Christmas at Strand House

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Taxi time,’ he’d said, leaning across the table to give her hand a squeeze. ‘The danger hour approacheth. Two people from out of town with hours to fill till morning.’

  Tom had even called the taxi for her, walked with her to the door – just a little behind her with a hand in the small of her back. And that’s when she’d been startled by a barrage of camera flashes and saw in rapid fast-forward how it would be if she were to enter a full-blown affair with Tom. She – and he – would be hounded.

  Martha, not liking herself very much at that moment for what she’d been on the cusp of, had turned to Tom then.

  ‘The danger hour is too dangerous for me,’ she’d said. ‘I’m not in the habit of breaking up marriages, despite the magic…’

  ‘…between us,’ Tom had finished for her.

  Martha didn’t think Tom was a serial adulterer, although she was under no illusion that she’d been the first to tempt him. For the two weeks they’d been thrown together, working on Breaking Ice, he’d showered her with gifts, in time-honoured Hollywood style – bespoke perfume and a designer handbag, Italian silk scarves and an amethyst pendant on a fine gold chain. She’d worn that pendant on her first – and last – dinner date with Tom. But she’d known in an instant, the camera flashes almost blinding her, that she hadn’t been in love with him – merely in lust, feelings heightened and enhanced by the place and the setting and the fabulous clothes. There could be many Toms in the future if she stayed here among the beautiful people with money to spend and lavish lifestyles. Was that what she wanted?

  And that was when she’d made her decision to end her contract on Breaking Ice and go home, back to the UK. And then… what?

  Well, she had a fortnight to work out where her life was going, and a town she didn’t know to explore. In front of her, there was the curve of a bay the colour of faded denim, flat as the proverbial pancake at that moment, and the sun was shining. First she’d need to find a supermarket of sorts to buy food, and maybe a bottle of wine, although she knew it was dangerous – very dangerous – to drink alone. Martha placed her four-inch heels in the cupboard in the bedroom, slid her feet into flip-flops, took a deep breath, and went out.

  ‘Can I help you with that?’

  A man’s voice. A Scottish accent. To answer or not? With one foot on the bottom step of the wooden steps that led up to the deck of 23 The Strand, and her arms full of carrier bags and a lamp she’d picked up in a charity shop, Martha considered her options. If she answered, she’d need to drop the Scottish accent she’d been using for a couple of days and which was becoming second nature now, because this man was likely to ask where in Scotland she came from, and she only knew Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, each of which had its own particular accent.

  ‘I can manage, thanks. Only a few more steps,’ she said. And then the newspaper that had been on top of one of the bags fell to the floor.

  The man picked it up, shifting awkwardly as he rebalanced himself.

  ‘Damned leg,’ he said, rubbing a hip. He looked at the photo and the headline on the front page and then at Martha.

  ACTRESS SERENA ROSS QUITS BREAKING ICE

  The photo was one taken on the steps of the hotel as Tom had guided her to her taxi. There were, Martha knew, more photos of them both inside, cosied up in the restaurant, because she was wiser now and knew that the man in the corner hadn’t been taking selfies but had been taking photographs of her and Tom.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ she said. ‘Thanks. The press scraping about in the gutter as per usual, I expect,’ she added, with a nod to the front page of the newspaper.

  ‘More than likely,’ the man said. ‘Don’t shoot but… Hugh Fraser. Photographer. Currently on sick leave while my leg heals.’

  Oh my God! What sort of a photographer, she wanted to know – paparazzi? – but she was afraid to ask. Her hat had slipped back over her head as she struggled with her bags. If he was paparazzi, would he recognise her? She might have changed her hair colour and be wearing coloured lenses, but her mouth was the same shape. Her nose. Her high cheekbones, for which she was known in the world of acting.

  ‘I’m sorry about your leg,’ she said, acting a calmness she didn’t feel inside, although it was true she was sorry. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You know how, on TV, when you see photographers following a story in the street and they’re running backwards and taking photos? Have you ever wondered if they fall over?’

