by Della Galton
‘I did. And Zoe said the reception was a riot.’
‘There was a lot of dancing and drunkenness. Just as a good reception should be. And James and Isobel adored the honeymoon suite in the lighthouse. She actually put a five-star review on TripAdvisor after breakfast this morning. Check this out.’ He showed her on his phone.
‘The little darling,’ Clara said, as she read the glowing recommendation. Perhaps everything had worked out all right in the end.
On Monday afternoon, which was Mr B’s day off this week, Clara had a visit from him too.
‘I came to say I’m really sorry about Portia and Prudence,’ he said, as soon as Clara had invited him in. ‘My kunekunes,’ he explained, when she looked at him blankly. ‘I’ve told Kate that I was totally responsible for what happened. Well, I was totally responsible for taking them to the Bluebell in the first place. It was not my fault they escaped from the kennels. I am pleased to report that they are now safely in their new paddock and they’re happy as pigs in…’ He spread his hands and smirked. ‘Fill in the blank.’
She wanted to say ‘cake’, but she hadn’t quite reached the ‘finding it funny’ stage.
‘How did they get out of the kennels?’ she asked.
‘They were let out by our saboteur.’ Mr B widened his eyes dramatically. ‘The same person who set off the fire alarm at the worst possible moment. At least we assume it was the same person. We don’t have CCTV of that part of the top floor, but we do have CCTV of the dog kennels, which Kate has been going through. It was a man, slim build, about 5ft 8, who let them out. It was clearly deliberate – he put his toe up poor Portia’s bottom, the scumbag. We think it might be the reporter again. Or someone who looks very much like him. Last time he had a scarf over his face and this time he had his head down. But that’s where my money is. And, in other news…’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘I’ve remembered where I know him from…’
‘Where?’ Clara asked, feeling her heart beat a little faster.
‘From the Yacht Club,’ Mr B finished triumphantly.
She stared at him in amazement. ‘I didn’t know you were even a member of the Yacht Club. I thought you hated the boating fraternity.’
‘I do and I’m not a member. But Meg, my better half, goes sometimes. And I’ve been to a couple of their dos with her because that’s the kind of supportive boyfriend I am. That ferrety reporter has been there both times with his stuck-up girlfriend, whose name I forget, but it will come to me.’
‘Right,’ Clara said. She still failed to see how this could help or how it was even relevant, but Mr B looked so pleased with himself that she didn’t like to say anything.
‘You’re probably wondering what the relevance of the Yacht Club is,’ he went on. ‘But, believe me, that’s where our problem will be rooted. It’s all about money.’
‘Go on.’
‘They’re like The Masons – secret handshakes and backhanders and lifelong allegiances. Am I allowed to say that, these days?’ He looked around the room quickly as if he were expecting a Mason to pop up from behind the couch. Knowing Mr B, he probably was.
‘I see,’ Clara said, now totally bemused.
He steepled his hands and gave her a look which said he could see that she didn’t understand a word of what he was talking about so he was now going to spell it out in words of one syllable. ‘They don’t like to see anyone doing well who isn’t in their circle. The Bluebell is way too much of a success story. We are a victim of our own success.’ He sat back in his chair.
‘It’s a lot of trouble to go to though, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, but there’ll be an endgame. There always is.’ Suddenly he shot forward again. ‘Veronica Cooper Clark. That’s her name. The stuck-up girlfriend.’ He breathed out a sigh of satisfaction. ‘I knew it would come back to me. I’ve got a near photographic memory.’ He paused. ‘By the way, while we’re on the subject of names, Zoe guessed my surname yesterday.’ He didn’t look too perturbed. ‘Thanks for not telling anyone.’
‘Were they surprised? It must have been a disappointment to find out it was quite ordinary, after all.’
‘Oh, they’ve had plenty of fun with Bacon,’ Mr B narrowed his eyes. ‘I let them take the piss for the entire day and then I told them they’ve still got to call me Mr B or there will be consequences of the dire variety.’
