The Little Bed & Breakfast by the Sea

by Jennifer Joyce

  ‘Welcome to Chapel Cove,’ Hugo said as they took in the view. Melody was already reaching for her camera, even as she was still perching upon Hugo’s outstretched arms. She clicked away, trying to capture the beauty and tranquillity of the cove. It wasn’t your typical British seaside scene – there wasn’t a bucket or spade in sight, there were no shops selling rock and tacky souvenirs, and there was a severe lack of the smell of fish and chips – but it was simply stunning and Melody wanted to commit the image not only to memory, but to her photographic collection.

  ‘You can put me down now,’ Melody said as she realised poor Hugo was still acting as a human chair. ‘Your arms must be aching.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Hugo placed Melody down gently on the pale sand and flexed his arms in a cheesy bodybuilder pose as she sat down. ‘I’m made of strong stuff.’

  Melody shook her head, though she was fighting a smile. ‘Sit down, you doofus.’ She patted the sand beside her and her gaze returned to the gently lapping sea. ‘It’s so peaceful, isn’t it?’

  Hugo sat down, crossed-legged, and nodded. ‘I bring Scoop here sometimes so he can have a good run along the shallows without having to worry about other dogs. He even ventures in for a full-on paddle some days.’

  Melody grabbed a handful of sand in her fist and allowed it to slowly cascade back down to the beach. ‘We should have brought him.’

  ‘Next time,’ Hugo said, and Melody didn’t point out how unlikely it was there would be a next time. Once her ankle was healed – or at least healed enough for her to walk on without wincing too much – she’d have to go home and face the life she’d avoided for the past few weeks. She wasn’t looking forward to her return, and not just because the simple act of living had become so hard. She’d felt real moments of pure joy here in Clifton-on-Sea, a sensation she hadn’t thought she was capable of producing any more, and she’d miss those moments, however fleeting they’d been. She remained tight-lipped as she gazed out towards the horizon, the familiar guilt jabbing her in the gut as she realised she’d been happy in those moments.

  ‘I keep forgetting you’re not going to be here for much longer,’ Hugo eventually said. They’d both remained silent for the past few minutes, enjoying the view before them, lost in their own thoughts.

  ‘I’ll be gone in a few days. Maybe even sooner.’ She looked down at her bandaged ankle. ‘It depends how I get on.’

  Hugo nudged her playfully with his shoulder. ‘We should keep in contact.’

  ‘What’s the point?’ she asked.

  Hugo uncrossed his legs and drew his knees in towards his body, resting his chin on them. ‘You can be quite harsh when you want to be.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Melody’s question had come out much more abrupt than she’d intended, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a valid point. ‘It’s just…’ She grasped another fistful of sand as her brain scrabbled to find the right words.

  ‘You have a boyfriend.’

  The idea was so ridiculous, Melody almost laughed. She frowned instead, great big furrows appearing in her forehead. ‘No, I don’t have a boyfriend.’

  ‘A girlfriend?’

  Melody unclenched her fist, releasing the sand she’d collected in one go. ‘No girlfriend. No significant other. No other at all, significant or otherwise. It’s just me, and that’s the way I want it to stay.’

  ‘Oh.’ Hugo frowned this time. ‘I thought…’ He shrugged. ‘I thought you’d been keeping me at a distance and were resisting my obvious charms because you were involved.’ He tried to flash his cheeky grin at Melody, but it didn’t quite make it onto his face.

  ‘I’m not involved. I’m… going through some stuff.’

  Melody clenched her fist again, but there was no sand in there this time. It sounded so flippant. So unimportant. ‘Going through some stuff’? It didn’t even begin to explain the devastation she’d gone through, the pain and the tears and the fight to keep going each day. She’d wanted to give up, to just lay down and stop fighting, because what was the point without Ollie?

