisher asks.

‘I really don’t want to impose on you any longer, you’ve already been so kind. I’m sure we’ll be fine from here. Thank you so much for all your help, Fisher. I really appreciate it.’

‘Not at all. It’s been my absolute pleasure.’ He looks wistfully up at the house. ‘I’ve many happy memories of time spent here at the house and on the island. I’m lucky to be the caretaker of the place now the owner only rents it out.’

‘Ah, I didn’t know that. Who is the owner?’

‘I’m not sure. I’m paid by the council, but I’ve only been doing it since my grandad retired from the job a few years ago. He loves this island even more than I do.’

He looks away from the house back to me. ‘So, any time you need anything while you’re here you just shout and I’ll be right over to help.’

‘Even if the tide is in?’ I ask, smiling.

‘Course! It’s not only Doris that can make it over here. I have my own boat too! Fisher McMurray at your service, Miss Sky, or should I call you Captain Sky now that you can sail a boat?’ He winks at me.

‘Thank you so much, Fisher. I hope you don’t regret that offer, I’m pretty sure I’ll be calling on you an awful lot in the next few days.’

‘It will be my pleasure to be at the service of Captain Sky and Seaman Fitz!’ He gives us a small salute.

And Fitz, on cue, gives a bark of approval.

Fisher has arranged for one of his mates to collect him in a fishing boat and take him back to St Felix. As they head across the water, Fisher looks right at home in amongst the fishing nets and lobster pots filled with the catch of the day. However, I don’t feel quite so at home as I gaze up at the large white house in front of me.

My job as a meteorologist has placed me in many varied and unusual environments over the years – both in this country and abroad – and until twenty months ago, I enjoyed an exciting and challenging career. But in all that time I’ve never lived on an island before, not as small as this one anyway. So although part of me can’t help but feel like this assignment is a little below my qualifications and experience, I have to accept that living on this Cornish island is going to be enough of a challenge for me right now and one I hope my health will hold up to.

‘Come on, Sky,’ I mutter as I try to gather myself. ‘You can do this. It’s only for the summer. Make a success of this and you’ll prove you’re ready to get back to bigger and better things.’

I’m not going to be totally alone here on the island. Other than Fitz, who is currently exploring every inch of the area around the house, a young trainee meteorologist will be joining me as my assistant, which is both a relief and a worry at the same time.

I was used to having assistants, and I was looking forward to working with someone who was hopefully as keen and excited by the weather as me. But I had also grown used to being on my own lately, and I was worried that living with someone else again might be difficult and awkward.

‘No, I’m not going to worry about that right now,’ I announce to a surprised Fitz. ‘If I’ve learnt anything lately, it’s that life is for living, not worrying about what might happen. I’ve been given another chance and I’m not going to waste it. Let’s start by seeing what our new home is like.’

Fitz doesn’t need telling twice; he races into the hallway and I follow him, pausing for a moment to take in my new surroundings. The house is basic, but it’s squeaky clean and smells freshly painted. The hallway is white like the outside of the house, and the floor underneath my feet is covered in red-brick tiles. There’s a stairway with a long oak banister that leads up to what I assume must be the two bedrooms the house had promised – one for me and one for my assistant.

‘Let’s look around down here first,’ I suggest to Fitz, but he’s already ahead of me. I see his furry black tail disappearing into another room at the end of the hall.

Fitz has always been an adventurous, inquisitive little dog. I’ve only had him about eight months, but in that short time we’ve become inseparable. He’d come to me as a puppy, when my next-door neighbour’s Yorkshire terrier had accidentally got pregnant, and my neighbour was desperate for the six gorgeous puppies to go to good homes.

Fitz, whose errant father is a Jack Russell, is classed as a ‘Yorkie Russell’, he’s a scruffy mix of black, brown and white wiry fur. Even though I’d been wary at first of taking on the responsibility of a dog in my condition, I have to admit that living with Fitz has done me the power of good. He has given me not only new purpose, but also some much-needed companionship, at a time when my so-called friends had become disappointingly absent from my life. Although my health was much improved by the time Fitz arrived, I still had bad times. But even on my darkest days Fitz never left my side.

‘I see you’ve found the kitchen,’ I tell Fitz as he stands in front of me, panting. ‘Let’s get you some water.’

Fitz’s food and water bowls are packed away somewhere in one of the boxes, so I open a few of the pale blue kitchen cupboard doors to try to find him a temporary container for his water.

The cupboards are filled with brand-new, white crockery in place settings of four, along with spotless glasses, saucepans with the labels still on, and shiny cutlery in the drawers. I knew household items were being sent for my stay, but I’d assumed I’d have to unpack everything and put it all away. Perhaps Fisher had taken it upon himself to do this for me? He seemed to care an awful lot about the little island and the house that sits upon it.

I find a suitable bowl and fill it with water for Fitz, then I watch him lap thirstily from it for a moment. There’s a large fridge-freezer standing in the corner of the kitchen, so I go over and open it, and I’m overjoyed to see a few basic supplies already waiting for me, including some fresh orange juice, which I pour into one of the glasses and drink just as thirstily as Fitz had done.

‘I guess we’ll have to get used to buying our supplies from the mainland,’ I tell Fitz as he drips water on to the floor from his wet chin. I reach for some kitchen towel and give his tiny beard a wipe. ‘I don’t think we’ll be able to get a supermarket delivery out here!’

