The Little B & B at Cove End

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Because I’m a saint,’ Rosie laughed. Then she looked serious. ‘No, I’m no saint, as you know. But you are my dearest friend, and I am Mae’s godmother, and I care about you both. And I would, quite literally, give an arm for you not to be in this situation, but we both know that can’t happen.’

  Cara nodded.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘for being there for me.’

  ‘No worries. Now, if you don’t need me to give you more advice on how to bring up your teenage daughter, I’d better buzz. I’ve got two eyebrow tints, a leg wax, then two Brazilians followed by a manicure on the books. And a thirty-minute drive to my salon, so …’

  Rosie had hit on the idea of opening her salon on Sunday evenings for women and girls who worked nine to five and couldn’t make weekday or daytime appointments, and who – perhaps – didn’t want to cut into their weekend time off by going to a beauty salon on a Saturday when they could be shopping or out with their mates. It was really taking off. But if she was honest, Cara was missing Rosie’s company; needing it now more than ever. The first six months after Mark’s death had been a mad scramble to sort the legal aspects that result from a sudden death, and Cara had got through it on automatic pilot almost. Then came the year of ‘firsts’ followed by a time of mourning for the good times she and Mark had shared, and a feeling of loss that they would now not have a future.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ Cara said, feeling anything but. ‘You go. I need to sort out bed linen and crockery and so on. Then I’ve got to think of something to send to the paper about putting in an ad for the B&B. With this art festival coming up, I can’t fail to get guests, can I?’

  Cara took a deep breath. And I’ve got to try not to worry about Mae being with Josh Maynard and whether he is pushing Mae into having underage sex, and work out how many rooms I will need to fill to pay the rates and the supermarket and for Mae to go to Paris with her school in September, she thought. Her head was a maelstrom of random thoughts, and she was starting to get a headache between her eyes.

  ‘It’s hardly St Ives here,’ Rosie said. ‘I mean, Larracombe? Two pubs, one church, a harbour that holds about a dozen boats, two gift shops and a handful of cottages. And a half hour drive to a decent supermarket. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It’s all over the village that some famous painter is coming. I mean, now this house is denuded of paintings, do you really want an art festival thrown in your face?’

  ‘I need the money,’ Cara said quietly. Just as soon as she was alone she’d ring the number on the bottom of the flyer and register. ‘And I thought you were in a hurry to go.’

  Rosie laughed.

  ‘Bugger off, you mean,’ she said. Rosie reached for her bag, rifling through it for her keys. ‘But think about it, eh? I wouldn’t want you to have any more pain – emotionally that is – than you already have.’

  ‘I have thought about it,’ Cara told her. She glanced at the darker patches on the kitchen wall where her beloved paintings had been, knowing the walls in every other room in the house looked the same. ‘Anyway, how hard can cooking bacon and eggs and a few rounds of toast be?’

  Rosie had found her keys and jangled them at Cara.

  ‘For me, my love, it would be akin to penal servitude – a fate worse than death. Oh God, sorry. I didn’t mean death as in Mark, you know. I meant death as in the worst possible thing that could happen to a person and …’

  ‘Stop! You’re digging yourself in deeper. You’ll need a sparrow’s crane to get you out if you carry on. Go!’ Cara laughed, feeling the ripple of the laugh ease her pain, and the tightness in her chest, just a little. Even the headachey worry lines between her eyes were smoothing out a little. She reached out and held onto her friend’s hands, and for a moment the two women’s eyes locked before Cara looked away, afraid that Rosie would notice Cara was hiding lies of her own. Because what she hadn’t told anybody – not Rosie, the coroner, the police, or Mark’s parents was that as well as all her paintings, Mark had also taken most of his clothes and his computer because Cara, unable to put up with Mark’s gambling any more, had asked him to leave.

  And would the guilt of that ever leave her? What if Mae were to even suspect that of her? What then?

  Chapter Two

  ‘Great, Mae,’ Josh said, giving Mae a quick kiss on the lips. ‘Glad you made it.’ He held out a hand and Mae slipped hers into it. How good it felt, her hand in his, especially knowing how half the girls in the village were greener than grass with envy that she was Josh Maynard’s girlfriend and they’d been passed over.

