Linda Mitchelmore - The Little B & B at Cove End

‘Well, he’d hardly buy it after, would he?’ Josh said. But he said it with a grin to show he was only joking. ‘You’ve not told me much about your dad.’

‘I thought you knew,’ Mae said. Hands clasped, she and Josh were meandering slowly to wherever it was in the car park his sister’s car was. ‘You came with your dad that day …’

‘He said I had to,’ Josh said. His grin had dropped now. He looked more angry than sad that he’d been made to go with his dad and Mae to the funeral parlour.

‘I’m glad you did come,’ Mae said. ‘But you could have said no.’

‘No? To my dad? You have got to be kidding!’

‘At least you’ve still gone one,’ Mae said in a quiet little voice. Her dad hadn’t been perfect and he got cross sometimes if she interrupted him when he was doing stuff on the computer, and almost never remembered to buy her mum a Valentine’s card and stuff like that. But still she wished she could say, ‘My dad’s picking me up from school today,’ or something.

‘Yeah, but it’s not easy,’ Josh said. ‘You should have heard the fallout when I did say no to him. About going to uni. He quoted, chapter and verse, how much he’d spent on private education for me and how I was an ungrateful so-and so. He wanted me to do theology like he had. And his father and his grandfather before him.’

‘And you wanted to break the mould?’

‘Yeah. Gardening’s not his idea of a career move, although I think Monty Don would beg to differ.’

Mae had no idea who Monty Don might be, but she guessed he was a famous gardener or something. Mae often didn’t know who or what Josh was talking about but wasn’t so stupid as to ask because it would highlight the differences in their family backgrounds and their education. She didn’t want to sound too much like a schoolgirl even though that was what she was.

‘Mums and dads don’t always know what’s best for their kids, I shouldn’t think.’

‘ Your mum? Does she give you grief about going out with me? Being older?’

‘Yeah. Calls you Granddad!’ Mae giggled.

‘She doesn’t?’

‘No. I’m only joking. But she’s been pretty cool about stuff since Dad died. Her friend, Rosie, was there when I was getting ready to meet you, huffing and shrugging and letting me know by her body language she didn’t think I should go, but Mum’s a right pushover at the moment. Doesn’t want me to be hurt any more, you know. Anyway …’

Mae let her words fade away. Some date this was turning out to be; her anger over her dad’s death and now her mum wanting to turn Cove End into a B&B was threatening to bubble over. Josh was going to get pretty fed up of her in a minute.

‘But you came anyway,’ he said, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘Like I said just now, I know your dad died, and how. My dad’s version of it anyway. You can tell me if you want. I think you’ve got anger over your dad just under the surface the same as I have over mine. Yes?’

‘Probably,’ Mae agreed. ‘But since you ask, just for the record, Dad made me angry a long ago before he went and got himself killed. He sold the dinghy without telling me and I loved going out in that with him. I don’t know why he did that. And then he sold Mum’s car and she couldn’t drive me into Totnes for my Saturday dance class any more. Like he didn’t care about me, you know. And there’s not been much cash for Mum and me since, which is why she’s got this stupid idea about turning the house into a B&B.’ Mae sniffed back tears.

‘If this was an old black and white movie, I’d whip out a pristine white handkerchief and offer it to you to mop up your tears.’ Josh dangled an imaginary handkerchief in front of Mae’s face.

‘Idiot!’ she laughed, pretending to take it. She felt a bit better having told Josh about her dad, although she doubted she would have if he hadn’t slagged his off a bit. It felt good that she could do that – that they both could.

‘I’m glad that’s off your pretty little chest,’ Josh said.

‘Yeah, sorry. Didn’t mean to be a drain.’

‘You’re not. But it must have been awful for your mum, too.’

Had Josh said that a few minutes ago, she might have snapped that he would say that, what with his dad being a vicar and everything – that he’d been brought up to say stuff like that whether he believed it or not. But now … well now she knew a little bit more about Josh, she could see the big house he lived in, the private education he’d had and the foreign holidays they went on meant nothing if he and his dad were at loggerheads all the time.

‘Did you mean it?’ Mae said. ‘About me telling you about my dad?’

Mae hadn’t had anyone to talk about it to really – what went before; before he’d died. There had been a couple of teachers who’d kept her back after a lesson when she’d been thinking about stuff and unable to concentrate who’d said if she needed someone to talk to, then she only had to ask. But what could they do?

‘Sure,’ Josh said. ‘Shall we sit for a bit?’

They were nearing a bench that was in the sunshine, a willow opposite dipping its frondy new growth almost to the grass.

‘Yeah. Okay.’ She took a deep breath and sat down, her hand still in Josh’s. ‘I don’t know if your mum and dad row …’

‘Big time!’ Josh interrupted. ‘Language too. Some of it very Anglo-Saxon!’

‘Really?’ Mae said, stunned.

‘The image of the benign reverend can be a myth!’

‘Right. Okay. Well, mine rowed but not big time. No bad language as far as I could hear. Most of it was sort of theatrical whispering, in the dead of night. It went on and on sometimes although I couldn’t hear what they were saying exactly. And sometimes I’d hear raised voices when I came in from school or something and they’d stop abruptly when they heard me shut the door, and it would be all false smiles and ‘Hello, darling, good day?’ and all that.’

‘Same in our house,’ Josh said. ‘They’d be arguing for England about something, then there’d be a knock on the door and I’d answer it and shout through that it was old Mrs Ellis or someone come to talk about her husband’s funeral and they’d appear in the hall, arms around one another, all smiles. I don’t know if there’s ever been a couple who hasn’t had a row or ten.’

‘No,’ Mae said. She and Josh hadn’t had one. Yet. She’d tackle that hurdle when she came to it. But right now, Mae thought that they’d exhausted the subject of rowing parents and how it affected their children. ‘But I don’t want to talk about it any more. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Josh said.

He stood up, pulling Mae with him. He let go of her hand and put an arm around her shoulders instead. Mae snuggled into him, feeling loved. Feeling safe. They began to walk more quickly towards the park gates.

‘What time have you got to be in?’ Josh asked, which only served to make her feel less like Josh’s girlfriend and more like a small child he was looking after. It knocked the wind right out of her sails for a moment.

‘Eight,’ she said.

‘Right.’

They were navigating the car park now.

‘Can we get a drink on the way?’ Mae asked. She quite fancied a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio – Rosie always brought a bottle or two when she came to visit and her mum always let her have a glass with dinner when she did.

‘Ah, Andy Povey won’t serve me wine for you. But we can pick up a bottle of something and take it down to Fairy Cove.’

‘Just the one bottle?’ Mae giggled – already she could taste the Pinot Grigio she knew Josh would buy on her tongue. Rosie didn’t like her mum letting her have a glass of wine and read her mum the riot act when she found out. Then Rosie gave Mae a lecture on the dangers of alcohol and how it altered your thinking, your rationale. Rosie used a lot of fancy words like that … rationale.