Finding Home

by Kate Field

  ‘Are you actually saying I’m not his type, being obscenely poor and coming from a common family?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Really? Don’t worry,’ Mim said, trying to steady her voice so he didn’t guess how hurt she was. It was one thing hearing it from Janet, but from him… Why did it feel like she’d been punched in the chest? ‘I know my place. Lia was making a joke. It’s a meeting, not a date. I may have no money and no class, but I have enough pride to refuse to be any rich man’s bit of rough.’

  ‘Mim.’ In a few quick strides he had crossed the hall. ‘Listen.’

  ‘I’ve heard more than enough, thanks.’ She climbed a couple of stairs, creating a gap between them. She took a deep breath and looked him square in the eyes. ‘You’re right. Stuck-up, snobbish, rich men aren’t my type at all. Thanks for reminding me.’

  At first it seemed that all of their hard work had failed. There were a few encouraging tweets about the charity over the weekend but not the rush of publicity they had hoped for. Only Lia’s confidence was undented as she cautioned them to hold their nerve and she was proved right. During the course of Tuesday, three bloggers posted features about As You Like It holidays. Traffic to the website they had set up grew and email enquiries finally trickled in.

  The story featured in the local newspaper on Wednesday and Lia brought a copy to show Mim. It filled the whole of page five, with a large photo of Mim, Lia, and Corin, a smaller shot of the caravan site, and a half-page article. Mim studied the photo of the three of them. It was a good picture. Lia was unsurprisingly photogenic. Corin’s smile dazzled even from a static image. Mim stood between them, looking happier than she could ever remember. She looked like she belonged. It was amazing what a few borrowed clothes could do.

  ‘The photos are the wrong way round,’ she said to Lia, dragging her gaze away from the image and ignoring the wistful feeling that was hovering round her heart. ‘The picture of the caravan site should have been the prominent one.’

  ‘I agree, darling, but what can we do? The article has taken a different angle than we’d planned, but all publicity is good, isn’t it?’

  Mim skimmed through the story. It should have been about the charity and what they were hoping to achieve, but although that was mentioned, it wasn’t the focus of the article. It was all about her, going back to the day when she had given Bill and Bea a lift to Devon and explaining how she had been the inspiration for offering the caravans for free holidays.

  ‘This isn’t true,’ Mim said. ‘It was all your idea.’

  ‘But you were the inspiration and it was your idea to make the holidays free.’ Lia smiled. ‘I guess a story of a rich girl helping the poor doesn’t have the same appeal.’

  ‘Can’t you put them straight?’

  ‘We both can. I’ve just had the most exciting phone call. We’ve been invited to appear on BBC local radio to talk about it. What do you say?’

  ‘Me? On the radio?’ Mim was struggling to share Lia’s excitement. ‘No way. I’ll sound thick.’

  ‘Of course you won’t, darling. You’ll sound very natural.’

  Mim suspected that ‘natural’ was the posh way of saying ‘thick’, but appreciated Lia’s attempt to be tactful.

  ‘When is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Friday evening.’

  ‘I’ll be working in the Boat,’ Mim said, with ill-disguised relief. ‘And no, I can’t take time off. It’s the busiest night and good tips. You’ll have to do it yourself. Just concentrate on the charity and how people can be referred for a holiday. That’s the only story we’re offering.’

  Karen produced a box of homemade chocolate brownies for their post-swim treat on the following Monday morning.

  ‘I thought I’d up my game now we have a celebrity in our midst,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t even sure you’d come today.’

  Mim laughed.

  ‘Because of that story in the local newspaper? That’s old news now and I came on Friday, didn’t I?’

  Another perk of not working in the deli was that Mim was now free to join Heather and Karen for the Friday morning swim. Even better, now the mornings were light, she could walk down into Littlemead along the coastal path. It was a steep climb back up but worth it to save on petrol money, and the view from the path was spectacular and lifted her spirits whatever the weather.