  ‘Course I made it,’ Mae said.

  Sometimes she had to pinch herself that he’d asked her out in the first place. She’d been shuffling along the breakwater, wrapped up against an early spring chill, looking out to sea, thinking about stuff, not really wanting to speak to anyone when Josh had come along and said, ‘Hi’. She hadn’t seen him around much since the time he’d come along to the funeral parlour with his dad, who was supporting her in her wish to see her dad one last time before he was buried in St Peter’s Churchyard. Her mum hadn’t wanted her to go. The funeral people wouldn’t let her in without an adult so on a whim she’d gone to the vicarage to ask if the Reverend Maynard could help. She’d been so surprised when Josh had pitched up that day. His dad had said he thought it might be easier for her if someone younger was with her as well. But she’d only been thirteen then, and Josh a teenager. What a difference a couple of years made.

  ‘So, here’s the plan,’ Josh said. He began walking away from the bandstand in the park, where they’d met, towards the gates. ‘A little trip to Fairy Cove. Just you and me. I’ve borrowed my sister’s car.’

  ‘Cool,’ Mae said.

  ‘Parked up over there.’ Josh pointed towards the car park.

  Mae’s mind fast-forwarded and she could already see them, kissing and cuddling in the car in the lane that went down to Fairy Cove.

  ‘Love the frock, by the way,’ Josh said. He held Mae out at arm’s length. ‘Give us a twirl.’

  Mae obliged, doing a couple of spins as he twirled her round.

  ‘Thanks. My dad bought me this one, you know, before he died.’

  ‘Well, he’d hardly buy it after, would he?’ Josh said. But he said it with a grin to show he was only joking. ‘You’ve not told me much about your dad.’

  ‘I thought you knew,’ Mae said. Hands clasped, she and Josh were meandering slowly to wherever it was in the car park his sister’s car was. ‘You came with your dad that day …’

  ‘He said I had to,’ Josh said. His grin had dropped now. He looked more angry than sad that he’d been made to go with his dad and Mae to the funeral parlour.

  ‘I’m glad you did come,’ Mae said. ‘But you could have said no.’

  ‘No? To my dad? You have got to be kidding!’

  ‘At least you’ve still gone one,’ Mae said in a quiet little voice. Her dad hadn’t been perfect and he got cross sometimes if she interrupted him when he was doing stuff on the computer, and almost never remembered to buy her mum a Valentine’s card and stuff like that. But still she wished she could say, ‘My dad’s picking me up from school today,’ or something.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not easy,’ Josh said. ‘You should have heard the fallout when I did say no to him. About going to uni. He quoted, chapter and verse, how much he’d spent on private education for me and how I was an ungrateful so-and so. He wanted me to do theology like he had. And his father and his grandfather before him.’

  ‘And you wanted to break the mould?’

  ‘Yeah. Gardening’s not his idea of a career move, although I think Monty Don would beg to differ.’

  Mae had no idea who Monty Don might be, but she guessed he was a famous gardener or something. Mae often didn’t know who or what Josh was talking about but wasn’t so stupid as to ask because it would highlight the differences in their family backgrounds and their education. She didn’t want to sound too much like a schoolgirl even though that w
as what she was.

  ‘Mums and dads don’t always know what’s best for their kids, I shouldn’t think.’

  ‘Your mum? Does she give you grief about going out with me? Being older?’

  ‘Yeah. Calls you Granddad!’ Mae giggled.

  ‘She doesn’t?’

  ‘No. I’m only joking. But she’s been pretty cool about stuff since Dad died. Her friend, Rosie, was there when I was getting ready to meet you, huffing and shrugging and letting me know by her body language she didn’t think I should go, but Mum’s a right pushover at the moment. Doesn’t want me to be hurt any more, you know. Anyway …’

  Mae let her words fade away. Some date this was turning out to be; her anger over her dad’s death and now her mum wanting to turn Cove End into a B&B was threatening to bubble over. Josh was going to get pretty fed up of her in a minute.

  ‘But you came anyway,’ he said, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘Like I said just now, I know your dad died, and how. My dad’s version of it anyway. You can tell me if you want. I think you’ve got anger over your dad just under the surface the same as I have over mine. Yes?’

