Cara smiled. Mae was still learning about making and breaking relationships, still finding it a bit difficult to move on from Josh, if Cara was reading between the lines correctly. But now she had Bailey to help her do that perhaps.
‘The paintings, Mum,’ Mae said, standing up straight. ‘Do you want them back or not? Or what?’ She’d raised her voice an octave or two.
‘Of course I do. But they’re not mine any more if your dad sold them, so …’
‘Oh, forget it,’ Mae said. ‘All this B&B stuff takes precedence now, doesn’t it? I …
‘Mae,’ Cara said, keeping her voice low. ‘You don’t have to be rude. I’ve explained.’
Mae shrugged. ‘I’m off,’ she said. ‘I’m a bit late anyway.’
‘Okay. Be safe. Love you,’ Cara said, not expecting Mae to respond, expecting another shrug. Yes, she ought to have made it her business to go and see if the paintings were hers after Mae had told her they were. She couldn’t be sure Mae would be positive they were her paintings because she knew that at that age, she’d never really taken in anything that had been hanging on the walls of her childhood home.
‘Yeah,’ Mae said, blowing Cara a kiss before running down the stairs.
‘Oh!’ Cara said, seconds later, as she stepped out onto the landing, the bundle of dirty linen in her arms. Tom had chosen that moment to step out onto the landing too. ‘I expect you heard some of that. About the paintings?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fancy a pub crawl?’ Cara said, laughing. She didn’t feel so alone with this now that Tom was here. ‘The Beachcomber first and then the Boathouse?’
‘Well, I make it a rule to never drink before the sun is below the yardarm, but I’ll break my rule for once. I’ve had a very productive two days. Rain is very conducive to productivity for a painter. Of course, I had the charms of the delectable Miss Horsham to avoid, but I was strong, and resisted.’
‘Awful woman,’ Cara said. ‘She’s lifted two towels and a trinket dish.’
‘Well worth the loss she’s gone, then,’ Tom laughed. ‘I promise to leave my room in exactly the same state I found it in.’
Cara’s little bubble of happiness deflated a little – Tom was still intending to leave. Sometime. Just not yet. Not until the art festival was over.
But he was here now.
‘Say half an hour?’ Cara said. ‘I’ll just get this lot through the washing machine.’
‘Perfect,’ Tom said. ‘Thanks for the food parcels by the way. You’ve saved this artist from starving in his garret.’
‘My pleasure,’ Cara told him. ‘I still can’t get out of the habit of making too much. Meals for three like I did for years and now there’s only Mae and me.’
‘Ah yes, Mae,’ Tom said. ‘My money’s on her wishing I’d left with Miss Horsham this morning. She turned up as I was putting the cottage pie you left in the microwave. I made my starving artist in his garret joke and she just looked at me, lips pressed together so tight I thought she’d super-glued them. Mae can make silence sound so loud!’ Tom put his hands over his ears and pulled a pained expression that made Cara laugh.
‘Oh, I’ve just remembered. I’ll need to leave about half past three. Train to catch.’
‘Oh,’ Cara said. ‘A date?’
‘Grown-ups do have them sometimes, Cara,’ Tom said, grinning. ‘But this one is more of a business deal. Louise is becoming difficult. She’s misunderstanding the terms of our settlement – God forbid that I should say deliberately, but I think that’s the case. It’s patently clear that she’s only entitled to share profits of any paintings she features in, and she thinks she’s entitled to a share of anything I do from now on. So it’s a meeting with our agent, and then a solicitor practised in this sort of agreement.’
Louise. Again. Still in the picture.
Perhaps it would be best if I backed off?
‘If you’d rather go now,’ Cara said. ‘I won’t hold you to any offers.’
‘I’d rather not go at all,’ Tom said. ‘But thanks for the offer. You can’t get rid of me that easily!’
‘Right,’ Cara said. ‘Our half an hour is now just over twenty minutes.’
‘Then we won’t waste another second!’
Tom disappeared back into his room, which made Cara think he’d intentionally come out onto the landing when he had, so she’d know he’d heard everything and he still wanted to help.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Leaving the house, Tom reached for Cara’s hand – initially, she thought, to guide her in a gentlemanly fashion down her steep steps to the road – but then he hadn’t let it go again. How deliciously comforted, how cared for, that made her feel.