  ‘Not the local paper,’ Karen said. ‘The tabloid. You did see it yesterday, didn’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t seen anything. I try to avoid all the gloom in the papers. What tabloid? You mean the details of the charity have made it into a national paper? That’s brilliant.’

  Karen opened a drawer and took out a copy of a national Sunday newspaper. She opened it and passed it over to Mim. “The Kindness of Strangers” ran the headline over the familiar photograph of Mim, Corin, and Lia. Mim read on, her heart thumping and her initial enthusiasm about the publicity quickly disappearing. This wasn’t brilliant at all. This was worse than the local newspaper, far worse. The charity was barely mentioned; the feature was entirely about Mim. They knew every detail: that she’d been brought up in care; that she’d lost her job and been sleeping in her car when she met Bill and Bea; that she’d offered them a lift across the country, and in return they had offered her a home and welcomed her to their family as she had none of her own; how they had combined forces to spread kindness to other people in need through the As You Like It charity. It was a powerful story; Mim could see that objectively. But it was a story about her and she hadn’t agreed to it being told.

  ‘It’s all over the internet,’ Heather added. ‘It’s one of the BBC’s most read stories on their news page. There’s so much bad news around at the moment that people have latched on to this as a feel-good story. You’ve gone viral.’

  Heather showed Mim her phone. The story was everywhere and had inspired lots of other people to share examples of random acts of kindness and paying it forward. Some people had even started using the hashtag #BeMoreMiranda. Mim swiped from page to page, hardly believing what she was seeing.

  ‘Great publicity for the charity,’ Karen said. ‘I wonder if Susie could benefit? She should start promoting that she designed the caravan interiors. She might get some work out of it.’

  ‘Were you really sleeping in your car?’ Heather asked, looking at Mim with sympathy. ‘You didn’t tell us things had been so bad.’

  She hadn’t told anyone. Only the Howards knew. Only they could have passed on this information to the press. And though she might once have been glad to see Bea’s ‘one of us’ claim confirmed in black and white, now it felt that they had cut her loose and exposed her to the curious gaze of the world. It hurt more than Mim could say. Did her feelings not matter to them at all?

  She walked back up the cliff path, dumped her wet swimming clothes at the caravan, and carried on up the track to Vennhallow. Bea and Lia were outside the house, debating whether to lower the roof on Lia’s convertible. Everything seemed surprisingly normal. Bea waved when she saw Mim.

  ‘Perfect timing, Mim dear. Are you free to drive me into Exeter later? I’m meeting friends for lunch but Lia can only take me now and it’s far too early.’

  ‘I saw the story in the Sunday paper,’ Mim said. Lia smiled.

  ‘Hasn’t it gone well?’ she said. ‘Mim, darling, you are the heroine of the internet at the moment. Aren’t you thrilled?’

  ‘No! We agreed that the focus would be on the charity, not me.’

  ‘I know but a good story needs a hook, darling, and it soon became obvious that you were it.’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Bea asked, smiling at Mim over the top of the car. ‘It’s gone better than we could have hoped. The reaction has been entirely positive. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were invited on to daytime television soon. Wouldn’t that be exciting? We could all have an outing to London.’

  ‘But all those things about me living in care and sleeping in the car w
ere private,’ Mim said. They didn’t seem to get it at all. They had ridden roughshod over her own wishes, thinking they knew best. An uncomfortable memory flashed up of Corin warning her about this and of her dismissing him. She hadn’t understood his frustration until now. ‘It should have been my decision who to tell.’

