Single Mother

by Samantha Hayes

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be!’ Mel calls back, holding her phone out in front of her. She plans on documenting the hotel’s journey back to life, making an album to look back on.

  An almighty clang makes her jump, the ground tremoring as Tom brings the digger’s bucket down over and over to lever up the first of the paving slabs. It takes several goes to grab and lift one, but as soon as that is loosened, the others come away like rotten teeth, cracking and crumbling, exposing soft, dark earth beneath. Tom heaps the waste into a skip, deftly working the controls in the cab as he manoeuvres the machine back and forth. As yet, there’s been no mention of payment, which she knows will have to be discussed. The important part, he’d told her, was just to get the works commenced.

  Mel watches on, one hand on her hip and the other at her brow as she takes in the scene in front of her, every so often aiming her camera and taking a photo. Her hotel. Her extension. Her business. Her money paying for all this. Her daughter crossing the car park with the new friend she’d met on the beach the other day. Their happiness.

  But more importantly, no Billy.

  She gives a quick wave to Kate and her friend, Chloe, as they walk past, deep in conversation, hardly able to believe that only a few weeks ago, she’d been struggling to make ends meet in a tiny flat in Birmingham, with Kate desperately unhappy at school and her job on the line.

  ‘Oi, oi, Tommo,’ she hears someone shouting above the noise of the digger as it growls through the earth.

  The engine noise slows and dies as Tom cuts the power, leaping out of the cab as another man, a bit older than Tom, swaggers up the drive. He’s also dressed in workwear and heavy boots, a pack slung over one shoulder. After they’ve exchanged greetings, Tom tugs off his outer shirt to expose a grey vest, his broad shoulders lightly tanned from the decent weather.

  Mel goes inside to make some tea and returns ten minutes later with a tray of mugs, setting it down on a pile of bricks.

  ‘Never say no to a cuppa,’ Tom says, striding up to Mel. ‘Or never say Nah, should I say?’

  ‘I took a day off,’ Mel replies, laughing and looking down at her plain white T-shirt. She glances up again, catching Tom’s eye for a moment – a look shared.

  ‘Aye up, me stomach thinks me throat’s been cut,’ says the other man. He’s shorter and stockier than Tom, and his head is mostly bald with a monk-style haircut sitting on top of a chunky neck and shoulders. His pale and slightly hairy belly protrudes from beneath his luminous work vest, hanging over his khaki knee-length shorts. He reaches for a mug.

  Tom’s eyes narrow, faint creases of smile lines appearing either side as he grins. ‘Mel, this is Nige. We’ve worked together for donkey’s years. Nige, this is Mel. Also known as the person brave enough to take on Moreton Inn.’

  Nige holds out a thick, stubby arm towards Mel, the fingers of his hand spread like a chunky starfish. Mel returns the gesture, catching sight of tattooed letters written across his knuckles. She can’t quite make out what they spell.

  ‘Nice to meet you too, Nige,’ she says. ‘Are you local?’

  ‘Born and bred,’ he replies, giving Mel’s arm a good shake, making her shoulder socket twinge. ‘Did a bit of work for Joyce over the years, so I know the old place well.’ He slurps from his mug of tea.

  ‘You knew Joyce?’ Mel asks. ‘Do you know much about her? If she had a big family, many relatives?’

  ‘If she did, she never spoke of them. She had enough on her plate as it was, with that bloody girl.’

  ‘Bloody girl?’

  ‘She still here, is she, Tommo?’ Nige continues. ‘The crazy one?’ He nudges Tom, sloshing his tea.

  Tom clears his throat. ‘She is, mate, so keep your voice down.’ He rolls his eyes, turning to Mel. ‘He means Miss Sarah.’

  ‘If she were my gal, I’d have given her a clip round the ear and told her to sort her attitude out,’ Nige continues. He takes a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one up. ‘Don were far too lenient with her.’

  ‘Don… as in Donald?’ Mel’s heart misses a couple of beats as she wonders if it’s the man from the newsagent.

  ‘Yeah, Joyce’s bloke. Don Bray.’

  ‘Anyway, Mel, Nige is my wingman and he’s good at what he does,’ Tom continues, seeming keen to change the subject. ‘He’ll help get this place whipped into shape in no time.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Mel replies with a nervous laugh, offering round the biscuits. ‘You’d better let me know how much this is all going to cost, too.’ Mel laughs again, placing a hand on her phone in her pocket. She’s already checked her banking app another three times today, just to make sure.

