by Gemma Fox
Oh how Bernie missed that beautifully appointed three bedroomed, ground floor apartment that would sleep eight without any difficulty whatsoever. Bernie grinned – and it got better. It looked like things had turned the corner. He hadn’t lost his touch after all. He’d told the driver all about his fictitious friend, presently going through a very nasty and very messy divorce. They had had adjoining villas in an imaginary but very quiet little family-run resort in Tenerife, and had spent the same fortnight there for the last ten years. As Bernie let the lie catch light, the driver had nodded, his eyes bright with avarice as he sniffed the odour of a genuine copper-bottomed bargain. ‘And you reckon he’s up for selling his, too, do you?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Bernie, although careful not to sound too eager. It was always best to let the victim do as much of the running as possible. ‘We’ve already said it won’t be the same any more anyway, not without both families being there. The years go by so quick.
‘Now my kids are grown up, me and the missus decided it was time to look around for somewhere a bit more upmarket. You know how it is – this place is great for kids but you get past all that, don’t you, really? These days I see meself more as a cocktail-by-the-pool man rather than a sandcastle and red-pop bloke. Anyway, I’m more or less a hundred per cent certain his place’ll be coming up within the next couple of months. His wife wants a quick settlement, you know how it is. My mate loves that villa; it’s right next to the pool, lovely views out over the bay, everything. Best spot on the whole development, I’ve always reckoned – and that’s why she wants him to get shot of it – you know what women can be like. Bloody spiteful if the mind takes them.’
The lorry driver nodded ruefully. ‘Yeah. My first missus was like that, but not Cindy – she’s a lot younger than me, nice girl, used to work in the office. Since we’ve had the kiddies it’s calmed her down a lot. We like it down here, don’t get me wrong, but she misses going up West with the girls – and the shopping, you know. She likes her shopping and her holidays does our Cindy – and a place that size would be ideal.’
Bernie nodded. ‘Course it would. Nice shopping centre just down the road, good food, nightlife – and the beauty of having yer own villa is that you can rent it out the rest of the year. You can make your money back in no time at all. We go through a letting agency to handle all the paperwork. The villas are all serviced, you just pay an annual ground rent – it ain’t that much. Me and the missus have done very nicely out of it over the years.’
The driver totted up the maths in his head as Bernie casually plucked a whole string of fictitious numbers out of his head.
‘Sounds like a really good investment on top of everything else. I could take my older lads as well – they live with me first missus, although knowing Cin’ she’d want to take her mum and her sister an’ all. How many bedrooms did you say it’s got?’
‘Three nice-sized doubles and a bed settee in the lounge, but it’s a big lounge –’ Bernie could almost see it in his mind’s eye; French windows opening up onto a marble-paved terrace looking over an azure-blue sea. God he would have bought it himself if he’d had the chance. You wouldn’t feel tucked up or anything. And with this agency that I’m signed up with you have first pick of the dates you want each year.’
The driver had nodded and narrowed his eyes. Bernie could track the man’s mind moving off into the middle distance, working out all the possible permutations of sleeping arrangements. ‘What sort of money do you reckon your mate’s going to want for it?’
Bernie smiled and shrugged, not wanting to appear too eager, not sure of how much he could squeeze from his companion.
It seemed that the journey wasn’t wasted after all. The warm glow of a nice new scam washed over him. ‘Let me ring my mate and then I’ll give you a buzz – sort you out a few photos to show to your Cindy.’
The man grinned. ‘Thanks mate. Good luck, and I hope they can fix your motor, it’s a bastard when they let you down like that. You reckon that the garage will have come out and picked it up by now, do you?’
‘I hope so. The amount of money they quoted to do it I’d have expected them to fly and pick it up by helicopter.’
The man laughed. ‘Yeah I reckon we’re in the wrong game, don’t you?’
Bernie nodded. He’d had to come up with some sort of explanation why a man of means like himself was hitch-hiking.
The lorry driver gave another wave as he drove off towards Minehead.