  ‘You’ve always said you weren’t ashamed of your past. Nor should you be.’ Bea walked round the car to stand in front of Mim. ‘Have we done wrong, Mim dear? I’m mortified if we’ve upset you. We thought we were acting for the best.’ She squeezed Mim’s arm. ‘Wait until you see the impact the publicity has had already. The inbox is full of messages offering donations and support, and referring families for holidays. A holiday park in Yorkshire has offered one of their caravans for two weeks in the summer holidays for anyone who can’t travel down here. This is going to make a difference to so many families and it’s all thanks to you. You have made this charity a success. Surely you can’t be unhappy about that. Isn’t it exactly what we wanted?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bea spent the next few days apologising to Mim, even though she’d insisted it wasn’t necessary. She’d been hurt at first, but she couldn’t regret the publicity for long, whatever it had cost her, when she saw the result. Emails and donations to the charity were pouring in. It broke her heart to see pensioners offering the few pounds they could afford and to read some of the stories of the people who were nominated for holidays. Hadn’t she vowed to do whatever it took to make the charity a success? And it was, beyond her wildest dreams. So what if her history had been bandied round the internet for a couple of days? Bea had been right; she wasn’t ashamed of it. All that mattered was what she did with her life now, and being involved with this charity was the best thing she’d ever done.

  She received a text from Bea on Saturday morning saying that there was a surprise waiting for her at Vennhallow. She wandered up the track, enjoying the warm sunshine on her face, and speculating what the surprise might be. It wasn’t the first one Bea had arranged, although it was hard to imagine anything beating the Chinese takeaway she’d been invited to share at the house earlier in the week.

  Bea answered the door looking very pleased with herself and Mim’s hopes rose. Had Mrs Dennis made one of her delicious lemon drizzle cakes? Bea laughed when Mim asked the question.

  ‘She made coffee cake this week, but the surprise is even better than that.’ Bea led Mim towards the drawing room and paused dramatically at the door. ‘You have a visitor.’

  ‘Do I?’ Mim couldn’t think who it might be. The friends she’d made in Littlemead would come to the caravan, not disturb Bea. She had an awful thought. ‘It’s not another journalist, is it?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I’ve learnt my lesson there. No, this is a surprise you’ll like. A friend from the hotel has come to see you. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s all because of the article in the newspaper. I’m thrilled that something good has come out of it for you. You can’t still be cross with me after this.’

  A friend from the hotel? Mim’s mind spun with images of Robbie the chef and Beryl the cleaner, before Bea swung the door open and ushered Mim inside. And there, sitting on the sofa in front of a tray of tea and cake, was Gordon’s daughter, Yvonne, absolutely the last person that Mim could wish to see. A friend? It wasn’t the word Mim would have used.

  Yvonne regarded Mim, a satisfied smirk on her face.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Mim asked. She couldn’t believe it. Was this a joke? A journalist would have been a thousand times better than this.

  ‘Tracked you down, haven’t I?’ Yvonne replied. ‘Shouldn’t have sold your story to the press and splashed your face across the papers if you were trying to hide.’

  ‘I’m not hiding.’ Mim looked at Yvonne with a growing feeling of unease. What was she doing here? She wasn’t about to offer a donation to the charity, that much was clear.

  ‘Mim dear, who is this?’ Bea asked. She couldn’t have missed the frosty atmosphere in the room. ‘Is she not a friend of yours?’

  ‘Absolutely not. This is Yvonne, Gordon’s daughter.’

  ‘The one who threw you out onto the streets without so much as a reference?’ Bea marched over to Yvonne and whisked the cup and saucer from her hand. She picked up the tray of cakes and carried it to the opposite side of the room. Mim could have hugged her for the gesture.

  ‘How dare you infiltrate my house under false pretences,’ Bea said. She had never sounded so posh.

  ‘It’s this one you want to watch in your house,’ Yvonne said, pointing at Mim. ‘Don’t believe whatever sob story she’s told you. She wormed her way in with my dad, a man twice her age, in the hope of inheriting our hotel. And now she’s had the nerve to tell the press that I treated her badly by getting rid of her! She probably has her eye on this place now. Don’t trust her if you have a husband or son.’

  It shouldn’t still hurt to hear such things, but it did. Yvonne lived in Bristol and had rarely visited Gordon at the hotel. Mim had been happily installed there for over a year before Yvonne had discovered her existence and, jealous of her relationship with Gordon, had accused her of sleeping with him to obtain the hotel. Gordon had set her straight but the suspicion had never gone away and, if anything, had worsened when it was Mim who had been with Gordon when he died. Yvonne had inherited everything so why was she pursuing her vendetta? There could be no benefit now, nothing in it for Yvonne but the satisfaction of seeing Mim upset. Did she really hate her so much?

