The Hotel at Honeymoon Station : A totally heartwarming romance about new beginnings

by Tilly Tennant

  The sale of Emma’s house had raised a little money – though not nearly as much as she’d hoped for. That might have been down to the quick sale of course, but she’d needed it to go through swiftly in case she got cold feet and changed her mind, not to mention the risk of Dougie putting a spanner in the works. Although he hadn’t given her as much trouble as she’d imagined he might.

  At first he’d done his utmost to change her mind, motivated, no doubt, by the shock of suddenly losing his ever-dependable meal ticket. He’d hung around the house like a cloud of gnats round the head of an evening jogger, until the house had changed hands and he’d been forced to start phoning. He hadn’t dared come to her dad’s house, where she’d stayed for a few weeks while everything in Dorset was finalised, and she had to be thankful for small mercies.

  Once Dougie had finally got the message, contact had dwindled – just a few pathetic text messages and unanswered phone calls until there was nothing. The last she’d heard of him he’d moved in with Willard permanently, where they were both enjoying their evenings smoking themselves into oblivion. At least that was one less thing for Emma to worry about.

  Handing her notice in at Burnbury’s and seeing the look on Margot’s face was a particular highlight of the final weeks of her old life. There were many things she’d wanted to say to Margot, about all the times she’d used Emma as a skivvy and left her to take the rap for a mess that was her fault, about the endless breakfasts and never-ending lunch breaks, the hours of personal calls and sneaky late starts and early finishes. But in the end Emma just wished her good luck in finding another mug who would be stupid enough to do all Margot’s work for a fraction of her pay and strode out of the building feeling like the triumphant heroine from a romantic comedy.

  To make up the financial shortfall, Emma had sold all her furniture, her car, most of her jewellery apart from one of her mother’s rings, a large portion of her clothes (she wouldn’t have much call for evening dresses working on a building site) and had even cashed in some ancient savings bonds. What she’d still needed after that her dad had provided, though she’d done her absolute best to make sure the amount he had to put in was as small as possible. It was still a lot.

  Now the moment had finally arrived. Tia killed the engine in a little parking bay that was as close to the station house as the weeds and rubble would allow, and in silence they both looked up at the building. A large section was obscured by trees and ranging shrubs, but Emma could see the faded wood of the eaves which had once been painted pristine white, and the shingles of the roof now dotted with holes, and the flutter of excitement within her fought with the sudden sinking feeling that she’d just done the most stupid thing of her entire life. She looked across at Tia and wondered if she was thinking the same.

  ‘Well,’ Tia said finally, ‘we’d better go and see what we’ve bought.’

  They’d looked before, of course, but it had been via a virtual online tour, aided by the information from various surveys, which was how the auctioneer had deemed it best to accommodate a large number of viewings in a quick window of time for the sale. Emma’s dad had offered to drive down with her to sneak a look round, but Tia had convinced her that there was no need. Perhaps, secretly, she’d been afraid seeing it in the flesh would give Emma cold feet, and perhaps, if Emma was honest, she’d been a little afraid of the same thing herself. If she’d been to visit before the sale, would she have wanted to back out? A small part of her hadn’t wanted the escape route, because that part of her knew her life needed a new direction. Often the leap that would offer you freedom needed to become a push or it would never happen. And the fact that nobody could see it officially in person, Tia had reasoned, would put some off bidding and meant the selling price would eventually be lower as a result.

  Emma had been encouraged by that, and they’d been so swept up in the excitement of the moment that they’d bid with confidence and kept going until they’d won. Looking back, if she was perfectly honest, the excitement at the prospect of owning Honeymoon Station had been so intoxicating that in the heat of the moment they’d have carried on bidding, despite not feeling armed with enough information to know exactly what they were buying. It represented so much more than a building or even a business for both of them. Two women who needed fresh starts and big changes – it was a powerful force.

  Emma’s mouth was dry and her heart thumped as they walked around to the front of the building. The iron of the tracks was long gone, but the scars of their existence still ran the length of the platform and out towards the tunnel of overgrown trees in either direction. A butterfly bush almost as wide as the roof clawed at the sky straight from a hole on the left side. Whenever Emma saw shrubs growing from an abandoned building like that, she was always astonished at their hardiness. Various trees and shrubs and thick-stemmed weeds crowded the platform and obscured the columns holding up the canopy that must have once sheltered the waiting passengers, some which Emma recognised and some she didn’t. A squirrel darted up one of them and disappeared into the foliage.

  ‘They always say that nature would reclaim the planet if we died out,’ Tia said wryly. ‘This lot certainly proves that theory.’

  ‘I suppose it’s been empty a long time. I mean, it would have been nice to have less to do, but I guess it’s to be expected.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Tia was quiet for a moment, but then she turned to Emma with a manic grin and pulled her into a violent hug.

  ‘We’re here!’ she cried. ‘We’ve done it!’

  ‘Steady on!’ Emma laughed. ‘We’ve done nothing yet; this is only the beginning.’

  But despite her words of caution, she felt the emotion too, a curious mix of fear and ecstasy, of hope and optimism and doubt. It was a heady cocktail.