  ‘What kind of stuff?’ Hugo asked. His voice was gentle, almost lost in the slight, salty breeze. Melody rarely spoke about her past, but she felt she owed it to Ollie to explain. To take back that flippant remark and let Hugo know what Ollie had meant to her. And so, sitting on the secluded beach, Melody told Hugo about the best friend she’d known most of her life. The friend who’d helped shape the woman Melody had become. They’d laughed together, cried together, fallen in love with boys (and later men), fallen out of love, grown from gangly children to curious teenagers to young women ready to take on the world, sharing these pivotal moments so wholeheartedly that they’d become part of the fabric of each other’s lives. Memories and experiences melded together so seamlessly, Melody wasn’t always sure where she ended and Ollie began.

  ‘She was everything to me,’ Melody said, though her words couldn’t convey just how special their friendship had been. ‘She believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. She didn’t speak to me for a week when I applied for a secretarial course at college instead of the photography course she’d talked me into picking. Being a photographer was my dream – being a secretary wasn’t. She knew that and was so disappointed when I chickened out.’ Melody smiled. ‘It was the longest week ever, for both of us. Her protest was supposed to last until I came to my senses and withdrew my application and reapplied for the right course, but she caved before I did. My fear was too overwhelming, even though I missed Ollie so much.’ Melody closed her eyes and lifted her face to the hot sun. ‘I miss her now. Every day. I still can’t believe she isn’t here and I’ll never get to speak to her again.’

  Melody felt a hand on hers, grains of sand scratching lightly against her skin. She opened her mouth to continue, but found her words were lost. What else was there to say? Ollie was gone and Melody missed her so much it took her breath away. Instead of speaking, she reached into the back pocket of her shorts and pulled out the photograph, running a finger over the young, grinning face of Olivia Greyson, eyes crinkled, dimples at their maximum adorability.

  ‘Is that you and Ollie?’ It was the first time Hugo had spoken since Melody started to delve into her past. She nodded, still not ready to speak. ‘How old were you?’

  Melody flipped over the photo, though she knew the answer already. Inscribed on the back, in Ollie’s mum’s neat handwriting, was Ollie and Melody, Blackpool, 1998. She flipped the photo over again, to the image of the best friends sitting astride a couple of donkeys, grins filling their faces and displaying the joy the day at the seaside had brought.

  ‘We were seven.’ Melody handed the photo to Hugo so he could take a closer look. ‘I’d gone to Blackpool with Ollie’s mum and dad and her baby brother. I’d forgotten about it until Ollie’s mum gave me the photo. She’d been going through some of their old photos for…’ Melody closed her eyes again. For Ollie’s funeral. She couldn’t say it. ‘And she thought I might like this one. She said we looked so happy and that’s how she remembered us as little girls. Always smiling.’

  ‘It’s a lovely photo,’ Hugo said. ‘Special.’

  Melody nodded. ‘It’s what brought me here. On this trip. Ollie finally convinced me to give photography a go. She made me promise, you see, before…’ Before she died. Before she left me, for ever. ‘She said life was too fucking short to settle for second best. I should grab life with both hands while I could and reach for my dreams, otherwise I was wasting the life I’d been given.’ Melody took the photo back from Hugo and touched the very tip of her finger to Ollie’s face. ‘So when I read about the local photography festival, I signed up. I didn’t give myself chance to think about it. I just did it, so I couldn’t chicken out. I’d made that promise to Ollie. I couldn’t let her down.’

  Her face was wet, she realised. She’d been crying. Why hadn’t Hugo said anything? Made her stop? She reached up to wipe the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, not rea
lising she was leaving behind patches of sand.

  ‘The theme of the festival is childhood memories. I had this photo propped up on my bedside table, the very essence of a happy childhood before life turns shit. So I decided on the British seaside theme and here I am. Taking photos. Like it matters.’ Melody shoved the photo roughly into her pocket. Her hands formed fists beside her and she started to take slow, deep breaths before she lost control.

  ‘It matters to you,’ Hugo said. ‘And it mattered to Ollie. You’re doing it for her, remember?’

  Melody shook her head, over and over again. ‘No. I’m doing it for me. Because it’s something I’ve dreamed of. Ollie wasn’t interested in photography! She was a counsellor. She helped people, every single day. She made a difference, yet here I am, squandering life. I don’t help people. I’m selfish and undeserving. Why should I be here, enjoying life, when Ollie isn’t?’

