Beach Hut Surprise: Escape to Little Piddling this summer — six feel-good beach reads to make you smile, or even laugh out loud

by Libertà Books

  The cheating ex was history, but Rose missed the warm comfort of someone beside her in the dark and she wasn't sleeping. When she did manage to nod off for a few minutes, her mind had not shut down but had been chasing down corridors, searching for something. Trying to call out to someone who was always just out of sight, who couldn't hear her, because the sound was on mute.

  She'd been avoiding the emotional minefield of the boxes that had been cluttering up the hall since she'd cleared her father's house and one night, afraid of slipping back into the dream, she got up, went downstairs and dragged them into the centre of the room.

  It took a while. She was continually ambushed by memories. Her mother's last birthday before the cancer took her. Pictures of graduations, holidays, birthdays going back through the years. A photograph of the twins making their promise when they'd joined the Cubs brought her to a halt.

  Why hadn't she been a Cub? Or a Brownie? She searched her memory but there was nothing there, and now there was no one to ask.

  She was torn between a smile and tears when she found the photograph of a birthday cake her mother had made. She'd picked out Rose's name in little red roses and there was a single candle in the shape of an eight.

  And that was it for her.

  Every step of Lisa and Matt's lives had been recorded from the first moment of birth. There were photographs of her playing with them in the garden, on holiday, older, but there were none of her before they arrived. None of her as an infant in her mother's arms, a toddler. There was no first-day-at-school picture.

  It was as if her life had started on her eighth birthday.

  Had she missed an album somewhere? Thrown it out in a box of rubbish?

  She swallowed down a lump in her throat and, as she climbed back into bed, something made her reach for the beach hut postcard, a distant connection with her father, and tuck it under her pillow.

  It didn't stop the dreams. If anything they became more intense until, weeks later, in a moment of terror, she woke herself up, screaming.

  She reached for the comfort of the postcard, clutching it against her chest until her heart stopped hammering.

  She had to get away from everything that had been happening and, as the first streak of dawn lit the horizon, she was in the fast lane, on her way to Little Piddling sur Mer.

  Chapter Two

  Rose arrived as Little Piddling was lifting its shutters for the day. She parked her van in the pay-and-display, found a café on the front. She hadn't been eating much, wasn't hungry, but she sat outside with a restorative coffee and forced herself to eat a croissant warm from the oven, while she checked out accommodation.

  Her dash to the coast had been a crazy impulse. She had no idea if she was fleeing the last few dreadful months or racing towards something waiting for her in this town with a ridiculous name.

  Right at that moment, it didn't seem to matter.

  She booked into a B&B in the Regency terrace overlooking the bay, but the room wouldn't be available until two o'clock. It didn't matter.

  After days of rain, the seafront and beach were sparkling in the sunlight and she couldn't wait to take a look at the beach hut.

  Arthur Kettlesing, a partner in Kettlesing & Flint, the agency handling the sale, leapt to find her the details.

  "Has there been much interest?" she asked. "I would have thought most beach huts would have been snapped up by Easter."

  "It's still early. There's always demand at the beginning of July, when the school holidays begin but, once the weather picks up, people aren't looking for a fixer-upper. They want something they can use straight away."

  Fixer-uppers were right up her street, but she wasn't about to tell him that. Instead she pulled a face.

  "A fixer-upper? How bad is it?"

  "It needs painting inside and out, but the condition is reflected in the price." When she didn't reply, he added, "I'm sure the owner would be open to a reasonable offer."

  "Can I see it now?"

  "I can't leave the office right now," he said, with obvious regret. "My partner is conducting a country house auction and he'll be away all day, but I'm sure I can trust you with the key. If I can just take some details?"

  She handed him her card.

  "Rosalind Redmayne Designs?"

  "Yes. I'm staying at Queen Charlotte House on the promenade."

  "Good choice. Flo will make you very comfortable." He handed her a keyring with the agency tag attached. "No need to rush back with it, Miss Redmayne. It's a lovely day. Take your time, try it out. If we're closed when you're done, I'll be at Dumaine's Wine Bar this evening. We could seal the deal over a glass of something."

