Escape for the Summer by Ruth Saberton Page B

while she attempted to decide what to do next.
    Andi sighed. It had probably been easier for Einstein to figure out his theory of relativity. At the moment she couldn’t see much further than either panicking or ranting or, when she wasn’t engaged in those activities, eating all the cakes Gemma insisted on baking. For a girl who was always on a diet Gemma had some very odd ideas about what was healthy. Andi was pretty certain that carrot cake couldn’t really be classed as one of your five a day. Still, there was no doubt about it, Gemma Pengelley was an amazing cook and Andi had enjoyed comfort-eating every calorific mouthful. She figured she deserved a lot of comforting. She might as well add getting fat to her list of woes. Maybe Callum South could hire her for his show? Andi smiled in spite of herself: if you couldn’t beat them, join them.
    Anyway, now Angel and Gemma had quit their flat and were out of Tooting on their wild goose chase to Cornwall. Andi hadn’t really any choice but to throw her lot in with them and come too. She had contemplated contacting her father for some help but the thought of his silent disappointment seeping down the phone line had frozen her finger every time she almost called him. Andi had spent the past twenty-nine years feeling as though she was a big letdown to her father. No matter how hard she tried, she was never able to please him. She hadn’t achieved the A-level grades he’d expected; she hadn’t followed in his footsteps to Magdalen College in Oxford; and her job, although steady, wasn’t something he could boast about at embassy soirées. If she asked him for help he would probably loan her some money, but Andi knew she’d be paying it back in more ways than one. Sharing a caravan with Angel and Gemma was definitely the lesser of two evils. At least she could keep an eye on Angel. Surely her sister couldn’t get up to much in a quiet Cornish seaside town?
    The car breasted the top of a hill, then coasted downwards – and suddenly they were in Rock. The road dropped away steeply to the turquoise ribbon of the Camel Estuary twinkling in the sunshine and braided on each side with egg-yolk yellow sand. Moored boats danced on the tide, Padstow glittered across the water and a RIB zipped by, leaving a paper-doily wake across the shimmering surface. To her left and right, chunky Range Rover Sports, BMW X5s and Porsche Cayennes lined the streets while impossibly skinny women with golden tans, tortoiseshell hair and huge shades meandered along the road. There wasn’t a clapped-out banger or scruffy person in sight. Suddenly conscious of her own lank hair and soggy jeans, Andi sank back into the seat.
    Talk about hitting Rock Bottom. She was practically ready to dig.
    Andi knew she was no good at positive thinking. Here she was, arriving in one of the most beautiful seaside towns in Britain, and she was still moping. She couldn’t possibly have any more tears left to shed, surely? She had to get a grip and try to make the most of being here. She was bound to find some kind of a job; in the meantime, she could work out a way of getting her money back from Tom, a way that didn’t involve threatening to chop off his bollocks as Angel had so temptingly suggested. She could live cheaply here and get herself together for a bit.
    “We’re here! We’re here!” Angel chanted, her eyes big blue saucers of excitement. Turning around she cried, “Look, Andi! There’s Ocean View! It’s hardly changed!”
    Sure enough, there was the beautiful old house where, until their mother had died, the Evans sisters had spent every summer. Ocean View was one of Andi’s favourite places in the world. Rented by her father for the whole summer break, long before the royals and the Hooray Henrys discovered Rock, it was a higgledy-piggledy New England style affair, all weathered clapboard and turrets and widow’s walk. Perched high on the hillside, surrounded by ancient cedar trees, it overlooked