Beach Hut Surprise: Escape to Little Piddling this summer — six feel-good beach reads to make you smile, or even laugh out loud

by Libertà Books

  If he put up for election in her ward, she'd vote for him. And if she was in trouble at sea, that smile...

  There was a glimmer of something, a tug of recognition, and she visibly shivered.

  "Rose?"

  "Make that two biscuits," she said. "Anything but bourbons, and I promise not to tell."

  "You still hate them?"

  For a moment everything seemed to stand still, until the silence was broken by the thump of a seagull landing on the roof.

  "I think it must have heard you mention biscuits," she said, then, when he didn't respond, "I'll—um—just go and take a quick look inside the hut."

  Unsure what had just happened, Rose tried the key in the lock, conscious that Daniel was watching her.

  "The door's dropped," she said, taking the handle and lifting it so that the lock lined up. This time the key moved but met resistance. "And it's not locked."

  "Maybe someone else viewed it and left in such a hurry that they didn't stop to lock up."

  She gave him a sideways look. "Are you trying to put me off?"

  "No..." There was the sound of a kettle whistling. "I'd better get that."

  She waited until he'd disappeared, then pushed at the door. It had swollen a little and it needed a firm shove, but having pushed the door all the way open, she hesitated, half-expecting to be repelled by some malignant force.

  Instead she was enveloped in the scent of dry seaweed, sun-baked wood, the lingering mustiness of a damp towel that had been left behind at the end of the summer.

  It was the first-day-of-the-holidays smell, full of anticipation and sunshine and, as she stepped inside, the compact interior seemed to open up in welcome, almost as if it had been waiting for her.

  She reached out, put her hand flat against the wall. The wood was cool and dry and she felt the tension seep from her shoulders.

  "Yes..." The word escaped on a breath. "Yes," she repeated, although what she was agreeing to, she couldn't have said.

  There was a child's bathing suit lying in a crumpled heap, on the floor. She stooped to pick it up, expecting it to be stiff and dry, but it was quite wet, as if some little girl had just run in from the beach, peeled it off and left it there.

  She looked up at the roof, wondering if there was a leak, but there were no water stains, only a swathe of cobwebs hanging in a gauzy curtain in front of a sleeping loft.

  Evidently someone was taking advantage of the unlocked door which, considering how quick Daniel had been to challenge her, suggested that they had to be pretty light on their toes.

  Her first job would be to change the lock, she thought, as she reached behind her and hung the swimsuit on one of the useful hooks near the door. Then frowned as she looked back. How had she known they were there?

  Good design. It was where she would have put them and, with her designer's hat on, she set about thoroughly examining the interior.

  The structure appeared sound enough, but like the exterior, it had been neglected. The cupboards were solid but hard used and one of the hinges had given way so that the door was hanging open to reveal an assortment of mugs. A tall narrow cupboard contained a broom, a dustpan and a cricket bat. No ball.

  Across the rear, there was a long storage bench. The cushion had been covered in a heavyweight retro chintz—roses, fuchsias and leaves on a dark blue background. It had faded and begun to rot where it had worn thin.

  With luck—and perseverance—she might be able to trace some of the same fabric to replace it. Old curtains for sale on eBay were a good source.

  Inside the seat, there would be a pink beach umbrella, a blow-up bed with a foot pump, a striped blanket and last year's rubber flip-flops...

  The image had been so vivid that it was a shock when she lifted the lid and saw an umbrella, its frame rusty, the cloth disintegrating. The flip-flops were there and the foot pump, but no blow-up bed and no blanket.

  Sand crunched beneath her feet as she dropped the lid, took a step back, grabbing for the nearest thing to steady her as she stumbled over something that had gone over with a clatter.

  The final screws on the cupboard door gave up their precarious hold and it came away in her hand. It was heavy and it slipped from her fingers, narrowly missing her foot.

  She muttered an expletive, took a moment to catch her breath, then spotted the cause of her stumble.