  His optimism warranted a smile, but no guarantees. "I'll see you later, Mr Kettlesing."

  "Arthur..."

  He waited for her to reciprocate, but Rose preferred not to mix business with pleasure. "I'll see you later, Arthur."

  Rose could have walked along the promenade, but she took the steps down onto the beach which, apart from a couple of mothers with pre-school children, was deserted.

  Further along, a group of older children in bright red school sweatshirts were poking about in tidal pools under the supervision of a couple of adults and, in the distance, where the beach gave way to shingle, a man was throwing sticks for a large black dog to retrieve.

  This was all very new. Rose's parents had been deaf to the children's pleas to join their classmates on the annual summer exodus south to the beaches of Spain and Portugal.

  They had favoured rugged camping and pony-trekking holidays in the Highlands and in the mountains of mid-Wales. Beautiful, but about as far from the coast as it was possible to get.

  Older, Rose had been more attracted to cities—Rome, Paris, New York—and the ex was a winter sports fan.

  Slipping off her shoes, Rose caught her breath as the cold water rippled over her feet. Offshore, a sailing dinghy was tacking in the wind and in the distance, blurred by the haze, was the outline of a container ship making its way west.

  The tide had turned, leaving behind smooth wet sand and, as she walked along the water's edge towards the beach huts, she picked up small shells and stones, worn smooth as they'd tumbled in the sand.

  Completely absorbed by the faint trace of an ammonite in the surface of one, she didn't notice the little boy clutching the blow-up alligator twice his size until, unable to stop his mad rush for the water, he blundered into her.

  Rose caught him before he fell, steadied him. Checked that he was OK.

  "Gator!" he cried. "My gator!"

  She looked around and saw that his toy had bounced into the water and was in danger of being swept out into the bay.

  The boy began to wail loudly and, dropping everything, she splashed into the sea to rescue it. It skimmed over the water at surprising speed and, already up to her knees, she missed it a couple of times as it was jerked out of reach.

  In the distance someone shouted for her to leave it, but she called back, "It's OK, I've got it." And, at the third lunge, she grabbed it by the tail.

  She hauled it in, waded back to the beach and handed it over to the boy's mother, who sighed and said, "This thing has been nothing but trouble since his dad bought it."

  Rose, whose crops were now soaked to well above the knees, the edge of her shirt dripping from that last lunge, was only half-joking when she said, "Maybe you should stick a pin in it."

  The woman gave her an odd look before bustling the boy away.

  "Just trying to be helpful..." Rose muttered, shaking her head at the woman's lack of manners and sense-of-humour vacuum. Then, when she bent to retrieve her bag and sandals, something half-buried in the sand caught the sunlight as the wavelets retreated.

  A piece of blue-green sea glass...

  She dug it out with her fingers, swilled away the sand, smiling at this little treasure, but when she stood up, the man who been throwing sticks for his dog was looming over her.

  "Didn't you hear me?" he demanded.


  The sun was at his back, his face in shadow, a close-cropped beard adding to the illusion of darkness. The only light came from eyes, the same blue-green as the sea, and they were blazing with anger.

  Startled, she dropped the glass and took a step back, before gathering herself.

  "Was that you shouting at me?" she asked. "It was OK, I'd got it." For all the thanks she'd got.

  "More's the pity. Never," he said, forcefully, "ever go into the sea after a blow-up toy."

  "And leave it for some poor creature to choke on? There's too much plastic in the sea already," she replied, seriously irritated now. What was his problem?

  "Too much plastic and too many bodies of people who think the ocean is just a big paddling pool," he retaliated.

  Bodies?

  Rose looked out across the bay, remembering how quickly the toy had been sucked away, tugged out of reach. How easily she'd been drawn in, up to her thighs before she knew it.

  How much further would she have gone?