Head down, Bernie walked up the hill towards the entrance to St Elfreda’s Bay, grinning. He most definitely hadn’t lost the old magical Bernie Fielding touch, although on a better day he would have had a cheque out of the bloke as well. Selling time-share on the hoof – selling anything – was for Bernie, like a concert pianist doing scales. Maybe this good deed was just what he needed to bring about a little luck, a change of fortune. He could certainly use one; things had been a bit lean of late. But then he’d always had his ups and downs, life was like that. Bernie picked up the pace and started to whistle. He was about due an up.
St Elfreda’s holiday park was a mile or so off the main road, at the bottom of a steep roadway cut through mature woodland. It had once all been farmland and, realistically, despite tarmac and passing places the road was still more suited to tractors and four-wheel-drives than most family saloons. Even so, it was an idyllic setting for a holiday. Around a sharp right-hand corner at the bottom of the hill lay the caravans, cabins, tents, and old-fashioned beach huts tucked up amongst old trees with proper gardens. There was a shop and stables, and outbuildings that had been converted into a cosy little bar and café. Away to the left down a cobbled track, where once men had brought coal ashore from Wales on a whole string of mules, lay a private cove and a secluded sandy beach. Nearly there, thought Bernie, whistling a medley from Les Miserables.
At this time of the morning the beach was bright, blustery, and almost deserted. The little sandy cove was one of the main reasons Maggie had always loved holidays at St Elfreda’s. The bay was like a nibbled bite out of the coastline, sheltered on two sides by sweeping cliffs, and was totally private, used only by the people on the campsite and intrepid walkers who ambled up from Watchet or down the coast from Kilve.
It was an astonishing landscape. The cliffs were made up of layered, waved and slanted rock formations, some in varying shades of red, some cream, some grey and some further round the bay tinged with green, so that it looked as if the cliff face was made of great folds of chocolate-chip ice cream. Across the beach great rills of rock, which had survived time and tide and winter storms, cut through the sand at odd angles like spines, making sheltered spots to sit under or flat surfaces to bask on. On one edge of the cliffs that embraced St Elfreda’s Bay a waterfall tumbled down over the raw edge, fuelled by an upland freshwater stream.
‘It’s a great place to wash the sand off. The boys love it – although it’s always cold,’ Maggie said, nodding towards the column of water, hands stuffed in the pockets of her fleece as she and Nick ambled along, heads tucked down against the breeze. The wind cut the water into a fine mist that clung and hung in the air, sunlight slicing it into rainbows.
Nick – who had taken his shoes off almost as soon as they hit the beach – grinned, paddling bare feet into the fresh water where it cut through the broad delta to the sea.
Maggie laughed. It was the most relaxed she had seen him since they’d met, with his trousers rolled up, shoes in hand, big chunky sweater tied around his broad shoulders. Maggie peeled strands of hair off her face as the wind wrapped it tight over her eyes and mouth, watching Nick as he picked his way gingerly through sun-warmed run-offs.
It felt so easy and so very, very right for him to be there with her.
‘I wish this could go on forever,’ he said, as if reading her mind. Maggie turned away so that he couldn’t see her face, struggling to stop her thoughts from running away to the warm and tender place that they were heading. This wasn’t real, or even possible, i
t was just a hiatus – a break in real life for her. And for Nick? Well, for Nick it was a moment of relief before the madness began all over again.
He looked across at her as they scrambled over the rocks, jumping down and waiting to help her, the touch of his hand making her shiver. There were just so many things that Maggie wanted to ask him but she had no idea – worse still, not enough courage – to know where or if to start. So they had walked and talked about her and the boys, and the school where she taught. Nick was easy to be with. They talked about how she had been left the beach hut by an elderly family friend and how she had struggled to keep it for years, long before they became trendy.
It was a notch or two up from polite conversation, but not much more, except that all the while Maggie could sense that odd little tingle that only comes when you fancy someone and it is reciprocated, and she didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried and so swung uneasily between the two.