  It was a small plastic bucket for making sandcastles, but it had been filled with shells, smooth pebbles and sea glass, collected by some young beachcomber and now scattered across the floor.

  She had no sense that she was being rejected by the hut, despite the bucket and the door, and knelt to gather up the treasures, still damp from the sea. But that moment, before she opened the storage seat when, in her head, she'd seen what was stored inside, was just a little bit weird.

  It would have been weirder still if the contents had matched the vision, but it had just been her imagination working overtime.

  Since she was down on her hands and knees, she took the opportunity to check the floor for any sign of damage or rot.

  It was obvious that the surface had been scoured by years of sandy feet. It would need sanding and sealing, but it appeared to be sound.

  She had just reached to push the door closed so that she could see behind it, when she spotted a bare foot, the nails painted with badly chipped red polish.

  She froze, for a moment horribly afraid that she'd stumbled across a body, but then the foot began to inch back behind the door.

  Whoever was hiding there was very much alive, and Rose let out a huff of relief as she realised that it had to be the child who'd discarded the bathing suit.

  Trapped by the unexpected arrival, she must have dived into the only hiding place available and, over the initial shock, Rose peeped around the door, her lips formed to say "boo".

  The sound stuck in her throat.

  It wasn't a child curled up behind the door. Looking back at her was a young woman, wearing a pretty blue polka-dot sundress.

  Her dark hair was curled damply about her face and her mascara had run, but she had that fine bone structure that would still look good when she was eighty.

  There was something oddly familiar about her, a bit like spotting someone in the street that you couldn't quite place until, hours later, you realised that she was the dentist's receptionist. But Rose hadn't met anyone in Little Piddling apart from Daniel and Arthur Kettlesing; and the woman who'd served her with a croissant had short blonde hair.

  Before Rose could ask who she was and what she was doing there—the damp hair, the child's wet bathing suit made that fairly obvious—the woman said, "There you are, Katy. What's taken you so long?"

  Katy...?

  Rose, whose heart was getting more of a workout than was entirely welcome in one morning, replied sharply, "I'm not..." Damn it, it was no business of this woman who she was. "Look, the hut was left unlocked and you took advantage, but you have to leave now."

  "That is no way to talk to your mother."

  What?

  "No... That's enough." Rose had sat for long hours holding her mother's hand while she lay dying of the cruel cancer that had taken her from them. She stood up. "You have to leave. Now."

  "I can't do that, Katy. Peter asked me to wait for you..."

  "Peter...?" Rose repeated, confused. "Look, my name is Rose and my father died three months ago." And then, because there could be no other explanation, "Are you Jules?"

  "Mama to you, young lady. And why are you calling yourself Rose?"

  "It's my name."

  The woman shook her head, sighed. "I called you Katy after a book I loved, but your Nanna Rose will love that you're using her name. Have you been to see her, yet?"

  "No, no, no!"

  Pauline, her father's mother, had died in a plane crash with the rest of his family when he was at university, but her maternal grandmother, Margaret, was very much alive and running a complex of gîtes in the Dordogne with her second husband.

&
nbsp; "You know this was Nanna Rose's beach hut, Katy. She gave it to me for my twenty-first birthday and it should have come to you."

  Daniel tapped at the door. "Coffee's ready," he said, pulling a face as he looked up at the ceiling. "This is a mess."

  He couldn't see Jules where she was sitting behind the door, shaking her head vigorously.

  Jules didn't want him to know she was there and, for some reason that she couldn't explain, Rose stepped back out into the sunlight.

  "I'll leave the door open to let in the fresh air." Allow her unexpected tenant to escape.

  "What do you think?" he asked, looking up at the roof.

  "It needs cleaning up and painting inside and out, but it's basically sound."

  "Well, that's a start. Did someone stop to see what was going on?"

  "No..."

  "Oh. I thought I heard you talking to someone."