  ‘I think it’s high time you left my house,’ Bea said. She held the door open, waiting.

  ‘I’m going nowhere until I’ve got what I came for,’ Yvonne said. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I read in the paper about her sleeping in her car. Her car! That car belonged to my father and now it belongs to me.’

  ‘It’s worth next to nothing,’ Mim said. She knew; she’d had it valued when she’d lost her job, but it hadn’t been worth selling. ‘You’ve can’t have come all this way for that?’

  ‘Not just for the car. I want the watch too.’ Yvonne looked at Bea. ‘My dad had a gold Rolex watch that meant the world to him. He always wore it.’ Her voice shook. ‘I want it to remember him by. I scoured the hotel from top to bottom and it wasn’t there. She must have stolen it. It’s worth at least ten grand.’

  ‘You silly woman,’ Bea said. ‘Why would she be living in poverty if she had an expensive watch in her possession?’

  ‘All part of the act, isn’t it? Perhaps she’s not had time to sell it yet. I want the police to be called.’

  Bea glanced at Mim, picked up her phone and left the room. Yvonne smiled. Mim gazed out of the window, seeing nothing. Was Bea actually calling the police? How could Bea think her capable of this?

  Bea didn’t return for almost ten minutes and when she did, Corin was at her side. Mim hadn’t seen him since the day of the charity launch. She’d tried to find him, to apologise for overreacting during their conversation about Henry Burrows, but Lia had said he was away helping on another school expedition. He looked at her now and didn’t smile. That hurt even more than Bea’s reaction. She’d thought they were friends, that they had a connection, despite their silly argument. He couldn’t believe this, could he?

  ‘Is he police?’ Yvonne asked.

  ‘He’s my son,’ Bea said.

  ‘Ha!’ Yvonne laughed. ‘That answers the question of whose bed she shares in this house. Didn’t I tell you what she was like?’

  ‘I think we’ve heard enough from you.’ Mim had never heard Corin sound so angry. It did the trick. Yvonne fell silent at last. ‘Let’s sort this out now. Mim, do you know anything about a gold watch?’

  ‘Yes.’ Three faces turned to her, one triumphant and two surprised. ‘Gordon did have a Rolex watch. It was the most valuable thing he owned, apart from the hotel.’

  ‘You see?’ Yvonne stood up. ‘When she didn’t get the hotel, she took the watch. Have you called the police?’

  ‘No.�
�� Corin shut her down with a look. ‘Did you take the watch, Mim?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Yvonne’s snort of triumph echoed round the room. Corin’s gaze didn’t falter. Mim looked straight back at him. ‘I took it to the pawn shop two years ago, at Gordon’s request, and I haven’t seen it since.’

  ‘There you go. The case is closed.’ Corin gestured at the door. ‘Perhaps now you would care to leave us alone and take your squalid accusations with you.’

  He believed her, just like that? Mim could have kissed him – in a strictly platonic way. Unfortunately, Yvonne wasn’t so easily convinced.

  ‘We only have her word for it,’ she said, but she didn’t sound as confident as she had done.

  ‘I have proof in the caravan.’

  ‘Do run along and fetch it, Mim dear, then this ghastly woman might finally go,’ Bea said. ‘I’m tempted to call the police after all and report her for squatting.’

  ‘You’re letting her leave?’ Yvonne said. ‘She might run away.’

  ‘Where would she run to? This is her home.’ Bea sighed. ‘Corin, will you go with Mim and make sure she comes back? Heaven knows no one could blame her if she didn’t.’

  ‘And who’s to say they won’t run away together?’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’ Corin didn’t wait to hear anything further but marched out of the room, swiftly followed by Mim. He was halfway down the track before he slowed his pace and she was able to catch up.

  ‘Now I see why you weren’t daunted by Janet,’ he said. ‘You’ve encountered far worse. Where did that God-awful woman spring up from?’