  Melody’s hands became angry fists again. She was shaking, jaw clenched. It wasn’t fair.

  It wasn’t fucking fair.

  She struggled to her feet, her ankle crying out, the pain slicing through her lower leg as her foot slipped on the sand. She hissed a breath in through her teeth, but she continued to move anyway, hobbling across the sand towards the sandy track.

  ‘Hey! Wait!’ Hugo was up off the sand before she’d made it a couple of agonising steps. ‘You can’t walk on that ankle. Not here.’ Before Melody could respond that she could walk anywhere she pleased, she was being scooped up into Hugo’s arms.

  ‘Put me down!’ she roared, hitting at his arms, his chest. Her jaw clenched harder each time she made contact.

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll take you home.’

  Melody shook her head. She was still hitting out, but there was no longer any force behind it. ‘I don’t want to go home. I can’t go home.’ Her voice cracked and hot tears started to stream down her cheeks, making tracks in the patches of sand she’d left earlier. ‘I can’t go home, Hugo. Not without Ollie. It’s too hard.’

  ‘The bed and breakfast,’ Hugo said gently. ‘I’ll take you back to the bed and breakfast.’

  Again, Melody shook her head. She couldn’t go back like this. A mess. Broken. She needed a bit of time to compose herself. To wash her face, at least.

  ‘Come back to mine for a bit,’ Hugo said. He’d already started to move up towards the car. ‘See Scoop. He always manages to cheer me up. If he can’t bring that beautiful smile back to your face, nothing will.’

  ‘What about James?’ The last thing Melody wanted when she was looking – and feeling – so ghastly was an awkward chat with Hugo’s brother.

  ‘Don’t worry, he won’t be there.’ Hugo smiled at her. ‘I promise.’

  They made it back to the car and Hugo helped her into the passenger seat, making sure her ankle wasn’t bashed in the process.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said as they pulled away from the cove, the beautiful scene fading from view. ‘For being a snappy cow at times, for being a mess. For making your T-shirt all soggy.’

  Hugo looked down at his T-shirt and gave Melody a knowing, sideways glance. ‘You just wanted me to have to take my wet T-shirt off, didn’t you? Hey, if you want a peek at my hot bod, all you have to do is ask.’

  Melody smiled, despite the tears still dampening her cheeks. ‘I’d appreciate it if you kept it on, thanks.’

  Hugo shrugged. ‘Your loss.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll live,’ Melody said, though she often wondered how she managed to with such a damaged heart.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mae

  Mae’s shift at the pub had started early as she’d been recruited to help with the clean-up operation after Doreen’s party the night before. Mae didn’t mind the earlier start as it meant she could finish mid afternoon and spend a bit of time with Hannah before the activities revolving around dinner and bedtime began. Hannah was having a wonderful time during the school holidays, going to the cinema and building sandcastles on the beach, but it was a pity none of it had involved Mae so far. They wouldn’t have time to venture far that afternoon, but they could certainly squeeze in an ice cream and paddle before dinnertime.

  She’d dropped Hannah off at her mum’s before heading towards the harbour. The sun was already bright, the holidaymakers strolling around in their shorts and T-shirts, the smell of sun cream wafting in through the open car window. The radio had been playing a summery tune from the early nineties and Mae couldn’t help singing along, feeling freer than she had in a long time. She turned onto the road that ran along the harbour, following it round to the Fisherman. The cries as the seagulls swooped through the air drowned out the radio as she parked beside the pub, their white bodies dipping and rising and looping back round towards the harbour wall before bobbing back out to sea again, repeating their dance over and over until a passer-by tossed something onto the ground and all seagull-hell broke loose. The passer-by yelped and staggered out of the way as a dozen or more seagulls descended.

  ‘Can’t be from round here,’ Frank said, nodding towards the littering bloke, ‘if that came as a surprise.’

  Frank was leaning against the pub’s wall, smoking a crafty cigarette. He’d been promising to give up for decades. Corinne had been promising to cut off his fingers if she caught a cigarette between them for just as long. Neither had kept their promise.

  ‘Must be a tourist,’ Frank surmised before taking a final drag.