  "Did you?" She managed a shrug. "I was probably thinking out loud. I do it all the time when I'm weighing things up. Trying to come to a decision."

  "And have you? Made a decision?"

  Chapter Four

  A few minutes ago, Rose had been happily planning the restoration in her head. She knew the exact shade of pink she'd use on the exterior. How she'd restore the cupboards to retain the retro look. The bunting she'd make to hang along the sleeping loft. How she'd fix solar-powered fairy lights and restore the carving along the roof ridge...

  Realising that Daniel was waiting, she said, "I should probably sleep on it."

  "You're not going to do that," Jules muttered. "It's been here all this time, waiting for you. I understand why your father wanted rid of it, but it wasn't his to sell. At least he kept the money for you."

  Money?

  Her father had given her some money when she'd left art college to help her start her own business. Money that had been their little secret...

  "You were always his little princess..."

  Rose looked at Daniel, but he didn't seem to have heard. She rubbed her hands over her arms, suddenly cold.

  "Are you OK, Rose?"

  She shook her head. "My dad died recently and I haven't been sleeping very well." She shrugged. "Not much at all, if I'm honest."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Thanks. It was such a shock. He had a heart attack when he was out running." The coroner's officer had assured her that it had been a massive event and he would have been dead before he hit the floor, but she hadn't been able to get the image of him lying on the cold ground out of her mind.

  "The coffee will help," Daniel said, walking back to his own hut.

  "He's right. Bring me a cup, there's a good girl," Jules called. "And a couple of biscuits. A woman could starve..."

  Resisting the temptation to stick her fingers in her ears, Rose shut the door with a bang, desperate to block her out.

  With a steaming mug of coffee in her hand, Rose began to relax. "The plan was to take a break in the Greek islands," she said. "I'm not sure how I ended up here."

  Daniel laughed. "That must have been some postcard. Who was it from?" he asked, casually.

  She glanced at the pink hut with its peeling paintwork and rose garland. Looked away.

  "It was old," she said. "Rosa's must have been freshly painted when it was taken."

  "I remember Katy's grandmother repainting the garland," he said. "I must have been six or seven. Katy was just a toddler, but she wouldn't rest until she was given a piece of wood to paint so that she could be an artist like her Nanna Rose."

  She was an artist?

  "Your family have had this hut for a long time?" Rose said, telling herself that she didn't want to hear about Katy or her Nanna Rose.

  "Since it was new. The oldest ones were converted from bathing huts that were pulled out into the sea by horses so that gentlemen could go nude bathing."

  She laughed. "That's quite an image. I hadn't realised they were that old. It's no wonder the atmosphere in Rosa's Retreat is so layered with memory."

  "Is it?"

  "There was definitely something." She looked across at the faded pink hut. "I can't wait to bring it back to life." Once her squatter had realised the game was up and moved on.

  "What happened to sleeping on it?"

  "That was the plan," she said, but outside in the sun, sipping warm coffee in good company, she had no doubts. "But I've learned over the years that when something calls you so strongly, there's no point in fighting it."

  "And Rosa is calling you?"

  "Something is. Finding that postcard was not just chance."

  "No..."

  She turned to look at him. "You believe me? You don't think I'm crazy?"

  "You believe it," he said, not quite meeting her gaze. "That's all that matters, but you're right to get an estimate of how much it's going to cost to repaint the exterior before you make an offer. Unless you have someone to help you?"

  The question hung there for a moment and there was no mistaking his meaning. He was asking if she had a partner and a pulse of heat swept through her body as trillions of cells quivered in response.

  "I have a very good idea how much a contractor would charge," she said, once she'd remembered to breathe, "but I'll be doing the work myself."

  "How good are you with a paintbrush?"

  There was nothing like a condescending man to provide a lust-quelling bucket of cold water.

  "Men seem to manage," she said, glancing over the rim of the mug she was holding. "How hard can it be?"

  He opened his mouth as if to tell her, but something in her expression must have warned him that it wouldn't be smart.