Nothing could have prepared Cara for how she’d feel when she saw the seascape painting that had once been hers hanging in an alcove in the Beachcomber. The alcove was all dark wood and maroon furnishings, and the lighting dim, but she knew in a second it was hers. She loved that painting – one of the those she’d been left in her grandmother’s will. She loved the deep turquoise of the sea with just a few petticoat frill tops to the small waves, and the pink thrift in the grass on the headland where the artist must have stood, or sat, to paint it.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the painting now. She stood in front of it, mesmerized. How much had Mark sold it to the landlord for? Would the landlord let her buy it back for the same amount he had paid for it? People were chatting around Cara, glasses clinking, but it was as though they were miles away. Cara turned as Tom touched her shoulder to let her know he was back.
‘Five minutes for the coffee,’ he said. ‘Machine’s just gone down. Won’t take a tick to sort it so the barman said.’ Tom pulled Cara gently away and guided her into a battered Windsor chair. ‘Fifty quid.’
‘For coffee? Fifty pounds for two coffees?’
‘With biscuits. Homemade.’ Tom laughed. ‘No, silly. I meant the landlord gave your husband fifty pounds for the painting.’ He walked over to the wall and lifted the painting from its hook. Cradling it like a baby in his arms he brought it back to Cara and held it out towards her. ‘So I’ve reimbursed him.’
‘But you can’t! You can’t just buy my painting. I don’t want you to. I hardly know you …’
‘I think you know me well enough to know I mean you no harm,’ Tom said, a thoughtful expression on his face.
‘I’m sorry. Yes. You’ve been very kind. A gentleman, in fact. But I was going to ask the landlord if I could pay him back in instalments for however much he wanted.’ Cara looked anxiously at Tom. She’d insulted him by what she’d said, hadn’t she? But to her relief he was smiling now. ‘I need to do it by myself, Tom. Do you understand?’
‘I understand but … no … I won’t say it. I’d lose my “gentleman” tag if I did.’
And what does he mean by that? That I’m stubborn? Wearing sackcloth and ashes over the situation?
‘I’m not in the habit of buying fifty-pound presents on a whim, not even for those who leave me a portion of cottage pie with a little note to say, I made too much. Do eat it if you would like to.’
‘It would have been a shame to waste it,’ Cara said.
‘Indeed,’ Tom said. ‘So, perhaps when we know one another a little better we can come to some arrangement – a few more of your delicious leftovers would go some way towards the painting.’
Cara couldn’t tell whether or not he was serious, but she wasn’t going to ask.
‘I really don’t mind sharing food,’ Cara said. ‘But I honestly haven’t got fifty pounds to spare just at the moment,’ she said. The bank was being very tardy in releasing funds from Mark’s pension; she’d heard of the ‘widow’s year’, but for Cara it was turning into a very elastic year – almost two now. She was worried that Mark had stopped making payments into the fund, in favour of the gambling tables and the bookmaker. Until she did get whatever little pension of Mark’s was due to her, she was only just about keeping the proverbial wolf from the proverbi
al door with her B&B lettings. ‘So, maybe we could compromise?’
‘We could. And I think we should.’
The barman came over with their coffee and biscuits, setting the tray down carefully in front of them. Cara wondered if this was the man who had bought her painting or if he just worked there. She wasn’t going to ask.
‘I’m still not comfortable letting you do this. Paying for the painting, even though I’ll pay you back as soon as I can,’ Cara said as firmly as she could when she and Tom were alone again. ‘Can you give the landlord back the money and I’ll sort it with him? To pay by instalments. And don’t tell Rosie any of this or she’ll want to buy it back.’
‘Rosie? She of the hefty punch?’
‘Your bruises have gone down,’ Cara said. ‘But yes, that Rosie.’ Cara twirled her engagement ring round and round her finger. She was feeling guilty she hadn’t been in touch with Rosie for well over a fortnight now. It wasn’t unusual for Rosie not to get in touch if she was busy or off on some romantic trip to Paris or Barcelona with a new man – it was, more often than not, Cara who made the running anyway, but she was happy to do so. ‘She bought something back for me when I didn’t really want her to.’