  ‘You’re not getting snobbish in your old age, are you?’ Mae asked. ‘You’ll be complaining next that they take over the place every summer.’

  ‘Hardly.’ Frank disposed of his cigarette in the metal wall-mounted bin beside him. ‘Tourists keep us going. We’d go under in a heartbeat if we had to rely on the likes of Tom Byrne and his everlasting pints.’ A grin spread across Frank’s face as he ushered Mae inside. ‘And speaking of Tom Byrne…’ He rubbed his hands together and opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘I hope you’re not spreading gossip about our customers, Frank Navasky,’ Corinne’s stern voice carried out across the pub. She was standing beside the buffet table, an open bin liner in hand as she plonked last night’s party debris inside it. ‘Because that’s my job.’ Dropping the bin liner, she scurried over, grasping Mae by the arm. Her grin was even larger than Frank’s, giving her an almost manic expression as she practically vibrated with the force of holding the gossip in.

  ‘Well?’ Mae looked from Corinne, to Frank, and back again. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Not a word!’ Corinne barked at her husband before turning to Mae again, her grip tightening in her excitement. ‘It’s Tom. Last night…’ She pressed her lips together and an excited yelp escaped. ‘He made himself a lady friend.’

  ‘A lady friend?’ Mae asked and Corinne nodded. ‘Who is she?’

  Corinne shrugged. ‘We don’t know. A friend of Doreen’s, we presume. I don’t think she’s ever been in here before, but old Tom took a liking to her. They chatted for hours and even did a duet on the karaoke. Elton and Kiki.’

  ‘Tom?’ Mae raised her eyebrows as she looked between Corinne and Frank. They were pulling her leg, surely. ‘On the karaoke?’

  ‘He was actually pretty good,’ Corinne said.

  ‘There’s a rumour going around that they were necking out the back,’ Frank said. ‘But Gary King started it, so I’m not entirely convinced it’s true.’

  ‘It’s the first time he’s shown an interest in a woman since the divorce, though,’ Corinne said. ‘So it’s a step forward at least.’

  ‘He’s getting back on the horse.’ Frank winked at Mae. ‘So to speak.’

  A rather unsavoury image popped into her head, but she pushed it away.

  ‘If old Tom can try again,’ Corinne said, giving Mae a pointed look. ‘What’s stopping a young lass like you?’

  Mae patted the hand still lightly gripping her arm. ‘Do you want a list?’

  The question remained in her head for the duratio
n of her shift, stubbornly bashing against the lining of her brain, over and over again. If Tom, who’d been almost spitting venom in his bitterness after the divorce, could put himself back out there and have another shot at romance, why couldn’t she? Tom’s wife had taken everything: their home, their friends, Tom’s dignity (according to the man himself), and had left him nothing but a couple of bin bags of clothes and his beloved cat. She’d have taken the cat too, Tom said, except the cat and his ex hated each other to the point of violence.

  But still, after all that, he’d found a woman who made him forget his hatred of karaoke and actually get up and sing.

  But Tom and Mae weren’t the same. Tom didn’t have a young child to consider. He could afford to take a risk. He could take as many of the damn things as he wanted. Mae, on the other hand, had to be more guarded.

  Unusually – or perhaps not, considering the gossip flying around – Tom didn’t make it into the pub during her shift.

  ‘You off already?’ Frank asked as Mae started to gather her things. He looked up at the clock, which still claimed it was ten past one. He checked his watch and tutted. ‘That bloody Gary King. I’ve a good mind to bill the little toerag for a new one.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll get a new one for your birthday next month?’ Mae suggested and Frank frowned.

  ‘Gary and I don’t usually exchange birthday gifts. We’re not that close.’

  Mae tutted. ‘Not from Gary.’ She reached up on tiptoe to kiss Frank on his stubbly cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘See you tomorrow, love. I’ll try and wheedle all the details from Tom – if he shows up.’

  ‘Maybe he wants to keep his private life private,’ Mae said. She’d been on the receiving end of the Navaskys’ meddling, and although they meant well, it certainly hadn’t been welcome.