The Little B & B at Cove End

by Linda Mitchelmore

  But her relief was short-lived.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ a voice behind them said. ‘If it isn’t our local baby-snatcher.’

  ‘Shove off, Bailey,’ Mae said, not bothering to turn around.

  She and Bailey Lucas had been at infant school together, and now at senior school as well, although Mae was in a higher tutor group. About six months ago, Mae and Bailey had gone out a couple of times: to the cinema once, and to drink endless glasses of coke in the Oystercatcher Café. They hadn’t even got to the hand-holding stage, never mind kissing or anything else. And then Josh had asked her out and, well, she hadn’t even bothered to tell Bailey she didn’t want to go out with him again – she’d just stopped answering his texts and he’d got the message in the end. She wasn’t proud of that now, but it was done and dusted. Josh had taken her to the cinema on their first date and they’d snogged their faces off in the back row. Her lips had been red raw when she got home, and she’d slathered on Savlon before she went to sleep in the hope her mother wouldn’t notice in the morning. She’d moved on. She wished Bailey would too. He wasn’t a bad bloke – just a bit boring, especially compared to Josh.

  ‘You heard her, Lucas,’ Josh said. ‘Shove off.’

  ‘When I’m ready,’ Bailey said. ‘And not before.’

  A frisson of unease rippled, cold, across Mae’s shoulders. Bailey took a step closer to Josh, squaring up to him. Josh was tall – just under six feet – but Bailey was taller by a good couple of inches. Thicker set too. He was easily the tallest boy in their year.

  ‘You just mind how you treat her, Maynard,’ Bailey said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Explain yourself,’ Josh said.

  He let go of Mae’s hand. Her right one. Surely he wasn’t going to throw a punch at Bailey here? There were two people in the queue in front of them – chattering away for England so Mae didn’t think they’d heard the threatening exchange. She glanced towards the counter where Meg Smythson was rapidly scanning the contents of a customer’s basket.

  ‘In case you need reminding,’ Bailey said, ‘you did the dirty on my sister, Xia. More than once from what I’ve heard.’

  ‘None of your business,’ Josh said. He turned to Mae. ‘Ignore him.’ He put an arm around Mae’s shoulder and swivelled her round to turn their backs to Bailey. He leaned in and whispered in her ear. ‘He’s just jealous.’

  Mae hadn’t told Josh she’d been out with Bailey a couple of times, but in this place she probably didn’t need to – everyone seemed to know about everyone else or who knew someone who did.

  ‘Jealousy is a totally useless trait,’ Bailey said, coming closer – so close Mae felt his warm breath on her neck.

  Mae turned around to face Bailey.

  ‘Back off, Bailey,’ she said. ‘Please. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your texts if that’s what’s troubling you. Okay?’

  This was getting uncomfortable now and they were no nearer the counter than they were when they came in. Meg Smythson was looking their way now, forehead furrowed with puzzle lines as though she was sensing trouble brewing in her shop.

  Bailey shrugged.

  ‘You heard her,’ Josh said, his voice low. ‘Back off before I make you back off.’

  Bailey stepped back a few paces.

  ‘Let’s just say, Mae, if you get any bother you know where to find me.’

  ‘Your knight in shining armour, Mae,’ Josh laughed, leaning closer to Mae.

  ‘Who I won’t need,’ she said, catching a whiff of Josh’s slightly alcoholic breath again.

  This was all turning into some sort of old-fashioned film scenario, with two men fighting over her – it was sort of flattering really in a strange way. She felt a bit princessy. And there he was – her dad back again in her mind because he’d always called her his little princess.

  Mae smoothed her hands down over the roses on the 1950s full-skirted dress, a lump in her throat … remembering.

  ‘But if you do, Mae,’ Bailey said, ‘the offer still stands.’

  Mae wondered what sort of terrible time Bailey’s sister might have had with Josh. Two-timing wasn’t the best way to go about things, but hadn’t she done it herself when she’d been sort of going out with Bailey and not told him she didn’t want to see him any more before starting to go out with Josh?

  ‘Ignore him,’ Josh whispered. ‘He’s not worth brain space.’