  ‘Probably,’ Mae agreed. ‘But since you ask, just for the record, Dad made me angry a long ago before he went and got himself killed. He sold the dinghy without telling me and I loved going out in that with him. I don’t know why he did that. And then he sold Mum’s car and she couldn’t drive me into Totnes for my Saturday dance class any more. Like he didn’t care about me, you know. And there’s not been much cash for Mum and me since, which is why she’s got this stupid idea about turning the house into a B&B.’ Mae sniffed back tears.

  ‘If this was an old black and white movie, I’d whip out a pristine white handkerchief and offer it to you to mop up your tears.’ Josh dangled an imaginary handkerchief in front of Mae’s face.

  ‘Idiot!’ she laughed, pretending to take it. She felt a bit better having told Josh about her dad, although she doubted she would have if he hadn’t slagged his off a bit. It felt good that she could do that – that they both could.

  ‘I’m glad that’s off your pretty little chest,’ Josh said.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Didn’t mean to be a drain.’

  ‘You’re not. But it must have been awful for your mum, too.’

  Had Josh said that a few minutes ago, she might have snapped that he would say that, what with his dad being a vicar and everything – that he’d been brought up to say stuff like that whether he believed it or not. But now … well now she knew a little bit more about Josh, she could see the big house he lived in, the private education he’d had and the foreign holidays they went on meant nothing if he and his dad were at loggerheads all the time.

  ‘Did you mean it?’ Mae said. ‘About me telling you about my dad?’

  Mae hadn’t had anyone to talk about it to really – what went before; before he’d died. There had been a couple of teachers who’d kept her back after a lesson when she’d been thinking about stuff and unable to concentrate who’d said if she needed someone to talk to, then she only had to ask. But what could they do?

  ‘Sure,’ Josh said. ‘Shall we sit for a bit?’

  They were nearing a bench that was in the sunshine, a willow opposite dipping its frondy new growth almost to the grass.

  ‘Yeah. Okay.’ She took a deep breath and sat down, her hand still in Josh’s. ‘I don’t know if your mum and dad row …’

  ‘Big time!’ Josh interrupted. ‘Language too. Some of it very Anglo-Saxon!’

  ‘Really?’ Mae said, stunned.

  ‘The image of the benign reverend can be a myth!’

  ‘Right. Okay. Well, mine rowed but not big time. No bad language as far as I could hear. Most of it was sort of theatrical whispering, in the dead of night. It went on and on sometimes although I couldn’t hear what they were saying exactly. And sometimes I’d hear raised voices when I came in from school or something and they’d stop abruptly when they heard me shut the door, and it would be all false smiles and ‘Hello, darling, good day?’ and all that.’

  ‘Same in our house,’ Josh said. ‘They’d be arguing for England about something, then there’d be a knock on the door and I’d answer it and shout through that it was old Mrs Ellis or someone come to talk about her husband’s funeral and they’d appear in the hall, arms around one another, all smiles. I don’t know if there’s ever been a couple who hasn’t had a row or ten.’

  ‘No,’ Mae said. She and Josh hadn’t had one. Yet. She’d tackle that hurdle when she came to it. But right now, Mae thought that they’d exhausted the subject of rowing parents and how it affected their children. ‘But I don’t want to talk about it any more. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Josh said.

  He stood up, pulling Mae with him. He let go of her hand and put an arm around her shoulders instead. Mae snuggled into him, feeling loved. Feeling safe. They began to walk more quickly towards the park gates.

  ‘What time have you got to be in?’ Josh asked, which only served to make her feel less like Josh’s girlfriend and more like a small child he was looking after. It knocked the wind right out of her sails for a moment.

  ‘Eight,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’

  They were navigating the car park now.

  ‘Can we get a drink on the way?’ Mae asked. She quite fancied a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio – Rosie always brought a bottle or two when she came to visit and her mum always let her have a glass with dinner when she did.

  ‘Ah, Andy Povey won’t serve me wine for you. But we can pick up a bottle of something and take it down to Fairy Cove.’