  Tom shifts from one foot to the other, sipping his tea. ‘I can have a quote with you by the end of the week, if you want us to tackle the work going forward,’ he says.

  Mel glances over at the girls and sees Kate holding up a jam jar to the sun. It’s stuffed full of leaves and twigs and, no doubt, bugs and insects and various fossils she and Chloe have been collecting. They’re laughing and chatting together, with Chloe tucking back a strand of red hair as she grins.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I’ll look forward to the figures. But remember – I’m not made of money, you know.’ She smiles, her heart skipping as Tom does that thing with his eyes again, almost as if they’re smiling too.

  ‘Oi, Tommo, that’s not what we’ve heard, is it, eh?’ Nige says, nudging him again. And that’s when Mel sees the word HATE tattooed across his knuckles as he brings his cigarette to his mouth.

  Twenty-Three

  Over the next few days, Mel barely stops grafting. With Kate happily in her second week at school, it’s a load off her mind, leaving her to focus on the work she can tackle herself at the hotel. The first job is giving the bar and restaurant a makeover. It’s got so much potential.

  ‘What do you think?’ Mel had asked Kate after the head teacher had shown them around the school.

  ‘It looks awesome,’ she admitted. ‘And the girl I met on the beach, Chloe, goes there and says everyone is really nice. She does computer club on a Wednesday and said I should join too. She’s into programming and stuff.’

  Mel had let out a contented sigh as she’d started up the Fiesta and driven back to the hotel. But she knew that, at some point, she’d have to have a quiet word with the head teacher about Billy, informing her that Kate was allowed to take the bus home, but wasn’t to be taken out of school by anyone except herself.

  ‘Do you think we’ll manage it between us?’ Nikki asks now, a velour-topped stool in each hand as they clear the last of the furniture out of the bar, piling it up in the reception area.

  Mel flexes a bicep and grins, pointing to her T-shirt. ‘Unstoppable’ is printed across the front, making Nikki laugh.

  ‘I didn’t put this on for nothing,’ Mel says, heading back into the bar and using a claw hammer to prise up the edge of the carpet. ‘I don’t care if I have to cut it up into tiny pieces with a Stanley knife, this is coming out,’ she adds with a grimace as she pulls hard at the corner, staggering backwards as it gives. The satisfying sound of the gripper rod losing its hold on the disintegrating hessian backing spurs Mel on. ‘You get the other corner, Nikki, and let’s see if we can’t roll the whole thing up into just a couple of large pieces. Tom will be around somewhere with Nige. The two of them will have it in the skip in no time.’

  Once the underlay is pulled up and chucked out the back, along with the levered-up gripper, Mel stands back, taking stock of what they’ve discovered underneath. ‘This was a lucky find,’ she says, admiring the polished wooden floorboards. ‘The carpet has actually protected them over the years.’

  Leaving Nikki to vacuum, Mel lugs the bar tables outside to the corrugated shelter where she’s set up the paint sprayer Tom hired for her.

  It’s as she’s about to pick up yet another table from reception that she freezes, spotting Miss Sarah standing on the bottom stair, staring directly at her. Then her eyes dart between
the out-of-place furniture and the empty restaurant area beyond. Mel sees a tiny flicker beneath one eye, a barely perceptible tightening of her jaw.

  ‘Hi, Miss Sarah,’ Mel says cheerily. It’s not the first time she’s attempted to make conversation with the woman since they’ve been at Moreton Inn, but each time she’s been met with the same silence. ‘I’m having a revamp of the restaurant and bar,’ Mel continues now, pointing to the now carpet-less area. ‘It’s going to be so much brighter and cleaner,’ she adds. ‘I’m going to paint all the furniture and give it a new lease of life. Cheer it all up a bit. What do you think?’

  Miss Sarah says nothing. She carefully comes down the last step, her bony fingers gripping the banister rail until the last moment, and then she picks her way through the muddle of furniture, curtains and boxes to get through to the restaurant. She heads directly to the spot where her table used to be. When she sees the entire room is empty, she simply stands and waits where her chair once was.