  Maybe he had a point. Clearing her throat, planning to tell him that she'd told the mother to stick a pin in the wretched thing, that his message had been received and understood, she was confronted by his retreating back.

  "Terrific," she said. "Piddling Sur Mannerless..."

  His huge, bear-like dog, who'd been sitting quietly during this exchange, gave her a sympathetic look.

  "Nigel!"

  Nice dog. The verdict was still out on his man. Undoubtedly, he meant well but, like the child's mother, his social skills could do with a little work.

  Her crops were soaked up to her thighs and she needed to change, but she'd have to pass the beach huts to get back onto the prom, so she decided to take a quick look at Rosa's Retreat on the way.

  She didn't need to get up close to see that the agent hadn't been kidding about the condition. Familiar with estate-agent speak, she understood that it was shorthand for anything from in-desperate-need-of-renovation to falling-down.

  Rosa wasn't falling down but, walking slowly around it, she could see that the paint, so bright in the postcard, had faded and was peeling off in strips where it faced the sea. The door was hanging a little out of true, one of the windowpanes was cracked and a chunk of the wood carving was missing from the roof ridge.

  Nothing that she wasn't able to fix and, close up, it excited her to see that the garland had once been painted.

  Most of the colour had been scoured by wind-blown sand and salt water, but there were still traces of it in the deeper crevices of the petals—rich pinks, greens and the sun gleamed on a touch of gold.

  It didn't take much of a leap to imagine what it must have looked like when new. It was what she did. She'd tackled anything from a simple cupboard to an entire house, bringing the dilapidated back to beauty, upcycling the past-it.

  All her instincts were telling her that this would be a great holiday project. A lot more productive than lying on a Greek beach. A lot less trouble than a mindless flirtation.

  "Can I help you?"

  She'd been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn't heard anyone approach and jumped nearly out of her skin, grabbing for the safety rail as she stumbled.

  The door to the dark green beach hut next to Rosa's was open and one look confirmed her worst fears.

  Usually she'd have given someone with a very nice dog the benefit of the doubt, but she'd been awake since before dawn, driven more than a hundred miles with a satnav that seemed to doubt the existence of Little Piddling sur Mer and it was about par for the day that Mr Grumpy, whose "Can I help you?" had been more along the lines of "What the hell do you think you're doing?", was going to be her next-door neighbour.

  "Are you determined to give me a heart attack?" she demanded.

  "What? No... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

  "And yet it's getting to be a habit," she snapped, and immediately regretted it.

  He was clearly taken aback by her reaction and maybe she had been a bit quick to judge, based on their earlier encounter.

  She turned to apologise, but the words died on her lips when she saw the way he was staring at her.

  "Katy?" he said, uncertainly.

  Her heart missed a beat at the name.

  "It is you! I'm so sorry, I didn't recognise you back there but... It's so good to see you."

  She just stood there, at a loss, not knowing what to say.

  "It's Daniel," he said, grinning now as he rubbed his chin. "I've grown a beard since you were last here."

  "No!" She said it sharply enough to stop him in his tracks as he stepped towards her, arms outstretched, as if to wrap her in a bear hug. "No," she repeated, but her legs were shaking a little as she took a step back. "You've mistaken me for someone else. I've never been here before. My name is Rosalind," she added, a little desperately.

  "Rosalind?"

  "Yes!" She only used her full name for business, but it was more emphatically not Katy than plain Rose.

  "But I could have sworn..."

  His grin faded as he dragged his fingers through the unruly mop of dark hair. "I'm sorry, it's just that the way you turned your head... For a moment I was sure you were someone I knew a long time ago." He shook his head, as if to clear the illusion. "We were just kids," he said. "She used to come to the beach in the summer with her mother and she did that thing with her chin."

  "What thing?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

  "That thing you just did." He lifted his chin up in a little sideways movement to demonstrate. "When she was annoyed. I was a vile ten-year-old and I used to tease her."

  "I'm sure she loved it." Still would... "But you haven't teased me," she said, making a conscious effort to keep her chin from doing anything.