  ‘Just the one bottle?’ Mae giggled – already she could taste the Pinot Grigio she knew Josh would buy on her tongue. Rosie didn’t like her mum letting her have a glass of wine and read her mum the riot act when she found out. Then Rosie gave Mae a lecture on the dangers of alcohol and how it altered your thinking, your rationale. Rosie used a lot of fancy words like that … rationale.

  ‘Yes. For now. You’re underage.’

  ‘Oh God, not you as well!’ Mae said, making a mock-cross face. ‘You should have heard the lecture Rosie gave me when Mum went out of the room. “Having sex with a minor is a major offence, Mae, so best remind your boyfriend of that in case he gets ideas. And so is buying alcohol for the same minor. Which means you in this instance, Mae. Don’t forget that will you, Mae? I know you’re fifteen going on fifty-one, but I don’t want you bringing any more worry on your mum’s shoulders, okay? End of lecture, Mae.”, Mae repeated, in a posh sing-song voice. ‘And she said “Mae” that many times it was like I’d forgotten my own name or something. Just because she’s my godmother doesn’t mean she can rule my life!’

  ‘She sounds like quite a woman, this Rosie,’ Josh laughed. ‘She’s got you fired up anyway!’

  ‘A force to be reckoned with,’ Mae said, doing her best not to sound angry and bitter. She was failing miserably because all the hurt and anger had bubbled up again.

  God, but this growing up lark was hard. No one in her class at school had a father who had died. No one had a mother who was going ahead with turning their home into a B&B against their wishes. No one knew just how horrid it was to go to sleep at night and dream about their dad and then wake up in the morning to realise he wasn’t there any more. No one knew how it felt to have a sort of house brick sat permanently on their chest. It all singled Mae out as being different, although she was anyway through the clothes she wore. She smoothed down the skirt of her frock and bent to finger out the netting petticoat that peeped out from the hem of it. It had a sweetheart neckline and a band of black crepe around the waist. Like she’d told Josh just now, it was the last frock her dad had bought her before he died. She knew she was wearing it to death because the seams were beginning to look strained, but wearing it somehow made her feel closer to him. Anyway, anyone could wear ripped jeans and a T-shirt two sizes too small and most of the girls in her class did at the weekends, like they were in a team or something. Mae didn’
t know she wanted to be part of any sort of team.

  ‘It’s what godmothers are supposed to do – toe the moral line. That’s the whole point of being one,’ Josh said, dragging Mae’s wandering mind back to the present. She thought she’d been thinking less about her dad lately, but somehow it was the other way round.

  ‘Yeah, but I still think she was out of order. We’re not even related. She’s just Mum’s friend from way back. And then there’s the fact she’s a bit of a slapper is Rosie. Two divorces, three live-in lovers – what sort of moral guidance is that?’

  ‘It’s life, Mae. And neither of the divorces might have been her fault. And has anyone ever told you that you’re very beautiful when you’re cross?’

  ‘That line’s got whiskers on it,’ Mae said, but she was glad Josh had said it all the same. And she knew she was probably boring him to death carping on and on about Rosie, who Josh hadn’t even met. She should stop. She’d try.

  ‘Comes from being an old granddad,’ Josh said, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling deliciously as he smiled. How dark his eyes were – 90% cocoa solids chocolate or something – and how Mae loved looking into them. ‘Shall we go and get that wine?’ Josh said as he unlocked the car door.

  ‘Yeah,’ Mae said, ‘I might die of thirst if we don’t!’

  ‘A vicar’s son, a murderer? That would never do!’ Josh said. He opened the door for Mae to get in, handing her the seatbelt. God, but how chivalrous. How very grown up it made her feel.

  Mae stood on tiptoe and lifted her face up to Josh for a kiss. When his lips came down on hers, she got a brief whiff of alcohol. Not beer. Not wine. Spirits maybe, definitely alcohol. Had he been drinking already? A glass of something with dinner, which she knew a lot of people were in the habit of having? Whatever, he was far from drunk, not even tipsy. But Mae thought it best not to ask as their lips met.

  They were soon at the corner shop on the road out of the village. Josh took no time at all choosing a bottle of wine. Pinot Grigio. And a bag of crisps. They joined the end of a small queue, and Mae was amazed to see she knew no one in it. At least no one who would tell her mum she was buying wine with Josh Maynard.