‘The something you’re winding round and round your finger and which you’re in danger of rubbing away?’
Cara stilled her fingers and looked at her engagement ring as though seeing it for the first time. How observant Tom was.
‘Yes. When the two potential B&B guests looted my place while I went to the shop for bacon and eggs, I thought they’d taken my engagement ring. But I also wondered if Mark might have pawned it because there were rumours going around that he had done that – without my knowledge, of course.’
‘And had he?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Rosie bought it back for you because the time for collection had passed?’
‘Yes.’
‘So Rosie’s got her gentler side, then,’ Tom said, laughing. ‘I can’t imagine, though, that Rosie would have shown the restraint you have in not coming into my room to snoop – it’s your room, after all, and you’d have every right to.’
‘You’ve got Rosie in one!’ Cara said. ‘But I don’t snoop. Did I tell you Mae said she doesn’t think you’re an artist at all and for all we know you’ve got an orangutan in there?’
‘Oh, she’s rumbled me!’ Tom laughed.
‘Very funny,’ Cara said. ‘She’ll be proved right or wrong soon, though, won’t she? It’s not long to the festival.’
Tom threw back his head and laughed.
‘And then she’ll be shot of me?’
‘She didn’t say that – not in as many words.’
‘Actions speak louder than words sometimes, Cara.’
‘They do indeed.’
Tom had just proved that by making the decision to buy Cara’s painting back for her.
‘And is that how you feel? You can’t wait to see the back of me?’
‘No, it’s not that,’ Cara said.
‘What is it then?’
It’s the way you made me feel when you grabbed my hand and pulled me out of my own front door to come painting-hunting. It’s the way it felt to have my hand held after years of Mark stuffing his hands in his pockets when we were walking anywhere together. It’s … it’s because I don’t want to lose my heart to you if Louise is always going to be around. And I’m not liking it one little bit that you’ll be away overnight when anything might happen with your ex-wife.
Cara had been sleeping better since Tom had turned up. She felt safer with another adult in the house – someone else to listen out for burglars or the smoke alarm … things that had kept her awake for so many hours in the night before.
Cara shrugged. She couldn’t tell him any of that, could she?
Tom studied her, his head cocked to one side.
‘Tell me to mind my own business, but I hope you’re not thinking of selling that ring to realise a mere fifty quid so you can buy the painting back yourself, fair and square, no exchange of leftovers?’
Cara hadn’t been thinking that at all, but now the idea was in her head, why not?
‘Thought so.’ Tom reached out and touched Cara’s hand briefly before taking it away again. ‘Gagging’s too good for me, but I’ll say it anyway – you might regret it if you do.’
Yes, Cara thought, I probably will.
But all she could think of to say was, ‘Hmmm.’
‘There must have been good times,’ Tom said. ‘When you were given the ring.’
‘Oh, there were,’ Cara whispered. ‘There were.’
‘And I’m probably overstepping the mark here with personal remarks like that. Forget I said that.’ Tom pulled a mock-sorry face that made Cara smile despite herself. ‘But just for the record, this painting is going back to Cove End with you and if you need any help to re-hang it, I’m your man. Come on, we’ve got more paintings to track down. And then I’ve got a train to catch.’ Then Tom picked up the painting and stood up, and began to walk towards the door. Cara had no option but to follow.
‘I’m your man.’ She knew it was just an expression, but she couldn’t help liking how it sounded.
‘Don’t look now,’ Mae hissed at Bailey. ‘But that’s my mum. She’ll go ape if she knows what I’ve done.’ She glanced at two hooks in the wall now bereft of the paintings that had been hanging on them a short while ago. The two small watercolours of woodland scenes were propped up against the table leg. ‘Oh, my God! And she’s with Michelangelo.’ Mae ducked down behind the back of the high settle.
‘As in the Sistine Chapel?’ Bailey said.
Mae looked at him sharply.
‘See,’ Bailey laughed, ‘just because I don’t live in a posh house like yours or Josh Maynard’s, it doesn’t mean I don’t know anything.’
‘Okay. Lecture over. But what is Mum doing with him?’
He’d been getting his feet under the table rather a lot, Mae realised now. She’d seen the note her mum had written sitting on top of a leftover portion of cottage pie. It wouldn’t be long before she was signing notes ‘Cara xxx’ and not just ‘Cara’, would it?