  Mae nodded – too full up to speak.

  It was their turn to be served.

  ‘Sorry about the wait,’ Meg Smython said.

  Josh placed the bottle of wine on the counter and Meg Smythson reached for it, and the scanner beeped loudly as she ran it through. The crisps followed.

  Josh reached for the wine, but Meg got there first, grabbing it firmly at the base and pulling it back towards her.

  ‘Buying wine for a minor is an offence,’ Meg said. ‘But I don’t need to tell you that, Josh, do I?’

  ‘I’m fairly conversant with the law on that matter, Mrs Smythson,’ Josh said.

  Conversant? Mae suppressed a giggle – Josh sounded so much older than his twenty years saying that. It made her giggle.

  ‘Something funny, Mae?’ Meg Smythson asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Mae said. She pulled a mock-glum face.

  ‘Well, lovie,’ Meg said. ‘I’ll say the same to you in case you didn’t hear the first time … buying wine for a minor is an offence. That is all. There are other people waiting to be served.’

  Mae looked behind her and saw that three other people had come in, one was stood behind Bailey and the other two were filling up baskets with goods.

  ‘In that case,’ Josh said, ‘I will part with the readies and we’ll get out of here. And just for the record, this wine is for my old man and my ma. For later. Okay with that, Mrs Smythson? Honest. On the Bible.’

  ‘You would say that!’ Mrs Smythson said, laughing now. She blushed.

  ‘I would. Oh, and that turquoise top you’re wearing really suits you, by the way, Mrs Smythson.’

  ‘Flatterer,’ Meg Smythson said, as Josh turned to go. Mae started to turn, but Meg Smythson reached out for her, and held onto her wrist – just for a second – before letting it go again. ‘You just watch it, Mae. I wouldn’t want my licence taken away. Get my drift? About the wine?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mae said.

  She turned to join Josh, who was already walking towards the door.

  As she passed Bailey he said, sotto voce, ‘He got my sister rat-arsed, which wasn’t pretty. Then he did the dirty on her. Just saying. Just so you know.’

  Mae couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that, so didn’t. She was so fed up of everyone telling her how to live her life. Fed up with being treated like a little kid, like she didn’t know anything, anything at all. God but she needed that drink now.

  Chapter Three

  The house was quiet now that both Mae and Rosie had gone and Cara was glad of something to do. She went into the hall, picked up the flyer for the art festival and rang the number.

  ‘Hello, Cara Howard here,’ she said quickly, the second it was answered. She felt nervous, stepping into the unknown as a landlady. Ought she not have rung on a Sunday and waited until the morning? Oh well, it was done now. She’d taken the first step towards her new venture – well, the second if you counted her handmade B&B sign – and there was no going back now. ‘I live at Cove End. I’m interested in offering accommodation to people coming to the art festival. Am I speaking to the right person?’ She knew her words were tumbling out like water over a weir, but that’s what nervousness did for you.

  ‘You are,’ a friendly voice said. ‘I’m Laura Pearse. What sort of accommodation do you have?’

  Cara wondered if she knew anyone called Laura Pearse, but she didn’t think so.

  ‘Two doubles and a single. One en suite. All with basins. Two with sea views. Oh, and a breakfast room that would be exclusively for guests’ use.’

  ‘Lovely. Perfect actuall
y. I’ll just take your details. I’ll have to get back to you nearer the date. Oh, hang on a minute. Actually I’ve had a couple of enquiries already from people thinking I’m the Information Bureau taking general bookings, and I’m not. One couple and a single male, wanting B&B accommodation in a few days’ time. Would you be up for that?’

  ‘I would,’ Cara said with a confidence she didn’t feel because she’d have a lot to do to get all the rooms ready.

  ‘Great. I’ve still got their details so I’ll get back to you and tell them they can give you a ring. Landline and mobile numbers. Okay with that?’

  ‘Fine,’ Cara said.

  It had been as easy as that. The potential guests had got back to her within half an hour and Cara had booked them in. Three guests in three days’ time. She was well on the way now!

