The Little B & B at Cove End

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Nothing like,’ Cara said. ‘Sit down. I’ll tell you. And before you tell me it’s far, far, too early to be drinking Prosecco, I’m having one. I need it. And you can have one too. You can stop the night because there aren’t any guests in. Only Tom.’

  ‘And he’s graduated to live-in lover?’

  ‘Not, um, yet,’ Cara said.

  ‘That’s my girl. Ever cautious,’ Rosie giggled. ‘But he might.’

  ‘He might. And that’s all I’m saying,’ Cara said. ‘My lips on that subject from now on are sealed!’ She took the Prosecco from the fridge, and found two glasses. Deftly she took out the cork and began to fill the glasses.

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t downed a bottle already? Your cheeks are all pink and you’re sort of sparkly. You look great, by the way. Chartreuse is a colour only a redhead like you can wear, and if you weren’t my best friend I’d hate you for it because it’s my fave colour, but it makes me look like a cadaver.’

  ‘I’ll take that back-handed compliment, thank you,’ Cara laughed.

  She was glad she’d chosen that particular dress now. Cut on the bias with a petticoat neckline and a frilled hem that stopped just above her ankles, it made her feel younger, sexier, slimmer. And comfortable.

  ‘If it’s not a post-coital glow you’ve got, then it’s something. And I want some.’

  ‘The glow or the Prosecco?’

  ‘Both.’ Rosie held out a perfectly manicured hand – the nail polish the colour and gloss of a London taxi in the rain – for the glass Cara was handing to her. ‘God but it’s good to see you looking so … stunning wouldn’t be too strong a word to use. You sure you’ve not been on the bottle already?’ She reached out and with the back of her hand and touched it to Cara’s cheek. ‘Yep, you’re hot! We must live in hope that Tom thinks so too when he sees you …’

  ‘Stop it! And no, this is the first today. There’ll be more later, but this is a little celebration. I’m glad you’re early because I wouldn’t have wanted to celebrate alone.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ Rosie said. ‘Never drink alone is my motto. To which end, I’ve got this little white velour bear called Blanco I prop up in a chair if ever I feel the need for, er, a little celebration.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I do. And stop hedging. What are we celebrating?’

  ‘Mae. Me and Mae. I’ve got my daughter back. You wouldn’t believe what she was telling me just now. Just spilling out of her it was, like the bubbles that just spilled out of this bottle.’

  ‘I won’t believe it if you don’t tell me, sweetie,’ Rosie said.

  So Cara did, gulping back tears of emotion and joy every now and then. She told Rosie everything. Topping up their glasses when they’d drunk them down halfway. Dutch courage.

  ‘Seems prepping food is as good as therapy, then?’ Rosie said. ‘And cheaper. And I have to commend you for your fortitude in fighting the waterfall that was threatening to tumble over – it would have wrecked your mascara. And bloodshot is so not a good look. Where’s Mae gone anyway?’

  ‘To Bailey’s. She’s gone to invite him and his sister and her boyfriend back later.’

  ‘Christ!’ Rosie said. ‘How much do they eat? I mean, there’s you and me, Tom, and four of Mae and her gang, but there’s enough stuff here for a Downing Street drinks’ party.’

  ‘I’m just hoping it’ll be enough. Tom’s agent and her husband are coming, and some other arty people from London and possibly some people who collect Tom’s work …’

  ‘Some single ones, I hope. Of the male variety. Someone to give me the glow that you’ve got, and if you think I believe it’s totally down to the fact you and Mae have stopped being at one another’s throats, then you’re living in cloud cuckoo land! And what’s more …’

  Cara picked up a prawn-stuffed canapé.

  ‘Open wide,’ she said. ‘I think only eating is going to stop your nonsense!’

  And with that she ran from the room in search of her bag and a cardigan for later in case they were later back than expected. Cara had never been to a private viewing before, or an art exhibition for that matter, despite having collected art, because she’d always bought from galleries before. Like Mae had said so very recently … the art exhibition was changing so many people in so many ways.

  Who’d have thought it!

  ‘Mae?’ Bailey said as he opened his front door to her knock.

  ‘I know. Bit of a shock, isn’t it? But it’s me.’

  ‘Is something wrong? You said to meet me at the hall. You’ve not changed your mind or something?’

  Bailey looked concerned, like he was going to be given the brush-off or something, although most people did that by text these days.