‘You’re very wise.’
‘I know.’ He brightened. ‘Fortunately, what with all the palaver about my surname and the excitement of the prize – I am currently in the design stage of Zoe’s Zabaglione – they’ve given up on trying to guess my first name.’
‘Do you think that’s a permanent state of affairs?’
‘Let’s hope so – eh? If they ever find out my first name’s Chris and my middle name starts with a P, I’ll never hear the bloody end of it.’
Clara took her cue from him and she managed not to smile.
He finally left after another two coffees and several more theories about why members of the Yacht Club wouldn’t want a place like the Bluebell Cliff to be doing well. These ranged from various grudge motives that were mainly rooted in the old boy’s network to the fact that someone in the Yacht Club wanted the site for an upmarket marina and couldn’t have it while there was a hotel there. This didn’t seem that likely, considering the fact it was on top of a cliff.
Clara was quite relieved when he’d gone. He was hard work to be around when he was in full-on conspiracy-theory mode. She’d had difficulty trying to think of a single motive for someone to be attacking the Bluebell, but Mr B had difficulty in narrowing it down to just a few. He’d had way too much practice in getting to the bottom of what he called the ‘real reason’ people did things, as opposed to the ostensive one.
Her third visitor was Adam. He arrived early on Monday evening, not long after Mr B had left. Clara felt surprise, swiftly followed by a flash of pleasure, when she opened the front door and saw him standing there.
‘Clara, apologies for just turning up like this.’ His dark eyes were threaded through with concern. ‘But I thought it might be easier to call in person than to carry on playing voicemail tag…’
She stepped back from the door, feeling ridiculously pleased to see him. ‘Do you have time to come in?’
‘Sure. If I’m not holding you up.’
‘I’m off work at the moment,’ she said, wondering if he knew.
It turned out that he did. ‘I heard what happened on Saturday,’ he said as they sat in the kitchen. His eyes were serious. ‘And I heard that Kate was back.’
‘News travels fast,’ she said, and he inclined his head in acknowledgment, but actually it felt good that they didn’t have to do small talk and beat about the bush. She liked that about him. She had liked it from the moment they met – well, possibly not on the first two or three meetings, but from then on in it had been good.
Her mind flicked back to the last time he had been here. How much they had shared then – how he’d told her about losing Shona, as they had sat in the anonymous darkness of Kate’s lounge. Maybe he regretted telling her that. She had wondered if he had when they had met at Oktoberfest and neither of them had referred to it.
‘Kate wasn’t originally coming back until this Saturday coming,’ Clara said. ‘But she was worried about all the things that have been going on. The Curly Wurly disaster was the final straw. Then she managed to get a cancellation on an earlier flight.’
‘It seems your chef might not have been so far out after all,’ Adam said. ‘With his conspiracy theories.’
‘I know. I don’t think he’s always right. But someone certainly has been trying to discredit us. It’s been happening for a few months. I wasn’t sure at first. But I am now. I thought for a while it may be directed at me personally.’ She told him about Will.
‘I suppose it’s possible, but don’t you think it’s just as likely, if not more so, that someone is targeting Kate? At the end of the day, it’s the hotel that they’re
trying to discredit. Yes, you would lose your job if they succeed in putting the Bluebell out of business, but Kate would lose so much more.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Nick and I were discussing it the other day. It also might be easier to have a go at her hotel while she’s away. Especially if whoever’s behind it is someone she actually knows. Kate isn’t as likely to catch on so quickly if she’s not here – and then when she does realise something’s amiss, she’d be inclined to look at her staff, not an outside enemy. I imagine that would suit a saboteur.’
‘You have been thinking about it,’ Clara said and he glanced at her.