‘So, how about we go back to the caravan?’ Nick said softly as they reached the path. Their eyes met. There was a loaded silence; Maggie felt her colour rising while she waited for his next words. ‘I’ll cook you eggs and bacon,’ Nick said.
Maggie looked across at him, not sure if she was relieved or disappointed. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’
‘What?’ He pulled a face. ‘Tomatoes, hot buttered toast? Good coffee –’
‘Coleman.’
He sighed. ‘You know, for just a moment there I genuinely had forgotten all about him.’
‘Sorry.’
Nick waved the comment away. ‘Hardly your fault, is it? I’ll ring him after we’ve had breakfast.’
Maggie laughed. ‘You have got a very peculiar set of priorities.’
Nick mimed an enormous pantomime shrug. ‘What can I say? It’s a gift – besides, I’ve decided I’m going to enjoy this moment while I can. After all, no one knows where we are, so what difference is another hour or two going to make. And it’s ages since I’ve been to the seaside.’
Good luck – wasn’t that what the driver had wished him? Bernie hoped it would hold. Once he got to the bottom of the steep road he stood for a few moments to catch his breath, wondering what he would do if Maggie wasn’t there after all. Walking down through the trees a peculiar sense of dread began building up in his belly.
Maggie’s beach hut was situated on the oldest part of the site, tucked away between a row of horse chestnuts in a proper little garden, boarded all around with pebbles and driftwood brought home from countless beach walks. Her plot was tucked back off the track that meandered around the site. Maggie loved it because it was so secluded.
Secluded. It crossed Bernie’s mind that the gasmen might already have been there, or worse still were there now. Who would know if she was in danger? Maggie’s plot wasn’t overlooked by anyone.
Everything else forgotten, Bernie picked his way nervously along the track between the huts, part of him terrified of what he might find. Maggie’s car was there, drawn up under the lee of the hedge which was cut through with a great swathe of wild honeysuckle. The curtains in the bedroom were closed.
Bernie climbed the steps and knocked, once, twice and then he waited. Nothing. The knot in his belly tightened. Cupping his hands around his face, Bernie peered inside. There were definite signs of life – a box of teabags and an open milk carton stood on the worktop, bags and boxes on the table. She had most definitely been there. A jacket was casually slung over a chair. He wasn’t sure whether it was a good sign or a bad one. What if this bloke – the one that they were relocating – was violent, too? After all, there was no telling what sort of a rogue he was. He could easily be a criminal turning his mates in, some sort of supergrass. What if he had forced Maggie to help hide him? What if the danger wasn’t just from the gasmen?
Bernie swallowed hard to try and still the butterflies in his stomach and was just looking around for something to help him pop the lock when he heard a familiar giggle behind him and turned towards the sound.
Maggie and a tall, good-looking man were walking back up along the path from the beach. They were both carrying their shoes, but very artfully so that the hand closest to each other was empty, and they were walking just fractionally too close together for comfort.
Bernie stared. He knew exactly what he was seeing but was still surprised. As he watched, the man’s hand brushed Maggie’s and almost instantly they both stopped dead in their tracks, and then, right in front of his eyes, the man turned to Maggie and very gently tipped her face up towards his and kissed her.
Unable to look away, Bernie felt his jaw drop open. Maggie didn’t move; she didn’t shriek or slap his face or run away. Quite the opposite in fact, she moved a little closer and kissed him right back.
Bernie groaned. Bloody hell. That was all he needed. Maggie didn’t need rescuing, what she needed was a bucket of cold water and a bloody good talking to. Had she got any idea what she was getting herself into? How long had she known this bloody clown? After all Bernie had gone through to get himself down to Somerset to warm her – to warn them. Bloody women.
‘Maggie?’
She swung round violently, almost as if Bernie had slapped her.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she said. Bernie could hear the astonishment in her voice. He held up a hand to silence her but should have guessed that it would be nowhere near enough.