  ‘Nope,’ Mae said. ‘Mind’s as good as it ever was. It’s my clothes I’ve changed. Can I come in?’

  Mae had never been to Bailey’s house – a small terraced cottage at a right-angle to the harbour, with just one window beside the small front door and two bedroom windows and a dormer above. The contrast between how small it was and her own, large home up on the hill was a bit of a surprise. How did they all fit in – Bailey and his parents and his sister, Xia?

  ‘Course,’ Bailey said. He leaned in to kiss Mae and she could smell the fragrance he used … or it could be aftershave, although she didn’t think Bailey had started shaving yet.

  He ushered her inside. ‘Excuse the smell of fish. Some holidaymaker came into the pub with mackerel they’d caught on a fishing trip but couldn’t take back to their hotel. So Xia brought some home.’

  ‘Smells good to me,’ Mae said. She leaned towards Bailey who had grabbed hold of her hand to draw her into the house.

  ‘Who is it, Bailey?’ Mae heard Mrs Lucas call.

  ‘Mae,’ Bailey shouted back.

  His mother came bustling out. Mae had only ever seen her at school events a couple of times, but she was younger and prettier than she’d remembered, probably the same age as her own mum but not so stylishly dressed. Not that that mattered.

  ‘Hello, lovie,’ she said. ‘Bailey’s told me all about you.’

  Mae liked the use of the term ‘lovie’ that Devonians used – from Mrs Lucas’s lips it sounded almost like a caress.

  ‘Oh, has he?’ Mae said.

  ‘The good bits, of course,’ Mrs Lucas said. ‘Don’t fret. Do you want a cup of tea, lovie?’

  She looked genuinely pleased that Mae had turned up.

  ‘No thanks,’ Mae said. ‘I’ve got to be down at the hall in, oh God, ten minutes or something, but I wanted to ask if Xia and her boyfriend would like to come back to ours after. Mum’s having a bit of a “do” for Tom. You know, the artist who’s been stopping. We live at Cove End.’

  ‘I know where you live, lovie,’ Mrs Lucas said. ‘Lovely house it is. And busy as a B&B, so I’ve heard. Well good for your mum, I say. And I’m sure Xia would love to. She’s in the shower at the moment – I expect you can hear it jumping off its chocks up there, she’s been in there so long!’

  Mrs Lucas was beginning to sound as nervous about Mae being in her hallway as Mae was about being there. So many people knew so much about her, what had happened with her dad, and it must be as awkward for them as it was for her. Mrs Lucas wasn’t judging her though, she could tell.

  ‘Mum! You’re rabbiting,’ Bailey said. ‘And is that fish burning I can smell?’

  ‘Oh, lawks, it could be,’ Mrs Lucas said, turning to run back to the kitchen.

  On impulse Mae followed, dragging Bailey with her.

  The Lucas kitchen was small but quirkily laid out with open shelves on the walls, and curtains on the bottom cupboards instead of doors.

  ‘Just caught it!’ Mrs Lucas said, pulling the pan from the flame.

  ‘Sorry, that was my fault, just turning up,’ Mae said. She inhaled the distinctive aroma of pan-friend mackerel fillets. She’d always loved fish. Well, you couldn’t live in Larracombe and not like fish!

  ‘Gooseber
ry sauce goes well with mackerel,’ Mae said. ‘And I know it sounds all wrong because it’s for Christmas, but cranberry jelly’s not bad either.’

  Where was all this stuff coming from? Jamie Oliver cookery programmes and Scott at the Beachcomber were her sum total of culinary advice. But she’d tried both and liked it. Before today she didn’t think she’d have dared give advice to someone who must have cooked hundreds of meals for her family.

  ‘Well, the jelly I can do,’ Mrs Lucas said, reaching for a jar on one of the open shelves. ‘Me and the resident hero have got a lot to eat up now seeing as Bailey and Xia will be up at yours later.’

  The resident hero? Mr Lucas presumably? What a fabulous expression!

  ‘You could come as well if you want, Mrs Lucas,’ Mae said. ‘Save the mackerel for another day. Mum’s made, like, mountains of stuff. And there’ll be fizz. Only Prosecco but …’

  ‘There’s posh!’ Mrs Lucas laughed. ‘But not this time, lovie. Some other time.’