‘This is probably completely inappropriate and terrible timing, but I – I like you, Clara. The thought of someone having a go at you, either directly or indirectly, makes my blood boil… oh hell – I probably shouldn’t have said that. It’s a long time since I cared enough to feel protective towards a woman.’ She raised her eyebrows and he rubbed his forehead, frowned and stood up, his chair legs scraping the tiles. ‘I should go. I’ve outstayed my welcome…’
She stood up too. ‘No you shouldn’t. You haven’t. I like the idea of you getting angry on my behalf.’
They stared at each other. But for once she didn’t feel as though she was way shorter than he was, a stubby dumpling of a woman – she felt petite and protected and she also felt something she’d felt once or twice before around him. There was something about his vulnerability and his openness that made him very strong.
‘I like you too,’ she went on. God, that was an understatement. ‘I really enjoy your company. I’ve wanted to ask you out for a repeat performance of our dinner at The Five Gold Coins for ages.’ She shot him a glance to see how he was taking this and saw that she had his total attention.
‘I’m not surprised you didn’t. Nick says I built a border wall after Shona and I sometimes think he’s right. It’s a lot easier to add bricks to it than take it down.’
‘Well, you did make it pretty clear that you preferred plants to people.’
‘Yeah. I know. I was lying. It’s high time I set the record straight. Would you like to go out for dinner with me, Clara King? A proper date where we don’t talk about business or our past or saboteurs – unless we want to, I mean?’
‘Won’t we run out of things to say?’ She was aware that they had taken a step closer to each other and now he put his hands on the outside of her arms, a little tentatively and she could feel the warmth of his fingers through the sleeves of her blouse and she could smell the scent of his aftershave, which was becoming familiar and something she associated very much with pleasure.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I don’t think we will.’
29
Adam was right. They didn’t run out of things to say. They went to The Ship, which was one of the many pubs in town. But it wouldn’t have mattered where they went, Clara thought later, because once they’d found a table in a little booth – The Ship was the kind of pub that had little booths – their external surroundings became muted and unimportant. She was occasionally aware of a burst of laughter from a nearby table or a waft of cinnamon and lemongrass; The Ship had a Thai menu. She was also aware that there were red carpets and curtains and a bar with friendly staff, but mostly she was aware of Adam.
It reminded her of the time they’d gone out to The Five Gold Coins in that there was a certain amount of flirting and banter, but they talked about other things too, this time. Deeper things, such as the love they both had for their families and their values and their fears and their insecurities and their mistakes.
‘I didn’t deliberately shut down after I lost Shona,’ Adam told her. ‘In fact, for the first couple of years I went a bit mad. I went on an internet-dating binge. I think I was trying to blank out the grief, overwrite all the painful memories with better ones. It didn’t work. Not surprisingly. No one compared to her. It just made me depressed.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Clara could feel his pain, evoked even now by the memory.
‘After that, I just buried myself in work. I went back to Plan A. Making my fortune.’ He shook his head. ‘That didn’t help much either. What about you? Did you have your heart broken? Is that why you’ve never got married?’
‘No. My story isn’t as dramatic as that.’ She wiped a smear of condensation from the outside of her glass. She’d ordered a white wine as he was driving, but she hadn’t drunk very much. ‘It’s really very boring. I just haven’t met anyone I’ve wanted to settle down with. My family think I’m too picky. My sister says there is no knight in shining armour, but actually I know that already and I don’t really want one.’
He pulled a face – mock disappointment. ‘So I don’t need to buy a suit of armour then? Just as well. They’re blinking heavy.’ A beat. ‘Metaphorically too, I suspect.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ They were so much on the same wavelength. ‘My mum says that all relationships are a compromise,’ she added. ‘And I agree with that too. Of course they are, but I’ve never wanted to compromise to the point of losing my integrity. If I am going to settle down with someone, it has to be because I can’t bear to be without them, not because I can’t bear to be alone.’
‘Hear hear.’ He sipped his Diet Coke.
‘And I think I told you before that when it comes to longevity, the bar is quite high in my family.’ She suddenly remembered that she hadn’t updated him about Grandad.
His expression sobered when she told him about the heart attack and then lightened again when she said that he was making a good recovery.