  ‘Of an amazing journey!’ Tia insisted. Her eyes were shining and she had a grin that looked like it would never end. She made her way towards the building and stood outside the boarded-up entrance, gazing up at it. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

  It had certainly filled Emma’s head with romantic notions when she’d viewed it online but, now she was here, she wasn’t sure beautiful was the word she’d use. Tragic was what came to mind now. Lost, ruined, hopeless… maybe potential was the most positive word she could summon.

  Tia pulled an iron key from her shoulder bag and handed it to Emma.

  ‘Want to be the first one over the threshold?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why not?’ Tia smiled. ‘You’re half owner after all.’

  ‘You’re half owner too.’

  ‘I’d have been none owner if not for you riding to my rescue. Come on, this is your moment and you’ve earned it. Get that door open and let’s have a proper look inside.’

  Emma took the key. Her palms were suddenly clammy. This was crazy – why was she so nervous? It was just an old building.

  The door was heavy and stiff, and Emma had to check she’d unlocked it properly twice because she struggled to get it moving at first. But eventually it yielded and groaned open.

  The first thing that struck her was the smell. While outside the overgrown vegetation had been strongest in her nostrils, now the faint dampness she’d detected from behind the locked door hit her with full force. It was the damp and mould and rot of years of abandonment, and if a scent could have an emotion attached then it was about the saddest thing she’d ever smelled.

  The second thing was how dark it was. The windows had been boarded up and even the bright sun outside struggled to find a way in. Never mind an old station house, Emma thought, the melancholy of the place seeping into every fibre of her being, this was more like a crypt.

  ‘Oh, isn’t it amazing!’ Tia gasped. ‘Look at the wood! And the ticket window! And these gorgeous seats!’

  Emma cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘You mean those seats covered in bird poo?’

  Tia grinned. ‘But there’s bound to be gorgeous old craftsmanship beneath that bird poo!’

  Emma’s
eyes raked the gloom. After a moment, the shape and features of the space began to emerge. Crafted in the glory days of steam, in its heyday this would have been a beautiful place. The rosewood of the counters and ticket-booth walls would have been sailed in directly from Africa or India and would have gleamed, glossy and freshly varnished, and the leather upholstery of the benches would have been soft and rich with the smell of furniture wax, while the polished floor would have echoed with the footsteps of travellers, the air of the tea room humming with chat and vibrant with the scents of freshly baked cake and gusts of fresh air as the doors of the waiting room opened and closed. Art deco posters, bold with colour and geometric designs would have adorned the walls, advertising trips to the seaside or the mountains of the Scottish Highlands or the majestic Lakes, alongside painted enamel plaques selling chocolate or cigarettes. Officials in gold-trimmed caps would have hurried here and there, all polished shoes and shining whistles. The air would have been rent by a shrill blow that told everyone the next train was about to leave and there’d have been a flurry of activity and goodbye kisses.

  Looking at it now, though it had all once happened in this very spot, it was hard to see those glory days. All Emma could think about was how much there was to do.

  ‘I think it’s all going to have to come out,’ she said. ‘I don’t see how anything in here is salvageable – it all looks rotten to the core.’

  ‘It might not be as bad as it looks. It’s hard to tell when it’s so dirty. First thing we should do is clean the place and get a proper look.’ Tia wandered over to a window and yanked at a plank of wood. ‘If we could just get a bit of light on the matter…’

  She pulled, and then tore her hand away with a squeak. ‘Ow! Bloody splinter!’

  ‘That’s a good start,’ Emma said. ‘Let’s go outside where I can see properly and I’ll get it out for you.’

  ‘Could you? I can never do it.’

  ‘I’ve pulled enough splinters in my time to be an expert.’

  ‘Lucky for me then.’ Tia followed her outside. ‘How come?’

  ‘Elise,’ Emma said, getting her handbag from Tia’s car and retrieving a pair of tweezers. As Emma had sold her car to raise money and Elise’s car had been confiscated from Dougie and was being stored at her dad’s, Tia’s car was essentially the business car now, which meant in a strange way it was also Emma’s, but it still felt odd and impertinent to have her own keys for it. ‘She was always picking them up from somewhere or other, and Dad was hopeless at getting them out because he said his hands weren’t steady enough. It wasn’t that at all – he just had no patience.’

  ‘Must have been hard.’ Tia turned her face away so she wouldn’t see Emma work at the wood lodged in her fingertip.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Growing up without your mum.’

  ‘I suppose it was but I got used to it very quickly. You do at that age. We were alright really. We managed the best we could, because we didn’t have any other choice.’

  ‘I suppose not…’ Tia winced as Emma got purchase on the end of the splinter.

  ‘Hold still… almost… there!’

  Emma held up the offending object for Tia to see.

  ‘It felt a lot bigger than that,’ Tia said, eyeing it with a look of deepest offence.

  ‘They always do,’ Emma said. ‘Like grit in your eye – feels like a bloody house brick but when it’s out you can hardly see it at all.’

  ‘Well at least I know I can rely on you to keep me safe while we’re working on this place.’

  ‘Or maybe we should make the DIY store our first stop to get safety equipment. I might be able to patch you up but there’s no point in ruining our nails and hands if we don’t need to.’