  Martha gulped. So he was paparazzi? What on earth was she doing keeping him here, engaging him in conversation?

  ‘Yes, yes, I have.’

  ‘Well, I did. Right over a low wall. Only it was an urban fox I was trying to film without scaring it off. Compound fracture. Hence my stay here for a couple of weeks to strengthen my muscles now the break’s been sorted. Running on sand is good for that.’

  ‘Oh!’ Martha said, unable to stop the smile that crept to her lips as a cartoon strip of Hugh running backwards and going over the wall played in her head. ‘Sorry. It’s not funny, I know.’

  ‘That’s okay. Every one of my colleagues fell about laughing. And you are?’

  ‘Martha Langford.’

  ‘I’d shake your hand, Martha Langford, if you had one free for me to shake. How about I come over all macho and carry this newspaper up the steps for you?’

  And then he did just that, but carefully and with a bit of a limp, Martha noticed.

  Hugh took Martha’s bags and parcels from her as she scrabbled in her pocket for the chalet key.

  ‘I’m at Number 20.’ He waved the newspaper in the direction of his chalet. ‘Belongs to my parents, actually. Holiday home of sorts. I’d stop with them in their house back in Exeter but Mum would smother me to death with kindness. Much better I fend for myself a bit, get those muscles working again. Keep an eye open for the next big scoop, as it were.’

  Martha shivered. She had no intention of being Hugh’s next big scoop.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You know. For your help. Just put my bags on the deck. I can manage now. Things to do. Bye.’

  With almost indecent haste she scooped her bags into her arms and grabbed the newspaper from him, pushed the door open with her knee, sidled in behind it and then closed it with a foot.

  Hugh seemed like a nice bloke – the sort of bloke she’d be happy to spend time with in normal circumstances, because photographers could be useful to an actress. But her circumstances weren’t normal, were they, if the papers were still carrying stories about her quitting Breaking Ice? And she wasn’t entirely sure she still wanted to be an actress any more anyway. And what was more, she badly needed to get to know herself better before she even thought about making a new relationship with anyone. And could she trust Hugh not to be on his laptop right now letting the world know he knew where Serena Ross was holed up?

  Martha kept a low profile for a few days, always on the lookout for Hugh in case he wanted to talk, or asked too many probing questions she didn’t want to answer. She’d seen him running a couple of times a day, not fast and rather ungainly, as though he was still carrying pain from his broken leg. She’d also seen him look up at her chalet as he made his way back to his own. But the red sand of the beach and the soft shush as the sea met the shore with a petticoat frill of white foam was calling her. The only thing Martha was missing from her old life at the moment was the gym. There were probably more than a few gyms in the area but she didn’t want to join one. Power walking and running could be just as good. She couldn’t hide from the world for ever. Or from Hugh. She had to get out there.

  Hugh always looked glowing and happy when he got back from a run. Martha badly needed some of that – glowing and happy. But running on the beach was tide-dependent so she bought a tide-table from the kiosk at the end of The Strand that also sold teas, coffees, ice creams and a few beach toys, so she could work out when Hugh might be running and when he might not. She simply couldn’t risk, at the moment at least, that he might recognise her, al
though she had a gut feeling he already had. Only that morning she’d seen him swing his long legs – rather stiffly – over the sandstone wall and drop onto the beach, landing awkwardly, struggling to get his balance the way a duck might on a frozen pond. She ought not to have laughed. Hugh had looked up directly towards her chalet as though he had sensed her watching him. She’d ducked quickly behind the curtain, but the speed of her movement made the fabric flutter. Had he seen?

  To run, Martha would need trainers and some leggings and a T-shirt, so she went out to buy everything along with a few groceries. And a newspaper. Back at her chalet she decided to take a mug of coffee and the newspaper down to the beach. She laid a towel on the sand and sat down.

  Martha shivered, a double-page feature on the demise of Tom’s marriage – TOM MARCHANT’S WIFE FILES FOR DIVORCE – falling open on her lap. Another actress, Amy Stevens, had been cited. Not her. So she’d been right – she hadn’t been the first to turn Tom’s head. And neither would Amy be the last. Martha felt relief wash over her that she hadn’t entered a full-blown affair with Tom and that there had been little between them except animal attraction, a few small gifts and one dinner after filming.