  She put the radio on low so as to have another voice in the house. She went upstairs, then down again, peering into all the rooms trying to see them with a stranger’s eye. Cove End had five bedrooms – two en suite, and there were two other bathrooms. Three of the bedrooms had sea views and the other two looked out over fields. There were three reception rooms – one of which Cara had always used as a breakfast room because it faced east and got the morning sun. She thought she could squeeze a couple of small tables with chairs in there and the guests could use that rather than the formal dining room that Cara rarely used because the table in there seated at least eight. Even when Mark had been alive it had rarely been used because Cara always thought it felt too stilted to be eating there, and so cold somehow. The kitchen was large, with room for a table and chairs and a small couch. There was also a downstairs cloakroom. Cara’s head was suddenly full of plans for her new venture. She’d need more tables and chairs for the breakfast room. And possibly some side tables and an easy chair or two for the bedrooms for guests. There was a homes section in one of the charity shops in Totnes that sold furniture cheaply. She’d ask Rosie to drive her over.

  ‘How much will two tables and some second-hand easy chairs, and a couple of cans of paint eat into my meagre savings?’ Cara said out loud, then clapped a hand across her face.

  She was talking to herself now. A sure sign of madness. Or desperate loneliness. But at least she had the house. And she was going to make it earn its keep. One of Mark’s perks as a bank manager had been a ridiculously low mortgage rate. When they’d first married, Mark had accepted every transfer posting he’d been given. They’d lived in just about every town in Devon that had a bank, and in each one they’d upgraded their properties. For one terrible moment after Mark had died, Cara had wondered if he’d embezzled money from the bank. The police had been one step ahead of her, of course, and had got into the hard drive of his computers – home and work. The extent of Mark’s gambling – telephone number amounts – had stunned Cara. The WPC who had been assigned to her after the accident had been very kind and understanding.

  ‘I knew he gambled,’ Cara had said. ‘I tried my best to get him to stop, but …’ Cara shrugged as if to show how hopeless it had been begging with him, arguing with him, threatening him to face up to his addiction.

  ‘You couldn’t?’ the WPC said.

  ‘No. Perhaps he thought he was doing it for the times he did win and he bought a new car, or changed the TV for one with a bigger screen or something, bought our daughter a whole load of new clothes – things to give us a better life.’

  ‘You are in no way to blame,’ she’d told Cara gently.

  But Cara did blame herself because a bank manager’s salary should have been more than enough to send Mae on school trips and she, Cara, ought to have challenged him about his gambling long before she had.

  ‘These trips aren’t supervised enough,’ Mark had said once when Rosie had offered to pay for Mae to go on a trip to Amsterdam. ‘I’m not allowing my daughter to roam about some foreign city at night, un-chaperoned, while their teachers are in a bar somewhere drinking their heads off, whoever might be paying for it.’

  And Cara had given in. But what do you do when you love someone as much as Cara had loved Mark? He’d been a good husband in other ways – a fantastic lover for a start. And on Cara’s birthday there had always been another painting, or some other present that Mark knew Cara would love.

  Now Cara knew different. Mark preferred to risk money that should have been spent on Mae in the hope of making more. And with that knowledge, her love for him had dimmed. And the original paintings had only been an investment, hadn’t they? Mark had said as much, wanting her to sell a painting he’d bought for one of her birthdays once he realised the artist was on the up and her painting was making four times the amount he’d paid for it.

  It was the car full of paintings, now smashed, and burned, beyond saving, in the back-seat area that had alerted the police to the fact that this was not just another sad, speed-induced accident. Mae had been at school and Cara, unable to bear seeing Mark leave, had walked down the hill to the harbour as he loaded his car with his clothes, his favourite CDs and his computer. She hadn’t known he would be taking the paintings.

  When she’d got back, she’d almost stopped breathing when she saw all the darker patches on the walls where her beloved paintings had been.

  A knock at the front door jolted Cara back to the present, and glad in a way that it had. She raced down the hall, making a mental note to get the polisher out and give the parquet a thorough going over very soon. She could see the silhouettes of two people – a man and a woman at a guess – through the stained glass.

  ‘Have you got a double room?’ the woman asked the second Cara opened the door. ‘Two nights?’