  Tia looked back at the building. ‘Well now we’ve seen it in the flesh, I suppose there’s a lot more to talk about.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘We should take some photos so we can study them later. Might be handy to get some advice on what we could salvage and what we’d have to ditch too.’

  ‘OK, we can do that. And then what?’

  ‘I vote we drive to the village and find our rental cottage. We’ll probably need to get some supplies too and I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to get chatting to one or two of the locals… You never know when their knowledge of the area might come in handy.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Lunch,’ Tia said. ‘I’m starving already.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll get to start any work on this place today?’

  ‘Depends how sleepy lunch makes me,’ Tia said with a grin. ‘Kidding!’ she added in reply to the frown forming on Emma’s forehead. ‘Let’s get lunch, pick up a few bits of equipment and food, and see if we still have time to make a start this afternoon.’

  Chapter Ten

  Their rental cottage was tiny, a little two-up two-down with a pocket square of garden at the back and a front door that opened directly out onto a higgledy-piggledy high street. In fact, it wasn’t just the high street, it was more or less the only street of note in the village. The house was small, but it was big enough as Emma and Tia weren’t planning to spend a lot of time there – which was lucky, because otherwise, in such a small space, they’d have been ready to kill each other very quickly.

  Outside on the street the paving slabs weren’t made of concrete as they were in most towns, but an older stone, worn smooth by generations of footfall and pleasingly uneven. The wrought-iron lamp posts were adorned with baskets of flowers, and tiny stone cottages, some with thatched roofs and some with grey slate, jostled for position along either side of the street like a crowd of children trying to get to the front of a queue for ice cream. The road that wound between them was barely wide enough to let two cars pass. Emma reflected that, in the age of horse power, there wouldn’t have been much more room for two carts either.

  At the far end there was a market cross raised up on a small roundabout, surrounded by flower beds of pink and lilac and peachy blooms. There was an old stone sign within the flowers, engraved with arrows and mileage for Dorchester and London and other places Emma wasn’t familiar with but which must once have been important locally. There was another signpost made from iron – still old – rust-bitten and weathered and patched up with years of paint to make the directions legible. This one indicated the way to nearby villages and towns. There were a couple of shops, a tiny post office that nobody ever seemed to go into, the obligatory country pub (charmingly named the Randy Shepherd), a café (the rather more conservatively named Honeymoon Café) and not a lot else. It was all perfectly adorable and perfectly quaint and would undoubtedly be a lovely stop-off for holidaymakers on their way to the coast or the New Forest, but there wasn’t a lot to make them stay.

  As they made their way to the cottage and took it all in, Emma was plagued by worries that now, not only did they have a hotel to build, but they also had to find reasons for their guests to come. She aired these doubts to Tia, who seemed unconcerned. Emma couldn’t decide if this was a comfort or not, but she did decide that they probably should have found out more about the village before going to such lengths to win the auction.

  The cottage owner, June, was waiting for them with the keys when they arrived. She’d explained over the phone that she usually let it out to weekenders and at that point Emma had wondered whether she’d be happy to hear that they wanted to live in it for the next few months while they worked on a hotel that would be in direct competition with her once it was open. But June had cheerily told them that she’d been thinking of retiring after the summer anyway and so, if anything, their arrival had done her a favour by giving her the push she needed to put the cottage up for sale once they’d finished with it. She’d even asked if they wanted to buy it instead of their long-term rental arrangement, but, lovely as the offer was, Tia explained that, financially, it was totally out of the question. After the call, Tia had told Emma it was a sign, an omen of good fortune that they’d bought Honeymoon Stati
on at exactly the right time. Emma smiled and nodded but had silently doubted life was always so simple.

  ‘You must be Tia and Emma!’ June said as she came out to greet them. ‘Do you have a car, my darlings?’

  ‘Oh, we had to park it on a bit of ground near the shop,’ Tia said. ‘We thought it might get in the way in front of the house with the road being so narrow.’

  ‘You’ll be alright – people will just drive around and we hardly have that much traffic anyway,’ June said. ‘Bring it round when you want to unload.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Tia said.

  ‘Well…’ June swept a hand towards the cottage. ‘Here’s home for you now.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Emma said.

  ‘I’m sure it’s smaller than you’re used to,’ June replied. ‘They used to build small back in the day, but I think you’ll have everything you need.’

  ‘As we won’t be in a lot, I don’t think we’ll need that much to begin with,’ Tia said. ‘A couple of beds, a bath and a kettle – that ought to do it.’

  ‘Well we definitely have those,’ June said cheerily. ‘Now, I know I said over the phone, but I must remind you of the bats in the loft—’

  ‘Bats?’ Tia asked sharply, glancing at Emma. Emma didn’t recall any mention of bats and, judging by her reaction, she guessed Tia didn’t either.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ June asked vaguely.

  ‘You might have done,’ Emma said. ‘I don’t remember for sure. Will they be alright?’

  ‘They’ll be just fine – they don’t mind you being there at all, and you might hear a bit of scratching and flapping every now and again when the house is quiet, but you won’t notice after a couple of days.’