  ‘Oh, you want your lunch, don’t you?’ Mel says, coming up behind her and glancing at her watch. She hadn’t realised the time. ‘Rose has some soup on the go in the kitchen. It smells delicious. Why don’t you head through and ask her for some? There’s enough to feed an army, and I can smell bread heating up too.’

  Surely that will elicit something from her, Mel thinks. But Miss Sarah just stands there, her thin arms hanging down by her sides, her chest rising and falling slowly beneath her pale pink cardigan. She stares at the wall ahead.

  ‘Or I can bring some soup up to your room, if you prefer?’ Mel asks, positioning herself in front of her so she has no choice but to look at her. ‘Is that a good idea?’ She catches a faint smell of lavender, as if her clothes have been stored with a little bag of it. ‘OK,’ Mel adds awkwardly, clearing her throat and heading off to the kitchen.

  ‘Think I’ve upset Miss Sarah’s apple cart a bit,’ she says to Rose, who’s bent over a large stainless-steel pot of soup. She explains what’s just happened, with Rose glancing up occasionally as she stirs. ‘Can I get a tray of food for her?’

  Ten minutes later, Mel carries the tray upstairs, balancing it with one hand as she knocks on the door of room twelve. There’s no reply, so she goes inside and finds Miss Sarah sitting in her chair with a book on her lap. Except she’s not reading it. She’s got her eyes screwed up tightly closed, as if she’s about to scream – her face puckered up and contorted as though in great pain. And even though Mel stands there for a few moments, watching, waiting, absolutely nothing comes out of her.

  ‘It was so weird,’ Mel tells Tom as they each slurp some of Rose’s creamy chicken soup from mugs. The sun is warm on their backs as they perch on the low brick wall that is soon to be torn down by Tom’s mini digger. He’s made good progress with the footings over the last few days, though he met with more complicated drainage issues than anticipated, which had delayed the works for a day or two.

  ‘I mean, she literally said nothing,’ Mel goes on. ‘She was just sitting there with her eyes shut tight. I mean really screwed up, like a kid would do.’ Mel sighs, drinking more soup. ‘To be honest, Tom,’ she continues, ‘I’m getting a bit creeped out. I’m going to ask the solicitor to look into it for me. See if he can find out what’s going on.’ Mel takes a deep breath, dunking some of the crusty bread into her mug. ‘Mmm, Rose isn’t actually a bad cook, you know,’ she adds, eating hungrily. ‘There’s hope for this old place yet.’

  Tom sits there, deep in thought, with that look in his eyes again – the look Mel now calls his ‘faraway’ look, though she also knows he’s still focused on her. He’s barely taken his eyes off her since she came out with the soup.

  ‘You really are, aren’t you?’ he says, flicking his eyes to her T-shirt. ‘“Unstoppable”. I admire that. Your feet have barely touched the ground since you arrived. You deserve some downtime, too, you know, Miss Douglas. Some good, old-fashioned fun.’

  Mel is about to bite into the bread, having wiped a large chunk of it around the inside of her mug, scooping up the chunks in the soup, but stops. Fun? she thinks. Is that… some kind of veiled invite? Is he testing the waters to see if I’ll… go on a date? She’s not had a date since… She thinks back, but she honestly can’t remember. It was way before she met Billy, and that was fourteen years ago now.

  ‘Fun, eh?’ she says, grinning. ‘Fun is cracking on with spraying these tables and stools.’ She laughs, biting into the bread and chewing, but suddenly stops, spitting it out onto the ground. ‘Christ,’ she says, wiping her mouth and frowning. ‘What was that?’ She peers into the dregs at the bottom of her mug, putting her finger in and fishing something out. When she holds it up to the light, she sees quite clearly that it’s a shard of broken glass.

  Twenty-Four

  For the next few days, Mel forced her aching and exhausted body out of bed each morning, donning her old, ripped jeans, an old T-shirt and fastening her hair up messily on top of her head. After Kate had left for school and she’d sunk several coffees, she’d wasted no time ploughing on with the seemingly endless list of tasks to get Moreton Inn ready for a new launch.

  ‘I think this shade, definitely,’ Mel says to Andy, the man in charge of the decorating team. Tom had called in a favour last week, managing to secure the firm at short notice, and an army of white-overalled decorators had arrived at 8 a.m. sharp and were now swarming throughout the downstairs rooms of the hotel as they sheeted up and brought in their prepping equipment and priming paint.