  "I'm sorry, Rose. I didn't intend that to sound quite so patronising."

  "I'm equally sorry to tell you that you failed." She reached into her bag and handed him her card.

  "Rosalind Redmayne Interiors." He glanced up. "You're a decorator?"

  "These days I mostly work on the designs and employ other people to do the serious physical labour, but I'm no stranger to sandpaper."

  Her business was Internet based. She could work anywhere and, with her father gone, Matt and Lisa busy with their own lives, there was nothing to keep her in Maybridge.

  She could let her cottage, rent somewhere in Little Piddling for the summer and bring the hut back to life in between design contracts. It would give her the break she needed, and a project that she could sell on for a profit when it was done. Or maybe she would keep it and rent it out.

  And while she was at it, she could find out more about the hut and its past owners. Look for the connection between Jules and her father. Maybe let Daniel help her rub down the exterior of her hut. Rub down her own exterior...

  "Rose?"

  She blinked. "Sorry, did you say something?"

  "I said we're going to be neighbours."

  He made that sound so intimate. Aware that her cheeks had become a little warm, she said, "I'm afraid it will be a bit noisy for a while. Are there likely to be objections from the other hut dwellers?"

  "Everyone will be glad to see Rosa looking tidy and if you promise to throw a really good party when you're done, we all might just pitch in and help."

  "I'll bear that in mind. And next time the coffee is on me."

  "You're going?" he asked when she put down the mug and stood up.

  "I have a beach hut to buy, but first I need to get out of these damp clothes. I'm hoping the B&B will take pity on me and let me into my room early."

  "Where are you staying?"

  "Just across the road at Queen Charlotte House."

  "Of course."

  "There's no of course about it," she snapped. "It popped up in my search, the reviews were good, it's just across the road from the beach huts and there's parking, all of which make it ideal."

  "Which is why it's the obvious choice," he said.

  "Oh. I thought you were... It's just that..."

  "It's OK," he said. "It's very popular with beach-hutters for all those reasons. You'll be very comfortable there�
��" A pager at his waist began to buzz and he was on his feet even before he'd glanced at it. "Tell Flo that you're a friend of mine and she'll sort you out," he said, backing away. "I'll pick you up at eight and take you to the Wine Bar for supper. Stay Nigel!"

  He didn't wait for an answer but was running, the boardwalk bouncing under the pounding of his feet as he headed for the pier.

  She looked at the bear-like dog who'd leapt up at the sound of the pager, but was now standing like a statue as he watched Daniel weave between the promenade strollers.

  "Don't worry, sweetie," she said. "He'll be back soon."

  His tail twitched as he looked back at her, then flopped down, his huge head between his paws.

  A few minutes later, an inflatable inshore lifeboat was speeding across the bay. It was too far away to see who was at the helm, but from the stance, the angle of the head, she knew it was Daniel. And she knew, in her bones, that someone was going to be very happy to see him heading in their direction.

  Rose took the biscuit tin and cups inside and rinsed them in the hot water left in the kettle, trying very hard to resist being a nosy neighbour, but with everything almost touching-close, it was impossible.

  Dan's Den, clean, neat, freshly painted, couldn't have been more different to the interior of Rosa. There was a lot of plain dark blue fabric, including a roomy hammock slung beneath the sleeping loft, which appeared to be used for storage. There wasn't a lot of headspace up there and Daniel would undoubtedly have knocked himself out if he'd sat up too quickly.

  There was a small desk with a stool tucked underneath and, above it, a corkboard thickly pinned with photographs.

  She leaned closer to take a better look. There were photographs of lifeboat crews, parties on the beach with friends and family. In quite a few he was with a pretty girl. Laughing, serious, distracted... In one it was a redhead, another had a sleek dark bob, and there was one with an enviable waterfall of silky blonde hair.

  It seemed that her neighbour with the pulse-raising smile was a bit of a player. She would have to watch herself.