‘Coming for lunch?’ Bailey said, dragging Mae’s thoughts back to the present.
‘As if. Can’t she see he’s just going to take advantage of her being a widow? We haven’t seen any of his art yet.’
Seeing her mother with a man who wasn’t her dad was making all sorts of emotions swirl around inside Mae. She felt anger that her mum had asked her dad to leave home over the gambling. Like, hadn’t she heard of counselling? But another part of her was pleased her mother fessed up about the gambling once she’d been asked. And there was fear in the pit of Mae’s stomach now, too, wondering what would happen if her mum and this Tom Gasson-Smith bloke were to get together.
‘Have we?’ Mae insisted, looking straight at Bailey as though expecting him to know the answer although she knew he couldn’t possibly. ‘Seen any of his art?’
‘Calm it, Mae,’ Bailey said. ‘From where I’m sitting it looks as though they’ve bought back the painting from the Beachcomber.’
‘Oh God, have they? Well, he might have done, and that can only mean one thing … Mum will owe him, and then he’ll never go.’
‘Mae, I …’ Bailey began but Mae stopped him. He was only going to tell her off for being mean, wasn’t he? Or try and reason with her or something. Bailey hadn’t lost his dad and he had no idea how this was making her feel.
‘Do you think I could just slip out to the Ladies and escape?’
‘Chill, Mae.’
Bailey reached for Mae’s hands and held onto them tightly. He gave Mae the sweetest of smiles.
Mae smiled back, a very watery smile, but a smile.
Then she turned towards her mother who had just been handed a bottle of Evian and a glass by Michelangelo. ‘Mum! Over here!’ she called.
Her mum came rushing over and before she could say anything, Mae said, ‘It’s ok
ay. This is a bistro, not a pub, so I’m allowed in the bar area. Food, you know.’
‘A bistro?’ her mum said. ‘I didn’t know.’ She looked around the room, her eyes finally settling on the two watercolours propped up on the table leg. ‘My pictures?’
‘Correction,’ Mae said. ‘They’re mine now. I’ve offered to come in and wash up at lunchtimes on the days I’m doing the late afternoon/early evening shift at the ice-cream kiosk. Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Starting next Monday. A business arrangement.’
‘Oh, darling,’ her mum said, her eyes all glassy with tears. She turned to Bailey and said, ‘Thank you so much, Bailey, for letting us know. For being so supportive to Mae.’
‘’s all right,’ Bailey said.
‘What are you doing with him?’ Mae jerked her head towards Tom who was handing the money over for the drinks. She was all churned up inside. Seeing her mother with Michelangelo and the fact they’d already been to the Beachcomber where Mae and Bailey had been going to go next had spoiled the surprise she’d been planning for her mum.
‘Tom? We’ve been buying back my painting from the Beachcomber. It was Tom’s idea, because we …’
‘We?’ Mae interrupted. That was twice in as many seconds that her mother had said ‘we’. Like they were a couple already. Damn it – tears were threatening to make a right drip of her again. Tom Gasson-Smith was far too sure of himself. Famous artist indeed – where were all the paintings then?
‘Tom’s paid for now, and I’m going to pay him back just as soon as I can.’
‘Right,’ Mae said.
‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’ Bailey butted in.
‘Oh, yeah. Sorry,’ Mae said. ‘Mum, this is Bailey. Bailey, this is my mum, Cara.’
‘Hi, Mrs Howard,’ Bailey said.
‘And I’m Tom,’ Tom said, putting his glass of wine down on the table, and handing her mum a glass of something fizzy – champagne or Prosecco or something.
‘Handshakes all round then,’ Bailey said.
Now Bailey seemed to have broken the ice, they all chatted easily enough for a while. Mae found it strange sitting in a pub with her mother and a man who wasn’t her dad. She couldn’t help noticing that he touched her mother’s arm to emphasise a point, or draw her attention to something on the walls of the pub that interested him – art stuff mostly. There were loads of paintings of yachts and schooners on the walls. Well, it was a seaside pub, Mae supposed. But if he was touching her mother’s arm, what else had he touched? If they were an item, why the hell hadn’t she been told?
The Little B & B at Cove End Page 18