Linda Mitchelmore - The Little B & B at Cove End

‘Duh!’ Mae said, slapping her forehead theatrically. ‘You don’t need to be Stella McCartney, or anyone else, Mum. You just have to make good stuff that people want and …’

‘Enough, Mae,’ Cara interrupted. Mae was making a very decent argument about what she could do to get them out of the financial mess they were in, but Cara had already thought of all that; been awake night after night thinking those same things and if she could get any of them to work. ‘Now go and meet Josh and have a lovely time.’

‘I’m already gone,’ Mae said, hurrying towards the door, not stopping to peck her mother’s cheek as she usually did.

Cara followed more slowly, stepping out onto the terrace. She pressed her lips together, forcing a smile she didn’t feel as Mae turned round for a brief moment before scurrying off. Mae was so pretty and never afraid to be different from her peer group. She was wearing the ballerina-length, black cabbage roses on a white ground, antique dress that had been her favourite since the day Mark had bought it for her from the vintage shop in Totnes. The fabric – starched to within an inch of its life – crackled as Mae walked. A black cardigan was draped over her shoulders, a simple, fine wool but faded.

‘Don’t be too late, Mae,’ Cara called after her, stepping out onto the terrace. ‘Please.’ But the breeze off the sea snatched her words away, blew them back in her face.

But perhaps Mae had heard because she turned, teased some tendrils of hair down each side of her face – a habit of long-standing – and Cara resisted the urge to rush down the path and hold her daughter to her lest it be the last time she ever saw her. Mae pointed at the sign Cara had painted, clapped a hand over her mouth to indicate suppressed laughter, then disappeared from view.

The hastily made sign – COVE END B&B – that Cara had made using some old paints of Mae’s she’d found in the toy cupboard, on a square of hardboard that had been propped up against the garage wall for as long as Cara could remember, swung back and forth, banging against the slim trunk of the lilac tree as Cara returned to the kitchen. She’d managed to find two hooks, screwing them into the bottom of the board on which hung a strip of hardboard with VACANCIES on one side and NO VACANCIES on the other.

‘Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?’ Rosie asked.

‘Tea, please. How sad would it be if I turned into a dipso widow-slash-single mother?’

‘But you’re not going to,’ Rosie said. ‘And you didn’t have to let her go. She’s only fifteen for goodness’ sake. You could have said no, you know. Mae is way too young for Josh Maynard. Or Josh is way too old for her. Whichever way you want to look at it.’

‘Not in Mae’s opinion,’ Cara said with a small sigh. ‘Or Josh’s, I suspect. If I forbade her to see him, she’d only find a way, behind my back, to meet him. Forbidden fruit and all that.’

‘How long have they been seeing each other?’ Rosie asked, arms folded across her chest and her hands tucked firmly under her armpits. Cara saw it for the gesture it was – disapproval. And Rosie wasn’t going to be moved on her opinions either.

‘Not long. Three months. Maybe four. Only at weekends because of school. Anyway, what is this? The Spanish Inquisition?’

Josh was good about bringing Mae home on time and Cara had to be thankful for that.

‘It’s only because I love you both,’ Rosie said. ‘I wouldn’t want more angst and drama dropped on you. You know, young girl who thinks she knows it all but doesn’t, and older man who knows it all and doesn’t give a fig who he uses to get his own way and …’

‘Rosie, you are …’

‘I know.’ Rosie thrust out an arm, traffic policeman-style, to halt Cara’s objections. ‘I’m out of order. Way out of order. But I’ve been that girl, done that, got the bloody T-shirt. It doesn’t alter the fact that Josh is twenty. He gets through girls the way most lads his age get through hair gel or whatever the latest fad fashion is these days. Ask anybody in this place and they’d say the same about Josh.’

‘Oh God,’ Cara said. ‘That’s the trouble with this place: everyone knows everyone else. Mae’s almost sixteen – she has to grow up sometime. If all I had to worry about was Mae seeing Josh Maynard, I’d be a happy woman.’

It was common knowledge in the village that Josh had been a bit of a rebel in his teenage years, railing against everything his father, a vicar, believed in. He’d left school in the middle of his A levels, stopped going to church on Sundays with his mother and sister, and loped from part-time job to part-time job with no real vision of his future. He was a regular at both village pubs and rumour had it he’d smoked pot for a while. Cara rather hoped he wasn’t doing that any more, but was wary of asking Mae if he was. But Cara knew Josh wasn’t the only one who had done these things. Hadn’t Cara herself gone through life to date with no clear vision? She’d even smoked pot – just the once because it had made her very sick and frightened the life out of her. Time, she decided, to shift the focus from Josh Maynard in this conversation.

‘Who else knows, do you think? About Mark, I mean, and his gambling.’

Cara bit the insides of her cheeks to stop her tears. She was sick of tears. Sick of the reason for them; Mark had spent every single penny of their savings on internet gambling, or down at the bookie’s betting on horses or dogs or both. The dinghy Mark had bought for Mae, and which she loved with all her heart, had been sold. Cara’s little Fiat 500 had been sold. Anything of any value had been sold so that Mark could gamble. Things disappeared – almost without Cara noticing sometimes – piece by piece. Mark had been crafty, taking a painting then regrouping the others so that it had taken Cara a while to notice it was missing. Amongst them had been three paintings she’d inherited from her great-grandmother, Emma. Two woodland scenes and a harbour scene. Emma’s first husband, Seth Jago – a gifted but amateur artist, so family folklore had it – had painted them back in the early 1900s. The only painting of Seth Jago’s that Mark hadn’t taken was a portrait of Emma that had been at the picture framer’s in Sands Road having a repair done to the corner of the frame where Cara had knocked it off the wall when she’d been dusting. Thank God she still had that because on that fateful night, Mark’s car had spun out of control at a roundabout and he’d been killed. Every other painting Cara had collected during their marriage – all fifteen of them – had been ruined beyond any hope of repair when the car had caught fire after Mark had been pulled free by the fire crew. Stuff in the boot had been saved, but not all the things on the back seat, the paintings amongst it. Cara often wondered where those other paintings of Seth Jago’s might be, but in a strange way she was glad they hadn’t become victims of Mark’s fatal accident, because they’d vanished from Cove End a long time before that.

Tell me, Rosie,’ Cara said as she sipped the tea her friend had made her, ‘is the whole village talking about me?’

‘Well, yes. Of course they are. Not as much as when Mark died because that was a shock to everyone I expect, but you’re probably still good gossip fodder.’ Rosie’s reply was swift and honest. ‘You’re only thirty-nine. You’re a widow. They’re sad for you, that’s all.’

Cara studied Rosie’s face as she spoke, trying to see lies in her friend’s eyes, the way she’d known there were lies in Mark’s eyes every time he’d said he hadn’t gambled that day, nor the day before, and that he wouldn’t gamble tomorrow. Whenever she’d challenged him, demanding to know where her silver, or her paintings, or her household goods had gone, Mark always said he’d replace everything just as soon as he’d won enough on the next throw of the dice. Always the next throw of the dice would sort everything. Except it never did. It was all lies, lies, lies. But Rosie’s eyes were wide and clear as they focused on Cara’s almost royal blue ones.