‘Spying on me, were you?’ She was blushing furiously and had leapt away from pretty boy as if he was on fire. ‘You’ve got a nerve showing your face round here –’
‘Shush,’ said Bernie gently. ‘Don’t get so wound up, Maggie. Calm down; it’s all right. I haven’t come to cause any trouble – I’ve come about him.’ He waved towards the tall man.
‘Him?’ Maggie said suspiciously. ‘What do you mean, him, Bernie? How come you know anything about him?’ Her voice was heavy with sarcasm and her eyes darkened as she looked him up and down. Bernie flinched. He didn’t know how much Maggie knew about what was going on but he sensed that she could detect his fingerprints all over this job.
Bernie nodded towards her companion. ‘I don’t know much at all, if I’m honest.’ He heard Maggie snort but apparently she decided not to pass comment on the state of his honesty as he turned to face the man. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you did, but two men came to visit me yesterday. They thought I was you and they had guns. Ring any bells?’
There was a dark and nasty silence. The man paled.
Maggie looked first at the man and then at Bernie. ‘And?’ she said, not dropping her gaze.
Bernie sighed. Maggie knew him too well – with Bernie there was always an and or a but.
‘And I think they’re on their way down here to find you – to find him. In fact, I’m surprised they aren’t here already.’
‘How do you know that they’re coming here?’ said Maggie, eyes narrowing.
Bernie sighed. ‘Because Mrs Eliot told me that she had told them –’
‘What? She told them that I was here? I don’t believe she’d tell anyone unless –’ and then Maggie blanched as the realisation hit her. ‘Is she all right? Did they – they didn’t hurt her, did they?’ She looked at the her ex-husband who shuffled nervously from foot to foot.
‘No, no, she’s absolutely fine. Fit as a fur coat full of fleas when I left her,’ said Bernie quickly. ‘She thought they were from the gas board.’
Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘I’m going to have to have a word with her about that.’
The man pulled out a mobile from his jacket pocket. ‘I ought to ring in now,’ he said. ‘Now that we know they’re on the way.’
‘Okay – but can we arrange to meet the cavalry somewhere else? I don’t want them turning up here.’
‘I’m not sure that you should be there at all,’ the man said. Maggie sighed. Bernie looked at him. Despite appearances he obviously didn’t know Maggie very well.
‘Can we talk about that later?’ she asked. The man nodded, givi
ng Bernie a sharp look, and then moved away to make his call.
Bernie shifted uncomfortably under Maggie’s icy stare. ‘I did try to ring and warn you, Maggie.’
She lifted an eyebrow. ‘Did you? And I wonder why that was, Bernie? Guilty conscience, was it? I get the distinct impression that you have had more to do with all this than meets the eye.’
Bernie stared at her. ‘Well that’s gratitude for you, I bloody-well hitched down here as well, and that’s all the thanks I get. I’m sorry I bothered you.’
Maggie held his gaze without flinching. ‘And don’t do that face on me, Bernie – or that “who – me” expression. I know you from way back, don’t forget that.’
Bernie shrugged the tension away. ‘What about pretty boy over there? Do you know him, too?’
‘Nick, his name is Nick. Although for a while he was called Bernie Fielding. Odd that, isn’t it?’
Bernie decided not to take the bait. ‘Nick, eh? What on earth were you thinking about, Mags? You should know better than to go around rescuing strays at your age. You don’t want to get mixed up with someone like him – you know, on the run. A criminal. He could have done anything, you know.’
Maggie laughed. ‘Who, Nick? Don’t be daft, Bernie, you only have to look at him to know that that’s not true. Nick’s not a criminal, he’s innocent.’
‘Oh right, well of course, that makes it all right then, doesn’t it?’ said Bernie, turning up the sarcasm to sear. ‘First rule of being a criminal is to say that you’re innocent. What did he tell you? That he was framed? That it was all a terrible mistake? That he took the rap for his mate? Honour amongst thieves? They all say that, you know. Don’t you ever learn, Maggie?’
Maggie beaded him with hurt and angry eyes. ‘When you say “don’t I ever learn”, I presume you are talking about yourself?’