  ‘Was it something I said?’

  Hugh. Standing above her on the steps that led to and from the beach. Could he read the headline from there?

  Martha closed the newspaper with one deft movement. She did not look up.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you’ve been avoiding me?’

  ‘If that’s what you think,’ Martha said with a shrug.

  ‘I like to think I’m thicker-skinned than that.’

  Hugh jumped – rather awkwardly it had to be said – down onto the sand and sat beside her without being asked.

  ‘You’re not still letting that get to you, are you?’ Hugh asked, tapping a finger on the newspaper in Martha’s – now shaking – hands.

  Oh my God. He knew, didn’t he? He knew that, despite the red hair dye, the coloured contacts, the wide-brimmed hat, and her almost exclusion from normal life, she was really Serena Ross.

  ‘You haven’t written this, have you?’ she asked, waving the newspaper at him. Sometimes it was better to graciously admit defeat than fight a corner she was never going to win. He would know by her answer that she’d guessed he knew.

  ‘No. Of course not. I’m a photographer – wildlife and landscape mostly – not a fully paid-up member of the paparazzi. But I did recognise you. And I’ve read that particular newspaper this morning and I see Mr Marchant has moved on.’

  ‘That’s not a very flattering remark,’ Martha said. He was making it sound as though she were totally dispensable, which, while it might be true in Tom Marchant’s case, was doing nothing for her self-esteem.

  ‘I’m not rushing to judge you. You’re here for your own reasons and it’s not for me to pry.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you are for one moment but… well… I’m a bit sensitive right now.’

  ‘Yes, I can see how that might be. But if it helps, today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappings, as the saying has it.’

  ‘If only,’ Martha said with a mock-groan.

  ‘True. But if you ask me – which I know you’re not – you are far, far prettier than his, um, latest squeeze.’

  ‘Well, thank you, kind sir,’ Martha said, unable to stop a smile creeping to the corners of her mouth. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  ‘Please do.’

  Martha felt her smile widen.

  ‘That’s better. Cliché alert – you’re even prettier when you smile.’

  ‘Thank you again, kind sir.’ Martha laughed. ‘I know I’ve not done enough of it lately. But I’ll need to go now. My coffee’s gone cold and…’

  ‘I could make you another,’ Hugh said. He gave Martha a big grin, the strength of it rippling the skin beside his eyes. ‘I’m in dire need of a coffee myself after my run. Stay right there,’ he went on, wagging a finger playfully at her. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  Before Martha could find breath to reply, Hugh had loped and limped his way back up the steps.

  Martha considered simply getting up and going back to her own chalet, because although she didn’t think Hugh was a controlling sort of man in any way, she didn’t know him well enough to really judge. And it had felt as though it was an order he’d issued just now.

  But she stayed. She was safe enough here on a public beach and, as far as she could tell, Hugh didn’t have a camera of any sort with him. She folded up the newspaper and put it underneath her beach towel and waited.

  Hugh was soon back. He’d put two mugs of black coffee, a small jug of milk, some tubes of sugar and a packet of Hobnobs on a tray.

  ‘Could you hang on to that while I sit back down?’ he asked. ‘Only I get a bit of a balance issue now and then from the leg and I wouldn’t want to shower you with it.’

  ‘Of course,’ Martha said, reaching up to take the tray.

  Hugh sat back down and took the tray from her.

  ‘How do you take your poison?’

  ‘Black, no sugar, thanks,’ Martha said.

  ‘Ah,’ Hugh said, ‘we have the same impeccable taste in coffee.’

  ‘Indeed we do,’ Martha said, accepting her coffee and holding it to her in both hands. How civilised this was, just yards from their chalets, nothing between them and the horizon except shell-strewn sand and some strings of seaweed left by the tide.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Hugh said, ‘but I’ve brought my phone. I don’t take it with me when I’m out running in case it falls out of my pocket.’ He placed the tray on the sand beside him and took out a top-of-the-range phone from the pocket of his shorts. ‘So many interesting things in the sand to take photographs of.’