  ‘Oh,’ Cara said. She hadn’t been expecting guests so soon. ‘Well …’

  She had two nights with no bookings before the people she’d just spoken to arrived. A whole host of butterflies was doing a dance in her stomach – this was all happening so fast. What had been just the germ of an idea was being made a reality.

  ‘Have you?’ the man said. ‘It does say B&B on your sign. And vacancies.’

  ‘Yes, I know it does,’ Cara said. ‘But it was a try-out with the sign, and really I’m not quite ready for guests. I was just about to put the polisher over the parquet.’ She opened the door wider so that the middle-aged couple could see the tatty state of the hall floor and her still-denuded walls. ‘I’m in the middle of redecorating,’ she lied.

  ‘Well, it looks clean enough to me,’ the woman said, ‘so can we come in? We’ve tried the pub but they don’t do rooms, and that place called…what was it, the Lookout?… is fully booked, and the Information Office is closed. I know I sound desperate and really we would be so …’

  Cara took a deep breath. She hadn’t really prepared herself for how it might feel to have strangers in her home. But she had to start her fledgling business some time. She hoped Mae wouldn’t be too shocked – or cross – to find strangers in the house already when she got back from her date with Josh.

  ‘A double,’ the man said, as though to remind Cara of what she’d been asked.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got a double room,’ she said. ‘Do come in, if you don’t mind the fact the walls are less than perfect. My paintings are in storage while I redecorate …’

  ‘A bit of faded wall won’t bother us, will it, Eddie?’ the woman said.

  Cara did a mental inventory of the linen cupboard. The best was an Egyptian cotton duvet cover and matching sheets and pillowcases, which was on her own bed – a luxurious treat to herself, a bit of spoiling now that Mark was gone. But the lilac floral was clean and aired and would have to do. No matching towels, but she couldn’t worry about that now.

  ‘I’ll get a room ready for you as quick as I can.’ She opened the door wider and ushered them in. ‘I’m Cara, by the way.’

  She proffered her hand first to the woman, and then the man.

  ‘Pam and Eddie Hine,’ the woman said. ‘Pleased to meet you, and I mean really pleased. We thought we were going to have to sleep in the car, didn�
��t we, Ed?’

  ‘Yes, love,’ Eddie said, looking fondly at Pam as a flush reddened the side of his neck.

  Well, well, well, Cara thought. I’ll bet my last £223.26 that these two aren’t married, despite making a good display of being newlyweds. She glanced at Pam’s wedding finger where a wide gold band shone brightly in the lights from the hall. And that look, and that flush of Eddie’s, brought a lump to Cara’s throat that was threatening to choke her. She saw herself trapped, in limbo, between fifteen-year-old Mae’s calf-love for Josh, and Eddie and Pam at the other end of the spectrum.

  And her own love for Mark stripped bare, sucked from her by his gambling.

  ‘Will you want the full English breakfast?’ Cara croaked.

  ‘Lovely,’ Pam said. ‘We don’t usually have a fried breakfast when we’re at home, do we, Ed?’

  ‘No, love,’ Eddie said. ‘But we’re not at home now, are we?’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ Pam giggled, which made Cara’s oneness more painful, and she felt herself invisible, a not-really-wanted witness to their coupledom.

  ‘Right,’ Cara said, battling to look like a real B&B hostess, ‘I’ll show you where the sitting room is and then I’ll make you a cup of tea while I get your room ready. The downstairs cloakroom is over there,’ she went on, pointing, and metaphorically crossing her fingers it was as squeaky clean as it usually was. ‘After that, I’ll need to pop to the shop to get the wherewithal for a cooked breakfast because, as I said, I wasn’t expecting guests so soon.’

  At least the sitting room was nicely appointed. Mark hadn’t had room to take the flat screen TV or what was left of the silver that had been Cara’s grandmother’s, although Mark had already squirreled a fair bit of that out of the house and sold it, much to Cara’s annoyance at the time.

  ‘You do that, Cara,’ Pam said as Cara ushered them into the sitting room and urged them to make themselves comfortable. ‘We’ll be as happy in pigs in muck here while we wait.’