  "Not teased," he admitted, "but I was a bit abrupt back there on the beach."

  "A bit? You yelled at me and then stomped off before I could tell you that I understood."

  "People don't realise how easy it is to get into trouble. In the sea," he added, to be clear. "Shall we start again?" He offered his hand and, with the sun on his face, his sea-glass eyes softened by a welcoming smile, he looked not so much threatening as dangerously attractive. "I'm Daniel Black." There was a slight lift on his name, as if he thought it might prompt her to remember him.

  "The sea is something of an unknown quantity, Daniel," she said, taking his hand. "You were right. I hadn't realised how far out I'd gone." His hand was big, square and calloused and the word safe popped into her mind as she took it. "I'm Rosalind Redmayne. Most people call me Rose."

  "Redmayne?" he repeated, as if still not totally convinced and expecting something else.

  "No relation to the actor." She shook her head, shivered a little. It was still early and in the shelter of the hill the sun wasn't making much impression on her damp crops. "Ignore me, I didn't get much sleep last night and I'm not making a lot of sense today."

  Chapter Three

  "Would coffee help?" Daniel asked. "I'm about to make some."

  "Thanks," she said. "It would be very welcome."

  With the formalities out of the way, Daniel disappeared into his beach hut, but his dog stayed to keep her company and gave a little grunt of pleasure when, having offered him her hand to sniff, she scratched him behind the ear.

  "He's a Newfoundland, isn't he?" she said, when Daniel emerged with a couple of chairs.

  "More or less. His original owners underestimated how big he'd get and I took him in when they panicked. What brings you to Little Piddling, Rose?"

  "Is it that obvious that I'm a visitor?"

  "You said you hadn't been here before," he reminded her, "but you don't have the trappings of the average holidaymaker."

  "No blow-up alligators here," she assured him.

  "That one belongs to a local who should know better," he said. "I will have words when I see his father."

  "Are you a policeman?" she asked.

  "No, much worse. I'm on the crew of the lifeboat."

  "Oh.
" If he was one of the volunteers who put their lives on the line when people got into trouble, his attitude to safety was understandable.

  "So?" he prompted. "You don't have small people clinging to your legs and the arts festival isn't until July. Unless you're scoping us out in advance for television coverage?"

  "Nothing that exciting. Would you believe me if I said I had been lured here by an old postcard?"

  "Which one?" he asked. "We should use it on the town website."

  "It was a picture of these beach huts and this one had my name on it. When I discovered that it was for sale, it seemed like fate."

  "You're thinking of buying it?"

  A moment ago he had been on the verge of flirting with her, but now he was frowning and she sensed a sudden reserve in his manner.

  Immediately back on the defensive, she said, "Do you have a problem with outsiders buying property here?"

  "Not all the beach hut owners are locals. Some just come for a few weeks in the summer and let them out for the rest of time," he said, "but that one..."

  "What about it?"

  "Every year, at the beginning of the season, someone comes along full of plans to give it a make-over, but by the end of the summer it's back on the market in a worse state than before. The last people arrived full of enthusiasm, but they said it had an odd atmosphere. Almost as if it didn't want them there."

  "That's ridiculous," she said. But was it any more ridiculous than her own feeling that it had been calling her? Her mad dash down the motorway... "It has to be an excuse for realising that they didn't want to waste their precious holiday wielding a paintbrush."

  "Possibly. Why don't you take a look while the kettle boils and see how it feels about you?"

  "Don't you mean how I feel about it?"

  "I'll have that cup of coffee waiting for you when you're done," he said. "I'll even open a packet of biscuits by way of apology for yelling at a visitor."

  "That has to be against the by-laws," she said, in an effort to get back to the flirting.

  "If it gets out," he assured her, "I'll be drummed off the town council."

  He smiled so that she would know he was joking. It was the kind of smile that, if you were short of sleep, emotionally vulnerable and not entirely sure what you were doing, could seriously disrupt the steady 58 beats a minute that, according to her Fitbit, was her normal.