Not so long ago, when I couldn’t leave my house, my weekly supermarket delivery had been a necessity I couldn’t have survived without. When I was able to care for myself once more, and my mum had moved back to our family home, a supply of ready meals and easy-to-prepare food was essential to my recovery and energy management.

See, look how far you’ve come, I remind myself as I stare at the fridge-freezer in front of me. You’re not only looking after yourself and Fitz now, but you’re doing it all the way out here, on an island in the middle of the sea!

Alongside the fridge-freezer, there’s a large range cooker, and on the worktops, a shiny kettle and a modern four-slice toaster.

‘They really have pulled out all the stops for us,’ I say to Fitz as I inspect a fancy coffee maker that grinds its own beans and froths up hot milk. ‘I didn’t expect all these home comforts, but they’re very welcome! I thought the only reason I was offered this job was because they couldn’t get anyone else to do it. But maybe they really did want me after all?’

Fitz looks up at me, his head cocked to one side.

‘You don’t care where we are as long as we’re together, do you?’ I say, lifting him up for a cuddle. ‘And you really don’t know how much I appreciate your unconditional love.’

Fitz gives me a lick on the cheek.

‘Exactly!’ I tell him, grinning. ‘Right, now we’ve quenched our thirst, let’s go and see what else this house has to offer, shall we?’

Along with the kitchen, there’s a bathroom on the ground floor and, unusually, the two bedrooms. I’ll be taking this one, I think as I look in on a bedroom with a large, king-size bed and a firm mattress – again the bed and the mattress seem brand new. No expense has been spared when it came to setting up this house for us, and yet again I can’t help but wonder why.

Fisher had told me that this house had originally been occupied by an elderly couple, but when they both passed away, the house had become quite derelict. Everyone thought the couple had owned the house and the island, but it turned out that they’d only rented it. When the Wave Watch volunteers had showed an interest in setting up a station here on the island via the local council, permission had been granted immediately by the mystery owner. No one lived on the island once it became a Wave Watch station, not until now that is.

‘Shall we go upstairs?’ I say to Fitz as we finish our exploration of the ground floor.

Fitz doesn’t need asking twice as he races ahead of me to the top of the stairs. I pause for a moment at the bottom, grateful as always that I can actually do this again. Never do I want to go back to those dark days when a flight of stairs felt like a mountain to be climbed, while carrying a backpack filled with bricks.

But thankfully today I’m able to follow Fitz, even if I do take the stairs a little more carefully and slowly than my companion.

‘Wow!’ I exclaim as I reach the top, and I’m greeted by a huge open-plan room with an enormous bay window at one end. ‘This is amazing.’

The room has clearly been designed to make the most of the view. At one end there’s a sofa, two armchairs, a couple of side tables and a TV, and at the other, right in front of the bay window, are the remains of the Wave Watch station.

They’ve taken all their equipment with them, but left behind a large desk, an office chair and the units that used to house their gadgets and machinery. It looks a lot like someone has moved out of rented accommodation, taking their possessions with them, but leaving behind the fixtures and fittings.

I go over to the window and take my first look out at the view I’m going to be spending the next few weeks, possibly months, looking at.

It’s amazing how much you can see from here – not only an incredible view over the town of St Felix, with its quaint fishermen’s cottages, winding cobbled streets, solid stone harbour and long sandy beaches, but also what feels like a never-ending seascape, stretching over the waves, and out into the deep Atlantic Ocean.

A house with a view like this, on its own island, must be worth an absolute fortune here in Cornwall, I think as I stand taking in the amazing vista surrounding me. I wonder why the owner doesn’t live here themselves, or at least rent it out as holiday accommodation; they’d make a fortune.

But for now, I’m glad they don’t. I may not have wanted to come here. I may have taken a while to accept the surprising offer to weather watch from this island. But now I’m here, I’m so glad I did accept. It may not be the most glamorous job I’ve ever done, or a job that’s going to further my career in international meteorology circles, but as I gaze out at the beautiful Cornish coastline, I wonder if a view is ever going to take my breath away quite as much as this one is right now.

*

The rest of the day is mainly spent unpacking – not only my luggage but also the many boxes of weather-recording equipment that have been sent over in advance by courier.

As I unpack the scientific instruments, I feel like I’m greeting familiar friends. There are the well-known gadgets like a rain gauge and wind sock, along with a thermometer and barometer for measuring temperature and atmospheric pressure. And the less recognisable – an anemometer for measuring wind speed, a hygrometer for measuring humidity, and a pyranometer for measuring solar radiation.

As I discover each device hidden underneath the polystyrene packing chips, and set it up in the most appropriate place either on the desk in front of me or outside of the house, I begin to feel more and more at home.

When Fitz begins to get a little restless, I take him for a short walk around the island. Short, because it only takes us ten to fifteen minutes to walk the entire circumference of Aurora, and that’s over rocky, undulating, narrow paths. It must easily be less than half a mile around the whole island.

‘Sorry,’ I apologise to Fitz when we arrive back at the house. ‘It’s not very far around here, is it? We’ll have to take you over to the mainland to give you a good walk.’

I’d been quite surprised when I first got Fitz just how much energy he had for a little dog. He was always on the go and I had hoped as he grew older that he’d calm down a little. But Fitz can outwalk me any time – not a huge ach. . .