  ‘Mae?’ Bailey said, anxiously now. ‘Isn’t there some place you have to be?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Sorry.’ Mae glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. She only had about ten minutes to get there now … she could make it if she ran.

  ‘Bye, Mrs Lucas,’ Mae said as Bailey practically dragged her to the door.

  ‘Nothing like your posh place, is it?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t!’ Mae said. ‘It’s your home, and it’s lovely. I like your mum.’

  Mae liked that Mrs Lucas had given her children unusual names. If ever she had a child, she’d make sure to give him, or her, an unusual name, something to make her child feel special, different in a good way. And besides, Bailey’s dad was still at home and what would Mae give to be able to say ‘Mum and Dad’ again in the same sentence.

  ‘She goes on a bit sometimes,’ Bailey said. ‘She knows about your dad but like I said, we don’t blab in this family. Anyway, I’m keeping you. Got to get myself into something smarter for later. It’s starting to feel a bit grown up, all this art private viewing stuff and coming to yours afterwards. You look great by the way.’

  Bailey ran a hand up and down Mae’s arm and it made her tingle in a way his touch hadn’t before, not like that anyway. Perhaps she was growing up a bit as well, wanting more than hand-holding and a few kisses with Bailey.

  ‘Thanks for the compliment,’ Mae said. ‘I thought it was time to embrace the twenty-first century. D’you know this is the first pair of jeans I’ve ever owned. Well, loaned, because they’re Mum’s.’

  ‘You didn’t have to do it for me, Mae, you know that,’ Bailey said. ‘Okay, I won’t lie and say I haven’t I’ve had a bit of stick for being seen out with you in the fancy frocks, but Mum said it was only jealousy and to ignore it.’

  ‘Best way,’ Mae said. ‘But I’ll put one on for the school prom … if you’ll be my escort?’

  The prom wasn’t until November – months away yet – but she hoped she’d still be going out with Bailey then. She’d let him know as much anyway.

  ‘That’s a date,’ Bailey said. ‘Old-fashioned word “date” but it’s kind of appropriate, eh?’

  Mae smiled but couldn’t think of a thing to say. The conversation seemed to have run its course, but no doubt it would flow easily enough again once the exhibition was over and they were back at Cove End discussing it.

  ‘Right, I’m off,’ Mae said. ‘See you in … whatever.’

  She turned and ran down the hill.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘Darling, I don’t think I can,’ Cara said. ‘I’m getting cold feet.’

  Mae, looking so young and fresh and flushed with a sort of dog-rose glow about her cheeks, had an arm linked through Cara’s and was almost dragging her towards the village hall. There was a huge sign across the door.

  TOM GASSON-SMITH – INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED ARTIST

  Just Tom. No mention of Louise. Cara breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Mum, you have to. Tom went on and on about how I had to get you there, so I asked him what it was worth and he said, possibly a tablet – a Dell. They’re the best.’

  ‘Mae, Tom is not going to buy you an expensive tablet. Or any tablet for that matter. If anyone buys you a tablet, it will be me.’

  ‘Whoever comes up with the readies first,’ Mae said with a grin. ‘But we’d better go in. And before Rosie arrives. You know what she’s like – she’ll get all hyper-excited being in the same room as a famous artist and everything.’

  She leaned against Cara’s shoulder and Cara rather liked this new turn of events, with Mae less snippy. Happier. She’d even stopped calling Tom, Michelangelo.

  ‘You look good in jeans, Mae,’ Cara said, still not quite believing that Mae was wearing her first-ever pair of jeans. ‘I would have bought them for you before, only …’

  ‘Delaying tactics,’ Mae butted in. ‘Stop it, Mum. What I’m wearing is not the issue here today, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Cara said, knowing she’d been trying to hold off the moment. She must have had hundreds of imagined scenarios about what Tom’s paintings would be of, and why he said she was going to get a surprise, but she had a feeling she hadn’t thought of whatever it was actually going to be.

  ‘Well, we’re here,’ Mae said, as arm-in-arm, mother and daughter arrived at the door of the village hall.

  Cara took her arm from Mae’s and pushed open the door. She took a deep, steadying breath. How stupid to be so nervous about looking at a few paintings.

  ‘But there’s no one here,’ Cara said as she and Mae, hand-in-hand, closed the door of the hall behind them.