‘It’s very early days, of course. But Gran is fussing around him like there’s no tomorrow. They are both so aware that there very nearly wasn’t.’
‘Bless them,’ he said, a strange mixture of pain and relief in his eyes, and she broke off, aware that he must be remembering that sometimes there wasn’t. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, catching her look and interpreting it correctly. ‘Taking things for granted is part of the human condition. We all do it nearly all of the time. It’s hard not to.’
They left The Ship around ten p.m. – ‘I have to get up for the breakfasts even if you don’t,’ Adam said. ‘Not that we’re full or anything even close. But you have to get up for a quarter of a restaurant just as early as you have to get up for a full one.’ As he opened the passenger door of the Jaguar for her, he said, ‘The other reason I came round to see you tonight – as well as to check you were OK I mean – was because I wanted to tell you something before it becomes common knowledge.’ He shut her door and got into the driver’s seat and put on his seat belt. ‘We’ve just put the Manor House on the market.’
‘Oh my goodness.’ She stared at him in the dimness of the car. ‘How come? It’s not because of Nick, is it?’
‘It’s partly because of Nick,’ he said, putting the key into the ignition but not starting the engine. He rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared out of the windscreen into the dark car park. ‘His illness doesn’t help. But, to be honest, it’s really about the hotel. The figures don’t add up. We’re hardly breaking even, let alone making a profit. It’s not really viable for us to continue.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘That must be really disappointing.’
‘It is, but we’ve had a long time to get used to it.’ He turned to look at her. ‘So it isn’t surprising. With hindsight, we should probably have bought a little B&B in town, not a bloody great place on the cliffs. Bearing in mind that neither of us really knew what we were doing. Ho hum! We live and learn.’
‘Well, I think it’s much better to have gone full out for a dream than never to have tried at all,’ she said staunchly.
‘That’s what Nick thinks too,’ he said, starting the car and pulling out onto the main road. ‘And I think I probably agree. It was actually his decision to finally throw in the towel – not mine.’
There was a sadness in the car now and Clara couldn’t think of a single thing to say that would help, so she sa
id nothing. In the end, it was Adam who broke the pause.
‘I’m guessing we’ll be there for a while yet. Hotels don’t sell very quickly.’
Clara didn’t think she would ever get to sleep that night; Adam filled her thoughts. His voice, his lovely eyes, his touch. She had a feeling they had started something important tonight. Embarked on a relationship that was going to be long term.
When he had dropped her off, he had insisted on walking her to the bungalow’s front door and then he had leaned in and kissed her very gently on the lips. It had been tender and gentle and she hadn’t wanted him to stop. And then, without either of them instigating it, the kiss had moved up a gear. The dozens of tiny flickers of electricity that had sparked between them all evening had morphed into several hundred volts of passion.
Bloody hell. It was a good job Kate had no neighbours near enough to overlook them, she’d thought, when they had finally pulled apart and looked at each other breathlessly. Clara could see the same slightly disbelieving look in his eyes that she knew must be in hers.
‘To be continued?’ he’d said.
‘Oh definitely.’ They’d grinned at each other like idiots.
‘Shall we speak tomorrow to arrange something?’ His voice was tender.
‘Sounds perfect.’
As she had watched him drive away, she had felt an overwhelming rightness in her heart. A quiet certainty that this was what she had been waiting for – maybe all of her life. A relationship with someone she knew shared her values, someone who set her senses racing but who could also end up as her best friend.
Suddenly it didn’t matter that absolutely everything else was up in the air.
While the saboteur was still at large, her future was uncertain. Adam’s future was uncertain too. She hadn’t asked what he and Nick would do when the Manor House was sold. Maybe it depended on how much money they lost. The two most likely buyers for a place that size were a hotel chain or a developer and neither of them would want to pay much. The economic climate was too uncertain. He was right about nothing being likely to happen very quickly though. Big hotels like that could take years to sell.
