Linda Mitchelmore - The Little B & B at Cove End

Cara ran along Higher Street praying she’d catch the corner shop before it closed for the night. The sky was beginning to darken, that lovely indigo shade shot through with fuchsia pink that Cara loved, and which usually meant that tomorrow would be a fine day. She speeded up as she saw Meg Smythson walk towards the door of her shop, as though she was about to lock up. But Meg had seen Cara and held the door open for her to go in.

‘Well, fancy,’ Meg said. ‘I had your Mae in here earlier. Lovely girl, your Mae. Where does she get those dresses she wears?’

Mae had been to the shop? Cara wondered what for, and what she might have bought, not that she had a lot to buy anything with, but the bank was paying Cara a small widow’s pension, even though it wasn’t stretching very far and Cara liked to give Mae a bit of pocket money.

‘Charity shops,’ Cara said. ‘And a stall in Totnes Market. And she’s had some of it for ages, waiting to grow into it.’

‘Well, she looks stunning in them,’ Meg said. ‘And is going to be more beautiful still once she’s finished her growing. With that Josh Maynard, she was.’

Cara didn’t like the way Meg had put the word ‘that’ in front of Josh’s name, as though he was something best left in the gutter.

‘I know. She’s going out with him.’

‘Bit of a disappointment to his dad is that Josh,’ Meg said. ‘Wanted university for his son, he did, but all that was in Josh’s head was surfing and earning money and he was having none of it. Never going to get rich gardening, is he?’

Cara suddenly felt defensive of Josh. She didn’t like his character being ripped to shreds by Meg, any more than she’d liked it when Mae had been dismissive of Rosie.

‘Monty Don seems to do very well from gardening on TV,’ Cara said. She had a ‘bit of a thing’ for Monty Don as she imagined many viewers did.

‘Another world, that, TV,’ Meg countered, her voice dripping with disdain. ‘Hardly Larracombe, is it? A bit of lawn-mowing for the Thrupps at Barley Mead, and a quick strim around the edge of the graves up at St Peter’s.’

Cara’s blood seemed to chill in her veins at that last remark – Mark was buried in the graveyard at St Peter’s. She hadn’t been there for a while to lay flowers or just to stand there and talk to him, tell him how sorry she was for everything that had happened between them. She wondered if Mae had. She could ask, of course, but Mae thought questions like that were an intrusion so Cara tended to hold back. But right now Cara didn’t really have the time or the inclination to be getting into any sort of philosophical argument with Meg about gardening and TV and she could only think that life wasn’t too exciting amongst the pre-packaged potatoes and the newspapers and the bars of Cadbury Milk, and that when Meg did manage to get an audience she liked to share an opinion or two.

‘Have you ever asked Josh if he wants to be rich?’ Cara asked. ‘Or if, perhaps, he’s happy working the soil, growing things?’

Meg Smythson bridled.

‘Well, all I’m saying is,’ Meg said, leaning closer towards Cara as though someone might overhear her even though there was no one else in her shop, ‘I know I’m telling tales out of school, and that Josh can charm the birds from the trees, but it was alcohol he was buying.’

‘And is legally able to do so,’ Cara said. ‘He’s over eighteen.’

‘Ah yes,’ Meg said. ‘I know that.’ She tapped the side of her nose. ‘And he assured me it was for his parents’ consumption, if you know what I mean.’

Cara knew. Meg Smythson was implying that Mae would be given a share of the wine and none of it would be going back to the rectory.

‘Eggs,’ Cara said. ‘I’d like half a dozen large eggs if you’ve got them. And a packet of best back bacon. Sausages – chipolatas if you have them. Oh, and a thick sliced loaf. Please.’

There were, Cara knew, a couple of tomatoes in the salad box of the fridge that had gone a bit soft but which would be perfect to go with a fried breakfast, and there was an unopened jar of marmalade in the cupboard, won at Mae’s school winter fair, and neither of them liked marmalade, so that would have to do.

‘And a dozen or so mushrooms,’ Cara added, as she spied a basket on the counter with milky-white button mushrooms in it.

‘Got guests, have you?’ Meg said, taking a packet of bacon from the fridge and handing it to Cara. ‘I saw the sign. You’ve had the council people in, hygiene and that, I expect?’

‘Er, yes. Of course,’ Cara said, hoping Meg wouldn’t realise the word ‘yes’ wasn’t the answer to both questions. How had she completely overlooked the possibility that she might have to be registered to take in B&B guests and have her kitchen and bathrooms passed for hygiene?

Well, that’s what widowhood did to you, wasn’t it? It deprived you of rational thinking for a while at least. And widowhood, mixed with the terrible guilt that Mark wouldn’t have died had she not asked him to leave, was threatening to overwhelm her now. She made a show of examining a tin of chicken curry on the shelf beside her, just for something to do – so she wouldn’t have to look Meg Smythson in the eye and run the risk that Meg would know she was lying.

‘Good,’ Meg said. ‘Because if you haven’t had the hygiene people in before guests arrive, then they take a very dim view of the whole thing. A very dim view.’

Meg reached for the mushrooms to weigh them out. She sniffed, giving her head a shake and her shoulders a shudder as if envisaging the dire consequences for Cara if she’d failed to register with the council.

‘And they take a very dim view of underage drinking around here as well,’ Meg finished. ‘No matter it might be the vicar’s son what offered that drink.’

Oh dear, Cara thought, Meg Smythson didn’t like me stopping her telling tales about Josh and Mae, did she?

‘And that’ll be four pounds and ninety-seven pence,’ Meg said. ‘Shocking the price of things today, isn’t it? Money goes nowhere, does it? And I expect with you being a widow now it’s even …’

‘Here’s the money,’ Cara said, certain that there had been knowing in Meg’s voice and it was a crowing sort of knowing rather than a sympathetic one. She couldn’t get out of the shop fast enough.

And if anyone from the council should turn up in the morning, she’d tell them that the Hines were personal friends and that she wasn’t charging them. There, stuff that in your pipe and smoke it, Meg Smythson!

‘Josh, no!’ Mae said. ‘You can’t drive. You’ve drunk almost the whole bottle.’

She lunged towards him and tried to snatch the car keys from him, but he jerked his hand away, held them over his head so that Mae couldn’t reach. The car was parked at the bottom of a rough, narrow lane that led to a secluded rocky beach – a perfect place for courting couples although theirs was the only car there at the moment. How she was going to get herself out of this predicament she didn’t know yet, but she’d think of something. Foremost in her mind was stopping Josh from driving.

‘You want it all, you do,’ Josh said, slurring his words slightly. ‘Or don’t want it in your case.’

Josh slid a hand between her knees, and began to slide it up her thigh, but Mae pushed it away.

‘No, Josh. Don’t. Please.’

Josh had never done that before and Mae wondered if it was the alcohol affecting his judgment – he knew she was underage for sex and she’d told him, right at the beginning, that she wasn’t up for that and he said he understood. Mae shifted sideways on the car seat to put a bit more distance between her and Josh, wondering why alcohol seemed to change a person’s personality the more they drank. They either became louder and funnier if they were cheerful people to begin with, but the flipside of that was that some people became nasty and mean. Where had the Josh, who was so kind and understanding when she’d been remembering her dad, gone? She was pretty certain now that Josh had been drinking before they’d met. Bailey’s words flashed through her mind – ‘He got my sister rat-arsed and it wasn’t pretty’ . Well, she wasn’t even tiddly. Perhaps what Bailey had warned her about had been in the back of her mind all the time.