  ‘Only me,’ Tom said, suddenly appearing from behind the stage curtain. ‘Thanks for coming, Cara.’

  ‘What about me?’ Mae asked, mock-outraged. She gripped even tighter to Cara’s hand.

  ‘Both of you, of course.’ Tom jumped off the stage and walked towards them. ‘The whole package. I’ll just drop the latch to stop the world and his wife coming in for a moment,’ Tom said, skirting round Cara and Mae to do so. ‘Come on.’ He grabbed Cara’s free hand and drew her towards a row of paintings. In silence, they stood – the three of them – in a row looking at Tom’s work. All seascapes. All huge. Oils. The sea filled each frame, dancing with colour. From a distance the sea appeared to be turquoise, or deep navy, but up close Cara could see there were many colours in each dab of paint, colours you wouldn’t associate with the sea, like pink, orange and brown. There was very little foreground in any of them, just a few stems of mauve thrift, or a gull disappearing out of the corner of the painting. And very little sky either, just a thin ribbon of it at the top of each painting – the pearly grey of dawn, or the raspberry ripple of sunset. The prices were eye-watering – nothing was less than three thousand pounds. Cara would have loved to buy one, but she’d need another three or four seasons at Cove End to be able to afford one at those prices.

  More seascapes hung on the opposite wall, but this time they were all watercolours. The sea didn’t dominate in them either. Sometimes a yacht filled the frame with just a border of sea around it, or a massive expanse of sand with a child’s sandcastle and a discarded flip-flop with the sea in the distance at low tide.

  ‘Blimey, you’re good, Tom,’ Mae said. ‘Bailey is going to love these. He’s like, good at art, but not that good.’

  ‘Thanks, Mae,’ Tom said. ‘I wasn’t good when I started, just had a love of it. The more I painted, the more I studied the masters and other – often amateur – artists, the better I got at it. Bailey will too if he’s got the passion.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mae said. ‘But they’re not cheap, are they? I mean … what?’ Mae pointed to a study of a fishing boat lying at anchor, in a sea that was almost the blood-red of sunset, tipped slightly to port. ‘Eighteen hundred pounds and it’s, what, no bigger than A3!’

  ‘Mae!’ Cara said.

  ‘Well if the prices do nothing but inspire Bailey to pursue his craft then they’ll have served a purp
ose!’ Tom laughed.

  ‘I’m sorry …’ Cara began. She thought Mae had lost all her snippiness around Tom, but obviously she hadn’t.

  ‘Don’t be,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve had harsher art critics than that! Anyway, now you’ve seen what I’ve been doing in the weeks I’ve been holed up in your dormer bedroom, come and see these.’

  In the middle of the room were two easels, both had paintings on them but were covered with sheets – Cara’s best top sheets, she realised now. Tom must have borrowed them.

  ‘Is this why you’ve asked us to come a bit early?’ Cara asked. Her stomach was in knots now and blood was pulsing past her ears with nerves. She gripped more tightly onto Tom’s hand.

  ‘You’re going to have to let me go for a second, Cara,’ Tom said. ‘I’m in danger of having the blood supply cut off the way you’re gripping.’

  ‘Sorry, but …’ Cara began as she released Tom’s hand.

  ‘Give me a hand with the sheet, Mae, can you?’ Tom said. He turned to Cara. ‘I’ll bring your sheets back, I promise. And I’ll put them through the washing-machine. I might even come over all domestic and get the iron out. Right, Mae, on the count of three, pull the sheet your side up and over very gently. One, two, three.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Mae said, once the painting was revealed. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Phew!’ Tom laughed. ‘My credibility as an artist is intact if you recognise yourself from behind!’

  ‘But when?’ Cara said. ‘When did you paint that?’

  Cara had seen Mae like that, rushing off down the path dressed in one of her beloved frocks, so many times – she knew the back view of her daughter as well as she knew the front. In the painting Mae was wearing one of her frocks, the turquoise one with the white polka dots. It stopped mid-calf showing off Mae’s slim ankles, and Mae was in the foreground, filling the frame. Tom had captured the crazy paving of the path that led down to the front gate, a few bluish/purple campanulas creeping out of the gaps on the edges of the painting. The B&B sign could just be seen – slightly out of focus – in the distance, swinging rather lopsidedly from a gatepost. Mae’s glossy hair was catching the sunlight almost like it was on fire.