  Mel taps her finger over a pale shade of grey, almost bordering on sage, as the main colour to transform the chunky wooden bar. ‘And I’d like the overhead part painted in this slightly darker grey. I think with the good lighting up there, it’ll look really on-trend but still traditional.’

  Andy nods, making a note in his phone of the colours so he can order in what’s needed.

  ‘On-trend isn’t something I’ve ever heard said about this old place,’ Tom says, appearing beside them.

  Mel feels his hand brush against her back.

  ‘And just to let you know,’ Tom continues as Andy walks off, ‘some guy just pulled up out the back asking if you had any rooms vacant. I said you’re renovating and not open for guests yet. Is that right? Plus he looked a bit unsavoury,’ Tom says. ‘Wasn’t sure you’d want him here,’ he adds, looking around the chaotic scene. The entire floor of the restaurant and bar is sheeted off, with the far end of the room clouding in dust as two decorators sand down the front shutters, ready for a new coat of white paint.

  ‘Unsavoury?’ Mel says, catching her breath. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I shouldn’t judge, I suppose, but sometimes you get a… a feeling about people, if you know what I mean. He looked like trouble, is all I can say.’

  Mel frowns. ‘What was he driving?’ It’s only when Tom looks down at her hand that she realises she’s gripping onto his forearm tightly.

  ‘Good question,’ Tom says, thinking. ‘A beat-up old Transporter, I reckon.’

  ‘What’s a Transporter?’ Mel asks in a panicked voice. ‘And what… what colour was it?’

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks. ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet. Do you want to sit down?’

  Mel nods, staring blankly across the room. Surely not… surely she’s allowed more than a few weeks of peace before he tracks her down?

  ‘I’m… I’m fine,’ she says.

  ‘It’s a type of van, the kind a tradesman might use,’ Tom says. ‘And it was red. A battered old thing.’

  Seeing Mel is distraught, Tom goes off to make her a coffee, returning with a couple of biscuits for her too.

  ‘Look, I have the observational skills of a bat and a memory like a sieve, so please do take with a pinch of salt what I said about that man,’ he says, handing Mel a coffee. ‘I might have got the van details wrong, but he looked unsavoury. Take a break for ten minutes. You look done in,’ he adds.

  Mel smiles briefly. ‘Thanks,’ she says, biting into a biscui
t, hoping it will perk her up. Tom wasn’t to know why what he’d said had bothered her so much. After she finishes her drink and Tom has gone back out on site, she busies herself with taking down the many pairs of old and dusty curtains in the bedrooms.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she mutters under her breath, lugging yet another load of faded fabric out to the yard to fill what seems like a never-ending supply of skips. ‘I swear, if he’s found me, I swear… I’ll… I’ll kill him…’

  ‘Remind me not to cross you any time,’ Nige calls out, looking her way with a large shovel to hand as he stands knee-deep in the footings. The mini digger was unable to reach the last part that needed excavating. Tom had said the only way forward was to dig manually, which meant him and Nige putting in some back-breaking graft for several days.

  Mel hurls the pile of old curtains into the skip, turning her head away as a cloud of dust billows up. She catches sight of Tom glancing over at her, shovel in hand. She can’t be sure, but she thinks he gives her a wink, a little smile. She hurries back inside.

  ‘How are you both getting on?’ she says to Rose and Nikki, who are stripping the kitchen for a deep-clean. ‘Is all this to be thrown out?’ she asks, examining ancient-looking packets of food.

  ‘Yup,’ Nikki says cheerfully from the top of a stepladder as she sloshes a cloth out of a precariously balanced bucket of water. ‘It’s all long out of date. And it’s disgusting up here,’ she says, referring to the tops of the wall cupboards. ‘Decades of grease and grime.’

  Rose is on her knees, pulling old cookware from deep under the worktops. She makes a grunting sound, before emerging with some old saucepans and hauling herself up. She peers into them, pulling a face. ‘Three dead spiders and…’ She makes a noise in her throat. ‘Mouse droppings,’ she adds, dumping the lot in a pile by the door. ‘There’ll be a dead mouse or two in there somewhere, mark my words, bloody things.’