  Martha heard her own sharp intake of breath, like a gunshot in her ears. Of course, people took pictures with phones as well as cameras, and phones could be so slim and so easy to hide. A shiver of unease wriggled between her shoulder blades.

  ‘But no photos of you. Promise,’ Hugh said. ‘I think I could work out where your thought processes were going there!’

  ‘More than likely.’ Martha laughed nervously. She sipped at her coffee – very good coffee she was pleased and surprised to note. But she wanted the focus off her for the moment, so she asked: ‘What sort of photographs do you take? And sell, presumably?’

  ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘Until I’ve finished this coffee?’ Martha quipped – gosh, how good that felt, to make a joke.

  ‘Right. Well. Best drink slowly! I do wildlife photography and sell it to book publishers and magazines. Newspapers. I take landscape photographs for the same outlets. Both here and abroad for all of that. Most of that is commissioned but I also sell to photo-banks and agencies, and I have no jurisdiction over where those photos go. When cash flow has been stagnant I’ve done engagement parties, weddings – both in the UK and exotic beach locations, local theatre productions, that sort of thing. Enough to be going on with?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you,’ Martha said. She had a feeling she knew what sort of photographs Hugh might take that went to photo-banks and agencies over which he didn’t have, as he’d said, jurisdiction: photos of celebrities being where they ought not to have been, and with people they ought not to have been with. But it was only a feeling – she had no proof.

  ‘And do you know something, Martha?’ Hugh went on. ‘I’ve had all-expenses-paid trips to Bali and Bondi Beach, various Greek Island beaches and countless places in Spain, and it’s always puzzled me as to why people bother to go all that way when we have perfectly lovely beaches in this country. I mean, look at this one.’

  Martha looked. Indeed it did look magnificent with the sun shining, the sea, as she looked out towards Torquay at one side of the bay and Brixham at the other, appeared as though someone had scattered a million diamonds over it. Seagulls dipped and dived on the thermals and a cormorant dived for fish, then reappeared a few seconds lat
er some way from where it had gone down.

  ‘On a day like today, yes,’ Martha said. ‘I suppose people go abroad for the guaranteed sunshine.’

  ‘Ah!’ Hugh said. ‘Not always guaranteed, I’m afraid. A friend’s wedding I covered in Bali was rained off completely – monsoon didn’t come into it! I could set up some wonderful shots here. The bride, barefoot, with her skirt hoisted to her knees, dipping a toe in to test the water for a paddle, with the groom holding her firmly by the waist, his trousers rolled up over his calves, so she doesn’t stumble.’

  Goodness, what a romantic, Martha thought. Was there a significant woman in his life, she wondered, but wasn’t going to ask. They were only ships passing in the night here, weren’t they? Hugh was healing and she was, too, in a way.

  ‘I say,’ Hugh said, scooping up a handful of sand and shells and letting the sand sift through his fingers. ‘Could I borrow a corner of your towel to photograph these? The stripes are sharp and the navy against the white of the shells will be a perfect backdrop.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ Martha said, and edged a little further away as Hugh moved towards her, making space for his photoshoot.

  ‘What I’ll do,’ Hugh said, ‘is lay the shells in a line down the navy stripes. See, some of them have little swirls of long-discarded egg cases encrusted on them. And this one has got a frond of seaweed so firmly attached to it it’s going to take more than my strength to pull it off.’

  ‘It’s like a hat,’ Martha said. ‘Or a fascinator.’

  ‘Exactly that. And this one is so perfect it’s like one half of a pigeon’s egg. And just as delicate.’ Hugh handed the shell to Martha, placing it gently on her palm when she held out her hand to take it.

  ‘Exquisite,’ Martha said. And it was. She knew beaches were always covered in shells from which the living beings had long gone, but she’d never stopped to examine any of them in detail as Hugh was now.